I always like to get my wife’s take on things, as she is smart, good looking and, frankly, I way outkicked my coverage, so to say, in my choice of spouses.
In watching some of the Kavanaugh hearings yesterday I asked her opinion on the whole deal. She says that pretty much every female she knows (herself included) got groped at some time in their lives but all have moved on from things that happened oh so long ago. She also says that this circus will severely damage any claims by, well, pretty much any female that may have been actually sexually abused in the past. “What happened to strong women? Are we all precious flowers now that must be so delicately handled?”
My wife also doesn’t think that Kavanaugh actually did said groping – but that even if he did, it was in high school some 3.5 decades ago so, well, bfd.
Her social media feeds have exploded with vitriol. I am glad I deleted my facebook account some time ago. I am sure it is awful.
That is one strong woman’s viewpoint – I would love to hear from some of our other what I would consider strong women contributors here on their take of the situation.
I think I’d qualify as a strong woman; my husband would certainly say so. The Dems treatment of Kavanaugh has outraged me beyond almost any other issue I can recall since I began following politics–when I was a teenager in the late 1960s-early 1970s. (Okay, maybe not as much as Nixon did back then, but I was young and foolish.)
From what I read in the comments on blogs that I frequent, many other women feel the same. In fact, I get the sense that the women are far angrier than the men. In my case, it doesn’t have anything to do with being cast as a precious flower or with the dimunition of legitimate claims of assault. (Those things disturb me, but they are down the list as sources of anger.)
My first thought is that what angers me is the naked, shameless cynicism with which the Dems have behaved. Of course, they don’t believe Ford. Of course they aren’t really that sensitive to women’s claims of harrassment and assaut. If they were, they’d set their own house in order–and it’s obvious that they haven’t taken any steps to do so.
But why does the cynicism make me so mad? It’s not like it’s anything new. I think it’s because the Dems seem to think that women are so stupid that they will buy what they are selling. It’s beyond insulting to think that we are all that shallow and easily manipulated. It’s the strong women most of all who are going to be angered and offended by that ham-handed approach.
“Her social media feeds have exploded with vitriol.” Her social media feeds certainly would not be exploded with evidence and logic, because all that they have for argument against Kavanaugh is just vitriol.
“I think it’s because the Dems seem to think that women are so stupid…” My wife mentioned this as well. Her intelligence was quite insulted by the whole circus.
Married once, now 36 years back, with three fine kids and not alot of fiscal security, but… we’ll get by. Anyone who calls my gentle little wife a “precious flower” doesn’t know rocket-propelled grenades from tiddlywinks.
Count both of us sworn enemies of Rats’ perfervid dreck. Arrogant, corrupt, dishonorable and self-centered to the nth degree, “they are the moral outcasts of mankind” [Churchill, 1941].
Any time a fat-faced “Spartacus” (!) like Booker, Maxine Wigmore, an upskirts Willy Brown Kamela type, blats forth, we know that Rats in general and their MzBill-Pelosi axis in particular will wave degenerates’ soiled diapers like Pickett’s battle flags.
EBSFDNC.
After Kavanaugh’s presentation and its effect on wavering Flake and probably Collins, my mother may not have to stop voting for Republicans.
It is sad to think that every female has been groped at some time. Perhaps it is part of the stupidity of 14 year old boys and girls. But at least it can be a learning experience for girls; what boys to avoid and what situations to avoid. Part of learning how to navigate in the real and occasionally ugly world, I guess. Nonetheless it is not a reason to give credence to an utterly unsubstantiated smear.
And the treatment of Ford by the Dems exposed not only naked and shameless cynicism, it exposed cruelty without remorse. Feinstein only looked good in comparison to Boxer. Now she just looks like Boxer with a three digit IQ.
“It is sad to think that every female has been groped at some time. Perhaps it is part of the stupidity of 14 year old boys and girls. But at least it can be a learning experience for girls; what boys to avoid and what situations to avoid. Part of learning how to navigate in the real and occasionally ugly world, I guess.”
Two generations ago, society told girls boys didn’t get to touch them without being married, as marriage was the only way that consent was established. Now society says, hey, kids, do whatever you like, it’s all super awesome fun. The notion that this has been good for girls is lunacy.
I watched the whole thing and live blogged at Althouse. I watched the CSPAN feed at CTH, no commentators.
My wife came and went during the day. She is angrier than I am.
I thought that Ford is a troubled woman who probably has “recovered memories” from therapy.
Today, some lies are coming out. The house remodeling she used to explain why she was in “couples therapy” in 2012, actually happened in 2008 and is a rental house, not the residence.
The fear of flying was another.
She claims PTSD but a psychologist I know agrees that PTSD involves the victim ruminating about the details constantly and they do not forget those details. They keep them up at night.
Also, apparently the guy that Ed Whelan identified, who looked like Kavanaugh, was a boy friend of hers and she has been protecting him. He may have done it.
Too many questions.
I think the hearings were a disaster for Democrats. Single women, who are their base, will agree with them but they would anyway. I think they alienated a lot of swing voters.
I think giving women the vote was a mistake. Fight me.
Dan, my wife would agree with yours, but then she is a conservative Republican voter. I happened to hear a very brief part of the testimony, where the accuser stated that she was “100%” confident that Kavanaugh was the perpetrator of the vile deed. But she only recalled this event from “therapy” after more than 3 decades, couldn’t remember where or when it happened, constantly changed her story, etc. The “100%” answer was preposterous and convinced me that she was lying for “the cause”. She’s Anita Hill, Jr., and the Lefty sisterhood will fall for this scam too. I realize that the Republican political strategy was to be very congenial and sympathetic toward this woman, but I would have preferred that the Republican female prosecutor take an approach of nicely, politely destroying her and her credibility. I’ll add that today’s WSJ had a big, front page picture of the accuser alongside Kavanaugh, with a huge “100%” caption prominently featured on Ford’s picture. The “news” section of the WSJ continues to reek.
