After a long rise from the early Colonial period, the expansionist phase of America's geopolitical influence peaked sometime between WWII and the end of the Cold War, and no later than the 1990s the Establishment began grasping at straws to create the illusion that we were still a British Empire for the new millennium. As in so many other domains, Trump's goal in foreign policy is to end the wasteful foolishness and get real. (Read a transcript of his recent speech, or watch the video.)
This shift will be one of the main differences between today and the last time a populist Republican led a re-alignment out of a period of laissez-faire economics and open borders -- the election of 1896, won by William McKinley, Trump's closest predecessor.
Back then, America was still expanding: just one year into his Presidency, McKinley presided over the Spanish-American War, through which America gained Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, as well as a protectorate over Cuba. We intervened in Latin American politics for the better part of the 20th century. In 1896, Utah had just attained statehood, and there were still five states out West left to join (Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii).
Today, our Union isn't going to get any bigger, and with the prospect of a Puerto Rico bailout, if anything the American people will be open to shrinking it. And we see what we get by trying to maintain a sphere of influence over the entire globe.
"America First" is a great way to transition away from imperial over-reach without sounding or feeling defeated. It's not that the rest of the world beat us, rather we beat ourselves through arrogance and wastefulness. Shrinking our sphere of influence down to the 50 states is no more defeatist than the Roman Empire letting go of the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. It's not going to be the age of the Five Good Emperors forever. And it's not going to be the age of Teddy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt forever either.
One of the main dangers facing a shrinking empire is getting over-run by migrants -- the Germanic tribes during the decline of the Romans, South Asians being invited into the post-colonial UK, and now the Muslim migration over Western Europe. Peter Turchin identifies the glue holding together an empire as solidarity among the citizenry, or the potential for collective action. When that glue starts to come undone, it will naturally show up in the form of borders not being defended as fervently as in the climate of "we're all in this together".
Thankfully, the Trump movement is working to solve this major problem of post-imperial political life, most of them not knowing anything about the fall of the Roman Empire, and therefore not deliberately "applying the lessons of history". But whether consciously or intuitively, we're largely going to avoid getting over-run by foreign hordes as we shrink back our sphere of influence, once we Build That Wall, deport the illegals and anchor babies and their families, end birthright citizenship, and dial down immigration.
To close on a different topic, it was reassuring to hear Trump use the phrase "Western" values, institutions, and civilization, rather than the phony construction "Judeo-Christian" values etc. that the guru of the Cruz Cult would have used. It's a shift away from the Jewish-influenced neocon agenda of nation-building and cultural imperialism, and setting a more pragmatic and non-interventionist goal of staying true to our (non-Jewish) cultural roots and setting a good example. Whoever wants to emulate us, can try, and whoever does not, will not. Big deal.
When Trump does mention Christians, he's referring to an ethno-cultural group under siege in the Middle East. He doesn't talk about the entire religion of Christianity, let alone as something that ought to be spread around the world in a latter-day version of the White Man's Burden. Leave cultural change to the missionaries, not the politicians. That point generalizes to all aspects of the culture war that has yielded zero results for the would-be conservative theocrats.
April 29, 2016
Reminder: Anti-Trump rioters are Hillary plants, not Sanders supporters
After Trump's yuge rally in Orange County, CA, protesters outside the venue started trashing a police car, and acting badly enough that 20 arrests were made. Similar to the protests and quasi riots outside of the canceled rally in Chicago.
These crowds carry signs saying "Bernie," they chant "Bernie," and are all Millennial age. And yet unlike actual Sanders supporters, hardly any of them are white, and their slurs are about people being racist and sexist, when the Bernie bros don't care about identity politics whatsoever, but rather populist economic matters (minimum wage, student loans, free health care, etc.). Identity politics and culture war stuff is Crooked Hillary's schtick.
If the black agitators in Chicago or the Mexican agitators in California were truly fans of Bernie, then he would be cleaning up in states with large non-white populations. It stands to reason that these agitators are, if anything, supporters of Crooked Hillary.
Mostly, though, they're just paid protesters, as Roger Stone has said, and as Trump has begun to make clear as well. They're part of MoveOn.org, Black Lives Matter, and other groups funded by George Soros, mediated by David Brock, and in general working on behalf of Crooked Hillary and the globalists.
Another of their goals is to sow discord between the Trump and Sanders voters, who overlap on populist economic policies and non-globalist foreign policy (albeit with Bernie being less nationalist, and merely non-globalist). We shouldn't fall for that, since we'll be courting them in the fall, especially in certain states that we need to change from blue to red, like Michigan (which Bernie won, and not because the whole state is blue-haired SJWs with $100K in student loan debt).
Instead, online or in real life, whenever they show these paid protesters with Sanders signs, we should ask the others in the audience, "Oh please, if they're Bernie bros, then where are all the white people at?" It not only unmasks the protests as false flag operations from Crooked Hillary, it also reminds the Sanders voters how their primary season would be going if there weren't so much diversity in America.
These crowds carry signs saying "Bernie," they chant "Bernie," and are all Millennial age. And yet unlike actual Sanders supporters, hardly any of them are white, and their slurs are about people being racist and sexist, when the Bernie bros don't care about identity politics whatsoever, but rather populist economic matters (minimum wage, student loans, free health care, etc.). Identity politics and culture war stuff is Crooked Hillary's schtick.
If the black agitators in Chicago or the Mexican agitators in California were truly fans of Bernie, then he would be cleaning up in states with large non-white populations. It stands to reason that these agitators are, if anything, supporters of Crooked Hillary.
Mostly, though, they're just paid protesters, as Roger Stone has said, and as Trump has begun to make clear as well. They're part of MoveOn.org, Black Lives Matter, and other groups funded by George Soros, mediated by David Brock, and in general working on behalf of Crooked Hillary and the globalists.
Another of their goals is to sow discord between the Trump and Sanders voters, who overlap on populist economic policies and non-globalist foreign policy (albeit with Bernie being less nationalist, and merely non-globalist). We shouldn't fall for that, since we'll be courting them in the fall, especially in certain states that we need to change from blue to red, like Michigan (which Bernie won, and not because the whole state is blue-haired SJWs with $100K in student loan debt).
Instead, online or in real life, whenever they show these paid protesters with Sanders signs, we should ask the others in the audience, "Oh please, if they're Bernie bros, then where are all the white people at?" It not only unmasks the protests as false flag operations from Crooked Hillary, it also reminds the Sanders voters how their primary season would be going if there weren't so much diversity in America.
April 27, 2016
GOP primary is no longer the Conservatism Olympics
With the Trump army enjoying another week of yuge margin victories in the popular vote, and sweeping yet again nearly 100% of the delegates, the Conservative Movement faction of the old Republican Party is struggling for a way to rationalize their continued utter defeat.
Hey, I know -- "Those states don't count since they're just worthless liberal East Coasters that will never vote Republican in a million years."
Great mindset for winning a general election, dipshits.
Then again, when you look at how the Conservative Movement has been behaving all along, it's becoming clear that they never did want to win the election. If they did, they'd have to find some way to appeal to blue states so that they'd switch at least temporarily to red. And yet they have instead doubled down on hardline rhetoric about the culture war, laissez-faire economics, and neocon foreign policy, which they know will only peel off more red states into the blue column. ("I guess they weren't that red to begin with, then -- good riddance," moans the impotent bitter culture warrior.)
These types -- from anonymous internet commenters, to talking heads, to the leader of the Cruz Cult himself -- are angry that Trump has put so many blue states into play for his brand of politics in the general election. For the right-wing culture warriors, nothing could be more desecrating of their brand than to see Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, or Massachusetts listed in the same column as Texas, Kansas, and Utah.
The Cultural Right is more disgusted by the thought of New Englanders joining the Republican tent than they are about illegals streaming over the Mexican border, or their Tea Party heroes giving Obama everything he asked for in the omnibus budget.
For these ideological purists, the Republican primary is not supposed to produce a contender for the general election. Rather, it's supposed to serve as the Conservatism Olympics, where the candidates perform in a variety of events -- stump speeches, televised debates, sit-down interviews, in-person pandering, photo ops, etc. -- and are given a Conservatism score by a panel of judges, namely the outcome of the primary or caucus or convention.
Only some of those outcomes matter, though, since we are talking about the Conservatism Olympics -- Texas, Kansas, Utah, they all count, but we can just throw out the results from New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Massachusetts.
The function of the nominating convention, then, is to formally coronate the gold medalist in the Conservatism Olympics. No one expects him to achieve anything in the general election, but that was never the point. The whole point was to stage an elaborate series of games for political athletes, creating a spellbinding spectacle for the right-wing audiences.
The candidates, their managing and consulting teams, the RNC, etc., all get to line their pockets with funds raised to put on the big show. The emotionally driven voters get to enjoy the spectacle. And the donors get to launder a shit load of money, and although getting nothing in return at the national level (their nominee will not become President), they can still enjoy influence at the local, state, and regional level.
None of the actors truly loses if the Conservative gold medalist loses in the general, so why would anything stop this circus from repeating itself every cycle?
In fact, if the contests of ideological purity kept going, pretty soon the Republicans would be glibly writing off every state except for Texas, Kansas, and Utah. "Yeah, well, Kentucky and Alabama used to be Conservative, but then they got drawn in by the Trump phenomenon, so like, nice knowin' ya." And then Texas and Kansas would get demographically replaced by Democrats, and it would be only Utah's caucus (electoral votes: 6) that mattered in the minds of the Conservative Movement.
The old Republican Party -- Wall Street shills at the top, and the Cultural Right as the base -- would have headed in that direction toward greater irrelevance, impotence, and invisibility. So the Trump movement's hostile takeover of the GOP is only saving them a slow and painful death. We are breathing new life into the party, but it is populism and nationalism that is animating the body politic, not Conservatism (or Liberalism, for that matter, on the Democrats' side).
Keep your eyes on the Cruz Cult, and you'll see the profound disconnect between their old failed style and the new winning style. They are plainly dismissive about winning any new states in the general election because that's not the point. The point is to see who scores the most points with the reddest of red states, for Conservative Movement bragging rights.
How about we cut to the chase and formally award Cruz with a gold medal in Conservatism, say at Trump Tower, and he can drop out of the race and let the Trump movement get on with the real-world business of destroying Hillary Clinton (we've already destroyed the Bush dynasty), and then on to making America great again!
Hey, I know -- "Those states don't count since they're just worthless liberal East Coasters that will never vote Republican in a million years."
Great mindset for winning a general election, dipshits.
Then again, when you look at how the Conservative Movement has been behaving all along, it's becoming clear that they never did want to win the election. If they did, they'd have to find some way to appeal to blue states so that they'd switch at least temporarily to red. And yet they have instead doubled down on hardline rhetoric about the culture war, laissez-faire economics, and neocon foreign policy, which they know will only peel off more red states into the blue column. ("I guess they weren't that red to begin with, then -- good riddance," moans the impotent bitter culture warrior.)
These types -- from anonymous internet commenters, to talking heads, to the leader of the Cruz Cult himself -- are angry that Trump has put so many blue states into play for his brand of politics in the general election. For the right-wing culture warriors, nothing could be more desecrating of their brand than to see Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, or Massachusetts listed in the same column as Texas, Kansas, and Utah.
The Cultural Right is more disgusted by the thought of New Englanders joining the Republican tent than they are about illegals streaming over the Mexican border, or their Tea Party heroes giving Obama everything he asked for in the omnibus budget.
For these ideological purists, the Republican primary is not supposed to produce a contender for the general election. Rather, it's supposed to serve as the Conservatism Olympics, where the candidates perform in a variety of events -- stump speeches, televised debates, sit-down interviews, in-person pandering, photo ops, etc. -- and are given a Conservatism score by a panel of judges, namely the outcome of the primary or caucus or convention.
Only some of those outcomes matter, though, since we are talking about the Conservatism Olympics -- Texas, Kansas, Utah, they all count, but we can just throw out the results from New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Massachusetts.
The function of the nominating convention, then, is to formally coronate the gold medalist in the Conservatism Olympics. No one expects him to achieve anything in the general election, but that was never the point. The whole point was to stage an elaborate series of games for political athletes, creating a spellbinding spectacle for the right-wing audiences.
The candidates, their managing and consulting teams, the RNC, etc., all get to line their pockets with funds raised to put on the big show. The emotionally driven voters get to enjoy the spectacle. And the donors get to launder a shit load of money, and although getting nothing in return at the national level (their nominee will not become President), they can still enjoy influence at the local, state, and regional level.
None of the actors truly loses if the Conservative gold medalist loses in the general, so why would anything stop this circus from repeating itself every cycle?
