"She has broken with the world of the real." That's postmodernism: the separation of words from reality. Heck, it even admits that -- proudly. And the laptop class is almost uniformly postmodernist.
"prominent people have crawled so far up their own asses that they think their rectal lining is the world." I almost blew chai tea out my nose on that one, Chris.
"these people need to be hurt"
This is a big deal. It's not funny. I really struggle with this: how to balance forgiveness and grace with accountability. I struggled with it after COVID too when mask lunatics suddenly memory holed everything they'd done and expected the rest of us (who they'd been calling murderers for 2 years) to write it off with a, "well, we did the best we could with limited information." But I tried to let it go.
When the activists who demanded that we get rid of police officers later complain about how violent their cities are and expect the rest of us to pretend they didn't have a hand in creating that violence... I try to let it go. Focus on the good. Focus on the fact that urban cities are becoming safer again.
When journalists suddenly rediscover that objective reality exists outside of their words and that their descriptions are completely unrepresentative of it (as Phillip K Dick says: "reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, is still there")... I will try to let it go.
When the doctors and social workers and teachers all suddenly memory hole how they've sliced off and withered the private parts of thousands of vulnerable teenagers... I will not be able to let it go.
My faith teaches forgiveness, and so I do try to forgive all of these. I try to forgive regardless of your repentance. I forgive not for you but for me, because being perpetually angry with you is poisonous to my own soul. But my faith also teaches justice. And the idea that Christianity teaches only Heavenly justice is simply wrong. Christianity is where the concept of "social justice" originates, specifically the Catholic Worker movement of the early 20th century. Justice is something to be sought here "on Earth, as it is in Heaven". Man's justice will always be a pale shadow of God's. Man's justice must always be tempered by the knowledge that man is sinful. But we're not off the hook. "Just don't make waves and let God deal with the injustices" is as wrong as "kill them all and God will know his own" (supposedly spoken by Fr Arnaud Amalric during the crusades.)
So I really struggle with how to handle accountability for these sorts of behaviors. Assuming our tribe manages to attain power to actually hold people accountable, how should we do it? What is the appropriate penalty for doctors who sliced the private parts of vulnerable teenagers? For blue-haired teachers who taught fellatio techniques to 11 year olds? For open race hustlers who profited by egging on mobs that were burning down poor black neighborhoods? On my bad days I can think of a variety of Medieval tortures that would be appropriate. But man's justice must always be be performed in the knowledge of man's sinfulness: "there but for the grace of God go I". So how do we do it? I'm not sure. I would love to hear other serious ideas on this subject.
Brian - try not to harbor contempt. As you say it is not good for your spirit.
Honestly my brushes with contempt have been with Christians more than any other group....2 Timothy 1:7...nuff said. That was all they needed to know...and somehow they forgot one of Jesus's most important and widely known lesson.
As far as your anger...that is justified. Let it be our fuel. At the same time; we are blessed to not have scales over our eyes, like most. IMO we stay steadfast because there is only one thing more powerful than The Truth; silence about The Truth.
We are just messengers.
I'll leave you with this:
He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.”
Thanks Ryan. Aquinas is one of my go to people as well. Protestants who think he's Catholic need to relook at their Reformation calendar. He's in both camps.
I've been reading Aaron Renn recently here on Substack. His views on the feminization of the church have altered my own somewhat. Like you, he sees a place for righteous anger (which to Renn's thinking is a masculine quality). The standard pulpit response to this is "only God gets to turn over the moneychangers' tables in anger; you're a sinner, so you can't". Aquinas would not agree. Neither would Augustine. Neither would the early Church Fathers. neither would Charles Spurgeon. For that matter, neither would Mother Teresa or JPII. So what do they all know that we've forgotten?
As always, the difficulty lies in the specific application. Drawing the line between a response that is righteous vs revengeful.
"Justice isn't contempt" is a good observation. I happen to appreciate Ryans response, and greatly value Brians. At its origins, contempt meant "open disregard or disobedience" and in that sense, I find it necessary to harbor contempt for the unreality. The problem is that the unreality folks have insisted that we join them in and endorse their unreality. Without contempt for the lawlessness (which is really what the unreality is about) we can not ever have justice.
I feel as if I'm more brutal, Angus. You and Ryan and Brian seem much higher minded. You're people I want in service to the country, to consider the best ways to do things. Me? I agree with what you all are saying, but I'm more reactionary, or it feels as if I am.
It's really hard to do this in writing; if we all sat around a table I'd be able to hold my own and explain better.
My bottom line: the enemy is insane and should be treated as such--the rejection of justice? of unreality? In-sane. And because they're trying to force us into 15-minute cities eating bugs, I'm ready to f*ck them up. No nuance.
I can get past a lot of that. To some extent. I would be foolish to not think it could happen again, in a heart beat. But the mutilation of children….? Nope. Those people can not be let off the hook, in any way.
Great comment. I struggle with all the same things. I'd simply point out that forgiveness doesn't eliminate the need for accountability. When we forgive, we don't just forget and send all that bad behavior down the memory hole. As you rightly point out, forgiveness is the release of a need for vengeance in those who have been wronged. It's something we do to ensure that we're not tied up in mental knots ourselves. But there are still consequences for behavior. That's not vengeance; that's accountability. I'm a strong believer in naming names and calling out the bad behavior. We need to see real repentance from people, not a quick "Oops, my bad" and an effort to sweep things under the carpet (which is what we're seeing today). IMO, that means investigations and prosecutions for public behavior. It means lots of hard, direct confrontation and conversations for private behavior. I fully agree with you that we must not compromise our Christianity, but nor do I think that means we must simply walk away without any restoration of these relationships. To put it another way, God doesn't just sweep our sin under the carpet. He sent his son to die to pay the price for our sin. He forgives us, but the penalty must still be paid.
Forgiveness is a two way street. I can forgive but the sinner has to sincerely be sorry.
Take my sister. She behaves as if her abortion is absolved and atoned for by being a loud supporter of every leftist cause. So she isn’t sincerely sorry for her abortion, in fact she is doubling down on sin by being proud of it. It is much easier to pass off one’s sin as virtue than it is to be sincerely sorry. This is why pride/vanity is the deadliest sin - divine forgiveness requires humility.
It’s like.y more of denial. To admit to herself what she did as an abomination to God. I feel sympathy since I know bearing a child you never wanted is a huge burden. However, murder isn’t the solution. She knows.
With respect, I beg to differ. Forgiveness is a one-way street. You can forgive someone without any change in behavior on their part, just because you choose to let it go. That said, surely, it’s much more satisfying when somebody who has done something wrong recognizes that, takes responsibility for it, and is truly sorry and penitent. In that case, restoration is actually possible, which it really isn’t when things are just one-way. But forgiveness doesn’t have to be a two-way street. I’m sorry to hear about your sister. That’s rough.
Forgiveness and peace is for those who make mistakes and/or people who express sincere contriteness. Neither of those apply here.
Bullying is different. And bullies need to be punched in the nose (or throat) if you want them to stop their behavior. It's not anger or contempt - it's behavior modification.
fwiw - the level of proudly displayed contempt from the left over the last 4 years has severely weakened my faith in humanity.
Christian militias are a common thing in many parts of the world. These are Christians who come together for the purpose of protecting their own -- punching those who try to bully or hurt them in the nose. I was appalled by that for a long time. I tended toward the Voice of the Martyrs school of thought -- win them over with your faithfulness and love even if it costs you your life. Now that my own society is starting to persecute Christians (very minorly compared to many others) I find myself more sympathetic to such organizations.
There is a very different interpretation of "turn the other cheek", rooted in the context of life in the time of Christ.
Back then, left was considered bad, and the left hand was only used for bad things - like wiping your arse. So when you were struck, you were struck with someone's right hand on your left cheek - them good, you bad. When you "turn the other cheek" you are, in effect taunting the individual to strike you with their left hand on your right cheek - them bad, you good. It would be the type of typical passive-aggressive response needed when one party has substantially more power than the other. It's a very rebellious act that only appears to be submissive.
