Just Because You Can

I haven’t written to this blog in a long while because I haven’t been angry enough about something in particular to do so. Well today, I have something at which I can direct some energy.

There’s a pernicious cliché I hear almost every time I talk to someone who doesn’t like Open Carry (which is the practice, in those states--free states--where it is legal to openly carry a firearm): Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, or another variation, Just because you can, does not mean you have to. I suppose one can also add, Just because you can doesn’t mean you must.

As with many such clichés, it seems to say something profound but actually doesn’t as I propose to show forthwith. The reason I dislike clichés is that they are a shortcut to critical thinking. In fact, it may be more true to say that clichés are short circuits, an endrun around having to think too deeply about things. By the way, if you want to see a thoroughgoing disassembly of cliché, I suggest you read Jonah Goldberg’s The Tyranny of Clichés.

So let’s make things a bit more concrete, shall we, and rejigger the mental circuitry, take apart this vapid saying, put some meat on them bones. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should … is an incomplete sentence, it’s a phrase. There are things missing, aren’t there? Let’s add stuff:

“Just because you can eat ice cream doesn’t mean you should.” (Noted, and thanks. I’ll go ahead and eat ice cream. I like ice cream.)

“Just because you can kiss your wife goodbye doesn’t mean you should kiss her goodbye.” (Noted, and thanks. I’ll go ahead and kiss my wife goodbye, because it shows I love her and she likes it.)

“Just because you can pet your dog doesn’t mean you should pet your dog.” (Noted, and thanks. I’ll go ahead and pet my dog, because I like doing it and my dogs likes it, too.)

You see what I mean? As you start adding specifics, it starts to approach inanity. It actually doesn’t tell you anything at all. There’s stuff missing, important stuff: the phrase is meaningless because it doesn’t give any reasoning & with that goes meaning, and meaning is vital to reason. In fact, it does mental damage beyond that. Let me illustrate:

“Just because you can exercise your First Amendment right to petition government does not mean you should.”

Woah now, come again? Why not?! It’s my right to petition government, are you saying I should not? Why not? Why don’t you want me to exercise my right to petition government, what's your motive? What do you have against my exercising the right to petition my government?

See the scorpion’s tail in that seemingly innocent cliche? It gets people comfortable with doing nothing. In fact, the counterargument can be more correct: Just because you can means you should! Also in fact, this is the way better phrasing: it is positive, it is a call to action. Of course, it keeps out a bunch of things as well, but I’d much rather defend a positive position than the negative. One’s making an argument, the other is merely making a critique. One is the sun, the other is the eclipse.

In the case of our civil rights, just because you can exercise your civil rights, means you should! A right not regularly exercised atrophies. A right which falls out of common use is a right effectively lost. A right which no one cares to exercise soon becomes easier to forget, and even to legislatively abrogate.

And here’s the reason I wrote this today: I hear this nigh meaningless phrase uttered in reference to Open Carry so here it is, the missing information: “Just because you can Open Carry doesn’t mean you should.” To which I counter, why ever not? It is a valid expression of our right to keep and bear arms! Those who contend that we shouldn’t or mustn’t are trying to sell you on letting go one of your most important civil rights, just as surely as they’re trying to sell you on any of the others you do have.

I have been told that the Supreme Court has decided on a slim margin that there is now a right to same-sex marriage. All well and good, and it is now the law of the land. One of the arguments on the side of the SSM crowd was that it was a civil right, and any attempt to water it down with civil unions or any other facsimile of full on marriage, is oppressive. Do not tell me when, how, and with whom I can exercise my civil rights! If it makes you uncomfortable that I want to exercise my right to same-sex marriage, I suggest you go pound sand (or go to jail in that Kentucky case). You cannot debate my civil rights away! You know what, I agree.

“Just because you can marry a man if you’re a man doesn’t mean you should.” Try telling that to the SSM supporter and be excoriated, and rightly so. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.

I support Open Carry, it’s part & parcel of the “bear arms” section of the Second Amendment. If it makes you uncomfortable that I am OC, I suggest you go pound sand. I don’t care what you think or, to be precise, what you feel. Your insecurity about when I choose to exercise my civil rights doesn’t matter.

Some people don’t like the light it throws on all gun owners when certain gun owners act up. How they look while OC. It makes society at large think worse of us all gun owners. Some people say Open Carrying at people (whatever the hell that means, I’m guessing posturing aggressively) is wrong--we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it?--and yet others go on about how our rights will be curtailed by voters when people misuse it.

That’s the thing about rights, you see. They can’t be voted on; an opinion about a revoking a natural right is meaningless. I refuse to have the actions of a person who happens to be in the same category as me define who I am. A person who misuses their rights gets individually punished. If it is not against the law to OC then leave the man alone who OCs. He’s no more breaking the law than is the man who is eating breakfast at a cafe. Leave him alone.

That it happens to be a gun and not a breakfast sandwich is meaningless. Stop trying to convince me to stop exercising my civil rights because you don’t like the form in which I’m doing it or what I'm wearing while doing it. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.

I could add that I usually don't Open Carry often as a choice because of strategic & tactical reasons (I don’t have backup, I don’t have a radio connecting me with a ton of other armed citizens who will arrive to help me if I get in trouble, etc.). But to make a point of it, to exercise a right which needs exercising, to condition the populace to being comfortable with the Second Amendment, to spit in the face of those who wish to make me feel like a dirty, broken person, belonging in the back of a closet: Just because I can, I will.

Open vs. Concealed Carry

A storm in a teacup, so the saying goes, and there's no bigger one than that currently raging between the advocates of so-called Open Carry and Concealed Carry. The carrying is of weapons, by the way.

Begging your pardon, it's not so much a storm as a bleeding hurricane. And it's all for naught. Why must people act as if those two modes of carrying a firearm are somehow mutually exclusive? Let me repeat this question:

Why must people act as if those two modes of carrying a firearm are mutually exclusive?

Because, pssst, they aren't. There's nothing that says that in jurisdictions where the two modes of carry are legal, you must choose one or the other! And once you have chosen to carry in one mode, you can never, ever, ever again carry in any other mode. Nonsense, stuff and double nonsense. Yet, to read the "debates" raging on various Facebook pages, twitter, and blogs, you'd think this was a problem beyond all cognition.

In Idaho, we are able to carry openly without a permit. With a tax permit, we are also able to carry concealed in town (you may carry concealed while outside city limits). We are currently trying to replicate what Vermont--of all states!--has had since 1791, so-called Constitutional Carry. This means that if you're a law-abiding citizen without adjudicated mental infirmities, not prohibited from owning firearms, you ought to be allowed to carry in whatever mode you desire. The Second Amendment describes it as carry but not in what mode.

And this is crux of the issue: in jurisdictions which both modes are legal, carry as you wish! I choose not to carry openly most of the time because concealed carry affords me the element of surprise if, God forbid, I ever have to deploy a firearm to defend against a forcible felony. Open carry is less strategically sound and were I to openly carry, I would very likely be doing so in a group of friends so we can look after each other. Cops who carry openly have backups, partners, access to long arms within reach and a radio for tactical reasons, and so would I want as well.

However, there's no law that forces me to carry one way or the other. And I refuse to impugn my fellow citizens' right to carry as they wish. The two modes of carry are not mutually exclusive. Good people can and do both!

I have more to say about this, but I wanted to keep this post short. However, I am going to take this opportunity now to address the brain-dead who insist in various ways all asinine, that those who carry openly are making it hard to know the difference between good guys with a gun and a bad guy with a gun.

One woman on Facebook put it this way (and by "way," I mean batshit cuckoo):

This is how you argue, folks! pic.twitter.com/HTrkxZytmy
— Salty Codger (@fwoodbridge) March 10, 2015

Ignore for a second her incredible assertion that someone exercising their legal rights necessarily leads to you standing over "your dead child's grave". What I want you to notice is this line:

You people are making it impossible to tell the good guys with guys [she must mean guns] from the bad guys with guns. And just one more thing [as if she's ready to drop some mad knowledge, yo!] ... 100% of all bad guys with guns were good guys with guns before they committed their first crime.