In fact, if the contests of ideological purity kept going, pretty soon the Republicans would be glibly writing off every state except for Texas, Kansas, and Utah. "Yeah, well, Kentucky and Alabama used to be Conservative, but then they got drawn in by the Trump phenomenon, so like, nice knowin' ya." And then Texas and Kansas would get demographically replaced by Democrats, and it would be only Utah's caucus (electoral votes: 6) that mattered in the minds of the Conservative Movement.
The old Republican Party -- Wall Street shills at the top, and the Cultural Right as the base -- would have headed in that direction toward greater irrelevance, impotence, and invisibility. So the Trump movement's hostile takeover of the GOP is only saving them a slow and painful death. We are breathing new life into the party, but it is populism and nationalism that is animating the body politic, not Conservatism (or Liberalism, for that matter, on the Democrats' side).
Keep your eyes on the Cruz Cult, and you'll see the profound disconnect between their old failed style and the new winning style. They are plainly dismissive about winning any new states in the general election because that's not the point. The point is to see who scores the most points with the reddest of red states, for Conservative Movement bragging rights.
How about we cut to the chase and formally award Cruz with a gold medal in Conservatism, say at Trump Tower, and he can drop out of the race and let the Trump movement get on with the real-world business of destroying Hillary Clinton (we've already destroyed the Bush dynasty), and then on to making America great again!
April 26, 2016
Trump discouraging transplant-ism: Don't go anywhere, the jobs are coming back
When Trump was touring Upstate New York, he began to recite some of the awful statistics about how all the good-paying jobs have left the metro area that he was addressing -- median incomes down thousands of dollars since 2001, double-digit decline of manufacturing jobs, and so on and so forth.
But he was always quick to reassure the audience not to worry, once he gets elected and starts bringing back those good jobs from their off-shored locations, the people of Rochester or Syracuse or wherever will be able to live a good life in their home town once again.
He knows that many people leave their home town if there aren't any good jobs. Of course, many leave even if there are good jobs, because they want the best jobs, even if it means uprooting themselves -- part of the status-striving trend of the past 40 years. By now, though, most people who are tempted to leave Upstate New York are not careerists causing a brain drain, but those in search of a decent middle class job.
He also made it clear that he understood why, despite all the awful statistics he just got done reciting, the audience had stayed around -- they love their community and their family. For social people, that's a powerful force keeping them in a dwindling regional economy. Only asocial nerds or amoral sociopaths wouldn't feel at least a little guilty leaving their home town relationships just so they can make more money.
It's refreshing to hear such a public figure, and possibly our next leader, restoring the job / life balance in front of a national audience. In contrast to the reigning view that you should change your life however necessary in order to serve the larger goal of continued career success, Trump was saying that the job was just a means to an end -- the goal being staying rooted in your physical community and your family and neighborly relationships.
When decent-paying jobs return to the hollowed-out regions of America, there will be no more trade-offs between seeking a middle-class income and staying where your roots are, just like during the Great Compression of roughly 1920 to 1980.
But in the meantime when there is such a trade-off, notice who Trump is siding with -- those who are remaining loyal to their home town and to their kinfolk, at the cost of lower incomes and less stable job prospects. They could've cut their family and community loose in order to make more money at a New Economy bubble magnet like North Carolina, Utah, Texas, or wherever else.
Trump is saying they're doing the right thing and yet are being financially punished for it -- therefore, we have to bring good jobs back, so they can be rewarded for doing the right thing vis-a-vis the people they're attached to, and who are attached to them.
Make no mistake: he's not just saying that you should work to live instead of live to work. Most people who promote that idea these days are lifestyle strivers who are saying something different -- that you should definitely transplant yourself away from your boring home town, but choose your destination based on how fun the lifestyle will be, and get whatever job you can find locally that will allow you to lead that lifestyle. Are you outdoorsy? Find whatever crappy job you can in Colorado, and go from there. Are you more cosmopolitan? Find whatever crappy job you can in New York, and go from there.
Although this view does put lifestyle above career, it doesn't include community or family in lifestyle. When some transplant moves to Manhattan, they don't belong to a community there, and likely never will. They're just treating the place like their own great big playground, although they come to realize that they have to share it somewhat with others. But a bunch of kids descending on a water park does not make the place into a community. And of course they won't have any family there either, so there goes the other source of organic social roots.
Trump's view of a job not as a means of personal advancement, but as a way of not having to leave your roots, ought to help turn the tide on the transplant phenomenon. While we're killing off the Bush and Clinton dynasties, we're also voting against the broader yuppie movement they stand for. From now on, the populist and nationalist program will seek social stability rather than social mobility. "Bringing back jobs" is a means toward that community-oriented goal, and not so much a form of wealth gospel.
But he was always quick to reassure the audience not to worry, once he gets elected and starts bringing back those good jobs from their off-shored locations, the people of Rochester or Syracuse or wherever will be able to live a good life in their home town once again.
He knows that many people leave their home town if there aren't any good jobs. Of course, many leave even if there are good jobs, because they want the best jobs, even if it means uprooting themselves -- part of the status-striving trend of the past 40 years. By now, though, most people who are tempted to leave Upstate New York are not careerists causing a brain drain, but those in search of a decent middle class job.
He also made it clear that he understood why, despite all the awful statistics he just got done reciting, the audience had stayed around -- they love their community and their family. For social people, that's a powerful force keeping them in a dwindling regional economy. Only asocial nerds or amoral sociopaths wouldn't feel at least a little guilty leaving their home town relationships just so they can make more money.
It's refreshing to hear such a public figure, and possibly our next leader, restoring the job / life balance in front of a national audience. In contrast to the reigning view that you should change your life however necessary in order to serve the larger goal of continued career success, Trump was saying that the job was just a means to an end -- the goal being staying rooted in your physical community and your family and neighborly relationships.
When decent-paying jobs return to the hollowed-out regions of America, there will be no more trade-offs between seeking a middle-class income and staying where your roots are, just like during the Great Compression of roughly 1920 to 1980.
But in the meantime when there is such a trade-off, notice who Trump is siding with -- those who are remaining loyal to their home town and to their kinfolk, at the cost of lower incomes and less stable job prospects. They could've cut their family and community loose in order to make more money at a New Economy bubble magnet like North Carolina, Utah, Texas, or wherever else.
Trump is saying they're doing the right thing and yet are being financially punished for it -- therefore, we have to bring good jobs back, so they can be rewarded for doing the right thing vis-a-vis the people they're attached to, and who are attached to them.
Make no mistake: he's not just saying that you should work to live instead of live to work. Most people who promote that idea these days are lifestyle strivers who are saying something different -- that you should definitely transplant yourself away from your boring home town, but choose your destination based on how fun the lifestyle will be, and get whatever job you can find locally that will allow you to lead that lifestyle. Are you outdoorsy? Find whatever crappy job you can in Colorado, and go from there. Are you more cosmopolitan? Find whatever crappy job you can in New York, and go from there.
Although this view does put lifestyle above career, it doesn't include community or family in lifestyle. When some transplant moves to Manhattan, they don't belong to a community there, and likely never will. They're just treating the place like their own great big playground, although they come to realize that they have to share it somewhat with others. But a bunch of kids descending on a water park does not make the place into a community. And of course they won't have any family there either, so there goes the other source of organic social roots.
Trump's view of a job not as a means of personal advancement, but as a way of not having to leave your roots, ought to help turn the tide on the transplant phenomenon. While we're killing off the Bush and Clinton dynasties, we're also voting against the broader yuppie movement they stand for. From now on, the populist and nationalist program will seek social stability rather than social mobility. "Bringing back jobs" is a means toward that community-oriented goal, and not so much a form of wealth gospel.
April 22, 2016
Which Democrats could Trump include in his administration?
From the very beginning, Trump has said that he's always gotten along with everybody -- he's donated to Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, everybody. He's deplored how polarized the country has become, where Democrats and Republicans both think the other side is not merely an opponent in an electoral contest, but the evil enemy. And he's repeatedly assured us that he's going to be a unifier, and that he's going to unite the country, so that members of the two parties won't be totally alienated from each other.
None of the other Republicans have campaigned with this message, either now or any time in recent memory. Their goal is instead to unite the Republican party, and to wage war against the evil enemy in the general election, whether or not they win (they usually don't).
Since Trump has placed unity of the nation over unity of one of its parties, it stands to reason that he'll make "getting along with Democrats" a theme of his general campaign. Not the Democrat Establishment, of course, but the good Democrats, the ones who want to make America great again. Trump will further marginalize Crooked Hillary by declaring that she can keep the bad Democrats -- the SJW crowd and the Wall Street lobbyists -- and because Trump is not riding on the backs of a wacko culture war group itself (unlike Cruz would be doing), she won't be able to respond by marginalizing him and his supporters.
Openly courting the "honest Democrats," along with those who normally wouldn't be voting at all, avoids the moronic strategy that the Republicans have been losing with for 25 years -- "hammering the swing voters". Nobody can be on the fence between Trump and Crooked Hillary, so anyone who is, must have no principles or goals or intuition. They're going to flip a coin on election day, so why waste so much time, money, and effort trying to budge them?
Courting honest Democrats by defending most aspects of Planned Parenthood, keeping Social Security as is, blasting George W. Bush's entire legacy, and so on and so forth -- that's how you win an election. Convert those who would normally be on the other side, and get more people off of the sidelines and into the arena. Unlike unmovable swing voters, these folks have clearly defined things they care about, and if you give them reason to believe you'd do well for those things, you're in the running.
Best of all -- they're way more than 3% of the population. Convert them, and you win in a landslide. Not just barely winning if you manage to convince every single swing voter.
This doesn't require tons of time, money, and effort -- only a shift in the policies that your party would normally be advocating (and losing with). Only blind adherence to a failed ideology (GOP conservatism today, or Dem liberalism in the '70s and '80s), prevents candidates from simply changing their platform in order to broaden their appeal and actually win control of the government.
Still, persuading members of the other party that you're going to do better for their interests than the candidate of their usual party, is going to be a tough sell. They'll want unfakeable signals of good faith. Trump already has established his long past of relating well with Democrats and Republicans, not only personally but politically. What can he do, though, as a promise about the future?
He could name honest Democrats as members of his Cabinet, and as heads of other important federal agencies. (He's said his Supreme Court picks will be fairly conservative, so that would probably exclude any Dems.) There aren't many Dems who would overlap with his plan entirely, but maybe on one or two aspects -- in which case, assign them to the head of the relevant agency, where they couldn't compromise his plan in the domains where they don't agree.
They would not be tokens, an empty symbol of bipartisanship, but one of the best people for that job. Probably the best person to begin busting up Wall Street banks is not a Republican. And probably the best person to deport illegals and anchor babies is not a Democrat. But it's OK if some jobs will be best done by Dems and others by Repubs.
"Here's the story, folks: I only hire the best people, it has nothing to do with what party they belong to. And if it turns out they're not doing the best job, I'm gonna say -- YOU'RE FIRRRED!"
Poaching the best Democrats ahead of the election will not only persuade the voters that he's already President, it will be an unfakeable sign of good faith to the would-be Hillary voters that he's serious about wanting everybody, regardless of party, to join his team for the greater good of the nation.
So, who are some of the good Democrats that Trump could appoint to one post or another? They wouldn't have to be currently serving, of course. I know even less about them than I do about the universe of Republicans he is recruiting from. But they've got to be there somewhere.
Related: a few earlier posts here and here about what role Bernie could play in a Trump administration, and how it could help in the general election.
None of the other Republicans have campaigned with this message, either now or any time in recent memory. Their goal is instead to unite the Republican party, and to wage war against the evil enemy in the general election, whether or not they win (they usually don't).
Since Trump has placed unity of the nation over unity of one of its parties, it stands to reason that he'll make "getting along with Democrats" a theme of his general campaign. Not the Democrat Establishment, of course, but the good Democrats, the ones who want to make America great again. Trump will further marginalize Crooked Hillary by declaring that she can keep the bad Democrats -- the SJW crowd and the Wall Street lobbyists -- and because Trump is not riding on the backs of a wacko culture war group itself (unlike Cruz would be doing), she won't be able to respond by marginalizing him and his supporters.
Openly courting the "honest Democrats," along with those who normally wouldn't be voting at all, avoids the moronic strategy that the Republicans have been losing with for 25 years -- "hammering the swing voters". Nobody can be on the fence between Trump and Crooked Hillary, so anyone who is, must have no principles or goals or intuition. They're going to flip a coin on election day, so why waste so much time, money, and effort trying to budge them?
Courting honest Democrats by defending most aspects of Planned Parenthood, keeping Social Security as is, blasting George W. Bush's entire legacy, and so on and so forth -- that's how you win an election. Convert those who would normally be on the other side, and get more people off of the sidelines and into the arena. Unlike unmovable swing voters, these folks have clearly defined things they care about, and if you give them reason to believe you'd do well for those things, you're in the running.