I can’t claim to be a strong woman, or even a woman, but Chrissie’s Lies (with apologies to Steely Dan) have triggered a thought. I guess it is ok these days to be triggered?
Some years ago, I worked with a very interesting scientist who had been studying human perception. He concluded that the human brain has evolved to be very good at ignoring background “noise”, recognizing patterns, identifying anomalies, and projecting trends. But … the brain’s natural time frame is a few minutes — ideal for hunting. If events are faster or slower than that natural time frame, the brain is likely to miss the patterns and anomalies. He was working on visualization software to compress or stretch out events to this natural few minute time frame, thereby allowing our brains to assess them with our native abilities.
Put yourself back in the position of the post-WWII Soviet Union, struggling with the issue of how to bring down the stronger & wealthier democracies which faced it. We know now that senior levels of government, academia, media in the West were liberally salted with Communist sympathizers. The obvious way to bring down a democracy is Divide & Conquer — using the democratic process itself to undermine the nation state.
The natural vehicle in the US for this approach was the Democrat Party, although in those distant days it was more of a “Hand Up” party than the “Hand Out” monstrosity it has now become. The Democrats had somehow done a good job of capturing the vote of African-Americans — despite the Democrat history of being pro-slavery, Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow. Race was a good way to divide a society — but there were simply not enough minorities to undermine democracy.
To increase the division in a democratic society, then why not try to drive a wedge between males & females?
Step One would be to promote sexual licentiousness — fairly easy to accomplish, given the hormones pouring through both male & female teenage baby boomers. And Step Two would be to promote a wedge issue like abortion, which would get a lot of support from women fearful of the consequences of the sexual licentiousness in which they were encouraged to participate. It was an unexpected bonus to this long-term plan when abortion was “legalized” by the unelected Supreme Court exceeding its Constitutional mandate, rather than through the debate surrounding legislative action. This set the stage for undermining the Rule of Law essential to a democracy. Other governmental actions which facilitated the breakdown of the family also contributed to driving a wedge between men and women.
By pitting women against men, Divide & Conquer is achieving the aim the old Communists had of collapsing the democracies from within. Since the Soviet Union imploded during the course of this long-term plan, the unexpected winners from the weakening of western democracies will likely be either Muslim jihadists or Chinese fascists.
If we had recognized what was being done to us, would we have ended up in the sorry divided position we are in today?
I think the hearings were a disaster for Democrats. Single women, who are their base, will agree with them but they would anyway. I think they alienated a lot of swing voters.
I think the Dems’ tactics may bring out more R than D votes, especially in politically mixed parts of the country.
As I had said before – I will entertain the possibility that Blasey-Ford did have an unfortunate sexual experience as a teenager, and whatever treatment she has had for whatever her problem is, has not helped her in the least. That Kavanaugh seems to have been a complete and total Boy Scout/Mr. Clean since forever, does not help her case either.
I am beyond disgusted with the actions of the mainstream press, and with the screaming establishment feminist types at this point. At the very least, they have cynically exploited and encouraged the delusions of a woman with serious mental problems.
Well, I suppose Blasey-Ford will be rewarded with a book deal and a Lifetime channel movie out of it. At the very least, a guest spot on “The View.”
“Bishop” Flake and crime family member Murkowski have decided to go left and support the Democrats’ delay tactics.
The FBI had the matter referred and it went nowhere as they have no facts to investigate.
No date. No place. No witnesses who agree with her.
This is a game and Republicans always lose these games.
Brian…”Two generations ago, society told girls boys didn’t get to touch them without being married, as marriage was the only way that consent was established.”
I don’t think this was true even in the 1920s and 1930s. There were huge differences across subcultures, of course, but my perception is that “necking” and “petting” were quite common, often but not always stopping short of intercourse.
I don’t know if I’m a strong woman, but the sixties were a terrible time for girls with raging hormones – and I was there and thought of myself as quite, well, liberated. What we thought was liberating made us vulnerable & riven and what we thought restricting protected us & kept us whole. (Even then I thought the feminists appeared to be drama queens and whiners, but that’s probably the mid-western rather than the common sense in me.)
Yes, the women I know are furious – not least because some have husbands, brothers, or just friends. The thought that any of them could be destroyed by gossip is enraging. When the press corps asked Trump what was he saying to young men, he responded obliquely but of course what the Democrats are saying (and have been saying) is vote for them, vote for the issues they define as women’s issues (not necessarily of course what women see as women’s issues) and it doesn’t hurt if you organize rape trains; don’t vote as we wish and see the world as someone like Kavanaugh does and a lifetime of respect and empowering women can be devastated by one opponent and one woman – confused or political or just a drama queen.
I also think women may be more furious because all our lives we have seen women employ their tongues to slash as men have with their hands. I have only lately begun to realize that I’ve done a lot of that in my life – creating anecdotes and narratives that are fun to tell and that I draw some lesson or other from. That in itself is part of making sense of our world. But it can also hurt others when the truth or at least the perspective was personal, intense, and not mine. Needless to say, I’ve never thought of beating someone else up, But using another’s life as reality when it might more sensibly and sensitively be presented as a fictional interpretation is not attractive.
And so, women are more sensitive to the injustice – though few, I suspect, know others who go as far as to promote a creepy porn lawyer with an absurd tale.