Get that? She is unable to tell, just by looking at someone (who happens to be bearing a pistol in a holster or a rifle slung over the shoulder) whether that person will commit a crime or not. Gosh, wouldn't that be swell? If you could somehow tell, just by looking, whether or not someone will cause harm in the near future? Well, we could start by employing Pre-cogs. That'd be a good first start. Until then, how about you stick to reality?

Let me put it another way to this woman: two men are walking towards you. They are both men, as you can easily ascertain, which means they both have penises. Which means that either man could conceivably (heh) rape you. But, just by looking at these men, how can you tell who's a good man with a penis and who's a bad man with a penis?

And just one more thing, 100% of all bad men with penises were good guys with penises before they raped you.

Base Assumptions

Ran into this execrable pile of shit this morning and "felt led" to opine. I'll quote it here and tell you what I think following:

Rep. Curt Oda, R-Clearfield’s HB260 bill permitting concealed guns without a permit is irresponsibly dangerous. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the U.S. Supreme Court held, “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues of arms.”

As a licensed clinical social worker, I counsel men in relational disputes. Jacqueline C. Campbell, Ph.D., an internationally recognized domestic violence expert, has research suggesting the risk of a man killing a woman is highest where he is unemployed and possesses a weapon. Such men would often not be deemed mentally ill at the time of purchase of a weapon prior to relational disputes occurring.

Rep. Oda’s bill is irresponsible and would increase the likelihood that more women will be seriously injured or murdered than save people from criminals. Now is the time when government has a responsibility to protect its people and not promote freedom to handle anger and frustration to the detriment of people’s lives. Our freedoms on[sic] not unlimited, says the U.S. Supreme Court.

Tab L. Uno, LCSW, MPA

The open assertion is interesting, but there it is in all its sordid glory, the theme of his letter. Pity he follows up with a quote from a Supreme Court case that does not contribute in any way to his conclusion that a permitless concealed carry is "irresponsibly dangerous." Perhaps there's more following.

The second paragraph continues with an appeal to authority that because he's a licensed social worker--leftist alert!--what follows should be accepted without argument. What does he follow up with, a quote from yet another expert that suggests that a "man killing a woman is highest when he is unemployed and possesses a weapon."

Let's look at his base assumptions here: as a licensed clinical (no less) social worker, he's telling you to accept the "research" which "suggests" (though not actually proves) that there is a increase in the risk of men killing women when they're (a) unemployed and (b) in possession of a weapon. Keep it at the front of your mind his thematic conclusion: that permitless concealed carry is "irresponsibly dangerous" then ask yourself what connection permitless concealed carry has with research from some unknown authority figure named Jackie--whom he asserts is an internationally recognized expert--produced which show unemployed men who own guns are at risk of killing women.

Think of his assumptions here, based even though they are on this purported "research": he's assuming that men will have to be both unemployed and simply own a firearm to raise the risk of them killing women. That alone is debatable but it betrays a vicious mindset, a generalization that slanders men. Though strangely this curtails his argument, such as it is, since all I would have to do to destroy it is to say that employed male gun owners exist in much larger numbers.

Continuing: since the risk is "raised" that unemployed men are at risk of killing women (women in general or just ones they run into on the street?), we should not pass a law permitting concealed carry without a license. Okay, that makes all the sense in the world!

Unemployed male gun owners are at risk of killing women therefore do not pass a bill that would allow permitless concealed weapons carriage. Do you see the meandering illogic of this? The pure emotionality of it all? Women will die! The only thing that would round out this perfect dunghill of an argument is if he can somehow work in minorities, preferably gay minorities--into the whole stewpot.

His final paragraph seals the tomb: this bill will increase the likelihood that women will be murdered. H'm. Doesn't that require his two ingredients of male unemployment and simple gun ownership? Alas, he doesn't say. He just wildly asserts. His premises don't support his conclusions, but I wager he doesn't care, women will die! The fantastic rat's nest of assumptions that draws a connection between unemployed males killing women with their guns is a work of a very disturbed mind. That this person is "counselling men" is only just this side of frightening.

Secure in the fact that he has indeed made the connection between unemployed, gun-owning males, the women they kill, and permitless concealed weapons carry, he proceeds:

Now is the time when government has a responsibility to protect its people and not promote freedom to handle anger and frustration to the detriment of people’s lives.

Does that statement make any sense to you? I've read it a few times and each time, I get more confused. "Now is the time [as opposed to when other time?] when government has a responsibility to protect its people and [here comes the super bizarre part] not promote freedom to handle anger and frustration to the detriment of people's lives [Huhhuhwhat? Is there a freedom fit to be promoted by the government to "handle anger"? Seriously, what the fuck does this mean?]

By passing a permitless concealed weapons carry law, this is government "promoting freedom to handle anger and frustration to the detriment of people's lives"? How about permitted concealed weapons carry, which is legal now? How is the permitting process supposed to weed out unemployed men who will kill women? What standard ought the government use here? Will there need to be a question in the form for concealed carry that asks whether you're employed if you're male and which will deny you the right to keep and bear arms since it raises the risk of you bad male person you killing women?

Our freedoms are not unlimited, says the Supreme Court. I have so many questions: what does this have to do with permitless concealed weapons carry? Does the Supreme Court get to decide what those limitations on our freedoms are, or just the right to keep and bear arms? What will a limitation on the right to keep and bear arms mean with respect to unemployed male gun owners killing women?

This letter gives you an insight into the disjointed mind of a leftist who speaks only in buzzwords. Men kill women. Buzz! Guns are bad. Buzz! I am a clinical social worker. Buzz! Freedoms are not unlimited. Buzz! Supposition based on emotion riding on the rails of base assumptions with a touch of just pure crazy.

Tears on My Pillow

Ran into this gem published by our newspaper of record (I use that term loosely) here in Idaho, The Statesman. I'm going to quote it and intersperse my thoughts.

When a powerful organization called al-Qaida nurtures the violent fantasies of angry and disaffected men and enables them to obtain weapons and kill innocent civilians, we call that terrorism.
When a profit-driven industry lobby called the NRA makes it easy as pie for any angry or even crazy person to get handguns and assault weapons and act out their own violent fantasies against family and community members, does that count as terrorism, too?

Right off, you get the sense this is going to be a well-reasoned, thoughtful and sober reflection on the issues. "al-Qaida" is compared with the National Rifle Association because they both nurture the violent "fantasies of men" (not women?) by enabling them to "obtain weapons and kill innocent civilians."

Yes, those two organizations are different in name, perhaps, but that's where all difference ends. Must I point out the insanity of conflating these two organizations, really? Must I? Oh alright, I suppose I must. The NRA (I mean 'al-Qaida') enables crazy people to get handguns and assault weapons. I'd like to know how it does that exactly. Does it buy them the handguns? Does it encourage the crazy people to commit these atrocities? Does it put the evil in their minds, maybe using some "Inception"-type brainwashing? Does it make them crazy in the first place? I'm not quite clear what this person means by "enabling" because "easy as pie" isn't exactly a methodology.

To purchase a firearm, the NRA (I mean, 'al-Qaida') plays no part in the transaction whatsoever. To purchase a firearm, the person has two choices: buy from a dealer or buy from a private citizen. To purchase from a dealer, they must first have money, which isn't exactly easy to come by. So called "assault weapons" (so called because there's no one legal definition for what an assault weapon is) are expensive and the NRA, if anything, takes money not gives it.

At the dealership, the prospective buyer must pass a background check to ensure he or she is not a "prohibited person." Felons cannot purchase firearms, neither can those adjudicated mentally insane. So far, no 'Easy Pie' but it is simple as a concept: if you're not a felon or otherwise prohibited, nothing should come in the way of your obtaining a firearm, which is a right as recognized by the Second Amendment.

So what about private purchases? The first point to make here is an important and philosophical one: a firearm is not a sentient being, capable of making choices on its own. It is a tool, designed for the specific purpose of throwing a projectile in a certain direction, that direction chosen by the wielder of the firearm. It is a piece of property, no more no less. In many ways, it's like a car or a boat. As a private citizen, I ought to be able to sell my own private property, period. If you don't agree with this simply because it is a firearm, you are a tyrant-in-the-making.