Best of all -- they're way more than 3% of the population. Convert them, and you win in a landslide. Not just barely winning if you manage to convince every single swing voter.
This doesn't require tons of time, money, and effort -- only a shift in the policies that your party would normally be advocating (and losing with). Only blind adherence to a failed ideology (GOP conservatism today, or Dem liberalism in the '70s and '80s), prevents candidates from simply changing their platform in order to broaden their appeal and actually win control of the government.
Still, persuading members of the other party that you're going to do better for their interests than the candidate of their usual party, is going to be a tough sell. They'll want unfakeable signals of good faith. Trump already has established his long past of relating well with Democrats and Republicans, not only personally but politically. What can he do, though, as a promise about the future?
He could name honest Democrats as members of his Cabinet, and as heads of other important federal agencies. (He's said his Supreme Court picks will be fairly conservative, so that would probably exclude any Dems.) There aren't many Dems who would overlap with his plan entirely, but maybe on one or two aspects -- in which case, assign them to the head of the relevant agency, where they couldn't compromise his plan in the domains where they don't agree.
They would not be tokens, an empty symbol of bipartisanship, but one of the best people for that job. Probably the best person to begin busting up Wall Street banks is not a Republican. And probably the best person to deport illegals and anchor babies is not a Democrat. But it's OK if some jobs will be best done by Dems and others by Repubs.
"Here's the story, folks: I only hire the best people, it has nothing to do with what party they belong to. And if it turns out they're not doing the best job, I'm gonna say -- YOU'RE FIRRRED!"
Poaching the best Democrats ahead of the election will not only persuade the voters that he's already President, it will be an unfakeable sign of good faith to the would-be Hillary voters that he's serious about wanting everybody, regardless of party, to join his team for the greater good of the nation.
So, who are some of the good Democrats that Trump could appoint to one post or another? They wouldn't have to be currently serving, of course. I know even less about them than I do about the universe of Republicans he is recruiting from. But they've got to be there somewhere.
Related: a few earlier posts here and here about what role Bernie could play in a Trump administration, and how it could help in the general election.
April 21, 2016
The Afro-ization of Prince
From the wall-to-wall coverage of Prince's death today, you'd think he was Tupac Shakur or the Notorious B.I.G.
Only black commentators are speaking on the cable news channels, and several are bringing up his support for Black Lives Matter. Only the occasional white fan is heard from. In the afternoon CNN brought in Don Lemon, who is usually on at night, because it would be wrong to have only non-black anchors leading the discussion.
These non-black anchors are paining themselves to give off that defensive vibe of "I know I'm just a goofy non-black person who can't dance, but I too really liked his music. I mean, I'm not trying to culturally appropriate an African-American icon, I'm just sayin' -- I mean, say-inggg, I'm not trying to culturally appropriate your speech either..."
MTV, for perhaps the first time in two decades, is actually playing non-stop music, but they're mostly playing his videos from the mid-'90s onward, which happen to only have black people in them, and are more R&B / soul. As I finish that sentence, they've put on an old Fresh Prince video, "Girls Ain't Nothing But Trouble" (possibly an error by some intern who didn't know the difference), as though Prince had more in common with Will Smith's goofy rap act than '80s rock. Why not play "Manic Monday," which Prince actually wrote? Oh yeah -- performed by white people. Can't stain his memory with any whiteness.
There's nothing more ridiculous and embarrassing about the state of our popular culture than this Afro-ization of Prince -- a new wave / synth-pop / rock legend from the race-free 1980s. If anything, his persona during his peak was how racially ambiguous he was, and that he was working the ambiguous angle just for the sake of teasing the audience -- not out of any ideology or commitment to identity politics. It wasn't something you were supposed to dwell on or "get," just another little piece of provocation in his stage act.
Here's an earlier post about the lack of "policing the racial boundaries" of musical genres back in the '80s, looking at white hipster groups putting out funky dance classics -- not ironically, and not by qualifying it with "Hey, I know we're white and everything, but..."
During that socially outgoing climate, people felt free to mingle with folks from other groups just because they were all out and about. It wasn't deliberate or ideological -- trying to unite the races, overcome our differences, bla bla bla. It was simply, "We're out playing music, you're out playing music, let's see if we can jam together. If it works out, it works out, if it doesn't, it doesn't." That non-ideological mingling had already begun with disco, but it became taken for granted during the '80s.
Once the cocooning period set in during the '90s, though, the races withdrew into their own little bubbles. Now rock is exclusively white, and (so-called) funky dance music is exclusively black. It's similar to the fate of jazz during the cocooning Midcentury -- what began as racially mixed (without any deliberate ideology driving it) during the outgoing Jazz Age, became separated into strictly black jazz (bebop) and strictly white crooner type music (Sinatra).
When the cocooning phase gives way to another outgoing period, we can all stop walking on eggshells about whose group owns the exclusive territorial rights to which cultural styles. These battles have gone from annoying to silly to ridiculous, so it's only a matter of time before they're no longer taken seriously and we can all go back to normal.
Only black commentators are speaking on the cable news channels, and several are bringing up his support for Black Lives Matter. Only the occasional white fan is heard from. In the afternoon CNN brought in Don Lemon, who is usually on at night, because it would be wrong to have only non-black anchors leading the discussion.
These non-black anchors are paining themselves to give off that defensive vibe of "I know I'm just a goofy non-black person who can't dance, but I too really liked his music. I mean, I'm not trying to culturally appropriate an African-American icon, I'm just sayin' -- I mean, say-inggg, I'm not trying to culturally appropriate your speech either..."
MTV, for perhaps the first time in two decades, is actually playing non-stop music, but they're mostly playing his videos from the mid-'90s onward, which happen to only have black people in them, and are more R&B / soul. As I finish that sentence, they've put on an old Fresh Prince video, "Girls Ain't Nothing But Trouble" (possibly an error by some intern who didn't know the difference), as though Prince had more in common with Will Smith's goofy rap act than '80s rock. Why not play "Manic Monday," which Prince actually wrote? Oh yeah -- performed by white people. Can't stain his memory with any whiteness.
There's nothing more ridiculous and embarrassing about the state of our popular culture than this Afro-ization of Prince -- a new wave / synth-pop / rock legend from the race-free 1980s. If anything, his persona during his peak was how racially ambiguous he was, and that he was working the ambiguous angle just for the sake of teasing the audience -- not out of any ideology or commitment to identity politics. It wasn't something you were supposed to dwell on or "get," just another little piece of provocation in his stage act.
Here's an earlier post about the lack of "policing the racial boundaries" of musical genres back in the '80s, looking at white hipster groups putting out funky dance classics -- not ironically, and not by qualifying it with "Hey, I know we're white and everything, but..."
During that socially outgoing climate, people felt free to mingle with folks from other groups just because they were all out and about. It wasn't deliberate or ideological -- trying to unite the races, overcome our differences, bla bla bla. It was simply, "We're out playing music, you're out playing music, let's see if we can jam together. If it works out, it works out, if it doesn't, it doesn't." That non-ideological mingling had already begun with disco, but it became taken for granted during the '80s.
Once the cocooning period set in during the '90s, though, the races withdrew into their own little bubbles. Now rock is exclusively white, and (so-called) funky dance music is exclusively black. It's similar to the fate of jazz during the cocooning Midcentury -- what began as racially mixed (without any deliberate ideology driving it) during the outgoing Jazz Age, became separated into strictly black jazz (bebop) and strictly white crooner type music (Sinatra).
When the cocooning phase gives way to another outgoing period, we can all stop walking on eggshells about whose group owns the exclusive territorial rights to which cultural styles. These battles have gone from annoying to silly to ridiculous, so it's only a matter of time before they're no longer taken seriously and we can all go back to normal.
April 18, 2016
Trump brands her "Crooked Hillary," but still no pejorative nickname for Bernie
First there was "low energy" Jeb, then "Little Marco," and still "Lyin' Ted". This weekend Trump has rolled out his damning branding of Clinton as "Crooked Hillary," which brings up her long history of corruption as well as the rigged nomination process. She'll sell out the American people to further line her pockets, and she could only receive the nomination by influencing / bribing the superdelegates rather than the actual voters.
He has yet to brand Sanders with an attack on his character, you could argue because he's not much of a threat, but more likely because that's a bridge he doesn't want to... bern. Sure, he tosses out the "socialist slash communist" line, but anyone who can't tell he's just ribbing him is a humorless nerd. It's like one buddy teasing another for being a "chubby-chaser". And "socialist" only goes to his ideology, not some fatal flaw of his personality.
Whether or not Trump would go as far as offering Bernie the VP slot, he'd have to be crazy not to include him somewhere in his administration, and to broadcast that promise in order to draw in the Sanders supporters (the normal majority of them, not the fringe leftoids).
Keep him away from a position where he could do damage, like single-payer healthcare or free college for all. Maybe head of the Federal Trade Commission, though, restoring the agency to its original function as trust-buster rather than milquetoast "consumer protection" stuff.
If Trump is going to give a list of 10-12 potential appointees to the Supreme Court, why not do likewise for other key positions, to let voters know concretely what kind of administration they'd be choosing. It would also present a challenge to Crooked Hillary:
"So who would you put at the head of the FTC? Some party hack who gave a lot of money to your Clinton Foundation? -- which is a total scam, by the way -- You see, folks, that's all she is, is crooked. I'm going to put Bernie Sanders in charge of trust-busting, and the media monopoly and Wall Street are not going to have an easy time, that I can tell you. Hey, folks, would there be any President more unifying than Trump?"
He has yet to brand Sanders with an attack on his character, you could argue because he's not much of a threat, but more likely because that's a bridge he doesn't want to... bern. Sure, he tosses out the "socialist slash communist" line, but anyone who can't tell he's just ribbing him is a humorless nerd. It's like one buddy teasing another for being a "chubby-chaser". And "socialist" only goes to his ideology, not some fatal flaw of his personality.
Whether or not Trump would go as far as offering Bernie the VP slot, he'd have to be crazy not to include him somewhere in his administration, and to broadcast that promise in order to draw in the Sanders supporters (the normal majority of them, not the fringe leftoids).
Keep him away from a position where he could do damage, like single-payer healthcare or free college for all. Maybe head of the Federal Trade Commission, though, restoring the agency to its original function as trust-buster rather than milquetoast "consumer protection" stuff.
If Trump is going to give a list of 10-12 potential appointees to the Supreme Court, why not do likewise for other key positions, to let voters know concretely what kind of administration they'd be choosing. It would also present a challenge to Crooked Hillary:
"So who would you put at the head of the FTC? Some party hack who gave a lot of money to your Clinton Foundation? -- which is a total scam, by the way -- You see, folks, that's all she is, is crooked. I'm going to put Bernie Sanders in charge of trust-busting, and the media monopoly and Wall Street are not going to have an easy time, that I can tell you. Hey, folks, would there be any President more unifying than Trump?"
April 16, 2016
Filling in the profile of guys who fantasize about being babes: They're boob men
Last summer I began to profile an increasingly common form of sexual identity disorder -- the latent transgender or crypto-tranny. "Latent" because he only fantasizes about being a hot babe, rather than trying to overtly present as one with make-up and drag. Outside of a sexual scenario, this disorder expresses itself as fantasizing that he is a butt-kicking babe. See earlier case studies of the popularity of female bloodsport (women's MMA) and the butt-kicking babe fan service in the new Star Wars movie.
Although it sounds bizarre, the disorder is in fact widespread, hence the need to study the phenomenon and develop a profile. According to the internal statistics of a popular porn site, "lesbian" is both the most searched-for term and the most-viewed category across much of America. Because a guy watching porn is experiencing vicarious pleasure by imagining himself as one of the people on screen, any guy who seeks out lesbian porn gets aroused by fantasizing of himself as a babe who gets it on with another babe, rather than as a guy who gets it on with a babe.
He is not gay -- he is clearly attracted to women -- but he has a profoundly confused gender identity. In the original post, I speculated that he is awkward around girls, because he can't imagine himself as the kind of guy who a girl would willingly sleep with. Rather than accept personal responsibility, he places blame on an entire group that he belongs to -- it's not that he's awkward, it's that he's a guy, and girls simply have too high standards for guys. However, he still believes that all girls are basically sluts and have a fluid sexuality, and would therefore fool around with another girl. Therefore, he imagines himself as one of those girls, who would not trigger the sought-after girl's defenses.