Maybe...I've never really bought into that, but it's possible and the idea is intriguing.
They have implied authority, in that they are the fourth branch protected such that they hold them accountable. But with that authority granted in the BoRs come their own accountability… Chris is right… they need to feel pain, and I’ll lose zero winks when it happens.
We find those who can be brutal. Those doctors? Prison. Teachers? Prison. We need to hang those who forced public policy, who cheated on elections. That's treason.
We need to look to our former, braver selves, IMO.
Canada’s Charter of Righta have a caveat in Section 1. The following rights are within the bounds of good governance. In Canada we literally have no rights should the government decide in some particular instance we shouldn’t. Which means we don’t have any.
The stupidity of the writers boggles my mind. Idiots and Fools. Brian Peckford, one of the Premiers at the time and therefore one of the writers, stumped the country during Covid exclaiming loudly how Section 1 was being misused. I wanted to yell at him ‘you wrote it you fool. The words of the contract stand. Not what you claim was the intent.’ Any government of Canada can state a right can be overridden as a reasonable limit during a trying time. Of course that is when you need that right.
Canada previously had protection from British Common Law. Freedom of Speech has a long history of being protected under Common Law. The Canadian Charter specifically states it is the authority and British Common Law takes a back seat to it. I get infuriated even writing all this right now.
I'm increasingly convinced the Charter is a tool of judicial destruction upon Canada. It produced exactly what its detractors warned would happen: a presumptive, arrogant, and unaccountable judiciary that makes laws instead of interpreting them. I'm glad Ford and other premiers - including Poliviere should he be PM - have said they would use the Notwithstanding Clause more frequently. The Charter is now an abomination and a blight that should be exorcised from the Canadian body politic.
Both actually. Moreso the "rights" that have been an ever-expanding albatross around Canada's neck thanks to an activist judiciary, especially the baked-in hierarchy of rights that have entrenched, for example, affirmative action in hiring and the ever-expanding carve out of an essentially parallel First Nations/Aboriginal/Indigenous term-of-the-week "polity" that demands more money, more apologies, more "reconciliation" while knee-capping one of the last sources of wealth in the country: the resource sector.
comrade Yuri - I can feel the season is upon us. We are about to realize peak levels of absurdity and its partner, ridicule. We haven't even scratched the surface.
It’s hard to be mocked by the insane people you admire. In fact so often the people that stand for reasonable thinking and truly fair outcomes number very few- maybe only one with the courage to brave the “storm”. These clowns can’t take the shunning of their peers.
Maybe it’s because I am a lawyer, but I reached some kind of breaking point when Ketanji Brown Jackson (she of the US Supreme Court) said that she was “concerned” that the First Amendment was “hamstringing the government”. Wow. Did she let her graduate without the (required) course in Constitutional Law?Talk about “broken with the world of the real”…
Absolutely right. Really, her confirmation was truly the beginning of the end for SCOTUS. Her “wise Latina” hubris brought Ivory Tower Marxist race reductionism to the highest levels of American government (to the detriment of traditional “blind justice”).
This 2009 piece from NPR (!) does a good job of explaining the tension between classical ideas of law and “woke” legal relativism. Unfortunately, we all know who won that fight, and it hasn’t been good.
I’ll say it like it is. She got the job cause she’s a black woman who’s a liberal progressive. Biden said so himself. You can sustain a lemonade stand by promoting idiots.
Be careful Preparing things in parallel in case the house of cards collapses really offends the ruling class. Look at what they are doing in Arizona with the standby electors in 2020.
Myself, I'm looking forward to writers at The Free Press realizing they're never again going to be invited to sit at the "cool kids' table" -- I bet they have some amazing stories to tell.
And yet Bari and Nellie can’t begin to wrap their heads around the possibility that just maybe Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump might not be actual manifestations of a resurrected Adolph Hitler.
you have noticed the fixation that the Free Press has on Tucker Carlson too. They are super insecure because of him. Bari just needs to sit down and visit with him The Chris Cumo and Tucker Carlson interview was outstanding.
The reason free press can’t take Tucker is Israel. They are comfortable w the Bill of Rights right up to the point of Israel, then no. So I don’t bother w them. They are just another Baskin Robbins flavor of hypocrisy, nothing more.
I know a fair amount of lesbians. half of them would have punched anyone who called their girlfriend a fucking Nazi in the face. what the fuck Nellie? you just politely change the subject?
maybe lesbians in Texas are different than on the Coast...
I just listened to the interview and she talks about being first shocked, then worried about the career she had spent her whole life building to that point.
It demonstrates how much of an epistemic bubble our ruling class lives in. People who still have some grip on reality can slip into it, and when reality intrudes, it’s socially and psychologically painful to climb back out. The only solution is to keep slapping them with doses of reality and hope enough traditional liberals (conservatives don’t exist in these spaces) develop enough of a spine to tell the insane leftists “No”.
The Left is prototypically feminine. Look at constituency stats. The women of your nations drive them towards endless 'progress', and certain doom.
The U.S. spent the past half-century disenfranchising, dispossessing, and demeaning men, boys and masculinity itself, while rigging the culture to privilege girls and women from cradle to grave . . . preference and entitlement in education, employment, law, medicine, media and entertainment, so forth.
Biggest difference between the America I recall from the Fifties and Sixties, and post-Seventies America, is that the old (sane, functioning, largely Christian) America was male-led, in culture and institutions. Now, the U.S. is a completely female-centric and female-dominated nation . . . insane, non-functioning, and largely pagan. D.C. is little more than a coven, with a bunch of male grifters of the MIC still feeding off the nation's corpse.
Want to fix it? Change it from a female-ruled nation back to a male-ruled nation. This means tumult and pain. It means prioritizing and promoting the nation's sons, not its daughters. It means doing what God wants men to do (Bible) instead of what women want us to do (modern society). Yes that's right, it won't be popular. But it will work.
The denigration of masculinity as toxic is a harbinger of cultural death, and (for example) the transition to a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors made up entirely of women has led to an indescribably stupid politics of performative "compassion." But can we distinguish women from AWFLs?
In the shit-crazy madhouse of California, a bunch of shamefully stupid men (Scott Wiener, Alex Lee, Gavin Newsom, Rob Bonta, etc.) are dragging us to hell. I grant that three of those are feminized men, and the other one is...Gavin Newsom. But still. A bunch of the most successful and aggressive leaders of the effort to fight back against all of that cultural and political madness are women: Erin Friday, Julie Hamill, Jennifer Kennedy, Denise Aguilar.
See this footage of a Moms for Liberty group speaking during an event at a public library in Davis, California, and a male librarian silences the group and throws them out because they commit "transphobia" by saying that a dude in a dress is a man:
And Tessa Lena, Tess Lawrie, Christiane Northrup, Sherri Tenpenny, Carrie Madej, Christine Stabel Benn, Brianne Dressen, Meryl Nass, Gigi Foster, Christina Parks, Catherine Austin Fitts, Jennifer Sey, Simone Gold, Naomi Wolf to name a few.
But Chris - how much of these women stepping up is because men can’t. Imagine if a man started *gasp* mansplaining about why things are fucked up? You see it? They’ve already been pre-dismissed by the current lingua franca. Conservative, thoughtful women who see the harpies ruining the country are standing in place of their men who have been stricken from having a public opinion. This is where we are.
Yes you have it, exactly. We must now rely on females if we even wish to speak and communicate with, well, anything and everything in our feminist nations.
I am not evaluating the merits of any 'conservative' woman, only pointing out that we rather have already lost. 1000 lb gorilla in closet.
As long as women have the right to vote, it can’t be fixed. As a woman, I would hate to give up the right because I vote like a man, but I would do it if all the Sensitive Susie’s also had to give it up.
There are some women like you, scattered about, with sufficient wisdom to understand the basic problem in America. I see these women pop up online from time to time.
But you are correct, as long as females vote -- and essentially run the culture -- the ship will continue to sink.