That said, there are laws governing such transactions specifically because it is a firearm: the seller must be reasonably certain that the buyer is not a prohibited person. This means that most purchasers who do not know the buyer beforehand will insist on getting a bill of sale filled out, an ID check, and many insist that the buyer have a Concealed Weapons Permit which shows they've already passed an FBI background check. So far, no pie and the NRA (I mean 'al-Qaida') still hasn't made an appearance.

But, you protest, criminals and other prohibited persons get their guns somewhere! That's right: they buy them from other criminals. They do not go into gun stores. They do not buy them from law-abiding private citizens. Read the FBI reports on this and you'll find that criminals get the majority of their guns from strawman purchases (bad boy thug felon sends his baby momma who has no criminal record to buy him a gun) and of course from the streets.

As for crazy people obtaining firearms, until the day we can merely look at a person who has shown no signs of mental illness beforehand and foresee they are about to become insanely violent, we are forced to give them the benefit of the doubt. Mental illness is a terrible thing, but we all should not be guilty of it before clinical diagnosis. As easily as the mentally ill can use a firearm to cause violence, they can use a knife (as happened in China with those poor children) and they can use a car (too many examples of this abound) or something else, usually benign. It is the responsibility of society at large that before we strip someone of their unalienable rights--which include bearing arms--a sober judicial process must occur. We shouldn't be required to prove our sanity before exercising a basic and natural right. On second thought, maybe we ought to require proof of sanity before voting!

Now for "angry" persons obtaining firearms--what a ludicrous idea! Who hasn't been an "angry" person a few times in life? Prohibiting people from obtaining firearms because they're "angry" is insanity itself and pretty much rules out every man, woman, and child on the planet. Which is perhaps his goal, and if so, why doesn't he just say so?

As with most of the stupidity and irrationality in American public life, our friends, neighbors and family members are being killed on a weekly basis nationwide because this is what we have asked for, either by voting for politicians who are stooges of the NRA, or by not voting at all and thus leaving the decision to zealots.

In one breath you call Americans stupid and irrational but your "friends, neighbors and family members" who are killed on a weekly basis aren't stupid and irrational, they're just dead. Are those people not part of the stupid and irrational American public life? The connection he attempts to show between voting for politicians who are NRA (I mean, 'al-Qaida') stooges and his "friends and neighbors" being killed is tenuous, at best.

Let's see here: the politicians in Chicago, Democrats almost all, are hardly NRA stooges. In fact, Chicago and the state of Illinois has some of the most stringent gun regulations on the books. Yet it also has some of the highest murder rate committed with handguns (not "assault weapons," mind you which are statistically insignificant) in the nation. In fact, the areas with politicians who write the most stringent gun control measures into law have the highest rates of "gun violence." Interesting, that, no? So it seems where there's no NRA ('al-Qaida'), there's higher rates of "gun violence" which, alas, doesn't help his points.

So tell me again that a nation flooded with guns and plagued with mass murders is somehow freer and safer than nations such as Australia, Canada or England with vastly lower murder rates.
Somehow, I'm not feeling it.

And that's the key, isn't it? This whole letter is composed of "feels." You're not "feeling" it because basically, that's about all you're doing, is feeling. This is an unsteady appeal to emotion. None of the clear-eyed statistics actually supports your contentions so you blast out in a spittle stream of over-emotionality.

Well, I'm sure sorry to tell you this, but your feelings have no weight in overturning Second Amendment rights. As most Americans now agree, based on polling data, the Second Amendment is sacrosanct and gun control is nothing more than people control in hiding. The fact that someone, somewhere, will misuse their right to own firearms is not a reason to strip those rights away from everyone else. The fact that someone, somewhere, is sure to drink and drive is no reason to prohibit the sale of alcohol. Unless and until you commit a crime or are adjudicated mentally unstable, your rights are yours, given by the Constitution's 'Creator' and are not subject to your feelings.

As for the spurious claim about our nation flooded with guns is less "freer and safer" than Australia, Canada, or England, well that just does not hold any water! England and Australia have different populations in both numbers and culture than we do. Not only that, but their violence rates are higher per capita than ours. In fact, the United States is number 111 (One hundred and Eleven) in homicide rates worldwide and, if we take out the Democrat-controlled cities, we would fall even lower. We are freer, yes, and come to find out, we're safer, too.

Watch this, if you dare:


As an aside, it's rather interesting that you're calling out Australia and Canada where in the last few months violence with highly-regulated firearms have exploded into the news. France, with its Draconian firearms laws, just saw Islamic terrorists (NRA members?) murder police and journalists with semi-automatic rifles. How do you explain that away, I wonder?

And yes, I've been a gun owner all my adult life, am pro-hunting and attended the police funeral following the previous Moscow mass murders in 2007. Still not feeling it.
Chris Norden, Moscow

Well, Chris, the fact you're a gun owner "all your life" means nothing. It does not grant your opinion any more weight. That you want to limit firearm ownership, while being a firearm owner yourself, means nothing. It's a cheap rhetorical ploy to cover yourself in a mantle of reasonableness. It's sort of like saying that because you're married to a Jew, you are thereby free to be an anti-Semite.

The Second Amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with "hunting." Nice try. Go sell your crazy somewhere else, pal. Like Chicago.

I'm not a member of the NRA but this guy has given me all the reason I need to pull the trigger (no pun). Today, I'm joining the NRA (I mean, 'al-Qaida').

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2015/01/27/3612814_letter-guns.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

The White Rabbit Rides Again

Every summer it seems the gods decide to put me through an Olympics: “you, athlete (ha! Athlete!) prepare thyself for competition … with yourself.” Boom!

Here it comes—I picture a lightning rod upon which rides the gnarliest of viruses. This  year, it was these little beasties that landed with a thud:

These things decided to take up residence in my throat and turn it into a bachelorette's eve of Roman orgy proportion. And wouldn’t you know it, right in the middle of an Exchange Server 2007 to 2013 migration. The gods, they have a funny sense of humor.

Not knowing exactly what microbe had caught a ride on Thor’s lightning bolt, I decided to rest as much as possible and eat, only the latter of which I do rather well. When it became clear that it was strep throat, I felt like I should let my body (rest and nutrition, remember!) fight the infection rather than asking for help with antibiotics. Yes, this can be dangerous. Strep is no laughing matter, and people have died from it. However, at my age, I’m not particularly sure rheumatic fever or whatever other strep-related problems could take me out. So I (weakly) girded my loins and hung on for the ride.

I’m happy to report that though these bastards rained steel on the old stockade, it held strong. Though not without some very interesting hallucinations—you’ll have to remind me some time to select a few special ones for publication. One reason I felt I could withstand the onslaught without antibiotic aid is that I was still able to move about on my own steam, however slowly. I could still concentrate for a good hour or two. And so it was that Friday last, I went in to work with the idea of gathering up the remnant “action items” for the Exchange project I wanted finished this week. Silly Rabbit, projects are for healthy kids.

Nevertheless, as I scurried up the data I decided to check in on the governing document: the Exchange 2013 Deployment Assistant. This rather well-structured bit of work goes through and models out a project and task list for either a new installation or an upgrade from the various Exchange editions to 2013. When I had completed it the last time three weeks ago, the list printed out to 23 pages or so. This time, Microsoft had added enough information to make it now a 33-page monstrosity. Great!

This is a problem I’ve found with using on-the-cusp technology, especially Microsoft on-the-cusp tech. Things change, but enough to generate an additional ten or more pages?

Guess who took time off to get better?

By the way, at the first sign of strep infection, try this excellent recipe:

The Black Hole

[Composed on the spur of the moment. I am responsible, as usual, for any ranty goodness even if it doesn't make logical sense.]