I know, it sounds crazy. But I swear I've heard this kind of reasoning in dorm room bull sessions, on TV / movie character dialog, etc. A certain type of gullible and awkward guy believes that girls begin practicing kissing with other girls at their teenage sleepover parties, so they're all open to making out with each other. See this iconic scene from Cruel Intentions, which not only refers to the wishful thinking urban legend but enacts it for the viewer. To be clear, the target audience is crypto-trannies who are getting off on imagining themselves as the inexperienced geeky girl, who gets seduced by the experienced cute girl. (None of the YouTube comments refer to Selma Blair by name or as the one they're thinking about -- only the Sarah Michelle Gellar character.)
And if they're that socially awkward, perhaps they'd rather not have to interact with another girl at all. At some point, that line from L.A. Story popped into my head, and it all became clear. Steve Martin's character confesses that, "I could never be a woman, 'cause I'd just stay home and play with my breasts all day." That's one I've heard off and on over the years, sometimes with the addendum that he would be looking in the mirror while fondling himself, to get a good view of "his" boobs.
And they usually brought up the topic out of nowhere -- "You ever wonder what it'd be like to be a girl? I mean, like, just for a day?" Actually... no, I'm not that mentally fucked up. It never occurred to me that my whole life there've been these guys who were basically "coming out" as crypto-trannies, admitting that they had given deep thought about what it would be like to be a girl, and that the main reason they'd like to live a day as a girl would be to feel up their own boobs.
The incredulous reader can google around to find many examples of this fantasy being admitted to on the internet, supposedly as one of those innocent things we all think about (uh-huh). Use quotes: "if i were / was" "play with my boobs / tits".
Their focus is strictly on women's sexual nature, not their distinct social or emotional nature. That's typical of overt trannies as well, who have zero interest in what it feels like to be pregnant, to breastfeed infants, or to mind the children, but only what it feels like to have a dick driving up inside their crotch. Truly a feminine mind born in the wrong body.
After trying to make sense of all this, it struck me -- why don't any of these crypto-trannies ever fantasize about having a girl's butt? It's always the boobs that they're focused on. Go ahead and google the same phrases as above, only with "ass / butt / booty" -- no results. No memorable quote from TV or movies comes to mind. And I've never heard anyone talk about how awesome it would be to be a girl for a day, because you could check out your bubble butt while twerking in front of a mirror, smacking your own booty all day long, or whatever the hell else.
Fellow ass men, are you not dying of laughter just thinking about such a ridiculous "fantasy"? Nothing could be any less erotic than imagining a bubble butt on ourselves, even if we magically found ourselves trapped inside a girl's body for a day.
And sure enough, overt trannies are obsessed with getting breast implants, but not about getting female-typical butt implants, or having relatively fattier thighs, or getting hip implants to give them an hourglass figure.
So all crypto-trannies are boob men. How does that relate to the other features of the disorder?
First, it highlights the shared fetishistic mindset of crypto-trannies and boob men. I mean that in the sense of isolating a specific part and fixating on it, rather than taking in a more holistic view where the part is just one element of a gestalt. Ass men see their preferred part, though they also see the hips, the waist, the hourglass figure, the thighs, the belly. The butt is just one salient element of that gestalt. Boob men don't talk about how great the boobs look as part of a greater whole -- the ribcage, waist, collar, neck, shoulders, etc. They're isolating only the boobs themselves.
Second, it suggests a more juvenile or infantile mindset -- boob men are not fetishizing any random part, but the one whose sole function is to nurse infants. In most of the world, for most of human existence, the breasts were not considered a sexual part or taboo, and were not / are not subject to modesty norms (see this earlier post, and a follow-up post on the sex lives of primitives).
Maybe "juvenile" is too strong -- regressive is more like it. The boob man wants to retreat to the comfort of asexual breastfeeding, away from a more sexually mature focus on the nether regions, and the crypto-tranny wants to retreat from the awkward social interactions of adolescence and adulthood, which he feels makes it necessary to fantasize about being a girl in order for another girl to agree to get it on with him.
It's possible that the fetishistic mindset reduces to the regressive mindset, but I'm not clear on the developmental progression of analytical vs. holistic perception. It's my hunch that adults are better at seeing the gestalt, while babies are still learning which pieces fit together into a typical whole (e.g., eyes and mouth being pieces of the gestalt face). If that's wrong, then there are two separate "factors" of the latent transgender disorder.
It seems like the other features reduce to either one of those, though, and mostly to the regressive factor. Being a nerd -- being a man-child. Keeping the fantasies to themselves rather than presenting to the outside world as a girl -- being as socially timid as a child. Lower in testosterone than the overt autogynephile trannies, who are often athletes like Bruce Jenner or helicopter pilots like Bob Tur -- having a more pre-pubescent level of T. Self-centeredness, as revealed by the fantasies about playing with "his" own boobs -- children are more averse to playing with others than are teenagers or adults. Having a poorly formed gender identity to begin with -- obviously more typical of a pre-pubescent child. And so on.
I don't know about you, but I find this crypto-tranny stuff more intellectually fascinating than when I solved the mystery of what male homosexuality is all about, several years ago. (It's stunted psychological and often physical development during the "ewww, girls are yucky" stage -- search the blog for "gay Peter Pan-isms"). That was a problem that was already widely discussed, if cluelessly (e.g., gays are "hyper-masculine" or "feminized").
This new problem is one that nobody had formulated before, and yet we all recognize its many related features once someone gets the ball rolling. Yep, we remember some guy asking, out of nowhere, if we'd ever fantasized about being a girl ("...for a day") and playing with our own boobs all day long, possibly while in front of a mirror. Yep, we knew that guy in college who was obsessed with lesbians making out in movies. Yep, the nerds who love butt-kicking babes are projecting themselves into the character because they take slights against her intensely personally, not as though they were mere white knights defending the honor of m'lady.
If the current direction of popular culture is any sign, there will be even more damning evidence on the way. Just think -- five years ago, I could not have pointed to the popularity of women's MMA, nerds projecting themselves into the Star Wars heroine's place, lesbians being the most popular kind of porn, and even the overt trannies were not the main focus of the sexuality-related culture war (it was still fags and fag marriage).
It's going to be a very interesting and disturbing year.
Although it sounds bizarre, the disorder is in fact widespread, hence the need to study the phenomenon and develop a profile. According to the internal statistics of a popular porn site, "lesbian" is both the most searched-for term and the most-viewed category across much of America. Because a guy watching porn is experiencing vicarious pleasure by imagining himself as one of the people on screen, any guy who seeks out lesbian porn gets aroused by fantasizing of himself as a babe who gets it on with another babe, rather than as a guy who gets it on with a babe.
He is not gay -- he is clearly attracted to women -- but he has a profoundly confused gender identity. In the original post, I speculated that he is awkward around girls, because he can't imagine himself as the kind of guy who a girl would willingly sleep with. Rather than accept personal responsibility, he places blame on an entire group that he belongs to -- it's not that he's awkward, it's that he's a guy, and girls simply have too high standards for guys. However, he still believes that all girls are basically sluts and have a fluid sexuality, and would therefore fool around with another girl. Therefore, he imagines himself as one of those girls, who would not trigger the sought-after girl's defenses.
I know, it sounds crazy. But I swear I've heard this kind of reasoning in dorm room bull sessions, on TV / movie character dialog, etc. A certain type of gullible and awkward guy believes that girls begin practicing kissing with other girls at their teenage sleepover parties, so they're all open to making out with each other. See this iconic scene from Cruel Intentions, which not only refers to the wishful thinking urban legend but enacts it for the viewer. To be clear, the target audience is crypto-trannies who are getting off on imagining themselves as the inexperienced geeky girl, who gets seduced by the experienced cute girl. (None of the YouTube comments refer to Selma Blair by name or as the one they're thinking about -- only the Sarah Michelle Gellar character.)
And if they're that socially awkward, perhaps they'd rather not have to interact with another girl at all. At some point, that line from L.A. Story popped into my head, and it all became clear. Steve Martin's character confesses that, "I could never be a woman, 'cause I'd just stay home and play with my breasts all day." That's one I've heard off and on over the years, sometimes with the addendum that he would be looking in the mirror while fondling himself, to get a good view of "his" boobs.
And they usually brought up the topic out of nowhere -- "You ever wonder what it'd be like to be a girl? I mean, like, just for a day?" Actually... no, I'm not that mentally fucked up. It never occurred to me that my whole life there've been these guys who were basically "coming out" as crypto-trannies, admitting that they had given deep thought about what it would be like to be a girl, and that the main reason they'd like to live a day as a girl would be to feel up their own boobs.
The incredulous reader can google around to find many examples of this fantasy being admitted to on the internet, supposedly as one of those innocent things we all think about (uh-huh). Use quotes: "if i were / was" "play with my boobs / tits".
Their focus is strictly on women's sexual nature, not their distinct social or emotional nature. That's typical of overt trannies as well, who have zero interest in what it feels like to be pregnant, to breastfeed infants, or to mind the children, but only what it feels like to have a dick driving up inside their crotch. Truly a feminine mind born in the wrong body.
After trying to make sense of all this, it struck me -- why don't any of these crypto-trannies ever fantasize about having a girl's butt? It's always the boobs that they're focused on. Go ahead and google the same phrases as above, only with "ass / butt / booty" -- no results. No memorable quote from TV or movies comes to mind. And I've never heard anyone talk about how awesome it would be to be a girl for a day, because you could check out your bubble butt while twerking in front of a mirror, smacking your own booty all day long, or whatever the hell else.
Fellow ass men, are you not dying of laughter just thinking about such a ridiculous "fantasy"? Nothing could be any less erotic than imagining a bubble butt on ourselves, even if we magically found ourselves trapped inside a girl's body for a day.
And sure enough, overt trannies are obsessed with getting breast implants, but not about getting female-typical butt implants, or having relatively fattier thighs, or getting hip implants to give them an hourglass figure.
So all crypto-trannies are boob men. How does that relate to the other features of the disorder?
First, it highlights the shared fetishistic mindset of crypto-trannies and boob men. I mean that in the sense of isolating a specific part and fixating on it, rather than taking in a more holistic view where the part is just one element of a gestalt. Ass men see their preferred part, though they also see the hips, the waist, the hourglass figure, the thighs, the belly. The butt is just one salient element of that gestalt. Boob men don't talk about how great the boobs look as part of a greater whole -- the ribcage, waist, collar, neck, shoulders, etc. They're isolating only the boobs themselves.
Second, it suggests a more juvenile or infantile mindset -- boob men are not fetishizing any random part, but the one whose sole function is to nurse infants. In most of the world, for most of human existence, the breasts were not considered a sexual part or taboo, and were not / are not subject to modesty norms (see this earlier post, and a follow-up post on the sex lives of primitives).
Maybe "juvenile" is too strong -- regressive is more like it. The boob man wants to retreat to the comfort of asexual breastfeeding, away from a more sexually mature focus on the nether regions, and the crypto-tranny wants to retreat from the awkward social interactions of adolescence and adulthood, which he feels makes it necessary to fantasize about being a girl in order for another girl to agree to get it on with him.
It's possible that the fetishistic mindset reduces to the regressive mindset, but I'm not clear on the developmental progression of analytical vs. holistic perception. It's my hunch that adults are better at seeing the gestalt, while babies are still learning which pieces fit together into a typical whole (e.g., eyes and mouth being pieces of the gestalt face). If that's wrong, then there are two separate "factors" of the latent transgender disorder.
It seems like the other features reduce to either one of those, though, and mostly to the regressive factor. Being a nerd -- being a man-child. Keeping the fantasies to themselves rather than presenting to the outside world as a girl -- being as socially timid as a child. Lower in testosterone than the overt autogynephile trannies, who are often athletes like Bruce Jenner or helicopter pilots like Bob Tur -- having a more pre-pubescent level of T. Self-centeredness, as revealed by the fantasies about playing with "his" own boobs -- children are more averse to playing with others than are teenagers or adults. Having a poorly formed gender identity to begin with -- obviously more typical of a pre-pubescent child. And so on.
I don't know about you, but I find this crypto-tranny stuff more intellectually fascinating than when I solved the mystery of what male homosexuality is all about, several years ago. (It's stunted psychological and often physical development during the "ewww, girls are yucky" stage -- search the blog for "gay Peter Pan-isms"). That was a problem that was already widely discussed, if cluelessly (e.g., gays are "hyper-masculine" or "feminized").
This new problem is one that nobody had formulated before, and yet we all recognize its many related features once someone gets the ball rolling. Yep, we remember some guy asking, out of nowhere, if we'd ever fantasized about being a girl ("...for a day") and playing with our own boobs all day long, possibly while in front of a mirror. Yep, we knew that guy in college who was obsessed with lesbians making out in movies. Yep, the nerds who love butt-kicking babes are projecting themselves into the character because they take slights against her intensely personally, not as though they were mere white knights defending the honor of m'lady.