I am also glad that on there has been noting of the nature of the groping. Sure its creepy. But awkward guys in high school were awkward. (That a woman would have a lifetime of trauma from groping strikes me, too, as a bit absurd. This was not a rape, though it is described as one by the Democrats. And if she had reported it, I’m not sure how seriously it would have been taken in 1982 (no clothes off, you are at a party where you appear to be the only girl, you came and left voluntarily) and after it was reported and if anyone had been convicted, it would have been expunged when the boys turned 18, wouldn’t it have? I also suspect my parents would have asked what I was doing there and why in the world would I have gone into that bedroom.
Infantilizing is what the left does – whether it is in feminist terms or those of the Palestinian refugees or . . . well, wherever people are deeply unhappy a leftie offers the anti-solace of telling them it is somehow another’s fault. And I suspect this woman was and is deeply unhappy.
David: True, the societal rules weren’t always followed, of course. But they were there, and surely protected girls from unwanted advances. My guess is that things were much less likely to advance far without it being 100% clear it was what she wanted. Now there are no societally imposed boundaries, so boys try to go as far as they can and girls have to do the stopping themselves, with no strong backup from universally accepted social norms. Hence things like “every female has been groped at some time.”
I picked up on the same thing Owen did — Ms. Ford saying that she is “100% certain” that Kavanaugh was her assailant. The woman is a professor of psychology, and presumably knows something about the field. In particular, she knows that decades-old uncorroborated memories are often incorrect. She could be “very” certain, but a professional psychologist could never be 100% certain, because she would know that her own brain just might be playing tricks on her, as all brains do. She is either lying, or incapable of analyzing her own thoughts honestly.
One side effect of this – being from California and having to chose between 2 Democrats for Senator (thanks to revamped primary laws where the top vote getters are on the ballot regardless of party) – no Republican on the ticket – my mother was going to vote for Feinstein as the lesser of 2 evils. The other guy is like Kamela Harris.
Now this has made her so damned mad she will vote for neither.
Having kept this for – what – 2 months _ and now just releasing it it is a cynical ploy. I wonder how many Republican votes Feinstein will lose over this?
Giving the incident happened 36 years ago , mis Ford claimed its her civic duty to com forward now!!
But he is a judge before now and he hold really high profile ranking she shoud spoke before if she believe of her civic duty as she claimed
Mis Ford remind me with Nayirah Kuwaiti girl testimony after Saddam ivaded Kuwiste
In the end its turn all fabricated and lies…….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LmfVs3WaE9Y
Is this some sort of variant of Munchausens or a pathological hero complex?
Keep in mind to have deliberately fabricated this story and to utterly try to destroy an innocent party suggests someone who is exceptionally vile and malignant.
Or, did she think her poison pen letter would be the end of it, and then was trapped and threatened for lying to a Congress person?
It’s the broken glass scenario again for me. I will vote a straight Republican ticket, damn it. It’s not just the father, uncles, brothers, nephews, sons, grandsons, I have in my life, but, that I have no doubt, they would make the same sort of accusations against me, if I was in their way.
I listened to her testimony on the radio. I thought I had accidentally tuned in to NPR. All that uptalk and vocal fry. How does a woman who grew up in the DC area end up sounding like a valley girl? At the very least she is extremely suggestible.
But I think it’s worse than that. I think she was running a narrative created by psychologists and lawyers. Any time she was asked a question not in the narrative she had a memory loss.
A lot of women will identify with her story. That’s by design. They’re being played.
“I think she was running a narrative created by psychologists and lawyers.” – I believe Michael K. has been pounding the table on this since the beginning.
Well, I suppose Blasey-Ford will be rewarded with a book deal and a Lifetime channel movie out of it. At the very least, a guest spot on “The View.”
She’s already made over a half million on her GoFundMe campaign https://www.gofundme.com/help-christine-blasey-ford
That alone will more than cover her fear of flying therapy.
I think the Dems’ tactics may bring out more R than D votes, especially in politically mixed parts of the country.
Flake has pretty much cancelled out that effect.
What happens next is going to be crucial for GOP turnout.
If the delay goes beyond next week, all bets are off.
Personally, I would hold the vote saying that ‘We gave them a chance” and make everybody vote.
The Ford handlers will object and try to delay. Avenatti might even find another nut.
Vote !
There’s going to be a vote. Unfortunately the GOP majority is extremely slim, so the likes of Flake have to be catered to. I said the other day I think he wants his thumb’s-down moment, but if he does that after getting his way on this, it will look really bad, and I don’t see how he could justify it. I don’t see what the real risk here is. The FBI isn’t going to do anything other than amend the background check file in some miniscule way. CNN may take creepy pr0n lawyer guy seriously, but the FBI doesn’t have to. He’s out of committee, so we don’t have to do any of that nonsense anymore. The FBI will give Flake and the few others with him cover to say they’re in. And if they do vote no, then that should be even more motivation to vote GOP and get a bigger majority, not less.
To make a generalization, the root of the problem is that all too many women in modern US society are delusional. They they think that they can not only eat their cake, but they can continue to keep it up high on the shelf for impromptu high worship whenever they want others to do it. Trouble is, ladies, you can’t have it both ways: Either you are equal to men, or you are in need of protection. You can’t pick and chose which status you want when it is convenient for your desires, not can you make individual accommodations for yourselves at your whim. You want to run with the boys, it is an all-or-nothing proposition.
many women in modern US society are delusional.
No dont think so?