I hope you're sitting down, but I've been reading. I've been reading about so-called race relations in America in light of the Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman affair. For the record, I deplore these two men's actions. I deplore Zimmerman because he should have known better, being the older and therefore supposedly wiser man. I deplore Zimmerman because he should have been more cognizant of the responsibility that comes with having a concealed weapon. I do not think--not that it matters--that he's a racist just quite stupid. I deplore Martin because he was a jerk. He was center deep in the rut to become a gangster, a thug, and a blight on good society.
That said, the jury made a sound decision in pronouncing Zimmerman not guilty. There was enough reasonable doubt that it would not have been justifiable in any sense, starting with the legal and ending with the moral, to send Zimmerman to prison.
I deplore Barack Obama even more than those two reprobates. His decision to enter the fray was perhaps the politically astute thing to do considering his failing presidency, but that aside it was a repugnant show of racist ideology and belies a cynicism bred of deep-seated hatred. I can only surmise that it is of white people, but I can't be certain but it doesn't matter. He's an asshole, and that's all there is to it. I'm now awaiting any of several Federal Agencies (including the Department of Education with its law enforcement arm. Yes, it has one. Who'd a thunk that!) to carry out a campaign against me at his behest. Not that I'm that significant or anything. How's that for being cynical?
All that was a preamble for something that's been eating at me for a while: black Americans as a group. It has been said in some areas of the Internet that I've trod that blacks are altogether inferior (this is true racism by the way, according to its dictionary definition) and therefore are incapable of American citizenship, one that requires intelligent and educated participation. When one looks around at the actions or inactions as the case may be of black Americans, can you fault the racist for thinking this? Substandard scores in just about every recorded education goal. A hellaciously fractured family life. Mob mentality in voting practices and actual mob behavior. Crimes committed at a rate completely out of proportion to population numbers.
Attributing such behavior to poverty is nonsensical and smacks of political opportunism. How? As a thoroughly reliable guide, anything Barack Obama thinks can be chalked up to political opportunism and he thinks poverty and a currently non-existent widespread racism is the cause of black malaise.
There are studies that have shown that black people are predisposed to violence and criminal behavior based on genetics. Is that true, one wonders. Is there a genetic link that dooms the average black American to becoming a criminal? If you believe, as I do, that even if it were true there was a genetic predisposition to crime locked somewhere in the genes of black people, it does not then follow that black people are completely helpless in determining whether or not to commit a crime. Criminal behavior is learned and correlation is not causation and all that claptrap. But I play my hand too soon.
What I find ironic is that the racist thinking that dooms black Americans to being inferior citizens, incapable of breaking from their genetic prisons to live peaceably in the freest society in human history is the same  shared by those who are supposedly virulently avowed non-racists. Liberal thought actually treats blacks with kid gloves that belie an ideology of low to no expectations. Black voting is a sure thing, like children can be counted on to always like ice cream. Black-run cities are always guaranteed to be violent and out-of-control, therefore more money should be heaped on them much the same way you provide your crying toddler with a lollipop to assuage a tantrum. Black education scores are deplorably below standards therefore amass a heap of money so that black children who don't care to learn are presented with world-class facilities that go mostly unused.
It is my considered opinion that black Americans are not genetically inferior humans anymore than than Asians are genetically superior human beings. In spite of all the studies that show a correlation between one gene or the other and a certain behavior, humans are and have always been capable of rejecting any such predispositions. “The history of the world is but the biography of great men” is an aphorism I read long ago, and it is true. Now take a look at the actual biographies of such great men and you will find all those foibles that make humanity its own worst enemy: we steal, we lie, we cheat, we kill. We are not doomed to behavior. The supposed best of us can show the worst of all behaviors. The supposed worst of us can show the best of all behaviors. We learn to become what we are.
This is not to say that genetics play absolutely no part in fashioning our natures. To say so would be to overstep my expertise. I do believe our genes determine our brain chemistry, which may in turn determine behavior, yes. But I do not believe therefore that it does determine our behavior. There are many reasons which this is so, and we as a society certainly do not act--nor should we--as if we believe we have no choice in modifying any predisposed behavior. We punish a criminal not his parents, for a somewhat trite example.
No, what I believe is black America's problem isn't one of genetics. It isn't one of economics--I will put my childhood up against the poorest of any American and mine will be worse, guaranteed. It is, pure and simply a cultured laziness.
I have read stories of newly-freed black slaves searching the land, far and wide, looking to be reunited with their families after the Civil War. I have heard stories of immense courage that black American men and women showed to keep their family and individual dignities together in the face of true hate. I have seen black Americans respond with aplomb and God-given grace in the face of what must have been an unending racist storm. I have heard of black Americans fervently seeking education despite the certain knowledge of instant and painful death upon discovery.
So what happened?
The liberals did. I believe that it started with the best of intentions: in a drive to assuage their consciences--sometimes wrought by their very Christianity--these fine folk decided to bend over backwards to give the so-called black community a hand up, to help gain standing in America (something which did not happen anywhere else on earth, by the way). Along the way, it became corrupted; co-opted by people like Barack Obama and the Kennedys and the LBJs of the world, it led to a widespread dependency by what was once a proud people on the purse and largesse of the government. In yet another unnoticed irony, this is exactly what slavery at its heart is about.
Here's the thing: you do this for any group of people and you will get the same results. Black, yellow, white, blue it doesn't matter. You give unending handouts and people will become lazy and stop "struggling." Since I've become quite the gym meathead, I can tell you that an apt analogy is muscle atrophy. You don't use your muscles--and by use I mean punish them, subject them to load, stress, shear--and they will atrophy.
Here's my measly contribution to the national conversation on race: start shaming people. All people. Certain civilizational standards exist. When people don't meet those standards, shame them. It is shameful to bring a bastard into the world. It is shameful to go to prison. It is shameful not to be able to pay your bills. It is shameful to be lazy. It is shameful to be dull in school (I like this term, by the way. Just as a dull knife can be made sharp by pressure and persistence, a dull child can attain mental sharpness and acuity.) It is shameful to be a one-parent household by choice. It is shameful for a black--or any other color--girl to sleep with as many thugs as she gets the vagina tingles for. It is shameful to impregnate as many woman as you want and then run away. It is shameful to shirk one's responsibilities. It is shameful to expect then come to demand handouts of any sort. It is shameful to display mental laziness in picking a candidate simply because of his color. It is all shameful. But people, being social animals, will only feel shame if we as a society start vociferously shaming.
It is not a racist act to shame. It is, in fact, an empowering act. You are calling another human being who has slipped back on to the sanity platform. It is allowing that they are adults capable for realizing shame and also, more importantly, mentally, psychologically and physically capable of changing behavior. Raise the standards, demand they be followed, and people will respond.
That or continue thinking black Americans are pets to be assuaged with goodies.

The American’s Creed

I got a book yesterday, a 1948 edition of the Boy Scouts of America Handbook for Boys. I have a feeling there’s nothing about gay scoutmasters mentioned anywhere in it.
Here’s something I did find:

I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy within a republic; a sovereign nation of many sovereign states; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice and humanity, for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.
I therefore believe it is my duty to my Country to love it, to support its constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its Flag, and to defend it against all enemies.

That was by William Tyler Page. I wonder if this is in the newest edition of the BSA’s handbook, if they still publish a handbook. Absent a shared, organic culture, we need these kinds of coalescing creeds and stories that impart values to the children. That serve as a great Moral Compass for us as we wend our way, a nation of many different peoples.
For example, too many people don’t understand our system of government. People who have grown up here and supposedly been taught it at school. People who react with incredulity at the Electoral College and have no idea why it’s in place even though we’ve been electing Presidents that way for ever.
People who don’t understand the difference between a democracy and a republic and what type of government either one engenders. People who don’t understand that we elect democratically within a republic. People, in other words, who have never read or recited the above Creed.
Here’s the answer to the question “what’s the difference between a republic and a democracy” that I just this second read:

one is a form of government where at[sic] the other is a system is the real answer but democracy doesn't exist

The person who wrote this is 23-years-old. A native-born American. If this doesn’t shake what remains of your hope for America, what would I wonder.
A child reading this ex-classroom would be naturally inclined to ask what the line about a democracy within a republic meant and therein lies a teachable moment as the blowhards say. No one reads this kind of stuff anymore. And they all end up like the 23-year-old who thinks democracies don’t exist.