If the current direction of popular culture is any sign, there will be even more damning evidence on the way. Just think -- five years ago, I could not have pointed to the popularity of women's MMA, nerds projecting themselves into the Star Wars heroine's place, lesbians being the most popular kind of porn, and even the overt trannies were not the main focus of the sexuality-related culture war (it was still fags and fag marriage).
It's going to be a very interesting and disturbing year.
April 15, 2016
Trump enters new phase: Revealing corruption of electoral system
When the Trump campaign kicked off last summer, the initial phase was largely about destroying the conformity effect by saying what everyone already knew but was too afraid or too uncertain to say themselves. Suddenly we could talk about all sorts of policies, using whatever tone was needed for the occasion.
Soon it advanced to attacking a wide range of policies -- open borders, off-shored labor, etc. -- and pointing in the general direction of where we ought to be heading instead -- secure borders, bringing jobs back, and so on. Despite all the media hype about his tone, Trump became popular because of his positions rather than his persona.
He hammered these themes over and over during the early stage of the primaries, and by now his positions are so familiar that when he skipped the final debate, nobody complained that we needed to hear more about where he stood on some topic.
Where does he go after having covered "the issues"?
Throughout his campaign, he's stressed the corrupting role of money in politics, but now he's starting to pull the curtain back on all of the festering corruption playing out before our very eyes. At first, he used to say that our country doesn't win anymore because are leaders are so "stupid," or "incompetent," or "weak negotiators".
Lately he's begun to be more blunt by saying that in some cases the leaders really are stupid, but that in many other cases they're perfectly intelligent, and are simply controlled by donors and special interests through campaign contributions and other things. It seems like this pivot began when he repeatedly said he doesn't get enough credit from the voters for spending his own money instead of being bought and paid for.
I think most Americans recognize that wealthy special interest groups are a corrupting force on our elected leaders. Campaign finance reform has been a common topic for well over a decade now. If he'd stuck to discussing that form of corruption, he wouldn't have exactly been breaking news.
So instead he's decided to reveal a separate source of corruption in the electoral process -- the rigging of the party nomination system by highly connected insiders and party bosses, who are happy to thwart the will of the people in order to control who gets to be the Presidential nominee. As long as the rigged system produces two Establishment nominees, it doesn't matter who the voters choose. The only difference between them is distracting culture war stuff, and since the Establishment of both parties are social liberals, they don't mind if the culture war progresses with win after win for the liberal side.
That's what is behind all this drama about the scramble for delegates. Trump says, "I thought I already won the vote, and therefore the delegates?" The Establishment says, "Sorry, we're placing anti-Trump people in the delegate slots that you won." As Roger Stone has emphasized, "the big steal" would come from these Trojan Horse delegates betraying the majority (Trump voters) on decisions about how the nominee is to be chosen, before the first ballot at the Convention begins.
The citizens had never been aware that that's how the process worked, and how blatantly anti-democratic it is. The will of the people won the election, and that ought to be reflected in the particular individuals who serve as delegates for the winner, and how they vote on matters of rules and credentials at the Convention.
With so many Trojan Horse shenanigans coming from Lyin' Ted, Trump has brought in Paul Manafort to wrangle as many truly Trump delegates into the slots already fairly won by Trump. Manafort is a seasoned pro -- one of the "real vicious killers" who Trump has been saying all along he has connections with. It turns out they've known each other for 30 years, so there's no chance they were not in contact until recently, nor that they had not already worked out a contingency plan in case electoral shenanigans began.
I think Trump wanted to win the nomination as gently as possible -- if Lyin' Ted hadn't launched an all-out attack on Trump's delegates, there would've been no need to bring in Manafort (who must cost a lot more than someone who isn't a veteran, and Trump prides himself on being frugal). But not being naive, he would've expected something like this to happen sometime -- but to hold off on the big guns until they were needed.
First, it saves money during the gentle phase of the campaign by not having to pay the #1 guy. Second, it highlights the unfairness of the process -- it's so crooked that Trump had no choice but to bring out someone who seems more in place on the set of Goodfellas. And third, a shift in head personnel demands a reason, and therefore compels to media to explore the intricacies of delegate allocation.
If Manafort had been the campaign manager from the get-go, the media never would've asked why he was brought on board. And with electoral shenanigans only being a hypothetical at the outset, there would have been no actual story to report about how the Establishment strives to counter the will of the voters in real time during election season.
The same goes for the entirely voterless electoral process of North Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado, where a state convention of insiders chose the delegates without even a preference poll from the voters to tell the insiders and delegates who the citizens want. Trump sent Ben Carson as a surrogate to North Dakota and managed to pick up at least one delegate, so that didn't seem too bad -- plus nobody cares what happens in North Dakota. Ditto for Wyoming.
But when it came to the high-profile state of Colorado, which used to hold primaries from 1992 to 2000, and caucuses in '04 and '08, the canceling of the caucuses and of even a preference poll was too much. Maybe Trump would've held back if he'd at least gotten some of the delegates, but all of them went to Cruz, without any input from the voters.
Now, the decision to exclude the voters was made last year, so Trump had obviously known about it for awhile. But why bring it up when a bad outcome was only hypothetical, rather than actual? There would've been no story to report. Now it's big news, and the Establishment has to cover its ass after being caught red-handed, rather than abstractly defend the decision on its hypothetical merits last year.
There was no point in accepting the decision and trying to work within it -- that would have legitimized the anti-democratic process, would have resulted in zero delegates anyway, and would have wasted a bunch of money trying to lobby the Trump-hating insiders from the Cuck Belt of the Plains and Mountain states.
Now the entire weekend news cycle will be about Trump's op-ed in the WSJ, detailing how rigged the electoral system is already in the primary stage -- forget about what may or may not happen in the general. There will be a protest at the Colorado capitol building on Friday afternoon, to provide some visuals that the networks can loop over and over.
Ordinary citizens had never heard of canceled elections, and the hijacking of democracy by corrupt party insiders. That's not to say they had a clear picture of how they did think it worked, but I'm sure "voters going to the voting station" figured in there somewhere.
And with the public getting so upset about it -- along with the rigged superdelegate system among the Democrats, which Trump has also been decrying, in defense of Bernie Sanders -- he can bring up the need to reform the system so that it's the people whose input matters. As usual, we don't need a meaningless thousand-item blueprint that would crumble under the weight of reality. He just says we're going to fix these problems, meaning moving toward primaries instead of caucuses and voter-free conventions, and ending the practice of Trojan Horse delegate selection.
If Trump had remained a critic from outside the battle arena (as a non-competitor or as a third-party candidate like Ralph Nader), nobody would have listened to him. He had to enter the contest and become a personal target for all of these corrupt attacks, so that the media and the general public would pay attention. People listen to the actual target of an attack, if they're available, more so than a distant advocate for attack victims. It makes for a more vivid, immediate, and compelling story. We owe Trump a debt of gratitude for taking all this punishment on behalf of the welfare of the nation.
Who would've ever thought, just last year, that a major change resulting from this election season would be the over-hauling of the very nomination process, after the front-runner himself had revealed how crooked the workings of it were for the whole country to see? We keep saying it, but this time around, the sky's the limit.
Soon it advanced to attacking a wide range of policies -- open borders, off-shored labor, etc. -- and pointing in the general direction of where we ought to be heading instead -- secure borders, bringing jobs back, and so on. Despite all the media hype about his tone, Trump became popular because of his positions rather than his persona.
He hammered these themes over and over during the early stage of the primaries, and by now his positions are so familiar that when he skipped the final debate, nobody complained that we needed to hear more about where he stood on some topic.
Where does he go after having covered "the issues"?
Throughout his campaign, he's stressed the corrupting role of money in politics, but now he's starting to pull the curtain back on all of the festering corruption playing out before our very eyes. At first, he used to say that our country doesn't win anymore because are leaders are so "stupid," or "incompetent," or "weak negotiators".
Lately he's begun to be more blunt by saying that in some cases the leaders really are stupid, but that in many other cases they're perfectly intelligent, and are simply controlled by donors and special interests through campaign contributions and other things. It seems like this pivot began when he repeatedly said he doesn't get enough credit from the voters for spending his own money instead of being bought and paid for.
I think most Americans recognize that wealthy special interest groups are a corrupting force on our elected leaders. Campaign finance reform has been a common topic for well over a decade now. If he'd stuck to discussing that form of corruption, he wouldn't have exactly been breaking news.
So instead he's decided to reveal a separate source of corruption in the electoral process -- the rigging of the party nomination system by highly connected insiders and party bosses, who are happy to thwart the will of the people in order to control who gets to be the Presidential nominee. As long as the rigged system produces two Establishment nominees, it doesn't matter who the voters choose. The only difference between them is distracting culture war stuff, and since the Establishment of both parties are social liberals, they don't mind if the culture war progresses with win after win for the liberal side.
That's what is behind all this drama about the scramble for delegates. Trump says, "I thought I already won the vote, and therefore the delegates?" The Establishment says, "Sorry, we're placing anti-Trump people in the delegate slots that you won." As Roger Stone has emphasized, "the big steal" would come from these Trojan Horse delegates betraying the majority (Trump voters) on decisions about how the nominee is to be chosen, before the first ballot at the Convention begins.
The citizens had never been aware that that's how the process worked, and how blatantly anti-democratic it is. The will of the people won the election, and that ought to be reflected in the particular individuals who serve as delegates for the winner, and how they vote on matters of rules and credentials at the Convention.
With so many Trojan Horse shenanigans coming from Lyin' Ted, Trump has brought in Paul Manafort to wrangle as many truly Trump delegates into the slots already fairly won by Trump. Manafort is a seasoned pro -- one of the "real vicious killers" who Trump has been saying all along he has connections with. It turns out they've known each other for 30 years, so there's no chance they were not in contact until recently, nor that they had not already worked out a contingency plan in case electoral shenanigans began.
I think Trump wanted to win the nomination as gently as possible -- if Lyin' Ted hadn't launched an all-out attack on Trump's delegates, there would've been no need to bring in Manafort (who must cost a lot more than someone who isn't a veteran, and Trump prides himself on being frugal). But not being naive, he would've expected something like this to happen sometime -- but to hold off on the big guns until they were needed.
First, it saves money during the gentle phase of the campaign by not having to pay the #1 guy. Second, it highlights the unfairness of the process -- it's so crooked that Trump had no choice but to bring out someone who seems more in place on the set of Goodfellas. And third, a shift in head personnel demands a reason, and therefore compels to media to explore the intricacies of delegate allocation.
If Manafort had been the campaign manager from the get-go, the media never would've asked why he was brought on board. And with electoral shenanigans only being a hypothetical at the outset, there would have been no actual story to report about how the Establishment strives to counter the will of the voters in real time during election season.
The same goes for the entirely voterless electoral process of North Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado, where a state convention of insiders chose the delegates without even a preference poll from the voters to tell the insiders and delegates who the citizens want. Trump sent Ben Carson as a surrogate to North Dakota and managed to pick up at least one delegate, so that didn't seem too bad -- plus nobody cares what happens in North Dakota. Ditto for Wyoming.
But when it came to the high-profile state of Colorado, which used to hold primaries from 1992 to 2000, and caucuses in '04 and '08, the canceling of the caucuses and of even a preference poll was too much. Maybe Trump would've held back if he'd at least gotten some of the delegates, but all of them went to Cruz, without any input from the voters.
Now, the decision to exclude the voters was made last year, so Trump had obviously known about it for awhile. But why bring it up when a bad outcome was only hypothetical, rather than actual? There would've been no story to report. Now it's big news, and the Establishment has to cover its ass after being caught red-handed, rather than abstractly defend the decision on its hypothetical merits last year.
There was no point in accepting the decision and trying to work within it -- that would have legitimized the anti-democratic process, would have resulted in zero delegates anyway, and would have wasted a bunch of money trying to lobby the Trump-hating insiders from the Cuck Belt of the Plains and Mountain states.
Now the entire weekend news cycle will be about Trump's op-ed in the WSJ, detailing how rigged the electoral system is already in the primary stage -- forget about what may or may not happen in the general. There will be a protest at the Colorado capitol building on Friday afternoon, to provide some visuals that the networks can loop over and over.
Ordinary citizens had never heard of canceled elections, and the hijacking of democracy by corrupt party insiders. That's not to say they had a clear picture of how they did think it worked, but I'm sure "voters going to the voting station" figured in there somewhere.