It is fair to point out that the core of our modern evil and madness comes from AWFLs. They are the collective heart-of-darkness in the West, and they've been calling the shots for decades. They strut and terrorize their way through society, and society backs them up.
But all females are susceptible to the faults and weaknesses of female nature, and to some extent nearly all females are part of Team Woman. With rare exception, almost all women are feminists, no matter their claims otherwise. All females, to some extent, share in the sin of Eve, which is the propensity to seek to usurp male position and place, and to attain 'equality' with God. The male propensity, otoh, is the sin and fault of doing the will of females, not the will of God.
Christian and conservative men want very much to believe, for example, that the host of female candidates and officeholders proffered by the Repugnicants over the past decade consists of women who are 'on our side'. This is a mistake. The female mind and nature is NOT the male mind and nature, and they are not interchangeable.
Most Western men still view females via the past 1000 years of Romanticism, as the moral and spiritual superiors of men. Once again, sad and willful blindness guaranteeing that current problems cannot be addressed and resolved. I fear American men and women must learn the hard way.
Lol. If laughter, which is the only rational reaction to those bemoaning the victimhood grifters by setting themselves up as victims, is emotional for you, then you are most welcome.
If speaking the truth about a taboo and unpopular subject is bemoaning, then perhaps our interest in the truth is at different levels.
I didn't realize you were sufficiently aware of my personal life to discern I play the victim. Perhaps consider a hobby instead? Something constructive.
"As far as I can see, American men have been totally emasculated. They're like slaves! They die like flies from coronary thromboses, while their women sit under hairdryers, eating chocolates and arranging for every second Tuesday to be some sort of Mother's Day!" -- Lt. Col. J. Algernon Hawthorne (1963). Oh if he could see us today. :(
I would suggest looking outside the paradigm of men vs women and instead see this as pro-human vs anti-human. Each of the subgroups among us has been set up to weaken the others on purpose. Black-white, man-woman, LGBTQ -Cis. Muslim - Christian. The goal is not demasculization to ruin men. It’s to ruin men to weaken western civilization. Women (the sane ones) love children and their men, and want them to be happy and successful. It is not in their interest to destroy their futures. Something else is going on.
O yes there's a whole lot of Something Else going on, and I already know who and what about most of it. Many benefit by setting people at odds with one another.
However, certainly over the past half-century there has been an all-out effort from Western intel, government, media, corporations, and even churches to ruin men and boys. Those institutions are responding directly to the collective power and will of women, and that will definitely HAS been directed at men and boys with intent to ruin them in varied ways. It's been a cultural and extra-legal slaughter that nobody wants to talk about.
I do not see a whole lot of love for 'children and men' from modern U.S. women. I see some qualified love for children, if the woman feels they are hers, but I also see the collective power of women leading the charge for Endless Abortion and for Endless War against males, decade after horrible decade.
I do not see men collectively leading any charge to destroy femininity or individual females, based solely on their birth sex. So let's lay the blame where it exists, shall we? Also, it is women collectively that demand (and get) open borders, LGBTQ, college totalitarianism, female preference in education and employment, assumed maternal custody, separate justice system . . . and everything else radically 'progressive'.
Apparently there are a LOT of 'insane women' in the U.S. because most of the ruinous things going down in New Amerika are at the behest of empowered females and the gelded governments that serve them. That a (rapidly shrinking) minority of U.S. women opt for traditional roles does not negate -- nor excuse -- the reality of what's going on.
Our entire liberal class, meaning politicians, professors, college administrators and trustees, journalists artists historians etc—everyone who has benefited from the gifts of liberalism in its most expansive sense, meaning free thought, speech and expression and who are charged with transmitting our inherited cultural wisdom—have had their brains destroyed by the malevolent brain virus called Critical Theory.
Once afflicted with the Crit Theory virus, its sufferers confuse education w indoctrination, thought with dogma, censorship with debate and, worst of all, they believe that their "critical consciousness" has transformed them into secular saints or angels, that they've become the literal incarnation of the Good, that everyone who opposes them (even once) is the incarnation of Evil, that everyone and everything can be labled with a color-coded morality, and the possibility that they may be wrong or malevolent becomes impossible to conceive.
That's just my fancy way of saying that our liberal class has become sick and dangerous, they are really a mob of frothing zombies (but worse, because zombies don't imagine themselves righteous and infallible), but more like a Fifth Column that will burn down our entire society to maintain total control of it. They are going to have to be opposed and replaced—immediately after the arrival of the cataclysm up ahead that they are in the process of creating.
ugly things happen when a liberal class turns toxic and decides that the history/culture they've been charged to transmit is actually a nest of evil lies that needs to immolated and replaced by their special wisdom...these are supposed to be the watch dogs of liberalism but now they've gone rabid and want to bite the hands that feed them...this is shaping up to be a very ugly decade.
Yes. This fever only breaks when so-called liberals wake up to the fact that the people that are not offended by Trump are not their mortal enemies, and Marxists aren’t their best friends. Hopefully sooner than later.
our elite institutions are like the man whom, upon discovering a wasp in his house, decides to exterminate the creature using a flamethrower, and proceeds to burn his entire house down.
now, the wasp could be many things (Trump, disinformation, populism), but it doesn’t matter so much as the focus on the reaction. my father told me that the hallmark of a declining empire was when the reaction to a crisis was 10 times worse than the crisis itself. think: 9/11, 2008, Brexit, Trump, Disinfo, Covid etc…
you could never hurt them worse than they've hurt themselves. bet you a trip to oregon that they all took the jab. some of them won't be around long enough for us to continue calling them out
True. Sometimes I wonder just how self-limiting this is going to end up being. The crazies are the ones most likely to both take the jab and refuse to have kids.
Agree that, although she's written some good stuff, Bari Weiss is not to be trusted. I used to think that it was judgy or lowbrow to pay attention to a public intellectual's personal life, but I have changed my views on that. There are two kinds of people in the world. People who can accept reality and people who think they create reality according to their own preferences and hobby horses. A woman paying for sperm to impregnate her "wife" and pretending this is a normal or ok way to build a family is not accepting reality. She is also unreadable on anything relating to Jewishness or Israel (and I say this as a person broadly supportive of both). Giant blind spots about her personal demographic interests do not warrant trust or respect.
I've attempted to read Bari Weiss and succeeded for periods of time. But, inevitably, it becomes tedious. She is a smart woman and has some interesting insights, but she is still too closely aligned with the people she now criticizes to ever step very far from the accepted narrative. Even Nellie Bowles calls the editor that called her a nazi "a kind man." I can get similar perspectives to Bari from other writers who don't regularly contradict themselves while trying to stay within the proper lanes of "conventional liberal, lesbian, Jewish, Columbia grads." Candidly, I love watching this crowd enact a circlular firing squad.
Chris. I think you are being a bit hard on her. She’s undergoing a process. It’s not done yet. She really has featured quite a few stories that get lots of attention that blow up the MSM narrative. Give her some more time, I think we’re still seeing her move closer to reality. Nellie is a bit further away, but slowly moving too.
Yea, she's evolving, but it's way too slow for my taste. Smart people saw the writing on the wall a long, long time ago. At this point, the way of the world is completely obvious to even the casual observer. If she's just now figuring it out, she's just not that smart. Do I respect her? Sure, at some level. Do I admire her? No.
Bravo, Bravo and Bravo. I will pass this along. Many in my life are too high-falutin to read the output of the digital soldiers who have laid this all out for years, and upon whose wisdom I rely DAILY. Maybe this will pass through the rectal lining and make it to their eyes. Bless you.
Shaking my head and thinking, "These fbomb people.."
I want to make them hurt as well--but I think the real pain will be to see them put back into their appropriate place in the pecking order.
I know how I would respond seconds after I busted one of their noses...I'd feel total remorse, and then I'd feel like the bad guy.
These people should be relegated to jobs equivalent in stature, pay, and esteem of grammar school hall monitors.