Behold A Pale Horse

I do not watch the news (and no, not even Fox News). I stay away from these 24-hour factories of perfectly useless information because they have a way of sensationalizing their product such that one ends up believing the hype. What I’ve noticed by doing so is that 95% of what they deem newsworthy is definitely not. 4% of it is barely newsworthy and certainly will have no bearing on my everyday life. Which leaves the 1%.

Ah yes, the 1%, made famous by a group of unwashed, entitled jerks in makeshift camps (I had typed makeshit, which is actually precisely what these camps were). The 1% of news that actually is pertinent to my life. Yet even then they manage to make a mess of it, marketing it with such ferocity and frequency, it sears trails in the brain resulting in information overload and fatigue.

Friday, 14 December, 2012. Newtown, Connecticut. A ‘crazed’ gunman—and boy, don’t we hope he was crazy!—forced his way into the so-called Gun-Free zone of an elementary school and slaughtered the most innocent of victims possible. No one could protect those children from the onslaught of this asshole, not the teachers responsible for the kids’ safety and certainly not a piece of paper (the law).

As I was at the gym tonight, I found myself in the unfortunate circumstance of forced watching—volumeless—the usual suspects: CNN, NBC, MSNBC, and FOX. These networks and their smarmy hosts had descended on the small town in CT, snagging at anyone who wanted a few minutes of fame: tell us what you know, even if you don’t know anything. And everyone, believing of course that being on television is THE BEST THING EVER! obliges, including relatives of the murdered children!

Every so often, they would feature the pictures of the murdered children with their ages (6! 7!) highlighting the sorrow of a life snuffed out way, way too young. Interspersed with these grim, lump-inducing pictures, these media vultures leveled the info that this or that senator had rescinded his previous stance on Guns (“No one needs an Assault Weapon to go hunting!”) in seeming courageous defiance of the NRA! Some courage, some defiance. We have come a long way since ‘give me freedom or give me death.’

All at once I was overcome with an intense feeling of loathing for these media scum. Oh! You could just sense the gloating, the almost orgasmic delight—with the appropriate somber mask in place of course—that children had died so that their political agenda would finally (finally!) be pushed through: Assault Weapons Ban, Y’ALL!

I was so overcome with this feeling of scorn, that I fired off several tweets of invective. Yes, in America, that is what now passes as a display of indignation, 140 characters of hard-hitting snark. Useless, and like most of the citizenry, completely ineffective. As is this blog post. No one will listen, and even if they do and especially even if they agree, a barely noticeable nod will appear and vanish like the morning dew. Life goes on, Monday Night Football reappears to take up a place of honor in our mental lives.

I realized that in two months, the names and faces of these precious children will fade from national memory. Their parts have been played, and Obama—I will not call that phony, reprobate cast about President, as an ineffective measure of the derision I hold for that shitbird—and his liberal ilk will have rammed down our collective throats another completely ineffective piece of legislation (“We did something!”) aimed at … what, exactly? The last time this was tried in 1994, absolutely nothing came of it. Let me repeat that for the hard-of-understanding: nothing came of it. Zilch, nada, zip, zero, NOTHING.

Laws do not deter criminal behavior. This is something we all know and if you were the victim, what you have experienced. Like so-called Airport Security, it’s Kabuki theater, meaningless, a storm in a tea cup. If these sorts of bans worked, the United Kingdom would be the safest place, but don’t look up the actual statistics unless you want to be shocked—if that is still possible. Because since their ban, “gun crime” has bloomed quite nicely, thank you very much.

I could go on talking about the statistics and the empirical results of these sorts of legislation and their utter uselessness, but that is not what matters any longer. No, in America, we have become a nation of thirteen-year-old girls. Emotion reigns supreme, it overshadows all thought, all action. It overshadows entertainment, political discourse and every facet of life. We have become a nation of entitled thirteen-year-olds thinking feeling for today only.

Thirteen-year-old girls form cliques, a herd of conformist titterers. Go against the wishes of the herd and suffer the consequences of ostracism and exile, as screed after teenage-angst-filled screed is directed at the unfortunate trespasser in the form of endless snark, petitions signed to rid the trespasser of their jobs, aided and abetted by the Mainstream Media. Since their ‘parents’ are also thirteen, lack education and understanding and therefore wisdom, no guidance or discipline is forthcoming from that quarter. When the feelings get overwhelming, clique members seek comfort in distraction. Like 13-year-old girls, we don’t produce, we consume and voraciously so.

Even so-called Conservatives are 13-year-olds; slightly plainer and certainly pudgier 13-year-olds, sure, and as such not members of the ‘elite’ (elitist?) Cheerleading squad fawned over in the Leftist corner of the cafeteria. While not members of that particular group, this doesn’t prevent the Conservative brand of 13-year-old girls from forming their own less shiny facsimile of that group all the while daydreaming of being just as popular, pimples and crooked teeth notwithstanding (wouldn’t it be so cool if the media was on our side?!)

Conservatives may not be as flighty, but they are still 13. Which means emotion over substance, knee-jerk, thoughtless reactions (honestly, the woman’s body rejects the rapist’s baby?!). No sir, Conservatives are just as bad. I have read it somewhere that Social Conservatives are Third Wave Feminists who don’t believe in abortion and thinking about it, there is truth to this put-down. If you’re a Conservative and that statement stings, it does so for a very good reason.

So who’s in charge of this once-might nation? The depressing answer is no one. The ship of state is adrift in a sea of irrelevancy: the things that should matter don’t, even if we could determine what was relevant.What a mess!

An enchanting magic trick, once learned, will become prosaic and disappointing. Before I arrived its shores, America used to be my magic trick, but now I can see where the magician hid the string of dirty handkerchiefs and I am no longer enchanted.

Be Worthy, Redux

A friend on twitter responded to clarify what he thought the guy who said this meant:

“When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her.The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.” ― Venerable Abp. Fulton J. Sheen, Life is Worth Living

Here’s his take, from two consequent tweets:

Don’t think that’s what he’s saying. He’s explaining Paul’s letter: Men, love your woman as Christ love the Church.

Then:

He also puts a load of the responsibility on women to be honorable, moral, noble, virtuous. Then challenges men to match.

Now, I like my friend. He’s one of the more intelligent guys I know on that chatterbox of a site, but he’s absolutely misguided about this point—something I’ve told him directly. I’ll take the second tweet first and perhaps deal with the husband love of wife as Christ loved the Church tweet later (although that firstly stated, pesky submission part is a bitch to wrangle, no pun).

God—through Paul and the Venerable Abp—in apparently telling women to be “moral, noble, virtuous” then challenging “men to match” them is like asking two equally dirty children for one to mimic the other as an example “worthy” of it. There is no difference between men and women in the sin department. That’s the biggest problem I have with these kinds of statements. Both sexes are covered in the blackest of sins in God’s eyes so it’s rather silly to “challenge” one of those two equally filthy creatures to “match” the other. After the matching takes places, they’re both still just as dirty as the other.

Regardless, even if that particular interpretation is wrong—and it’s not—by asserting there’s a difference between men and women, with women taking the “load of responsibility” first then challenging “men to match,” one is, by definition, placing women—an equally sinful, disgusting creature in God’s eyes, remember—on a pedestal; maybe not as a worshipful object per se, but certainly as an example of some sort, to which men should strive to attain.

This is nonsensical yet unfortunately, it’s not the first time I’ve read stuff like this—that somehow women are more “pure” somehow, more “worthy,” serving as some kind of example to which men should “aspire” to be worthy of.

I first found out about Glen T. Stanton, Director of Family Formation Studies for Focus On The Family on Dalrock’s excellent blog. Stanton wrote a book titled, Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity.
In chapter 6 Metamorphosis to Womanhood:  Making Healthy Women out of Healthy Girls he explains that women are essentially innately good:

We should appreciate what a profound life transition takes place when a girl becomes a woman…
A good woman is the more intricate of the species, for while both men and women are complex and profound, women universally have more interesting layers to their femininity than men have to their masculinity….
…
As you read through the qualities described below, please keep in mind that much of this is innate, but because our culture seems to fight so hard to suppress certain natural tendencies, it’s our privilege and responsibility as parents to watch out for opportunities to nurture and guide in these areas.