Let go to “ Me To” copaning with Harvey Weinstein accuser and Bourdain’s ex Asia Argento
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6077381/Asia-Argento-paid-380k-young-actor-accused-sexually-assault.html
To reinforce and flesh out what I’m getting at with the above post…
Much of the issue between women and men in the US today stems from this illegitimate dichotomy between them: Women (in general) have stated they want full equality, and have been granted what we could term the “secular” overt trappings thereof. The trouble is, they (again, in general…) also want to maintain the special privileges and social benefits of still being a weaker, protected class.
And, here’s where this is happening right now, in regards to Kavanaugh’s pillory: Let us posit, for a moment, that I am a small, straight man, a prototypical “twink” in shape and appearance. I go with a small group of men I know to be sexually active gay males, typical “bears” as they might have it. I’ve given all the appearances of being “interested”, shall we say, and then experience a groping. Nothing more, no rape, no penetration… Just a groping that I put an end to by way of departing the scene.
Suppose I then wait 35 years, and claim that one of the “bears” raped me; what is the general response of society going to be?
Yeah; don’t make me laugh. I might never stop. Society sure as hell won’t stop laughing at me, were I to actually be in that situation.
That’s what Blasey-Ford basically did, and because she’s a woman, she expects and receives social protections and reactions that simply are not available to a male of any kind–Why? Consider the different responses to the men now coming out and making claims about Kevin Spacey, for example, to those women who similarly made assertions about Harvey Weinstein.
Because, the b*****s of this nation expect to be able to eat their cake, and still have it. This is a product of their essential delusion, in that they think they can have the rights of males without undertaking the responsibilities and obligations, while maintaining the protections granted them heretofore as a weaker class, due automatic protection and special consideration by all and sundry males.
In the Venn diagram of life, you can’t be a member of those two utterly separate classes, and maintain the same rights and privileges: Either you are a member of a protected class that the other will unhesitatingly die to protect, or you are not.
Too many American women want it both ways, and that’s what’s screwing the whole thing up between the sexes. You cannot be a “strong, independent woman”, and simultaneously howl that a big, mean boy groped you at a party where you willingly went 35 years ago, claiming was a sexual assault.
Even supposing that Kavanaugh did grope Blasey-Ford, where’s the rape? Did he pursue her, catch her, tear her clothes off, then penetrate her for his sexual gratification? Which is it, ladies? Are you so weak and frail that a bit of rough exploration is considered sexual assault? In male circles, that kind of rough-housing is called “Monday”.
I guaran-damn-tee you that if I were to come forward and claim that, say, Kevin Spacey had done the same to me at some point in my life? I’d be laughed out of the station house, were I to report it, and my congressional delegation would be like “Uhm… Yeah, see, here’s the thing… That’s no big deal…”.
Such is “male privilege” in our times.
In reality, the only person who could even make that a misdemeanor assault in our culture, and make it stick, would be a woman. Because… “Special”.
And, that’s not a state of affairs that is going to last, ladies. You’d better figure it the f**k out, and decide which it is, because the weak only maintain the privileges of being a protected class so long as the strong maintain forebearance and are willing tolerate your schizophrenic little delusions of grandeur. Either you’re equals, and participate in the scrum of life on the same terms the rest of us do, or you’re automatically regarded as protected by one and all. Not both, whenever you so whimsically chose.
It might work, if those of you who truly wanted equal status were willing to tattoo “Strong, independent woman” on your foreheads as a signal, and then you’d automatically be treated just like the boys, but so long as you want what amounts to special rights and privileges only when it’s convenient to you, well… It ain’t going to work.
The essential problem here is the one that has existed in the way the military treats women. You have a class, female, who enlists and offers to put their lives on the line to protect society alongside the young males–So long as it’s beneficial to them. Feces hits the fan, and then a bunch of those “women” (using the term loosely; I have other terms more suitable, but inappropriate to this venue) use the special privileges unique to their kind to get out of actually doing the service those benefits were supposed to be exchanged for.
And, if you don’t think there haven’t been a bunch of “women” who deliberately got themselves pregnant to get out of deployments, you’d be delusionally wrong. Hell, I’ve seen them use it to get out of onerous jobs they didn’t like, after getting a lot of expensive training.
Shit won’t work, yo… And, when a consensus is reached among the men they’re taking advantage of with all this crap is finally reached, one of two things will happen: Either the girls of the world will lose their dual-class status, or those men are gonna simply opt out of dealing with the little cunni. I’m thinking that may be why so many men are opting out of marriage and participation in society; when all the signalling is that women are superior in status (and, what else are they, when one can make a claim 35 years out of context, and bend the entire Congress to her immature whim?), and automatically accorded all the rights and benefits which used to belong only to males, while undertaking none of the inherent responsibilities and obligations? What do you suppose that signalling tells them, about their place in society, when they’re the only ones required to register for the draft, with full punitive measures in place if they don’t?
It’s a telling thing, about the women of this country, that this iniquitous state of affairs still exists some forty years after the legislation was put into place. Which is it ladies–Are you full citizens, liable for all the responsibilities and duties, or are you instead parasitical gold-diggers looking out only for yourselves? As a group, you’d better be looking at this, and doing something about it–Or, you’re all going to wind up in a situation that will be much uglier than it is right now.
The fact is, you want to be in a de facto position of utter superiority in society, which is the state of affairs we have today… Well, you’re going to have to earn it to keep it, because reality is, the boys ain’t gonna play. I’ve watched this play out in microcosm, with my nieces and nephews on the playground: The little girls who want to run everything, tell everyone what to do? After a bit, when the other kids (mostly boys) get tired of their bossy shit, they find themselves playing alone, and then come whining to the adults to try to force the other kids to play with them. You can see this same syndrome playing out around us in society, and the same things are happening on a macro-scale, with very similar effect.