And with the public getting so upset about it -- along with the rigged superdelegate system among the Democrats, which Trump has also been decrying, in defense of Bernie Sanders -- he can bring up the need to reform the system so that it's the people whose input matters. As usual, we don't need a meaningless thousand-item blueprint that would crumble under the weight of reality. He just says we're going to fix these problems, meaning moving toward primaries instead of caucuses and voter-free conventions, and ending the practice of Trojan Horse delegate selection.
If Trump had remained a critic from outside the battle arena (as a non-competitor or as a third-party candidate like Ralph Nader), nobody would have listened to him. He had to enter the contest and become a personal target for all of these corrupt attacks, so that the media and the general public would pay attention. People listen to the actual target of an attack, if they're available, more so than a distant advocate for attack victims. It makes for a more vivid, immediate, and compelling story. We owe Trump a debt of gratitude for taking all this punishment on behalf of the welfare of the nation.
Who would've ever thought, just last year, that a major change resulting from this election season would be the over-hauling of the very nomination process, after the front-runner himself had revealed how crooked the workings of it were for the whole country to see? We keep saying it, but this time around, the sky's the limit.
April 12, 2016
Trump-Sanders vs. Clinton-Cruz (thought experiment)
Here's a worthwhile thought experiment. Ignore your personal feelings about who you'd like to see as a nominee and running mate. The point is to objectively analyze a perhaps not-so-outlandish scenario that might unfold in this time of seismic political party re-alignment.
Suppose that Trump got the GOP nomination (which appears most likely), and sensing the great need to turn many blue states red, he chooses Bernie as his running-mate. Bernie accepts, having lost the Dem nomination and resenting the corruption in the Dem nominating process.
Then suppose that Hillary gets the nomination on the Dem side (most likely), and sensing the shifting red-blue map against a Trump-Sanders ticket, she chooses Cruz as her running mate. Cruz, stinging from losing the GOP nomination, accepts in order to keep the #NeverTrump spirit alive all the way to voting day.
1) Discuss the similarities that would link Trump and Sanders together, and those that would link Clinton and Cruz together. How much coherence would the Trump-Sanders campaign have in the fall of 2016, and how much coherence would the Clinton-Cruz campaign have?
2) What would most greatly distinguish the two campaigns, in other words what would be the greatest fault-lines in the general election?
3) Which campaign does best with which demographic groups?
4) More importantly, which campaign takes which states? And therefore, which one wins the election? You can be general or specific (play around with the 270 to win site).
Again, this isn't fantasy football. This is an exercise in surveying the state of party politics during a period of great re-alignment. I'll post my own thoughts later in the comments.
Suppose that Trump got the GOP nomination (which appears most likely), and sensing the great need to turn many blue states red, he chooses Bernie as his running-mate. Bernie accepts, having lost the Dem nomination and resenting the corruption in the Dem nominating process.
Then suppose that Hillary gets the nomination on the Dem side (most likely), and sensing the shifting red-blue map against a Trump-Sanders ticket, she chooses Cruz as her running mate. Cruz, stinging from losing the GOP nomination, accepts in order to keep the #NeverTrump spirit alive all the way to voting day.
1) Discuss the similarities that would link Trump and Sanders together, and those that would link Clinton and Cruz together. How much coherence would the Trump-Sanders campaign have in the fall of 2016, and how much coherence would the Clinton-Cruz campaign have?
2) What would most greatly distinguish the two campaigns, in other words what would be the greatest fault-lines in the general election?
3) Which campaign does best with which demographic groups?
4) More importantly, which campaign takes which states? And therefore, which one wins the election? You can be general or specific (play around with the 270 to win site).
Again, this isn't fantasy football. This is an exercise in surveying the state of party politics during a period of great re-alignment. I'll post my own thoughts later in the comments.
April 10, 2016
Trump country is the most deeply rooted region of America
A commenter brought this map to my attention, showing the extent of settlement in America as of 1830:
It looks an awful lot like the map of inferred Trump support from last year, and the map of states that Trump has won so far in the primary, which ties into the east-west dimension of the current political re-alignment:
It shows why the states just west of the Mississippi River on the southern part are Trump states (Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri), and why those farther north are not (Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin). More or less everywhere east of the Mississippi is Trump country, aside from Maine -- which the 1830 map shows was not settled very much back then, and so whose communities are not as rooted as the rest of New England. Ohio only went to Kasich because there was a favorite son for the non-Trump vote to rally around; Trump got the same share of the vote there as in the surrounding states that he won due to a more divided opposition.
The only real exception is Floria, which was not settled until much later but did go to Trump in a landslide.
Out West, we can see that the Bay Area and SoCal will be nice to Trump (as the Field Poll has already suggested). Arizona and Nevada (=Vegas) are by now extensions of SoCal, and they went heavily to Trump.
Since the Plains, Mountain, and Pacific Northwest regions aren't as deeply rooted, their people aren't going to resonate with "Make America Great Again," which relies on the listener feeling that something once great has been lost. But if your community's roots don't go that far back, it's hard to feel that there was a mythical long-lost Golden Age.
"Oh yah? Yah mean like when my grandparents came over from Norway in 1887? Oh gosh no, I don't wanna go back to dose days, heck no. But do I wanna live near da Mall of America? You betcha!"
Why is 1830, or thereabouts, the cutoff date? That's when the long Gilded Age began, when competitiveness and status-striving began increasing, after a decline from the founding of the nation through the Era of Good Feelings in the 1820s. If your community was founded during that initial period of getting along, pitching in for the greater good, and sacrificing some individual ambition for social harmony, that could have sent the community down a path of concern for the greater national good.
Whereas if the community was forged during an era of "I got mine, lots of luck getting yours," get-rich-quick schemes (including cattle ranching in Texas, farms in the Plains, started up overnight with large speculative loans from banks, or fur trapping and gold mining in the virgin Rockies), and minimal regulation of individual behavior (laissez-faire), that could have sent the community down a path of not really caring that much about the greater good of the nation. Not necessarily being hostile to the rest of the country, just being more insular and numb to what's going on at a national level -- let the rest of the country deal with its own problems.
Looking forward, the whole Northeast looks good for Trump, especially the two remaining Appalachian states of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. California will be his best remaining state out West. Idaho is the only Pacific NW state to predict what will happen in Oregon and Washington -- Cruz won not only the Mormon cult area of SE Idaho, but also the major city of Boise and the only metro area in the northern panhandle between eastern Washington and western Montana (Coeur d'Alene). Indiana is smack in the middle of Trump country, and has lots of delegates because it's not a sparsely and recently settled farming state (it ranks 15th by population, just behind Massachusetts and well ahead of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa).
Worst comes to worst, we have another Civil War -- but at least we'll know where to draw the borders. Were you settled before the long Gilded Age began around 1830, or did you fill up mostly from the waves of Gilded Age immigration?
It looks an awful lot like the map of inferred Trump support from last year, and the map of states that Trump has won so far in the primary, which ties into the east-west dimension of the current political re-alignment:
It shows why the states just west of the Mississippi River on the southern part are Trump states (Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri), and why those farther north are not (Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin). More or less everywhere east of the Mississippi is Trump country, aside from Maine -- which the 1830 map shows was not settled very much back then, and so whose communities are not as rooted as the rest of New England. Ohio only went to Kasich because there was a favorite son for the non-Trump vote to rally around; Trump got the same share of the vote there as in the surrounding states that he won due to a more divided opposition.
The only real exception is Floria, which was not settled until much later but did go to Trump in a landslide.
Out West, we can see that the Bay Area and SoCal will be nice to Trump (as the Field Poll has already suggested). Arizona and Nevada (=Vegas) are by now extensions of SoCal, and they went heavily to Trump.
Since the Plains, Mountain, and Pacific Northwest regions aren't as deeply rooted, their people aren't going to resonate with "Make America Great Again," which relies on the listener feeling that something once great has been lost. But if your community's roots don't go that far back, it's hard to feel that there was a mythical long-lost Golden Age.
"Oh yah? Yah mean like when my grandparents came over from Norway in 1887? Oh gosh no, I don't wanna go back to dose days, heck no. But do I wanna live near da Mall of America? You betcha!"
Why is 1830, or thereabouts, the cutoff date? That's when the long Gilded Age began, when competitiveness and status-striving began increasing, after a decline from the founding of the nation through the Era of Good Feelings in the 1820s. If your community was founded during that initial period of getting along, pitching in for the greater good, and sacrificing some individual ambition for social harmony, that could have sent the community down a path of concern for the greater national good.
Whereas if the community was forged during an era of "I got mine, lots of luck getting yours," get-rich-quick schemes (including cattle ranching in Texas, farms in the Plains, started up overnight with large speculative loans from banks, or fur trapping and gold mining in the virgin Rockies), and minimal regulation of individual behavior (laissez-faire), that could have sent the community down a path of not really caring that much about the greater good of the nation. Not necessarily being hostile to the rest of the country, just being more insular and numb to what's going on at a national level -- let the rest of the country deal with its own problems.
Looking forward, the whole Northeast looks good for Trump, especially the two remaining Appalachian states of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. California will be his best remaining state out West. Idaho is the only Pacific NW state to predict what will happen in Oregon and Washington -- Cruz won not only the Mormon cult area of SE Idaho, but also the major city of Boise and the only metro area in the northern panhandle between eastern Washington and western Montana (Coeur d'Alene). Indiana is smack in the middle of Trump country, and has lots of delegates because it's not a sparsely and recently settled farming state (it ranks 15th by population, just behind Massachusetts and well ahead of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa).
Worst comes to worst, we have another Civil War -- but at least we'll know where to draw the borders. Were you settled before the long Gilded Age began around 1830, or did you fill up mostly from the waves of Gilded Age immigration?
April 8, 2016
Star Wars: The Already Forgotten Sequel
If you've got even one nerd that shows up in your Facebook feed, you learned today that a trailer came out for the new Star Wars movie. I've already explained that the new movies are cosplay fanfiction, that the release of trailers for them is a new form of serial drama, and that the nerd obsession with butt-kicking babe characters is a form of latent transgender fantasy.
The trailer for Rogue One proves that all three key aspects of the sequels are going to infect the two anthology movies. Rather than being a quirk of the first director, they represent Disney knowing exactly what kind of content-chow the nerd audiences want, and supplying them shamelessly.
What's new to observe with the release of this trailer is just how forgotten The Force Awakens has become, not even three months after its release, and even among its hardcore nerd following. Facebook was filled with spazzy Star Wars shit for a few weeks when the new movie came out, but then... nothing. No quoting favorite lines -- evidently the dialog was forgettable. No references to favorite scenes -- evidently all visuals were forgettable. And no gushing over favorite plot points or themes -- evidently the entire narrative was forgettable.
The very same week that the DVD is released, there's already a BRAND NEW TRAILER for the lame anthology movie out later this year. No time off at all, just swill the content for The Force Awakens, and by the time it works itself out into a large belch, your gut is ready for another swill, this time from Rogue One. And by the time you belch that one out, there will be another of the sequels, belch, another anthology, belch, and finally another sequel, belch, and then all will be forgotten. Onto the next year-after-year geekout for some other nerd goldmine franchise.
I figured the nerds would pick apart the plot of The Force Awakens like they did Phantom Menace, pro or con, begin imitating characters either lovingly or mockingly ("Meesa hungry, meesa gonna make hot pocket and ramen noodle again for breakfast!"), and otherwise get familiar with it. But they've already flushed it all out of their system, to make room for their obsessing and spazzing over Rogue One.
Like I said, the real drama now takes place across the trailers -- one prolonged masturbatory anticipation, brief climax when it's out in theaters, and hardly any resting period before the next obsessive anticipation. Nerds don't want to enjoy the actual experience, they want to geek out over forecasting what it might be like (reminds me of how they behave in another domain of life).
Sadly, it's not only the hardcore nerds who are showing this addiction treadmill response to the new Star Wars movies. These days the whole movie-going audience is full of junkies in search of another quick fix before feeling empty by the time they get home. It'll be a miracle if anyone still feels attached to today's movies in just five years, let alone the rest of their lives.
The trailer for Rogue One proves that all three key aspects of the sequels are going to infect the two anthology movies. Rather than being a quirk of the first director, they represent Disney knowing exactly what kind of content-chow the nerd audiences want, and supplying them shamelessly.
What's new to observe with the release of this trailer is just how forgotten The Force Awakens has become, not even three months after its release, and even among its hardcore nerd following. Facebook was filled with spazzy Star Wars shit for a few weeks when the new movie came out, but then... nothing. No quoting favorite lines -- evidently the dialog was forgettable. No references to favorite scenes -- evidently all visuals were forgettable. And no gushing over favorite plot points or themes -- evidently the entire narrative was forgettable.