The left is comprised of the: ugly, misinformed, insane, fat, talentless, tangential, weird, perverted, doughy, skinny-fat, soft-brittle underbelly of any population. They are the ones who do not get married, do not have traditional careers, never played well with others, and have always lived in a twisted self-focused interpretation of reality.
We should recognize who they are and treat them accordingly. This might be a silly example--but Sports Illustrated put obese women in their annual swimsuit edition...18 months later they shuttered the entire enterprise. They are eating themselves and ruining the world.
Another excellent essay Chris, and one that many resonate with. Recently I read an essay by James Howard Kunstler in which he boiled it down to there are just two opposing sides now, the sane vs the insane, which is the point of your essay. To highlight that point even more I recently read Marxist gnome Robert Reich’s recent Substack on The Second Civil War (attached). If you really want to get a sense of the divide read the comments section. You will find it a journey into the dark night of the soul.
I can’t read the comment section of lefty papers. I am isolated from those people in real life, so I still have some hope of normalcy, but seeing and reading the crazy makes me despondent and hopeless.
I made that mistake as well... What's crazy is that Reich and his followers represent, at least a segment of, the mainstream left. When I dropped out of the left, during Obama's second term, you would only find that sort of comment section in really bat-shit corners of the leftieverse. It does not inspire a sense of comfort and makes one's thoughts turn to Gen 4 night vision and pallets of MREs.
It has been a trend since the Obama days and really amped up once Trump won. Republicans are good people but have bad ideas to republicans are bad people with dangerous ideas to republicans are dangerous people with dangerous ideas. It has been part of the Orwellian twisting of language to dehumanize your opponents to the point that “by any means necessary” becomes the operative agenda for the progressive movement.
Don't you want to project yourself into that gathering of self-regarding NYT staffers to say, "'She's a fucking Nazi' isn't a fucking argument, asshole."
Neither are bad-faith interpretations of people's politics, actions, or the decision to open a taco truck when they're nOt EvEn LaTiNx. Go cry harder on The Splendid Table.
Our entire culture is steeped in people MAKING SHIT UP. Out of whole cloth.
-Disobeying order? Is good! No, you made that up. Because Trump.
-Democracy is great, except for the people who practice it. Also made up.
-Judge Cannon is in over her head and here to testify to that on CNN's Out Front are Andrew Weissmann and famed White Sox Ty Cobb, both coming in cleats high to gore the evil that is Trump and his enablers. Made up as a closed-case narrative because these two hardly suffice as a quorum of esteemed legal minds.
Read the comments on a Jeff Tiedrich post and you can't recognize the fantasy they partake in. It would be useless to even troll because they are convinced of the shit they make up to feel alive through rage.
And the millionaires and billionaires encourage it. They cultivate this level of derangement because they make money off of it. Or they can throw their money at the people-who-make-shit-up because they're the ones who are setting the right fires to satisfy their belief that only Ivy League-credentialed technocrats should rule the world.
In Nate Silver's article from today, we learn that the New Yorker's Masha Gessen is among those who think their own ass, to use Chris' parlance, is the world. Who says "a lot of my journalist friends are just much better informed." BY WHOM? BY WHAT FUCKING METRIC?
Think all the way back to 2016 when the Huff Post was publishing article after article that Bernie Sanders Can Win! Seth Abramson was a cottage industry of this dreck unto himself. Making shit up.
Read Jeff Gerth's analysis for CJR of the media's coverage of Trump. Over and over, the esteemed press was either making shit up or buying into made-up stories.
You get the Covid jab and you'll never get Covid or transmit it. IT. WAS. Bullshit.
The Twitter Files don't show our esteemed government trying to censor people. They were just making suggestions. Egregious level of bullshit.
Mostly Peaceful Protests.
Right-wingers are "weaponizing" congressional hearings so they can destroy the academy.
Bari Weiss getting dragged by Times staffers during the 2018 Olympics because she tweeted "Immigrants: They get the job done" to celebrate figure skater Mirai Nagasu.
Transwomen are women.
People opposed to abortion just want to control wimmin's bodies.
If you're opposed to DEI, you're a racist.
The FUCKING WEATHER IS RACIST.
Cities are phallic and anti-woman.
The world is going to burn any minute now.
Trump is going to lock all his enemies away just like he did during his first term.
We're not asking the media to give favorable coverage to Biden; we just want the them to see the world through our political lens, and if that effectively gives favorable notices to Biden, well wouldja look at that?
NPR isn't a cesspool of preening wokeness; it's Uri Berliner who's the bad guy.
Everything I don't like is Hitler.
Anything I don't agree with is "demonstrably false."
The very concept of malinformation.
It's all bullshit.
And it piles higher and higher because the ones who stacked the pile, stir it around, and ladle it out have no incentive to dig us out of it. It is like the fucking fuel for Bartertown. And we desperately need life beyond Thunderdome.
"She has broken with the world of the real." That's postmodernism: the separation of words from reality. Heck, it even admits that -- proudly. And the laptop class is almost uniformly postmodernist.
"prominent people have crawled so far up their own asses that they think their rectal lining is the world." I almost blew chai tea out my nose on that one, Chris.
"these people need to be hurt"
This is a big deal. It's not funny. I really struggle with this: how to balance forgiveness and grace with accountability. I struggled with it after COVID too when mask lunatics suddenly memory holed everything they'd done and expected the rest of us (who they'd been calling murderers for 2 years) to write it off with a, "well, we did the best we could with limited information." But I tried to let it go.
When the activists who demanded that we get rid of police officers later complain about how violent their cities are and expect the rest of us to pretend they didn't have a hand in creating that violence... I try to let it go. Focus on the good. Focus on the fact that urban cities are becoming safer again.
When journalists suddenly rediscover that objective reality exists outside of their words and that their descriptions are completely unrepresentative of it (as Phillip K Dick says: "reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, is still there")... I will try to let it go.
When the doctors and social workers and teachers all suddenly memory hole how they've sliced off and withered the private parts of thousands of vulnerable teenagers... I will not be able to let it go.
My faith teaches forgiveness, and so I do try to forgive all of these. I try to forgive regardless of your repentance. I forgive not for you but for me, because being perpetually angry with you is poisonous to my own soul. But my faith also teaches justice. And the idea that Christianity teaches only Heavenly justice is simply wrong. Christianity is where the concept of "social justice" originates, specifically the Catholic Worker movement of the early 20th century. Justice is something to be sought here "on Earth, as it is in Heaven". Man's justice will always be a pale shadow of God's. Man's justice must always be tempered by the knowledge that man is sinful. But we're not off the hook. "Just don't make waves and let God deal with the injustices" is as wrong as "kill them all and God will know his own" (supposedly spoken by Fr Arnaud Amalric during the crusades.)
So I really struggle with how to handle accountability for these sorts of behaviors. Assuming our tribe manages to attain power to actually hold people accountable, how should we do it? What is the appropriate penalty for doctors who sliced the private parts of vulnerable teenagers? For blue-haired teachers who taught fellatio techniques to 11 year olds? For open race hustlers who profited by egging on mobs that were burning down poor black neighborhoods? On my bad days I can think of a variety of Medieval tortures that would be appropriate. But man's justice must always be be performed in the knowledge of man's sinfulness: "there but for the grace of God go I". So how do we do it? I'm not sure. I would love to hear other serious ideas on this subject.
Hard questions, and necessary.
Brian - try not to harbor contempt. As you say it is not good for your spirit.
Honestly my brushes with contempt have been with Christians more than any other group....2 Timothy 1:7...nuff said. That was all they needed to know...and somehow they forgot one of Jesus's most important and widely known lesson.
As far as your anger...that is justified. Let it be our fuel. At the same time; we are blessed to not have scales over our eyes, like most. IMO we stay steadfast because there is only one thing more powerful than The Truth; silence about The Truth.
We are just messengers.
I'll leave you with this:
He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.”
- Thomas Aquinas
Thanks Ryan. Aquinas is one of my go to people as well. Protestants who think he's Catholic need to relook at their Reformation calendar. He's in both camps.