You want to maintain this crap, you’re going to be finding yourselves having to play alone, and maintain the castle walls all by your lonesome selves, because the men who might have been your partners in this endeavor got tired of holding the shitty end of the stick for all of your cute little fantasies about life and how to live it.
Two unrelated thoughts:
1. The week-long delay will allow squishy Republicans and endangered Democrats to see how the testimony is polling. If the voters are as pro-Kavanaugh as some of us think, that may be enough to hold the Republicans firm (except maybe Flake, since he’s ‘retiring’) and push other Democrats besides Manchin into the ‘yes’ group. If anything comes out that casts further doubts on Ford’s honesty, sanity, or decency, all the more so. You know they’re all frantically begging their pollsters for reliable numbers right now.
2. Decent Californians might want to hold their noses and vote for Feinstein. That hard-core leftie she’s running against is 99% likely to serve a full term if elected. She seems a 50-50 chance at best. She’s 85 years old, so there’s a fair chance she will die of natural causes in the next 6 1/3 years, or develop medical problems that prevent her from staying in office. If she does a McCain and hangs on to her seat for six months or more when she’s too sick to show up for a vote, that’s just as good for Republicans. Given her many crimes (gross financial corruption, shielding a known Chinese agent, making a mockery of the Senate’s advise-and-consent role) and Trump’s admirable vindictiveness, there’s also a fair chance she will resign in disgrace or (if she lacks the sense of shame to do that) be impeached and removed from office, assuming she’s reelected. Seeing her hauled away in handcuffs from a Senate office building would obviously be even more enjoyable than if it were from a retirement mansion. That last may seem unlikely, but it’s not totally out of the question.
What Kirk said, in both posts, and yes, there have been women thinking about this as well – it came up in the military from the time that women first began doing the unconventional jobs. A number of the women I served with in the early 1970s were the first or second women in their specialty, and they worked their guts out to qualify for it, to do the job and meet the expectations of the guys they served with. And then there would be the girls who found themselves in those jobs, and began wining and crying about it all, which infuriated the first lot of women no end. I had a female friend who was one of the first two Air Force field wiremen in their unit. Behold the third woman assigned was one of those shrinking souls who cried about breaking a nail or some such cr*p … and when the first two got sick of the third woman shirking her job and shaking her t*ts at their supervisor – they beat her up.
Handle cr*p like being groped at a party – or stay the hell home. Don’t claim “I am woman, hear me roar” one minute, and whine like a little girl the next because some a-hole touched your boobs or something.
There was a lot to criticize the sci-fi writer Marion Zimmer Bradley about in her personal life (and in her books too!) but the one thing that she did outline very thoughtfully was the position of women on the planet Darkover who were the so-called “Free Amazons,” who specifically took an oath to abjure the privileges of women – to be sheltered, protected, supported by fathers and husbands — and to take on the obligations of supporting themselves, as free, responsible agents. There was an oath involved, I think they wore knives and male garb; they could marry informally, but not under the strict form. I used to wish that there was something like that for modern-day women in the real world. Take the oath and be a free, independent, responsible citizen, or stay on your pedestal and be taken care of.
@SGT. Mom,
You are definitely not one of the women I’m thinking of, when writing those posts. Nor would your two wiremen be.
What’s been really destructive with all this is that the whinging b*****s of the world, male and female both, have weaponized the consideration and special privileges of what used to be the feminine purview, using that leverage to gain the upper hand in all arguments–And, nobody has addressed them directly and clearly to say “Bullshit”, either. Something I just saw goes to outline this crapfest of cultural change very clearly:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3573927/Agony-50-50-mum-Women-held-upper-hand-custody-battles-fathers-winning-EQUAL-access-mothers-struggling-cope.html
Now, wait a minute, here… Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this a perfect illustration of what I’m saying? In days of yore, women were presumed to be the more nurturing parent, and could spend more time with the kids, so the theory was to give them most of the child rearing right, while the divorced husband was expected to support her in that endeavor with more money than time. So, now that the shoe is on the other foot, and fathers are wanting more actual, y’know, child-rearing responsibility, that’s somehow… Wrong? WTF?
Personal observation of life as it actually happens leads me to think that only a complete fool of a man marries or has kids in this society. It’s a rigged game; you might as well go throw your money away in Las Vegas. You cannot win; the women you might marry can destroy your family and take everything you work for over the course of your life, just because they don’t feel “fulfilled”. Where the hell is the equality in that?
Female friend of mine was, interestingly and counter-intuitively, a victim of this sort of thing–Her cheating POS of a husband up and decided that he was tired of her, and moved for divorce to enable his marriage to a younger and hotter version of her. Now, what was interesting was that when it came to the actual divorce proceedings in court, his lawyer (who had worked dozens of cases for women doing the same sort of thing for similar trivial reasons…) found that the judge was entirely unsympathetic, and basically had the entire case blow up on the husband and his lawyer. They got nothing out of the divorce, and she got it all. Now, you’d like to think “Ah, justice for the woman…”, right? But, the sad reality is, and this is exactly what the judge told her privately, that if she’d been a male, she’d have gotten the exact diametric opposite sort of treatment.
Which, TBH, kinda pissed her off. But, who’s gonna look a gift horse like that, in the mouth? She took her win, and walked off, financially intact.
But… Had she been a male? She’d have been screwed. Automatically, and with a thoroughness. Just because her partner “got tired of her”.
How’s that for equity, again, ladies? You wonder why men don’t want to commit, when they see things like that? You call it a win for the sisterhood, in all too many cases, but the reality is that the long-term picture is actually defeat, because the boys are learning you don’t play fair and are a complete bitch, to boot. Once the early testosterone years are behind them, most decide the tickle ain’t worth the scratch, and that’s why you see so many happily unmarried men doing their own thing on their own time, and not participating in family or raising the next generation.