So we have here a point on which both a Catholic church leader AND a Protty (as I’ve come to call us Protestants) advocate the purity and higher “worth” of females. Males, on the other hand are moral reprobates requiring civilization and a veritable injection of “aspiration” and of course, a woman figure to aspire to! To quote Stanton again:

Each conveyor belt leads not necessarily to manhood but to male aging, because that’s what the mere passage of time produces.  But good men don’t just happen …

Interestingly, if the tables were turned and somehow women were supposed to strive to be worthy of a man. Well, hellfire and brimstone, what a piece of patriarchal propaganda! How dare he?
It is hogwash. If anything, the Bible is clear on just which of God’s creatures is to be responsible for the other, and hint, hint, it’s not the female of the species.

Update: As if to further buttress this little rant of mine, here's former Governor Huckabee, preacher, (around 3:58') talking about "valuing" women, but that not being enough for the good Christian man, he also wants to "elevate" her. As they say on Twitter: SMH

Become Worthy

I just read this:

“When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.” ― Venerable Abp. Fulton J. Sheen, Life is Worth Living

 Which made me think of this:

Apparently it still needs to be said and I'll say it yet again:

WE ARE ALL—Men AND Women—FALLEN CREATURES AND NO ONE BUT GOD BELONGS ON A PEDESTAL.

No one—male or female—has to become “worthy” of anyone else. We're all pretty shitty sinners with foibles, depredations, wanton characters, & iniquitous. All of us are black-hearted, loathsome creatures:

²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

That's from St. Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 3, verse 23. That "all" is you, me, your dad, your mom, your sisters, EVERYONE. ALL of us. She may look better than you, gentlemen and certainly prettier, but her shit smells just as badly as yours and, depending on the day and Mexican diner, worse.

To put a woman, no matter how much you love her or how virginal or "pure" she is, on a pedestal is to substitute her for God, a burden that she—and certainly no one—can shoulder. The only thing we should ALL strive to be worthy of is of Christ's freely-given gift of salvation.

What tears me a new one is that apparently, the Sheen quoted is a church leader of some sort who should know better.

Word Cliff

Look at this list of words:

I, you, me, us, ugly, dumb, power, life, don’t, can’t, will, shall, powerless, are, is, won’t, aren’t, die, live, life.

If all you had were these words, and you were forbidden from using any others or even from knowing there are others available for use, imagine the kinds of conversations you could have. It isn’t hard to see that your cognitive ability, much less your very imagination will be stagnant and perhaps even regress.

It will be impossible to “see” anything not immediately describable by the contents of your word store. You will be literally literally lost, unable to break out of that mental prison and all because your vocabulary is stunted.

Now this is not a post to advocate you increase your vocabulary. No. It is a post to decry—uselessly, I’m sure—the practice in this country of outlawing words by convention. We have been convinced to accept a basket of words with the finger-wagging admonition that the use of any words not in that “safe” basket will result in proscription.

What results is the virtual certainty that no original thought is possible, at least not without paying the price and in a society in which payment—monetary or otherwise—is too high a price at whatever the price, almost no one will pay it. Those who do have their heads stuck on poles around the city’s walls as a warning.

We become suited thus to meander around the veld of our lives, “safe” in the herd. Our outlook of any danger blocked by the close view of the other sheep in the herd. We certainly can’t see the culling of the outlying sheep by wolves, and we’re too far inside the comforting milieu of society to hear the terrifying, dying bleats of those outliers.

Even those who, by dint of natural intelligence—the equivalent of a sheep born with a longer neck, perhaps—are able to see that in the distance, sheep blood is mixing with dust and terror, but their strained gushing comes out packaged and tightly bound in those limited words. Even if they were to find other words, no one around them would understand ‘those’ words and so our Cassandras’ warnings fall into  brains incapable of processing them. It then becomes only a matter of time before the sheep in the middle meet the same fate as their brutalized outlier cousins.

The ingenuity of limiting verbiage—and softly enforcing such limitations by ensuring teachers are worse every year—is that sometimes even those “special” sheep cannot, cognitively, understand what it is they’re seeing. They simply have no suitable words to think with. The very thing that differentiates humans from the lower animals, our ability to think our way out of trouble is impaired. Death results.

Many times, and here truly, is where that evil ingenuity reaches its apex: a few sheep assiduously strive to better their vocabularies, despite the pain of punishment and ostracism. They have gathered enough words and they have honed their cognitive ability. Alas, what they lack is the ability to make words connect to each other in critical ways and so they come to the wrong conclusions, warning about the wrong things if they do at all. This is like hobbling Usain Bolt at the ankles. All those powerful upper-leg muscles become ineffective because the road-meeting feet are incapable of translating potential energy to kinetic, Olympic gold winning energy.

As always, death results.

Victims

I'm always interested—and almost always disgusted, but that's another post—by who is identified as a victim by society and the media. The Petraeus Affair, which could have been the title of a smashing Sherlock Holmes story, is the latest example.

According to everything I've seen written and seen, Mrs. Petraeus is the victim of the whole sordid mess, forgetting Dr. (Mrs) Broadwell is one as well by any definition of the term. Am I being led to believe that husbands who are cheated on are not as important a victim category as long-suffering dowdy wives?

It seems so.

Excuses …

Take a look and absorb the message in this picture:

This is bullshit. It’s the kind of attitude people bring into relationships that dooms that relationship from the start.

Everyone in a relationship is owed a certain amount of respect and, for fuck’s sake, love. The person whose attitude is reflected in that picture is preparing themselves for a very bad situation. It’s an excuse for bad behavior, with the full expectation that the recipient of such bad behavior should accept it unconditionally and without reservations. Otherwise, you see, they’re not the right person!

I’ve got news for you: human beings don’t have unconditional love. I’m a Christian, and I believe God loves me. But I cannot bank on the fact that I can continue to sin willy-nilly every second I’m alive and expect that God’s love will remain intact and unchanged (it does, but that’s a reflection of Him, not me and a topic for theologians). There are consequences for my sin, for my behavior. So if even the Almighty doesn’t love unconditionally, asking for your partner to do so in spite of whatever crazy shit you pull based on the understanding that if they don’t, they’re not the right person is intellectual disingenuity.

So fuck you.

Or, to put it another perhaps more civilized way (and I’m paraphrasing Dennis Prager here), you wouldn’t assault me with your bad breath, don’t assault me with your bad mood. As a responsible adult in a relationship with another adult, you owe it to each other to be on your best behavior!

Nevertheless, fuck you if that’s your attitude. You’ll be alone feeding cats soon.

Cuckold!

Take a look at this couple:

The female—I don’t blame you if you’re confused about which one of the two is female. She’s on the right—is a writer who just penned a delightful screed for the New York Times titled, ‘You May Call It Cheating, but We Don’t.’
Ada Calhoun (you’ll notice she didn’t take her so-called husband’s last name) drops this clanger right off:

MY husband and I have been together for 12 years. We talk throughout the day. We like each other a lot in addition to being in love. We plan to be together for the rest of our lives. I feel profoundly lucky.
Yet one night this summer when my husband was out of town, a male friend stopped by for a drink. After our second drink, I kissed him. He started to kiss me back, and then stopped.
“We shouldn’t do this,” he said. “I should leave.” After a few ambivalent minutes, he made his way to the door. He knows and likes my husband, and was afraid, he said, that if things went any further he wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye.
The strange thing, though, is that my husband would not have objected.

After reading that, cast your eyes back to the sad sack on the left in that picture. Perhaps you’ll begin to understand why her “husband” wouldn’t have objected.
Ada, it seems, is quite the adventurous gal:

I’ve always associated adventure with sex. I’d had sex with more than twice as many people as my husband before we met and became immediately exclusive (when we were young by New York standards: 24 and 25). I slept my way around Europe as a teenager, and am sometimes wistful for the ability to leave situations the second they became complicated. To me, countries and boyfriends were similar. You visited, enjoyed the view until you didn’t anymore and then left. A friend once called me a “man-izer.”