I've been reading Aaron Renn recently here on Substack. His views on the feminization of the church have altered my own somewhat. Like you, he sees a place for righteous anger (which to Renn's thinking is a masculine quality). The standard pulpit response to this is "only God gets to turn over the moneychangers' tables in anger; you're a sinner, so you can't". Aquinas would not agree. Neither would Augustine. Neither would the early Church Fathers. neither would Charles Spurgeon. For that matter, neither would Mother Teresa or JPII. So what do they all know that we've forgotten?
As always, the difficulty lies in the specific application. Drawing the line between a response that is righteous vs revengeful.
Justice isn't contempt. This response feels very weak and dangerous.
"Justice isn't contempt" is a good observation. I happen to appreciate Ryans response, and greatly value Brians. At its origins, contempt meant "open disregard or disobedience" and in that sense, I find it necessary to harbor contempt for the unreality. The problem is that the unreality folks have insisted that we join them in and endorse their unreality. Without contempt for the lawlessness (which is really what the unreality is about) we can not ever have justice.
I appreciate your response as well.
I am very different from you guys, and I’m glad we all have different views.
Kathy, how are you different in this? I'm curious how you approach the rejection of un-reality and justice.
I feel as if I'm more brutal, Angus. You and Ryan and Brian seem much higher minded. You're people I want in service to the country, to consider the best ways to do things. Me? I agree with what you all are saying, but I'm more reactionary, or it feels as if I am.
It's really hard to do this in writing; if we all sat around a table I'd be able to hold my own and explain better.
My bottom line: the enemy is insane and should be treated as such--the rejection of justice? of unreality? In-sane. And because they're trying to force us into 15-minute cities eating bugs, I'm ready to f*ck them up. No nuance.
Does that make sense?
Reread his comment and then my response.
And then I'm happy to elaborate.
Will do, Ryan, I've got to put it in my queue for later, though. Substack is a deadly time sink.
Hahaha. Lolol. All good.
Cheers Kathy!
I can get past a lot of that. To some extent. I would be foolish to not think it could happen again, in a heart beat. But the mutilation of children….? Nope. Those people can not be let off the hook, in any way.
Great comment. I struggle with all the same things. I'd simply point out that forgiveness doesn't eliminate the need for accountability. When we forgive, we don't just forget and send all that bad behavior down the memory hole. As you rightly point out, forgiveness is the release of a need for vengeance in those who have been wronged. It's something we do to ensure that we're not tied up in mental knots ourselves. But there are still consequences for behavior. That's not vengeance; that's accountability. I'm a strong believer in naming names and calling out the bad behavior. We need to see real repentance from people, not a quick "Oops, my bad" and an effort to sweep things under the carpet (which is what we're seeing today). IMO, that means investigations and prosecutions for public behavior. It means lots of hard, direct confrontation and conversations for private behavior. I fully agree with you that we must not compromise our Christianity, but nor do I think that means we must simply walk away without any restoration of these relationships. To put it another way, God doesn't just sweep our sin under the carpet. He sent his son to die to pay the price for our sin. He forgives us, but the penalty must still be paid.
I write about some of these topics here: https://simplechristianity.substack.com
Forgiveness is a two way street. I can forgive but the sinner has to sincerely be sorry.
Take my sister. She behaves as if her abortion is absolved and atoned for by being a loud supporter of every leftist cause. So she isn’t sincerely sorry for her abortion, in fact she is doubling down on sin by being proud of it. It is much easier to pass off one’s sin as virtue than it is to be sincerely sorry. This is why pride/vanity is the deadliest sin - divine forgiveness requires humility.
It’s like.y more of denial. To admit to herself what she did as an abomination to God. I feel sympathy since I know bearing a child you never wanted is a huge burden. However, murder isn’t the solution. She knows.
With respect, I beg to differ. Forgiveness is a one-way street. You can forgive someone without any change in behavior on their part, just because you choose to let it go. That said, surely, it’s much more satisfying when somebody who has done something wrong recognizes that, takes responsibility for it, and is truly sorry and penitent. In that case, restoration is actually possible, which it really isn’t when things are just one-way. But forgiveness doesn’t have to be a two-way street. I’m sorry to hear about your sister. That’s rough.
Leonard's sister's doubling down on her abortion is behavior shared by about one-half of all Boomer and Gen X women.
Yep, true dat.
Forgiveness and peace is for those who make mistakes and/or people who express sincere contriteness. Neither of those apply here.
Bullying is different. And bullies need to be punched in the nose (or throat) if you want them to stop their behavior. It's not anger or contempt - it's behavior modification.
fwiw - the level of proudly displayed contempt from the left over the last 4 years has severely weakened my faith in humanity.
Christian militias are a common thing in many parts of the world. These are Christians who come together for the purpose of protecting their own -- punching those who try to bully or hurt them in the nose. I was appalled by that for a long time. I tended toward the Voice of the Martyrs school of thought -- win them over with your faithfulness and love even if it costs you your life. Now that my own society is starting to persecute Christians (very minorly compared to many others) I find myself more sympathetic to such organizations.
There is a very different interpretation of "turn the other cheek", rooted in the context of life in the time of Christ.
Back then, left was considered bad, and the left hand was only used for bad things - like wiping your arse. So when you were struck, you were struck with someone's right hand on your left cheek - them good, you bad. When you "turn the other cheek" you are, in effect taunting the individual to strike you with their left hand on your right cheek - them bad, you good. It would be the type of typical passive-aggressive response needed when one party has substantially more power than the other. It's a very rebellious act that only appears to be submissive.
Maybe...I've never really bought into that, but it's possible and the idea is intriguing.
They have implied authority, in that they are the fourth branch protected such that they hold them accountable. But with that authority granted in the BoRs come their own accountability… Chris is right… they need to feel pain, and I’ll lose zero winks when it happens.
Well said......Lot of us out here thinking the same things.....
We find those who can be brutal. Those doctors? Prison. Teachers? Prison. We need to hang those who forced public policy, who cheated on elections. That's treason.
We need to look to our former, braver selves, IMO.
Best comment, thank you.
These clowns need to feel the pain of everyone laughing at them. Where reason fails, ridicule prevails. It’s our duty, comrades.
Ridicule is indeed a solemn duty. Have at it! Please -- and thank you. Chris has certainly done yeoman's service to this very important work.
Q: What is the difference between the Constitutions of the US and Canada?
A: Both of them guarantee freedom of speech but the Constitution of the USA also guarantees freedom after the speech. (for now)
Canada’s Charter of Righta have a caveat in Section 1. The following rights are within the bounds of good governance. In Canada we literally have no rights should the government decide in some particular instance we shouldn’t. Which means we don’t have any.
The stupidity of the writers boggles my mind. Idiots and Fools. Brian Peckford, one of the Premiers at the time and therefore one of the writers, stumped the country during Covid exclaiming loudly how Section 1 was being misused. I wanted to yell at him ‘you wrote it you fool. The words of the contract stand. Not what you claim was the intent.’ Any government of Canada can state a right can be overridden as a reasonable limit during a trying time. Of course that is when you need that right.
Canada previously had protection from British Common Law. Freedom of Speech has a long history of being protected under Common Law. The Canadian Charter specifically states it is the authority and British Common Law takes a back seat to it. I get infuriated even writing all this right now.
At the time it happened I, and few others, said ‘canada exists until we elect a despot. Then it ends’. It took decades, but we did it in Justin.
I'm increasingly convinced the Charter is a tool of judicial destruction upon Canada. It produced exactly what its detractors warned would happen: a presumptive, arrogant, and unaccountable judiciary that makes laws instead of interpreting them. I'm glad Ford and other premiers - including Poliviere should he be PM - have said they would use the Notwithstanding Clause more frequently. The Charter is now an abomination and a blight that should be exorcised from the Canadian body politic.
Why? Section 1? Or the enumerated ‘rights’?