The premise made with all this crap was that it would be better for both sexes; what the actual delivery has been…? Yeah; not quite what I and a lot of others were promised. It’s unsurprising that so many opt out; what’s actually most surprising is that so many are still credulously playing the game, until reality slaps the shit out of them in divorce court or elsewhere.
All this is incredible entertainment and does not make you look like adults in any way. Your best soap to date.
My daughter went to Karate for about 9 months and became feared in our little town. She does not suffer fools gladly. Now she is sending my granddaughter to Taekwondo:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lvEavCopm8AsNVFtEKjQTNSUoliHOfP8
She is pleased. ;)
That’s my solution as a concerned parent, hers too.
Here’s PenGun, jumping up and down while cheering wildly, high up in the cheap seats of the Colosseum
as the pathetic Christians are torn limb from limb by the lions. “More” he yells, “Bring us more.”
For PenGun is not possessed of the ‘herd mentality’. PenGun is the New Man. The Adult.
PenGun is a classic troll. Contributing nothing and only seeking attention.
In reality, the only person who could even make that a misdemeanor assault in our culture, and make it stick, would be a woman. Because… “Special”.
Has anyone else noticed the astounding incidence of adult women have sex with teenaged boys ?
The usual reactions is “What a lucky guy!”
Then comes the baby. These women are crazy. Some are married. Many are teachers.
Teaching used to be a common occupation for young college women while they waited for the husband’s career to take off.
No more. The Education majors are the bottom quintile of college students in IQ and ability.
Oh well. We are just Canadians. and so are amused by simple things. I believe she is so pleased, because she gets to hit people. ;)
The huge difference in outcome when going to court for these child-molesting teachers is also telling–Rarely, if ever, do any of them get a judicial outcome that even comes vaguely close to what a male teacher receives for like cases. And, the rest of the female interest groups do nothing about it.
And, do please note who society looks at as more of a threat to children; it’s always the male, isn’t it? When you ask someone what a child molester looks like, they always picture some perved-out male; never do they describe Mary Kay Letourneau to you. Hell, they won’t even admit that someone like my old high-school art teacher, who openly and brazenly was boinking teenage boys she was teaching for something like 20 years, as a serial ephebophile. She was, though…
True equality will only be actualized when a woman gets charged with the same crimes a man does for the same offense, and then receives the same penalty. That’s not going to happen, though–Because “special”.
We’ve created for ourselves a society defined by a whole range of Venn diagrams, but the most iniquitous, and the one most damaging to the culture as a whole is that of “responsible and accountable group” vs. those who are not. If you’re a white male, it’s always your fault, no matter what–Black and minority males are only vaguely responsible and accountable for a limited range of things, and never against anything they do to a white male. Women, of any stripe, are never accountable or responsible for anything.
It’s a state of affairs that cannot last; will not last, and will result in the disintegration of what society we still have. The biggest reason for it is that the people who are held responsible and accountable are starting to wake up to the fact that this responsibility and accountability is all a one-way street, ending at their door. Lots of them are just opting out of it all, and refusing to play the game.
That’s the passive-aggressive response, and there’s going to be a significant fraction of the group that takes the non-passive path. And, unfortunately, the “leaders and traditions” which have betrayed them are not going to be who they look to for leadership and ideas, either. My guess is that we’re only a generation or two away from the full realization of a situation that would be ideal for something like an Islamic awakening, or something else akin to that, which removes power and authority from any element in society that has not undertaken the commensurate responsibility and accountability. Either that, or we’re going to have our asses handed to us by someone like the Chinese who recognize our societal weakness.
Following on from Kirk’s impassioned rhetoric — it would be useful to ask ourselves the standard question: Cui bono?
Who benefits from the situation that Kirk describes so well? Clearly, a very small number of women, mainly daughters of the upper middle class, have done nicely thank you. Look at the number of female CEOs of major companies, and the number of female senior government bureaucrats, and the number of female academics (including the delightful Chrissie), and the number of female politicians. Promotions are easier when only those with breasts can be considered for the position. But for most women, the changes that Kirk describes have made their lives more difficult in a variety of ways, and have tended to make them more dependent on the Political Class. And for most men, the situation has become distinctly worse, driving an unnatural wedge between men & women.
I return to the thought that the obvious beneficiary of the distrust that has been created between men and women in the US is an external enemy. We may be seeing the long-term consequences of the very long range Gramscian march through the institutions plotted by the old Communists of the now-defunct Soviet Union. My hope is that if we all — men & women — could recognize that we are being manipulated into tearing down our own country, then we might be able to respond constructively.
You don’t have to be a canadian commie troll to see that the behavior of the United States Senate these last few weeks is a complete and total embarrassment.
Gavin, I would love to have an external enemy to blame for all of this, but the fact is, we’ve done it to ourselves over a period of generations.
The roots go back to the late 19th Century, when the whole “Mother as saint” thing got started. You had this entire cultural movement that prepped the ground for today’s disastrous relationship between the sexes, and nobody saw it for what it was creating the conditions for. You can trace it out with all the sanctimonious crap that got started back then, like “Mother’s Day” and all the rest. The whole thing is clearly there, if you know what to look for. It’s innocuous vapidity, on first glance, but when you consider the unstated and unconscious implication of it all, well… White feathers, my sweet ass. Go fight your own damn battles, ladies–Don’t try to guilt men into it all.