The very same week that the DVD is released, there's already a BRAND NEW TRAILER for the lame anthology movie out later this year. No time off at all, just swill the content for The Force Awakens, and by the time it works itself out into a large belch, your gut is ready for another swill, this time from Rogue One. And by the time you belch that one out, there will be another of the sequels, belch, another anthology, belch, and finally another sequel, belch, and then all will be forgotten. Onto the next year-after-year geekout for some other nerd goldmine franchise.
I figured the nerds would pick apart the plot of The Force Awakens like they did Phantom Menace, pro or con, begin imitating characters either lovingly or mockingly ("Meesa hungry, meesa gonna make hot pocket and ramen noodle again for breakfast!"), and otherwise get familiar with it. But they've already flushed it all out of their system, to make room for their obsessing and spazzing over Rogue One.
Like I said, the real drama now takes place across the trailers -- one prolonged masturbatory anticipation, brief climax when it's out in theaters, and hardly any resting period before the next obsessive anticipation. Nerds don't want to enjoy the actual experience, they want to geek out over forecasting what it might be like (reminds me of how they behave in another domain of life).
Sadly, it's not only the hardcore nerds who are showing this addiction treadmill response to the new Star Wars movies. These days the whole movie-going audience is full of junkies in search of another quick fix before feeling empty by the time they get home. It'll be a miracle if anyone still feels attached to today's movies in just five years, let alone the rest of their lives.
April 6, 2016
Takeaways from Wisconsin primary
First, the good news is that Bernie won again (no identity politics among Dems when the state is white), although not by the margin he needs to in order to lock up the nomination. Still, whatever damages Hillary before the general is good, especially if it's setting up the expectation of a populist shaking up the Establishment. A good number of the Bernie voters in Wisconsin are hipster faggots, but he can't sweep the state relying only on them. That leaves plenty of normal Democrats who could cross over to Trump in the fall.
As for the Republicans, the results are not too different from Ohio, where Trump got the same share of the vote as in surrounding states, but where the non-Trump vote could better coalesce around a favorite son. Trump getting 35% in Wisconsin, to Cruz's 48%, is probably a similar story -- only with the favorite son being Paul Ryan, who by now is more or less out of the closet as the choice of a brokered convention.
CNN's exit polls showed that 55% of Wisconsin voters wanted Trump to get the nomination even if he doesn't get 50%+1 delegates, and only about half of these folks were Trump voters -- the rest were non-Trump voters who still thought that whoever wins the primary ought to get the nomination, even if they fall short of a majority of delegates. On the other hand, 43% of voters wanted the Party leaders to hit reset and pick a new candidate if none of the existing candidates got a majority of delegates. And of these folks, a large majority voted for Cruz.
So in this case, voting for Cruz was not just values-voter retards, but those who simply don't want Trump and want the Convention rigged to cancel out the voters, now that it's clear that all their initial choices have flopped.
Wisconsin always did look a bit iffy, though. I didn't want to jinx it, so I didn't bring it up beforehand, but recall this map of inferred Trump support way back from December. Wisconsin barely registers, while Louisiana does. Although the primary border is the Mississippi River, there is a secondary effect of north vs. south along this border -- Trump country goes a little farther west at the southern part, and recedes farther east at the northern end.
I discussed the basics of the geography in this post, invoking the idea of rootedness. Places west of the Mississippi were settled much later than back East. And even some out West are more rooted than others -- California more than Colorado, for instance. We can bet that Trump will do better in CA than in CO. Along the Mississippi River itself, settlement began in the south in what is now Louisiana, since the explorers began there and navigated their way up north.
I'll try to put harder numbers on that hunch later, basically looking at when there was triple-digit population increase within a state. That doesn't last forever -- only early on when it's wide open, after which it declines to double-digit increase, or even negative rates. Suffice it to say for now that Wisconsin's population began to stabilize decades later than Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Louisiana, etc.
On top of that, I get the impression that the areas that cucked hard for Cruz -- along the densely populated eastern part of the state -- are transplant magnets, where Wisconsinites from the more rural parts of the state have descended in search of greener pastures, so to speak. People who leave their roots behind are more likely to vote for a "more of the same" candidate like Cruz, whereas those who have stayed true to their roots (particularly up in the north of the state) are going to resonate more with "Make America Great Again".
That makes Wisconsin look like other places in the Plains, like Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas. Trump did well in the rural areas there, but not so well in the cities and their suburbs, where you find newly arrived middle-class strivers who are embarrassed about the rural origins of their parents and grandparents. They don't want to restore the former glory of the land of their kin, they just want to be able to hire cheap Mexican day laborers for when they remodel their bathroom and passively-aggressively show it off to their neighbors.
Speaking of attitudes, obviously Trump the Warrior was not going to do well in the non-confrontational Lutheran Belt. Taken together with the Utah results, he's not going to do well where there's a large concentration of Nordic people (including those from the Lutheran, i.e. northern/eastern, regions of Germany). Trump cleaned up in neighboring Illinois, not only because of all the founding stock in an early settled state, but because the Nordic weenies were diluted by the Mediterraneans and Slavs of metro Chicago -- who also helped him secure Michigan, and will go on to help him secure the entire Northeast.
This replicates what we see back in the European homelands, regarding the Muslim migration -- Germany and Scandinavia are mostly screwed, Eastern Europe is telling them to go somewhere else, the Meds are waving them up toward the gullible Nords, and the Celts are keeping them away too.
To end with a silver lining, CNN's exit polls showed no sex difference for either Cruz or Trump, whereas what happens usually is that Cruz begs for the women's vote while Trump wins the men's vote. After the neverending "war on women" narrative being pushed by the propaganda machine, you'd think Trump would've tanked with women. But he did exactly the same with men and women.
Remember, the Trump phenomenon is not only a political one, but an anti-media movement. He's been calling out all sorts of dishonesty in the media since he first began, and it's one of the things that resonates the strongest with voters. All those millions of dollars of attack ads in Florida couldn't stop him from winning by double digits over a sitting Senator and darling of the Establishment. And now we see that two straight weeks of "women hate Trump" not only failed to persuade the women of Wisconsin, if anything they rallied more to his defense. Ordinary people side with an honest person who's being vilified by the corrupt media.
And with that, Cruz has plum run out of largish states from cuck country. He needed to win all the delegates tonight, and will come up well short of that, meaning he'll now have to win an even higher percent of those remaining. After the initial several days of "OMG Trump lost," the narrative will shift inevitably toward, "Wow, Lyin' Ted needs like 90% of the remaining delegates -- and in the Northeast!"
It'll be like Iowa, where the Plains cucks had several weeks of impotent gloating before getting curbstomped in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and Super Tuesday.
Trump will also be rolling out his list of Supreme Court nominees, which will get everyone talking about something more important.
As for the Republicans, the results are not too different from Ohio, where Trump got the same share of the vote as in surrounding states, but where the non-Trump vote could better coalesce around a favorite son. Trump getting 35% in Wisconsin, to Cruz's 48%, is probably a similar story -- only with the favorite son being Paul Ryan, who by now is more or less out of the closet as the choice of a brokered convention.
CNN's exit polls showed that 55% of Wisconsin voters wanted Trump to get the nomination even if he doesn't get 50%+1 delegates, and only about half of these folks were Trump voters -- the rest were non-Trump voters who still thought that whoever wins the primary ought to get the nomination, even if they fall short of a majority of delegates. On the other hand, 43% of voters wanted the Party leaders to hit reset and pick a new candidate if none of the existing candidates got a majority of delegates. And of these folks, a large majority voted for Cruz.
So in this case, voting for Cruz was not just values-voter retards, but those who simply don't want Trump and want the Convention rigged to cancel out the voters, now that it's clear that all their initial choices have flopped.
Wisconsin always did look a bit iffy, though. I didn't want to jinx it, so I didn't bring it up beforehand, but recall this map of inferred Trump support way back from December. Wisconsin barely registers, while Louisiana does. Although the primary border is the Mississippi River, there is a secondary effect of north vs. south along this border -- Trump country goes a little farther west at the southern part, and recedes farther east at the northern end.
I discussed the basics of the geography in this post, invoking the idea of rootedness. Places west of the Mississippi were settled much later than back East. And even some out West are more rooted than others -- California more than Colorado, for instance. We can bet that Trump will do better in CA than in CO. Along the Mississippi River itself, settlement began in the south in what is now Louisiana, since the explorers began there and navigated their way up north.
I'll try to put harder numbers on that hunch later, basically looking at when there was triple-digit population increase within a state. That doesn't last forever -- only early on when it's wide open, after which it declines to double-digit increase, or even negative rates. Suffice it to say for now that Wisconsin's population began to stabilize decades later than Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Louisiana, etc.
On top of that, I get the impression that the areas that cucked hard for Cruz -- along the densely populated eastern part of the state -- are transplant magnets, where Wisconsinites from the more rural parts of the state have descended in search of greener pastures, so to speak. People who leave their roots behind are more likely to vote for a "more of the same" candidate like Cruz, whereas those who have stayed true to their roots (particularly up in the north of the state) are going to resonate more with "Make America Great Again".
That makes Wisconsin look like other places in the Plains, like Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas. Trump did well in the rural areas there, but not so well in the cities and their suburbs, where you find newly arrived middle-class strivers who are embarrassed about the rural origins of their parents and grandparents. They don't want to restore the former glory of the land of their kin, they just want to be able to hire cheap Mexican day laborers for when they remodel their bathroom and passively-aggressively show it off to their neighbors.
Speaking of attitudes, obviously Trump the Warrior was not going to do well in the non-confrontational Lutheran Belt. Taken together with the Utah results, he's not going to do well where there's a large concentration of Nordic people (including those from the Lutheran, i.e. northern/eastern, regions of Germany). Trump cleaned up in neighboring Illinois, not only because of all the founding stock in an early settled state, but because the Nordic weenies were diluted by the Mediterraneans and Slavs of metro Chicago -- who also helped him secure Michigan, and will go on to help him secure the entire Northeast.
This replicates what we see back in the European homelands, regarding the Muslim migration -- Germany and Scandinavia are mostly screwed, Eastern Europe is telling them to go somewhere else, the Meds are waving them up toward the gullible Nords, and the Celts are keeping them away too.
To end with a silver lining, CNN's exit polls showed no sex difference for either Cruz or Trump, whereas what happens usually is that Cruz begs for the women's vote while Trump wins the men's vote. After the neverending "war on women" narrative being pushed by the propaganda machine, you'd think Trump would've tanked with women. But he did exactly the same with men and women.
Remember, the Trump phenomenon is not only a political one, but an anti-media movement. He's been calling out all sorts of dishonesty in the media since he first began, and it's one of the things that resonates the strongest with voters. All those millions of dollars of attack ads in Florida couldn't stop him from winning by double digits over a sitting Senator and darling of the Establishment. And now we see that two straight weeks of "women hate Trump" not only failed to persuade the women of Wisconsin, if anything they rallied more to his defense. Ordinary people side with an honest person who's being vilified by the corrupt media.
And with that, Cruz has plum run out of largish states from cuck country. He needed to win all the delegates tonight, and will come up well short of that, meaning he'll now have to win an even higher percent of those remaining. After the initial several days of "OMG Trump lost," the narrative will shift inevitably toward, "Wow, Lyin' Ted needs like 90% of the remaining delegates -- and in the Northeast!"
It'll be like Iowa, where the Plains cucks had several weeks of impotent gloating before getting curbstomped in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and Super Tuesday.
Trump will also be rolling out his list of Supreme Court nominees, which will get everyone talking about something more important.
April 2, 2016
The Pro-Life Movement (TM): Just another branch of victimhood feminism
Once I heard that Trump made some controversial statements about abortion in a town hall, before it was aired, I knew I'd have to turn off the TV news for the following week. So far, this election has shifted decisively away from culture war topics, but that doesn't mean there won't be the occasional pebble on the road. Just like they played the racism card 24/7 a few weeks ago, and then the violence card within the past couple weeks, and now the war on women card -- which will evaporate in its turn within a week or so.
Little did I know, until foolishly clicking on an article about it, that the controversy was actually on "both sides" of the abortion issue -- obviously the pro-choice folks weren't happy that Trump said that if abortion were to become illegal, a woman who got one should be punished somehow. But why did the pro-life crowd get its panties in a wad? Because he was BLAMING THE VICTIM. In their view, only the person performing the abortion ought to be punished, not the hapless victim who brings them the fetus to be aborted.
Not to get all 2016, but wow, seriously? I literally can't even.
Certainly if you believe that abortion is murder, then the pregnant woman is at least an accessory to murder. Perhaps you wouldn't punish the woman as much as the doctor, but to not only let her off scot-free, to righteously command everyone to look the other way about what she did, is sacrilege.