Both actually. Moreso the "rights" that have been an ever-expanding albatross around Canada's neck thanks to an activist judiciary, especially the baked-in hierarchy of rights that have entrenched, for example, affirmative action in hiring and the ever-expanding carve out of an essentially parallel First Nations/Aboriginal/Indigenous term-of-the-week "polity" that demands more money, more apologies, more "reconciliation" while knee-capping one of the last sources of wealth in the country: the resource sector.
That isn’t a Charter problem. That is a stupid Liberal hack judge problem.
Love the Steely Dan handle.
Fav band all time
F R E E D O M O F S P E E C H
must include freedom of reach (though twitter considers them separate!)
No Free Speech without Reach. We need a #FreeReach laws urgently!
http://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/no-free-speech-without-reach
The full plan exposed, and 16 laws we need to exit Extermination Planet
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-plan-revealed
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/laws-to-exit-planet-prison
comrade Yuri - I can feel the season is upon us. We are about to realize peak levels of absurdity and its partner, ridicule. We haven't even scratched the surface.
It could destroy them.
It’s hard to be mocked by the insane people you admire. In fact so often the people that stand for reasonable thinking and truly fair outcomes number very few- maybe only one with the courage to brave the “storm”. These clowns can’t take the shunning of their peers.
Maybe it’s because I am a lawyer, but I reached some kind of breaking point when Ketanji Brown Jackson (she of the US Supreme Court) said that she was “concerned” that the First Amendment was “hamstringing the government”. Wow. Did she let her graduate without the (required) course in Constitutional Law?Talk about “broken with the world of the real”…
“I’m not sure I understand the distinction why the states would have the power, but the federal government wouldn’t."
-- Sonia Sotomayor
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/justice-sotomayor-claims-not-to-understand-the-distinction-between-state-and-federal-powers/
she never read as far as the 10th Amendment
But she got through a good three or four, for sure.
Real LOL. Indeed. I mean, she tried. There were just so many. 🙄
She can read?
Absolutely right. Really, her confirmation was truly the beginning of the end for SCOTUS. Her “wise Latina” hubris brought Ivory Tower Marxist race reductionism to the highest levels of American government (to the detriment of traditional “blind justice”).
This 2009 piece from NPR (!) does a good job of explaining the tension between classical ideas of law and “woke” legal relativism. Unfortunately, we all know who won that fight, and it hasn’t been good.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2009/05/sotomayors_wise_latina_line_ma.html
They really don’t support and defend the Constitution, do they?
I’m not a biologist, but I think she may be an idiot
I, also lacking credentials in biology, think you are right.
I've done a bit of biology.
She is in the genus idiotus, but part of the species drooling cretinous.
Little known fact, members of that species believe the smell of their colon is what the everyday world smells like.
Don't let her off the hook so easily.
That was a jaw-dropper for me as well.
How could anyone remotely familiar with American law get that foundational concept so backwards?
On the plus side she declared her allegience for all to see.
I suspect it was simply uncontrollable virtue signalling.
I’ll say it like it is. She got the job cause she’s a black woman who’s a liberal progressive. Biden said so himself. You can sustain a lemonade stand by promoting idiots.
DIE. She didn't have to take any of the law classes in law school, 'cause black.
She’s a communist so it’s kind of SOP for them.
I used to get confused, from day to day, about how I should characterize today's left...is it fascism today or socialism or communism, etc.
Ive seen enough, It's clear to me now they're all commies.
With apologies for using technical language from the academic field of political science, I like to use the term "dumb assholes."
As someone cREdenTiaLeD with a poli sci MA I believe the *ackTsUhal* term is "complete fucking moron".
AND INSANE!
Much of what is now touted as "normal" is totally, utterly, disconnected from reality.
What is a Woman?
^^^This!^^^
Hamstring away, FA!!!
We can't fix it. We need to build our parallel networks and be ready to stand clear when it all collapses.
🙌
Be careful Preparing things in parallel in case the house of cards collapses really offends the ruling class. Look at what they are doing in Arizona with the standby electors in 2020.
Yep. Parallel networks will be infiltrated and sabotaged. One must be vigilant and be prepared to start anew again and again.
Starting to think that the doomsday preppers aren’t wrong.
Myself, I'm looking forward to writers at The Free Press realizing they're never again going to be invited to sit at the "cool kids' table" -- I bet they have some amazing stories to tell.
And yet Bari and Nellie can’t begin to wrap their heads around the possibility that just maybe Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump might not be actual manifestations of a resurrected Adolph Hitler.
you have noticed the fixation that the Free Press has on Tucker Carlson too. They are super insecure because of him. Bari just needs to sit down and visit with him The Chris Cumo and Tucker Carlson interview was outstanding.
The reason free press can’t take Tucker is Israel. They are comfortable w the Bill of Rights right up to the point of Israel, then no. So I don’t bother w them. They are just another Baskin Robbins flavor of hypocrisy, nothing more.
I know a fair amount of lesbians. half of them would have punched anyone who called their girlfriend a fucking Nazi in the face. what the fuck Nellie? you just politely change the subject?
maybe lesbians in Texas are different than on the Coast...
Right?
I just listened to the interview and she talks about being first shocked, then worried about the career she had spent her whole life building to that point.
It demonstrates how much of an epistemic bubble our ruling class lives in. People who still have some grip on reality can slip into it, and when reality intrudes, it’s socially and psychologically painful to climb back out. The only solution is to keep slapping them with doses of reality and hope enough traditional liberals (conservatives don’t exist in these spaces) develop enough of a spine to tell the insane leftists “No”.
In many circles, they are the cool kinds now.
cool kids now.
(How about an edit and delete feature?)
Get rid of the app it's bunk
Specify, please.
If you go back to the desktop version you can edit (before someone responds or likes your comment) and it's not as glitchy.
None of those writers save Walter Kirn have our interests at heart. None.
The Left is prototypically feminine. Look at constituency stats. The women of your nations drive them towards endless 'progress', and certain doom.
The U.S. spent the past half-century disenfranchising, dispossessing, and demeaning men, boys and masculinity itself, while rigging the culture to privilege girls and women from cradle to grave . . . preference and entitlement in education, employment, law, medicine, media and entertainment, so forth.
Biggest difference between the America I recall from the Fifties and Sixties, and post-Seventies America, is that the old (sane, functioning, largely Christian) America was male-led, in culture and institutions. Now, the U.S. is a completely female-centric and female-dominated nation . . . insane, non-functioning, and largely pagan. D.C. is little more than a coven, with a bunch of male grifters of the MIC still feeding off the nation's corpse.
Want to fix it? Change it from a female-ruled nation back to a male-ruled nation. This means tumult and pain. It means prioritizing and promoting the nation's sons, not its daughters. It means doing what God wants men to do (Bible) instead of what women want us to do (modern society). Yes that's right, it won't be popular. But it will work.
The denigration of masculinity as toxic is a harbinger of cultural death, and (for example) the transition to a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors made up entirely of women has led to an indescribably stupid politics of performative "compassion." But can we distinguish women from AWFLs?
In the shit-crazy madhouse of California, a bunch of shamefully stupid men (Scott Wiener, Alex Lee, Gavin Newsom, Rob Bonta, etc.) are dragging us to hell. I grant that three of those are feminized men, and the other one is...Gavin Newsom. But still. A bunch of the most successful and aggressive leaders of the effort to fight back against all of that cultural and political madness are women: Erin Friday, Julie Hamill, Jennifer Kennedy, Denise Aguilar.
See this footage of a Moms for Liberty group speaking during an event at a public library in Davis, California, and a male librarian silences the group and throws them out because they commit "transphobia" by saying that a dude in a dress is a man:
https://twitter.com/ADFLegal/status/1790438946242990586
Or watch Jennifer Kennedy bury her foot up the collective ass of the dimwitted LA school board:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQf_y77unZw&t=1722s
Or consider, during the pandemic, Jessica Rose, Claire Craig, Tracy Beth Hoeg, Mary Bowden, and Margaret Anna Alice.