First, the whole deification of the Mother; then, the idea that giving women the vote (entirely unearned, I might add, by way of increased social duties and responsibilities), and from that, the whole slow-motion collapse began. Once male politicians started pandering to the female vote, and politicians had to start worrying about “looking good” for the ladies, the crash was inevitable. Their first victory was getting the vote; followed up with the social “reform” efforts like criminalization of narcotics, alcohol, and “smut”, whatever the hell that was supposed to be. And, all of that idiocy came in on the backs of women voters who both were manipulating men, and being manipulated by them.
The distortions crept in with the 17th Amendment, and kept right on going to the present day, when we have the Federal government as some sort of national super-father to the ladies, able to give them everything they ever wanted, and boy, have they wanted it. I seriously doubt that we’d be where we are today, in a lot of areas, had we told the little darlings “No, you get quite enough political influence by emotionally blackmailing the men in your life…”.
You go down the list of “feminine accomplishments” in legislation, and what you find is a litany of disaster, starting with Prohibition. You wonder why things are so f**ked up? Start asking the women in your life who and why they vote for. If your family is like mine, the disturbing fact is that there’s a huge swathe of them who vote based solely on appearance. “Oh, he looks nice…”, and never mind the asshole’s actual policies or performance.
You wonder how Bill Clinton kept getting elected? Women. They all wanted to f**k him, and their votes were proxies for that. The co-dependency between the abuser and the abused was never more clear than with Bill Clinton’s hold over the minds of “strong, independent women” like the multitudinous female apologists for him, starting with Hillary.
How else to explain Nina Burleigh, who famously said she’d “…be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”. Cunni like that have been effecting “change” in politics since we made the mistake of giving them the vote, and we’re suffering the third- and fourth-order consequences of that error today.
The “gift” of the franchise to women was a mistake. What should have happened, instead, was that we set the conditions such that the franchise only went to those (male and female both) who were worthy of it. People who offer up blowjobs to reward political scum like Clinton for their preferred policies are emphatically not worthy, and would be disenfranchised in a sane world. With Clinton, you had a creature who abused women, and yet still got the majority their loyalties and votes–How can you possibly argue that the woman voter as a class is at all rational, knowing that?
I don’t think we should have ever treated the right to vote on public policy with the casual insouciance we did. How the hell is it that we have allowed a situation where fully one half of the population can vote to send the other half off to die, and that half isn’t subject to the same obligations of high-risk service? What. The. Hell.
From day of birth onward, the male is automatically a second-class citizen, and his life is not his own, by statute and custom. The female, though? She’s a special flower, not subject to the same rules, duties, or obligations. And all too many of them take advantage of that fact to screw over the men in their lives with reckless abandon, gleefully accruing advantages left and right.
You watch what happens with Kavanaugh, and recognize that this is the denouement of things that started back in the last century, with all that “fairer sex on a pedestal” trend in society. Today we have female teachers sexually exploiting the students entrusted to them, and then being treated as though they were just silly little girls, incapable of being responsible or being held accountable. That’s just one example you can pull up out of all the inequities faced by men under their new and politically-oh-so-correct masters, and you could come up with dozens more, especially when you start looking at family law courts.
The starting point for all of our problems is embedded in those 19th Century ideals and values; women were not to be treated as equals, but as worshiped idols. Motherhood was cause for acclaim; fatherhood? Well, that abusive bastard better get his ass out there and make a goddamn living for them all, now hadn’t he? Oh, and by the way? The sunuvabitch better not stop off at the saloon to relax with a beer, either…
It started from there, on false premises, and it’s only gotten worse down the years, through the accrual of more and more “privileges” for the special little flowers of womanhood.
All too many of whom would better be termed “conniving acquisitive female dogs”.
The whole idea of equality between the sexes has to be built on a basis of true equality, or the entire edifice eventually comes crashing down. What you’re seeing today is the first bits of the death-wobble that will soon come–The canaries in the coal mines are all those men who are opting out of family creation, and all those women who can’t find “good men” for husbands. Never mind why, just contemplate the dysfunction in society that has created this, and consider the eventual consequences. The basic function of a civilized society is to foster the creation more people to continue that society by way of protecting and encouraging the formation of stable, successful families–And, we can’t even manage that, under the current conditions. Where, oh where, did we screw up?
What’s really messed up about this is that, reading what I’ve posted here, I come across as a misogynist even to myself, and that’s not where I’m coming from. I’m just pissed as hell that it has all come to this, and I resent the state of the world about me that’s created these issues. I’ve never abused a woman in my life, and yet I’m automatically seen as some flesh-demon to all too many of them, worthy of automatic denigration and punishment. I can’t even stop to deal with a situation where some little girls are wandering around unsupervised, and not have to worry about being accused as a molester of some form. I actually had that happen to me, not that long ago, and I felt forced to consult with a neighbor over it. We were both in a quandary about what to do… Intervene? Look the other way? What if we did something, and got accused? My eventual solution was to call my sister-in-law, alert her to the situation, and let the women deal with it.
How the hell did we let it get this bad, and nobody noticed or did anything to fix it? Why are we just throwing more and more coal into the fire, and ignoring the rising pressure gauges on the boiler?
I think a lot of the problems stem from the basic differences between the sexes in handling intra-sexual conflict–With a male, you offend, you get punched in the mouth. It’s almost always physical. Women, on the other hand? You offend, and it’s all social–You’ll become the subject of lengthy social vendetta, and have verbal knives thrust into your back. Anything goes, with no restraint, no rules. This is deadly to a society like ours, when little girls take the weapons and habits of the schoolyard into adult life, and apply them without restraint.