Not being part of the Pro-Life Movement, I'd always figured that they had similar views to my own -- that the woman was behaving selfishly ("uggh, accidentally pregnant -- well, sucks to you, fetus, mommy comes first"), in a deliberate way that harmed another person's life. Therefore she's guilty of something, and that kind of behavior ought to be considered shameful, with that shame serving as a deterrent to those considering abortion, as well as retribution for those who have chosen to get one already.
But it's The Current Year, and shaming people hurts their self-esteem and makes them feel excluded, so everyone who does something wrong is actually a victim of circumstances and only needs our compassion, not our attempt to guide their behavior in a better direction.
Christians are not even allowed to appeal to Jesus' command to "Go and sin no more" -- sinners aren't really sinners, but victims of someone else's plots. We're supposed to feel sorry for the pure innocent victims, and try to foil the plots of the truly wicked. That is actually a far more primitive worldview, akin to one where all bad things are due to witchcraft, rather than our own inner sinful nature.
If you look deeper, you see this phony victimhood feminism all over the Pro-Life Movement. They coined the term "abortionist" to demonize the performer of the abortion, but they didn't coin a term for the pregnant woman who brings the true victim before the abortionist. They also throw around the term "baby-killer" for the doctor, yet they don't refer to the pregnant woman as a "baby-killer supplier" or a "fetus pimp". And they refer to the whole class of abortionists, their places of work, and their PR / lobbying groups, as "the abortion industry" -- but not to the whole class of pregnant women who seek out their services as the "mommy before fetus brats," etc.
Aside from the remarks of the Pro-Life Movement, here are a couple of illustrative statements from the largest Protestant denomination in America, and the largest non-Christian religion, Mormonism.
Southern Baptist Convention, "On The Sanctity Of Human Life" (Columbus, OH 2015):
Mormon Church, LDS Perspective on Abortion and Human Life:
The Mormons are more passive-aggressive, so they refer to pregnant women not as seeking out an abortion, but "submitting to" an abortion, as though it were pushed upon her -- like there's some creepy moustache-twirler in a trenchcoat who pops out from the corner of a dark alley, aggressively hawking his service to college girls: "Pssst, you look like you hooked up this weekend and didn't use protection. Step into my office before anybody finds out, unless you want me to let your parents know..."
The Southern Baptists are more hot-blooded, so they go all-out in referring to the octupus-like "abortion industry" that victimizes vulnerable women.
So, victimhood feminism infects the views on abortion of both the back-East evangelicals as well as the out-West apocalyptic cults, not to mention the abortion-specific organizations.
Beyond the rhetoric, you see this attitude among the hardcore activists who take to property destruction and violence. They only target the doctors and buildings where abortions are done. They don't spray red food coloring onto the women going into the buildings, or do anything at all toward those on the demand side rather than the supply side of abortion. It's the same kind of lazy Leftoid thinking that says consumers can only be victims, and only producers may be blamed.*
The fact that the Pro-Life Movement is fundamentally an identity politics group explains why they have never accomplished much on a practical level. The whole point of identity politics is to signal your moral superiority over the members of a different identity group. And since victims are morally superior to their assailants, you just need to convince the point-awarders that so-and-so are the victims of such-and-such assailants.
Most of the Pro-Life Movement is not women who have had an abortion, but those speaking out on their behalf, a la the do-gooder white people who drone on about protecting saintly and defenseless blacks against evil white institutional racism, or the Sodomite marriage movement that is mostly made up of fag hags rather than fags themselves.
The men in the Pro-Life Movement are therefore male feminists, and as elsewhere in feminist organizations, are subject to the accusation of being well-meaning misogynists who just don't get it, and whose misogyny is no less harmful and dangerous because of its ignorance. In fact, Donald Trump found that out the hard way this week -- try to stick up for the "female victims of the abortion industry," and you'll still get hanged as a woman-hater if you suggested that the women bear even one iota of responsibility.
Unlike other victimhood feminist groups, the Pro-Life Movement has an unusual share of its members being men. I attribute this to the women in the Movement being emotionally more stable than their pro-choice counterparts, and more tolerant of well-meaning yet bumbling male allies. Still, if you step outside of the victimhood narrative and suggest that the so-called victims bear any individual responsibility, you're out in the doghouse.
If you considered yourself pro-life but have not had much contact with the Pro-Life Movement, you would have known that they were a culture war group, but I always figured their moral superiority angle was standing for life rather than death/murder. I figured it plugged into the other culture war groups who stress individual responsibility and not pretending that every bad act we do is because we're victims of powerful oppressors. And I figured it would be part of the culture war that grandstanded about putting others before yourself.
But nope, the Pro-Life Movement turns out to be just another branch of victimhood feminism.
I don't want to dwell on these culture war topics, now that the Trump phenomenon has finally given us a way to be productive in our political movements. But it's worth dissecting some of the cases, just to appreciate how useless and counterproductive they have been -- for decades. Here we have an example of the movement being impotent not only in the way that most culture war causes have been -- being obsessed with symbolic rather than concrete victories -- but also because its central claim, that "abortion is murder," was flatly contradicted by their total pardon of the pregnant women who seek out abortion.
When victimhood is the foundation of your identity, you won't bother trying to effect real change. Then you'd no longer be a victim, and would not get to preen about your superior moral value against your evil oppressors. That goes for feminists toward the patriarchy, as well as religious minorities like apocalyptic cults toward the majority of traditional church members and the non-religious. It also goes for ironic hipster types who want to keep the Rust Belt in the dumps economically, otherwise we couldn't score coolness points for dwelling among the ruins of steel mills and glass factories.
And that goes also for those who are the self-appointed saviors of a class of victims -- the Pro-Life Movement, animal rights activists, and the rest of them.
* We blame consumers of pornography, as well as the producers, but then it's hard to sell men as a victim group. (That doesn't keep segments of the anti-pornography movement from being an identity politics group based on a narrative about the male consumers being victims.)
Little did I know, until foolishly clicking on an article about it, that the controversy was actually on "both sides" of the abortion issue -- obviously the pro-choice folks weren't happy that Trump said that if abortion were to become illegal, a woman who got one should be punished somehow. But why did the pro-life crowd get its panties in a wad? Because he was BLAMING THE VICTIM. In their view, only the person performing the abortion ought to be punished, not the hapless victim who brings them the fetus to be aborted.
Not to get all 2016, but wow, seriously? I literally can't even.
Certainly if you believe that abortion is murder, then the pregnant woman is at least an accessory to murder. Perhaps you wouldn't punish the woman as much as the doctor, but to not only let her off scot-free, to righteously command everyone to look the other way about what she did, is sacrilege.
Not being part of the Pro-Life Movement, I'd always figured that they had similar views to my own -- that the woman was behaving selfishly ("uggh, accidentally pregnant -- well, sucks to you, fetus, mommy comes first"), in a deliberate way that harmed another person's life. Therefore she's guilty of something, and that kind of behavior ought to be considered shameful, with that shame serving as a deterrent to those considering abortion, as well as retribution for those who have chosen to get one already.
But it's The Current Year, and shaming people hurts their self-esteem and makes them feel excluded, so everyone who does something wrong is actually a victim of circumstances and only needs our compassion, not our attempt to guide their behavior in a better direction.
Christians are not even allowed to appeal to Jesus' command to "Go and sin no more" -- sinners aren't really sinners, but victims of someone else's plots. We're supposed to feel sorry for the pure innocent victims, and try to foil the plots of the truly wicked. That is actually a far more primitive worldview, akin to one where all bad things are due to witchcraft, rather than our own inner sinful nature.
If you look deeper, you see this phony victimhood feminism all over the Pro-Life Movement. They coined the term "abortionist" to demonize the performer of the abortion, but they didn't coin a term for the pregnant woman who brings the true victim before the abortionist. They also throw around the term "baby-killer" for the doctor, yet they don't refer to the pregnant woman as a "baby-killer supplier" or a "fetus pimp". And they refer to the whole class of abortionists, their places of work, and their PR / lobbying groups, as "the abortion industry" -- but not to the whole class of pregnant women who seek out their services as the "mommy before fetus brats," etc.
Aside from the remarks of the Pro-Life Movement, here are a couple of illustrative statements from the largest Protestant denomination in America, and the largest non-Christian religion, Mormonism.
Southern Baptist Convention, "On The Sanctity Of Human Life" (Columbus, OH 2015):
RESOLVED, That we call on Southern Baptist churches and entities to show the love of Christ through appropriate means to those women most vulnerable to the victimization of the abortion industry, and to show grace and mercy to those individuals who grieve with repentance over past abortions...
Mormon Church, LDS Perspective on Abortion and Human Life:
Human life is a sacred gift from God. Elective abortion for personal or social convenience is contrary to the will and the commandments of God. Church members who submit to...such abortions may lose their membership in the Church.
The Mormons are more passive-aggressive, so they refer to pregnant women not as seeking out an abortion, but "submitting to" an abortion, as though it were pushed upon her -- like there's some creepy moustache-twirler in a trenchcoat who pops out from the corner of a dark alley, aggressively hawking his service to college girls: "Pssst, you look like you hooked up this weekend and didn't use protection. Step into my office before anybody finds out, unless you want me to let your parents know..."
The Southern Baptists are more hot-blooded, so they go all-out in referring to the octupus-like "abortion industry" that victimizes vulnerable women.
So, victimhood feminism infects the views on abortion of both the back-East evangelicals as well as the out-West apocalyptic cults, not to mention the abortion-specific organizations.
Beyond the rhetoric, you see this attitude among the hardcore activists who take to property destruction and violence. They only target the doctors and buildings where abortions are done. They don't spray red food coloring onto the women going into the buildings, or do anything at all toward those on the demand side rather than the supply side of abortion. It's the same kind of lazy Leftoid thinking that says consumers can only be victims, and only producers may be blamed.*
The fact that the Pro-Life Movement is fundamentally an identity politics group explains why they have never accomplished much on a practical level. The whole point of identity politics is to signal your moral superiority over the members of a different identity group. And since victims are morally superior to their assailants, you just need to convince the point-awarders that so-and-so are the victims of such-and-such assailants.
Most of the Pro-Life Movement is not women who have had an abortion, but those speaking out on their behalf, a la the do-gooder white people who drone on about protecting saintly and defenseless blacks against evil white institutional racism, or the Sodomite marriage movement that is mostly made up of fag hags rather than fags themselves.
The men in the Pro-Life Movement are therefore male feminists, and as elsewhere in feminist organizations, are subject to the accusation of being well-meaning misogynists who just don't get it, and whose misogyny is no less harmful and dangerous because of its ignorance. In fact, Donald Trump found that out the hard way this week -- try to stick up for the "female victims of the abortion industry," and you'll still get hanged as a woman-hater if you suggested that the women bear even one iota of responsibility.
Unlike other victimhood feminist groups, the Pro-Life Movement has an unusual share of its members being men. I attribute this to the women in the Movement being emotionally more stable than their pro-choice counterparts, and more tolerant of well-meaning yet bumbling male allies. Still, if you step outside of the victimhood narrative and suggest that the so-called victims bear any individual responsibility, you're out in the doghouse.
If you considered yourself pro-life but have not had much contact with the Pro-Life Movement, you would have known that they were a culture war group, but I always figured their moral superiority angle was standing for life rather than death/murder. I figured it plugged into the other culture war groups who stress individual responsibility and not pretending that every bad act we do is because we're victims of powerful oppressors. And I figured it would be part of the culture war that grandstanded about putting others before yourself.
But nope, the Pro-Life Movement turns out to be just another branch of victimhood feminism.
I don't want to dwell on these culture war topics, now that the Trump phenomenon has finally given us a way to be productive in our political movements. But it's worth dissecting some of the cases, just to appreciate how useless and counterproductive they have been -- for decades. Here we have an example of the movement being impotent not only in the way that most culture war causes have been -- being obsessed with symbolic rather than concrete victories -- but also because its central claim, that "abortion is murder," was flatly contradicted by their total pardon of the pregnant women who seek out abortion.
When victimhood is the foundation of your identity, you won't bother trying to effect real change. Then you'd no longer be a victim, and would not get to preen about your superior moral value against your evil oppressors. That goes for feminists toward the patriarchy, as well as religious minorities like apocalyptic cults toward the majority of traditional church members and the non-religious. It also goes for ironic hipster types who want to keep the Rust Belt in the dumps economically, otherwise we couldn't score coolness points for dwelling among the ruins of steel mills and glass factories.
And that goes also for those who are the self-appointed saviors of a class of victims -- the Pro-Life Movement, animal rights activists, and the rest of them.
* We blame consumers of pornography, as well as the producers, but then it's hard to sell men as a victim group. (That doesn't keep segments of the anti-pornography movement from being an identity politics group based on a narrative about the male consumers being victims.)
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