In certain states, she’d have been called a “slut-izer.” And dear hubbie? She says:

Because of this, my husband has at times fretted that I might leave him.

Well, no shit. But, the plot thickens …

And yet, being married to someone who likes that you want other people …

Wait, so does Nutless fret about your hyper-sexuality or does he like that you “want” other people? Whatever. It seems, reading on (while promising myself to take a mental scouring shower as soon as I’d finished reading), he’d actually “hooked up” in the past. I guess this makes her various dalliances A-OK, something she strives to convince the reader of.
Look, it’s downright straightforward what’s happening here: Ms. Thang can’t quite believe, after all that numerous uncut European cock, that she’s saddled herself with this pathetic beta-male and so she’s somehow finagled a situation in which she’s free to fuck whomever whenever and somehow, hubbie doesn’t mind. (Or Else!) In fact, he likes it!
How avant-garde!
That, or how utterly wretched. Yeah, I’ll go with wretched. This is what happens in an ultra-feminized society. One in which the marauding power of an objectively ugly—body and soul—woman is so obscenely outmatched by the piddling manhood of her “husband.” America, ladies and gentlemen.

Tiresome

There’s nothing more tiresome than arguing with an internally conflicted person and I’m afraid my patience ran out, resulting in the usual dismissive “fuck off!”

This person, with only a basic appreciation of the philosophical underpinnings of logical argument, seems to have decided to go on a spiritual quest for why he believes what he believes. All well and good. Most intelligent people embark on such a journey if not once then several times during a lifetime. The problem is, he’s equipped with dull scissors and his forest of doubt is overgrown with Redwoods.

It doesn’t help, of course, that his rather dull wit and cumbersome mind has decided to stand fast on the sanctity of a few issues. To him, you see, it is beyond doubt that (1) the theory of evolution is wholly true; and that (2) atheists bear no burden of proof for their claims.

I could bear it no longer: people like this—along with this particular person’s poisonous ‘woe is me’ attitude—are fighting a battle against themselves the outcome of which is always loss. I’d rather stay out of the path this particular swarm of demon-infested hogs make careening over the cliff.

“Fuck off!” it is.

Hampikian’s Mangina

Greg Hampikian (greghampikian@boisestate.edu) is a professor of Biology and Criminal Justice and the director of the Idaho Innocence project. He wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times essentially questioning the necessity of men, if not for basic child rearing then definitely not for reproduction.

You see, according to the many-hatted dick professor at a third-rate university Boise State:

As the Princeton sociologist Sara S. McLanahan has shown, poverty is what hurts children, not the number or gender of parents.

Barring the obvious fallacy of an appeal to authority (just who the fuck is Princeton sociologist Sara S. McLanahan?) this specimen of beta male-ness—I mean, look at this clown-nosed, chinless mangina and tell me different:

uses SCIENCE to push the sex-positive feminist idea that his own children—whom he took care of as a, surprise!, house husband for a year—didn’t need him in any capacity, fundamentally.

Not content with one fallacy, he blunders into another. This time, he asks you to “think about your own history”:

Your life as an egg actually started in your mother’s developing ovary, before she was born; you were wrapped in your mother’s fetal body as it developed within your grandmother.

Yes dear reader, you have always been you from the time immemorial and the only thing you needed for some weird kind of meta-actual-existence was when,

… at some point, your father spent a few minutes close by, but then left. A little while later, you encountered some very odd tiny cells that he had shed.

First, this is a classic case or projection. Just because his love-making lasts “only a few minutes” much to his wife’s consternation, doesn’t mean that every man is so. Dick(-less). Second, and much more important, is this pernicious idea that an egg is a human being.

For a professor of biology (and criminal justice!), this is a strange thing to conclude unless I’m completely off my intellectual rocker. OK, maybe I am and I don’t know squat about biology, but(!) this is a dangerous Philosophical stance to take. If it is as the dick(-less) professor says, then abortion of an egg at any stage is murder of a human being!

There’s some other bullshit floating in that cesspit of an article, but here again we have an all too common case where a self-castrated scientist decides to overreach on his scientific background and starts drawing social engineering conclusions based on that background (yet another fallacy).

Listen pal, some bits of advice: stop smoking the blue grass and concentrate on satisfying your wife sexually. Although I’m sure that’ll be difficult since you’re dickless.

They Call Me Mr. Bombastic

This is the kind of needlessly fluent, pompous language that makes simple concepts overly difficult to understand:

The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] defines Aeronautical Decision-Making as a “Systematic approach to the mental process of evaluating a given set of circumstance[sic] and determining the best course of action.”

This sentence is not one that will flow easily through the brain. There’s guaranteed to be a few mental potholes and speed bumps as this tormented sentence stumbles its way through the eyes and up the brain. “Em, Syste-what now?”

Imagine reading sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph of this convoluted English and bureaucratese? I’m tired just imagining about it. Let’s try editing it down to size for comprehension, why don’t we—bear in mind I’m no editor, I’m just confused:

Here’s the FAA’s again:

Systematic approach to the mental process of evaluating a given set of circumstances and determining the best course of action.

Let’s start cutting out the superfluous words:

Systematic approach to the mental process of evaluating a given set of circumstances and determining the best course of action.

I’m still determined to simplify it a bit further. Circumstances is such a gigantic oaf of a word, isn’t it? How about:

A process of evaluating a situation and determining the best course of action.

I still think I could strip out a few words and still keep the idea intact and less wordy. Let’s try this:

A process of evaluating a situation and determining the best action.

There, how about that? Doesn’t it make a tad more sense? By cutting out the grandiose terms and keeping it simple, anyone indeed can read that sentence and come away with a pretty good idea of what the FAA (should have) meant when whichever drone of a technical writer they employed composed that tortured definition.

I charge $300 an hour, FAA.

The Usual Suspects

Since I spend a bit lot of time perusing twitter, it is now the primary source of my indignation levels. Yeah, I’ve given up watching television news because I like my TV. (By the way, I’ve given up watching local television news. It’s beneath contempt and I have yet to find I’ve missed out on any information of use. Abolish local TV news.)

And so it came to pass that this came tumbling through my timeline: The “Pretty or Ugly” Video Phenomenon written by a Meg Meeker, pediatrician.

Meeker, MD, reports that “a disturbing activity” has surfaced from our “tween” daughters. Tween, eh? OK doc. This “activity” is so disturbing because it involves “young girls posting videos on YouTube asking complete strangers to pass judgment on them.”

Gasp!

Yes, you heard her: “complete strangers.” OK. That’s it? No! “complete strangers” including “Old men.” Old men? Yes! Old men. AND “teen boys, teachers, pimps, maybe perverted grandfathers.”

As you may not know, but are about to, teen boys are dangerous, maniacal beasts who will, upon watching your daughter’s YouTube video will judge them! As if that’s not bad enough, old men, those sick, sick, sick sicko bastards will also pass judgment!

Oh wait, there’s more! Teachers, too! Wait, not teachers!!? Oh yes, teachers. You mean Mrs. Smith in homeroom? No, not her? Who? Just teachers? And what’s this, pimps?!!

Fuck no, not pimps. Anything but pimps. Pimps passing judgment on YouTube videos. What is the world coming to? Where do we go to hide from pimps watching YouTube videos? Nobody expects the Pimp Watching YouTube!

Oh but the last of this group of malodorous reprobates watching YouTube videos has got to be the absolute degenerative worst of the vile bunch: perverted grandfathers. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Perverted grandfathers, in whom we have placed the trust and care of our beautiful—or maybe not so beautiful, you’ll have to judge—daughters, watching them on YouTube. Pervertedly watching them on YouTube, no less.

Gasp, gasp, and triple gasp!

This bumbling buffoon should be stripped of her medical license, she’s so fucking dumb. The effusion of stupidity, the sheer riptide of “logic fail” in lumping pimps, teachers, and teen boys in the same lecherous group watching YouTube videos.