And Tessa Lena, Tess Lawrie, Christiane Northrup, Sherri Tenpenny, Carrie Madej, Christine Stabel Benn, Brianne Dressen, Meryl Nass, Gigi Foster, Christina Parks, Catherine Austin Fitts, Jennifer Sey, Simone Gold, Naomi Wolf to name a few.
But Chris - how much of these women stepping up is because men can’t. Imagine if a man started *gasp* mansplaining about why things are fucked up? You see it? They’ve already been pre-dismissed by the current lingua franca. Conservative, thoughtful women who see the harpies ruining the country are standing in place of their men who have been stricken from having a public opinion. This is where we are.
Yes you have it, exactly. We must now rely on females if we even wish to speak and communicate with, well, anything and everything in our feminist nations.
I am not evaluating the merits of any 'conservative' woman, only pointing out that we rather have already lost. 1000 lb gorilla in closet.
As long as women have the right to vote, it can’t be fixed. As a woman, I would hate to give up the right because I vote like a man, but I would do it if all the Sensitive Susie’s also had to give it up.
There are some women like you, scattered about, with sufficient wisdom to understand the basic problem in America. I see these women pop up online from time to time.
But you are correct, as long as females vote -- and essentially run the culture -- the ship will continue to sink.
BOOM
Nailed that brother.
'But can we distinguish women from AWFLs?'
It is fair to point out that the core of our modern evil and madness comes from AWFLs. They are the collective heart-of-darkness in the West, and they've been calling the shots for decades. They strut and terrorize their way through society, and society backs them up.
But all females are susceptible to the faults and weaknesses of female nature, and to some extent nearly all females are part of Team Woman. With rare exception, almost all women are feminists, no matter their claims otherwise. All females, to some extent, share in the sin of Eve, which is the propensity to seek to usurp male position and place, and to attain 'equality' with God. The male propensity, otoh, is the sin and fault of doing the will of females, not the will of God.
Christian and conservative men want very much to believe, for example, that the host of female candidates and officeholders proffered by the Repugnicants over the past decade consists of women who are 'on our side'. This is a mistake. The female mind and nature is NOT the male mind and nature, and they are not interchangeable.
Most Western men still view females via the past 1000 years of Romanticism, as the moral and spiritual superiors of men. Once again, sad and willful blindness guaranteeing that current problems cannot be addressed and resolved. I fear American men and women must learn the hard way.
So, women are the root of all evil, and also, men have no agency to behave in any way except what women tell them? Wow. Who knew?
Your extremist and emotional reaction prove my points. Much obliged!
Lol. If laughter, which is the only rational reaction to those bemoaning the victimhood grifters by setting themselves up as victims, is emotional for you, then you are most welcome.
If speaking the truth about a taboo and unpopular subject is bemoaning, then perhaps our interest in the truth is at different levels.
I didn't realize you were sufficiently aware of my personal life to discern I play the victim. Perhaps consider a hobby instead? Something constructive.
"As far as I can see, American men have been totally emasculated. They're like slaves! They die like flies from coronary thromboses, while their women sit under hairdryers, eating chocolates and arranging for every second Tuesday to be some sort of Mother's Day!" -- Lt. Col. J. Algernon Hawthorne (1963). Oh if he could see us today. :(
The men in the country where I've lived almost a decade now say America has four castes: children, women, pets, and men.
They see what U.S. men can't, or won't, see.
I would suggest looking outside the paradigm of men vs women and instead see this as pro-human vs anti-human. Each of the subgroups among us has been set up to weaken the others on purpose. Black-white, man-woman, LGBTQ -Cis. Muslim - Christian. The goal is not demasculization to ruin men. It’s to ruin men to weaken western civilization. Women (the sane ones) love children and their men, and want them to be happy and successful. It is not in their interest to destroy their futures. Something else is going on.
O yes there's a whole lot of Something Else going on, and I already know who and what about most of it. Many benefit by setting people at odds with one another.
However, certainly over the past half-century there has been an all-out effort from Western intel, government, media, corporations, and even churches to ruin men and boys. Those institutions are responding directly to the collective power and will of women, and that will definitely HAS been directed at men and boys with intent to ruin them in varied ways. It's been a cultural and extra-legal slaughter that nobody wants to talk about.
I do not see a whole lot of love for 'children and men' from modern U.S. women. I see some qualified love for children, if the woman feels they are hers, but I also see the collective power of women leading the charge for Endless Abortion and for Endless War against males, decade after horrible decade.
I do not see men collectively leading any charge to destroy femininity or individual females, based solely on their birth sex. So let's lay the blame where it exists, shall we? Also, it is women collectively that demand (and get) open borders, LGBTQ, college totalitarianism, female preference in education and employment, assumed maternal custody, separate justice system . . . and everything else radically 'progressive'.
Apparently there are a LOT of 'insane women' in the U.S. because most of the ruinous things going down in New Amerika are at the behest of empowered females and the gelded governments that serve them. That a (rapidly shrinking) minority of U.S. women opt for traditional roles does not negate -- nor excuse -- the reality of what's going on.
See Bronze Age Mindset.
Our entire liberal class, meaning politicians, professors, college administrators and trustees, journalists artists historians etc—everyone who has benefited from the gifts of liberalism in its most expansive sense, meaning free thought, speech and expression and who are charged with transmitting our inherited cultural wisdom—have had their brains destroyed by the malevolent brain virus called Critical Theory.
Once afflicted with the Crit Theory virus, its sufferers confuse education w indoctrination, thought with dogma, censorship with debate and, worst of all, they believe that their "critical consciousness" has transformed them into secular saints or angels, that they've become the literal incarnation of the Good, that everyone who opposes them (even once) is the incarnation of Evil, that everyone and everything can be labled with a color-coded morality, and the possibility that they may be wrong or malevolent becomes impossible to conceive.
That's just my fancy way of saying that our liberal class has become sick and dangerous, they are really a mob of frothing zombies (but worse, because zombies don't imagine themselves righteous and infallible), but more like a Fifth Column that will burn down our entire society to maintain total control of it. They are going to have to be opposed and replaced—immediately after the arrival of the cataclysm up ahead that they are in the process of creating.
This is why I don't mind these morons making a meal out of everything.
Their fuck-ups are coming in so fast now, it's just a matter of time before their world collides with reality.
If it requires a cataclysm...so be it. I see no other outcome.
Let's punk them until the inevitable...then we rebuild our way.
ugly things happen when a liberal class turns toxic and decides that the history/culture they've been charged to transmit is actually a nest of evil lies that needs to immolated and replaced by their special wisdom...these are supposed to be the watch dogs of liberalism but now they've gone rabid and want to bite the hands that feed them...this is shaping up to be a very ugly decade.
Get the effing thing started imo...I'm getting old.
Exactly. The pain is going to happen on way or another. Better sooner than later. And yea, I'm getting old, too.
Yes. This fever only breaks when so-called liberals wake up to the fact that the people that are not offended by Trump are not their mortal enemies, and Marxists aren’t their best friends. Hopefully sooner than later.
our elite institutions are like the man whom, upon discovering a wasp in his house, decides to exterminate the creature using a flamethrower, and proceeds to burn his entire house down.
now, the wasp could be many things (Trump, disinformation, populism), but it doesn’t matter so much as the focus on the reaction. my father told me that the hallmark of a declining empire was when the reaction to a crisis was 10 times worse than the crisis itself. think: 9/11, 2008, Brexit, Trump, Disinfo, Covid etc…
Very smart.
Such a perfect comment
thanks!
It’s the least I could do!
"The epistemic closure of the American cultural mainstream has become…" jihad upon the rest of us.
1. You cannot fix these people.
2. We need a national divorce.
3. People like Bari Weiss are still insane liberals who cannot be allowed in our new country.
This is probably true, but I still want to hurt them.
you could never hurt them worse than they've hurt themselves. bet you a trip to oregon that they all took the jab. some of them won't be around long enough for us to continue calling them out
🤞🙏
True. Sometimes I wonder just how self-limiting this is going to end up being. The crazies are the ones most likely to both take the jab and refuse to have kids.