Here’s the problem: what these stupid girls are doing by posting on YouTube is the same thing they’d have done elsewhere and are possibly doing elsewhere. It’s narcissism at play, attention-seeking, whorish attitude. Trying to tie this to a “neediness” problem stemming from low self-esteem is ridiculous. There are no more high self-esteem people in the world than teenage American girls. It’s preening, pure and simple. Mom and dad “hugging” daughters to tell them they’re beautiful isn’t going to do anything to stem the tide of these videos because it’s got nothing to do with self-esteem.

Even if it did, daddy or mommy hugging a teenage girl has never proved to bolster self-esteem and even if it did, by the time these dumb girls find it necessary to post these videos of themselves on YouTube, it’s already too late. Mommy and daddy have both failed as parents.

The last thing these girls are is “innocent” or “lovely.” How many times have parents and others been positively shocked by the goings-on among these so-called innocents? Girls fighting tooth-and-nail over all sorts of trivialities and posting those videos on YouTube. Two 11-year-old “lovely”, “innocent” girls fought to the death recently, over a boy it is speculated. Lovely.

Some will say cruel things and potentially wound them emotionally and some may like what they see and track these girls down.

Oh spare me! “Wound them emotionally”? Give your daughters self-esteem by “hugging” them because they’re so fragile (when they’re not tearing each other’s eyes out in competition for boys), so lovely (when they’re exposing themselves all over the Internet. Google “self-shots” if you dare) that mere words will emotionally destroy them.

Meanwhile, all those men old men, teen boys, teachers, pimps, perverted grandfathers (I can’t type this without getting enraged afresh) sharks are swimming around on YouTube emotionally wounding these lovely, innocent girls.

Are you so out-of-touch with reality, doc, that you actually believe this shit?! Are you so daft, so stultifyingly stupid, that you think this is the problem? If so, anyone who takes their kids to this pediatrician should have their heads examined.

The Project

Several years ago, I was the lead designer, architect, and all-round champion of a big project. Everyday I went in prepared for battle with skeptics and naysayers of every stripe. Were it not for my blind devotion to what I knew was right and true, I would have given up—almost did, many times—and turned over the hospital to the inmates. Every day since, however, my design’s been proven to be the right one, by constant practice and testing.

Skeptics, I can take. Blind naysayers, on the other hand, happy to impede progress for various—almost always petty—reasons are the bane of my existence. I can’t stand these people and unfortunately, there were more of these than the former.

As the project neared completion despite its many man-made potholes, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the “CEO” would be handing out certificates of appreciation at a lunch ceremony to project team members. I felt we’d deserved praise especially knowing we wouldn’t be getting any raises—also, free food tastes great, doesn’t it?

With the appropriate paeans to teamwork, something called “shared vision,” and hard work over, the time to dispense that certificate arrived and I found I was excited. Sure, it wasn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, but I like framing shitty certificates, it’s a character flaw.

My name was called, I walked up, shook hands with the Big Guy, had my picture taken, got a nice “thank you for your service” (so this is what servicemen feel like) and walked back to my now cold—and as it turned out—rather crappy spaghetti, a silly smile of satisfaction pasted on the puss. What happened next almost detached my brain’s left hemisphere.

The number one hellspawn, the master of disaster, the naysayer-in-chief, Lord Voldermort himself. Yes, his name followed mine. I hadn’t even seen him in the “banquet hall,” which is what this restaurant called a never-used outhouse attachment to their building. And yet, here he was, walking the same path toward the same Big Guy, getting the same inconsequential “thank you for your service,” same camera flash capturing the moment for the company newsletter, the jaunt back to his lair chair, my smile pasted on his incubus face!

If it were up to this guy, we wouldn’t be here. He’d tried everything short of walking in with an AK47 and shooting up the place. He’d hemmed and hawed. He’d raised objections at such a furious pace, they seemed to meld into a raging stream of endless German profanity. By the second day he was on the project, he’d stopped extending anyone the courtesy of a “hello” preferring a vampiric scowl and toothy snarl.

The most painful part of the project for me wasn’t the many, yellow hours spent devising and conceiving solutions to all the varied technical problems that inevitably attended a project of this size. It wasn’t dealing with the personalities of all the geeks of varying corpulence welded into too-small seats around too many conference tables. It wasn’t the interminable meetings. It wasn’t answering the same interminable questions hurled by people who thought they’d stymie this know-it-all this time! It wasn’t formulating answers to those questions so they’d make sense even to my embryo of a son (at the time) only to see the answer make hardly a dent on their high-tensile-steel armored, Rhino’s backside brains. It wasn’t even dealing with Mr. Personality, Demon Hellion with diarrhea mouth.

No.

The most painful part of this entire thing was that I’d been the one who suggested Dickhead for the team. Yes ladies, I’d been asked who I wanted on the team and recalling a time in the distant past when he seemed nice—I’d taken his talkativeness as a sign of a lively brain, not realizing maggot-infested decay can have the same effect—I wrote his name down and welcomed myself into hell.

And there he was, his goat hoofs cladding past my table, cradling the same certificate I’d just got for doing nothing at all. He’d stopped “working” on the team after two weeks, choosing rather to disappear back into Cesspit Valhalla where the very best assholes are forged. The horns on his head glowed with what I knew he thought was pride, if such a virtuous feeling is allowed to exist in the pure darkness that is his heart.

My hands grew heavy as the slaggy, ersatz gold lettering on the certificate proclaiming the everlasting thanks of a grateful nation to one Frederic Woodbridge, III and his descendants now and forevermore, faded into a puke-green patina. This worthless piece of paper was now well and truly worthless. If they saw fit to slide one of these things across to the one person who had actively worked to sabotage the project, there was no standard, no judgment, nothing. It was utter meaninglessness. Crap. Vapid. Air-filled. Inconsequential. Trifling. Shallow. Weak. Paltry. Putid. Wretched. Magno conatu magnas nugas.

The certificate spent almost a year in the trunk of my car, after which I tossed it onto the top shelf of a bookcase in my study and there it remains still, the paper personification of a black hole.

Relativism—Feet Firmly Planted In Mid-Air

This … cancer, eating away at the soul of humanity cloaks itself in wondrous finery, doesn’t it. How could being a relativist cause harm? Surely, what’s wrong with according “honor” to everyone’s viewpoint. To anyone’s viewpoint. It’s inclusive. It is welcoming. It is accepting. It is progressive. It is egalitarian. It is … human.

The problem:

And by insisting that “everything is relative”, everyone’s viewpoint becomes equally correct, equally valuable, equally “worthy of being honored”—no matter how absurd or contradictory or just plain stupid or wrong it might be.

This is why I continue to insist—despite the overtones of elitism it may seem to engender—that no one is simply, by the default of being born, “entitled to their opinion.” Opinions, just like the people who own them, are to be judged worth or unworthy.

Judgment per se presupposes a standard. This standard—whatever it is—in order to be a standard is required to be unchanging, proven true and factual by testing. This, for example, is how Science works. This is why you have little qualm with flying in an aluminum tube 35,000 feet in the air when you can’t intelligently discuss why it doesn’t fall out of the air: millions of people “prove” the safety of air travel by rigorous and constant testing.

Entitlement, generally, is mostly bullshit. One is not even entitled to their own life. One can’t, for example, make a case against the ocean as it pours into a drowning man’s lungs that it shouldn’t do so because the drowning man is entitled to their life. The ocean cares not a whit and another hapless person gets admitted to Davy Jones’s locker.

Everything is not relative. Relativism leads to doing things that are popular, not that are right and true and correct. Ironically, no one, not even its most ardent supporters can sustain relativism for long. We certainly don’t act as if relativism is true. You act as if your opinion that you should receive $11.34 in change from the cashier is correct, regardless of what the cashier’s opinion of the issue happens to be. You’re appealing to an external, unchanging standard (in this case, the “laws” of Mathematics) that the cashier’s opinion on the matter is incorrect. In this case, the cashier is certainly not entitled to their opinion.

So let’s stop feeding this creeping monster. Exercise your moral and mental courage: call things as they are, even those that will hurt you. Bring up the elephant in the room. Bring it up and kill it. Regain your human dignity. Because wherever it does lie, dignity does not lie with floppy relativists, however popular they are.