🙌 💞
Agree that, although she's written some good stuff, Bari Weiss is not to be trusted. I used to think that it was judgy or lowbrow to pay attention to a public intellectual's personal life, but I have changed my views on that. There are two kinds of people in the world. People who can accept reality and people who think they create reality according to their own preferences and hobby horses. A woman paying for sperm to impregnate her "wife" and pretending this is a normal or ok way to build a family is not accepting reality. She is also unreadable on anything relating to Jewishness or Israel (and I say this as a person broadly supportive of both). Giant blind spots about her personal demographic interests do not warrant trust or respect.
I've attempted to read Bari Weiss and succeeded for periods of time. But, inevitably, it becomes tedious. She is a smart woman and has some interesting insights, but she is still too closely aligned with the people she now criticizes to ever step very far from the accepted narrative. Even Nellie Bowles calls the editor that called her a nazi "a kind man." I can get similar perspectives to Bari from other writers who don't regularly contradict themselves while trying to stay within the proper lanes of "conventional liberal, lesbian, Jewish, Columbia grads." Candidly, I love watching this crowd enact a circlular firing squad.
Same. I respect and admire Bari Weiss, and I don't read a lot of her stuff.
Chris. I think you are being a bit hard on her. She’s undergoing a process. It’s not done yet. She really has featured quite a few stories that get lots of attention that blow up the MSM narrative. Give her some more time, I think we’re still seeing her move closer to reality. Nellie is a bit further away, but slowly moving too.
Yea, she's evolving, but it's way too slow for my taste. Smart people saw the writing on the wall a long, long time ago. At this point, the way of the world is completely obvious to even the casual observer. If she's just now figuring it out, she's just not that smart. Do I respect her? Sure, at some level. Do I admire her? No.
Bravo, Bravo and Bravo. I will pass this along. Many in my life are too high-falutin to read the output of the digital soldiers who have laid this all out for years, and upon whose wisdom I rely DAILY. Maybe this will pass through the rectal lining and make it to their eyes. Bless you.
Wow! Lol
With their heads so far up their asses,their eyeballs are close.
It is not just that schools and universities do not teach; it is that they actively mislead.
Shaking my head and thinking, "These fbomb people.."
I want to make them hurt as well--but I think the real pain will be to see them put back into their appropriate place in the pecking order.
I know how I would respond seconds after I busted one of their noses...I'd feel total remorse, and then I'd feel like the bad guy.
These people should be relegated to jobs equivalent in stature, pay, and esteem of grammar school hall monitors.
The left is comprised of the: ugly, misinformed, insane, fat, talentless, tangential, weird, perverted, doughy, skinny-fat, soft-brittle underbelly of any population. They are the ones who do not get married, do not have traditional careers, never played well with others, and have always lived in a twisted self-focused interpretation of reality.
We should recognize who they are and treat them accordingly. This might be a silly example--but Sports Illustrated put obese women in their annual swimsuit edition...18 months later they shuttered the entire enterprise. They are eating themselves and ruining the world.
bsn
Beaut of a move Sports Illustrated!
Bingo.
I fully agree these horrible miscreants need to be very badly hurt & all institutions razed to the ground & rebuilt.
Another excellent essay Chris, and one that many resonate with. Recently I read an essay by James Howard Kunstler in which he boiled it down to there are just two opposing sides now, the sane vs the insane, which is the point of your essay. To highlight that point even more I recently read Marxist gnome Robert Reich’s recent Substack on The Second Civil War (attached). If you really want to get a sense of the divide read the comments section. You will find it a journey into the dark night of the soul.
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/americas-second-civil-war-has-already?r=d42mp&utm_medium=ios
I'm not sure if I can click on that link while I'm sober.
I was going to say something similar. Some things are best left unread lest one puke.
Friday evening. With a glass of good whisky, perhaps.
I wouldn't risk ruining my weekend with that.
😆😆
I can’t read the comment section of lefty papers. I am isolated from those people in real life, so I still have some hope of normalcy, but seeing and reading the crazy makes me despondent and hopeless.
That puke is nuts but what’s nuttier is the fucking imbeciles that agree with him.
I made that mistake as well... What's crazy is that Reich and his followers represent, at least a segment of, the mainstream left. When I dropped out of the left, during Obama's second term, you would only find that sort of comment section in really bat-shit corners of the leftieverse. It does not inspire a sense of comfort and makes one's thoughts turn to Gen 4 night vision and pallets of MREs.
It has been a trend since the Obama days and really amped up once Trump won. Republicans are good people but have bad ideas to republicans are bad people with dangerous ideas to republicans are dangerous people with dangerous ideas. It has been part of the Orwellian twisting of language to dehumanize your opponents to the point that “by any means necessary” becomes the operative agenda for the progressive movement.
Don't you want to project yourself into that gathering of self-regarding NYT staffers to say, "'She's a fucking Nazi' isn't a fucking argument, asshole."
Neither are bad-faith interpretations of people's politics, actions, or the decision to open a taco truck when they're nOt EvEn LaTiNx. Go cry harder on The Splendid Table.
Our entire culture is steeped in people MAKING SHIT UP. Out of whole cloth.
-Disobeying order? Is good! No, you made that up. Because Trump.
-Democracy is great, except for the people who practice it. Also made up.
-Judge Cannon is in over her head and here to testify to that on CNN's Out Front are Andrew Weissmann and famed White Sox Ty Cobb, both coming in cleats high to gore the evil that is Trump and his enablers. Made up as a closed-case narrative because these two hardly suffice as a quorum of esteemed legal minds.
Read the comments on a Jeff Tiedrich post and you can't recognize the fantasy they partake in. It would be useless to even troll because they are convinced of the shit they make up to feel alive through rage.
And the millionaires and billionaires encourage it. They cultivate this level of derangement because they make money off of it. Or they can throw their money at the people-who-make-shit-up because they're the ones who are setting the right fires to satisfy their belief that only Ivy League-credentialed technocrats should rule the world.
In Nate Silver's article from today, we learn that the New Yorker's Masha Gessen is among those who think their own ass, to use Chris' parlance, is the world. Who says "a lot of my journalist friends are just much better informed." BY WHOM? BY WHAT FUCKING METRIC?
Think all the way back to 2016 when the Huff Post was publishing article after article that Bernie Sanders Can Win! Seth Abramson was a cottage industry of this dreck unto himself. Making shit up.
Read Jeff Gerth's analysis for CJR of the media's coverage of Trump. Over and over, the esteemed press was either making shit up or buying into made-up stories.
You get the Covid jab and you'll never get Covid or transmit it. IT. WAS. Bullshit.
The Twitter Files don't show our esteemed government trying to censor people. They were just making suggestions. Egregious level of bullshit.
Mostly Peaceful Protests.
Right-wingers are "weaponizing" congressional hearings so they can destroy the academy.
Bari Weiss getting dragged by Times staffers during the 2018 Olympics because she tweeted "Immigrants: They get the job done" to celebrate figure skater Mirai Nagasu.
Transwomen are women.
People opposed to abortion just want to control wimmin's bodies.
If you're opposed to DEI, you're a racist.
The FUCKING WEATHER IS RACIST.
Cities are phallic and anti-woman.
The world is going to burn any minute now.
Trump is going to lock all his enemies away just like he did during his first term.
We're not asking the media to give favorable coverage to Biden; we just want the them to see the world through our political lens, and if that effectively gives favorable notices to Biden, well wouldja look at that?
NPR isn't a cesspool of preening wokeness; it's Uri Berliner who's the bad guy.
Everything I don't like is Hitler.
Anything I don't agree with is "demonstrably false."
The very concept of malinformation.
It's all bullshit.
And it piles higher and higher because the ones who stacked the pile, stir it around, and ladle it out have no incentive to dig us out of it. It is like the fucking fuel for Bartertown. And we desperately need life beyond Thunderdome.
"Read the comments on a Jeff Tiedrich post..."
Nooooooo, no no no no no.
I stand corrected. I have opinions. I'm not always wise.