Somebody commented that this Kavanaugh thing was like the entire country was suddenly back in high school, and I think that’s got more than a little accuracy. And, I blame the adult Mean Girls like little Miss Dianne Feinstein for making it so. She should never have been allowed to do what she’s done, and if that implies that giving women the right to vote was a mistake, well… You do the math. I look at women like her and Hillary Clinton, and I can’t help but feel this whole Women’s Suffrage thing was a really bad idea, because it sure has hell hasn’t produced the proud promise we were all led to believe it would.
You don’t have to be a canadian commie troll to see that the behavior of the United States Senate these last few weeks is a complete and total embarrassment.
I saw a Facebook meme yesterday that I thought hilarious. Caption was that we’ll replace the Senators with feces-throwing monkeys.
the idea that giving women the vote (entirely unearned, I might add, by way of increased social duties and responsibilities), and from that, the whole slow-motion collapse began. Once male politicians started pandering to the female vote, and politicians had to start worrying about “looking good” for the ladies, the crash was inevitable.
Remember the first state to give women the vote was Wyoming where women had to really pull their weight in family life.
Prohibition was part of the Progressive Party agenda, not just women.
The thing that really flipped US politics was TV. That was what elected Kennedy in 1960.
The first President to use radio effectively was Coolidge, not Roosevelt.
What we are seeing now is a rebellion of wealthy pampered women against married life and children. They want NO responsibility, while at the same time, demanding privileges that they think men have. They want to have woman in STEM without having to learn the math. Dumbing down curricula is part of the agenda. The SAT was the “Scholastic Aptitude Test” when I took it. It has been dumbed down and now is the “SAT” with no definition.
There is even a movement to get rid of when it was invented to allow the poor but capable student an equal chance to get into college without the “old boy network.” Affirmative Action has replaced the OBN with a conspiracy of the mediocrities. They always find each other and work to eliminate standards.
Then bridges fall down.
There is even a movement to get rid of the SAT when it was invented to allow the poor….
Those two words got deleted somehow.
Antonio Gransci certainly set the agenda of destroying the college curriculum and the entire structure of “Bourgeoise Culture.”
It’s interesting that some excellent books on Bourgeoise culture have been written by the transsexual Deirdre McCloskey.
“The thing that really flipped US politics was TV.”
And the internet has made things infinitely worse. I honestly think we’re seeing a generation of psychopaths. Humans don’t view what they see on a screen as being real. The people on the other end aren’t human. That’s why you can say horrific things that you would never say to an actual person. And having a camera on you at all times makes you think you’re the star of a movie, so it’s not just politicians who are acting out a role for an audience, but huge numbers of average citizens. Note that all the idiots who confront Republicans make sure that they are being recorded while doing so. So you have huge numbers of people who think they are the stars of their own personal movie, and everyone else isn’t an actual human, but an actor in that movie, and when those extras get their lines wrong, it causes them to completely lose their minds, just like actors in a play would do if audience members started jumping on stage—that’s not in the script!
Kirk — I agree with you wholeheartedly that we are doing this to ourselves. But that does not automatically rule out the possibility of a multi-generational process initiated long ago by an external enemy. Gramsci was not from the US! Remember the whole concept behind many Eastern martial arts — use the opponent’s own momentum to defeat him.
Agreed that universal suffrage is destroying democracy as a means of government. Now California Democrats want to give the vote to non-citizens in the US illegally! It is clear that voters should have skin in the game. You have a good idea that votes should be limited to those –women as well as men — who have earned it. But how do we make that happen, in a world where even death is no obstacle to a Democrat voting the party line?
It is hard to see a way forward from our current unsustainable situation that does not involve something as destructive as the War of Independence or the Civil War.
If there were to be a new American Civil War, then it would be more like the Spanish Civil War than the original US Civil War….because the fault lines do not now fall between geographies to anywhere near the extent that they did in the 1860s.
But how do we make that happen, in a world where even death is no obstacle to a Democrat voting the party line?
I am a fan of Neville Shute’s novels. In one of them titled, “In the Wet,” he proposes a weighted voting system.
It’s been years since I read it but he suggests extra votes for military service and taxes paid.
The novel is actually Shute’s prediction, from 1955, of what England and Australia would be like in the 1980s, 20 years after he died.
Still, an interesting idea but unlikely to merit attention by current politicians.
Interesting that Neville Shute proposed extra votes for those with skin in the game. The better known example is Heinlein’s much later Starship Troopers.
It is quite clear that our Ivy League types and their ilk have no respect for what they see as the antiquated concept of citizenship. After all, all the best people now are Davoise! The Political Class likes the idea of their supporters voting early and often — but they seem to be incapable of recognizing the long-term cost to them of that short-term advantage.
Since anything which is given away for nothing tends not to be valued, a more sustainable society would split citizenship from residency. Anyone born of US parents would have Residency, but Citizenship and the right to vote would have to be earned in some way. Military service, of course. Net taxpayer — yes. Married women bringing up children would have Citizenship, since they certainly have skin in the game; single mothers dependent on welfare — not so much.
There are lots of good ideas for putting our society back onto a sustainable path. But it won’t happen because we have a Political Class which benefits from the current dysfunctional system, and which has the power to squash every good idea. Eventually, the government debts that can never be paid and the government pension promises that can never be fulfilled will bring the system down. The people of the former Soviet Union went through that with much privation but no bloodshed — Let’s hope we are as fortunate.
Brian at 11:45 am said: “I don’t see what the real risk here is. The FBI isn’t going to do anything other than amend the background check file in some minuscule way.”
You’re kidding, right? Ford’s lawyer, Michael Bromwich, was a former inspector general within the DOJ/FBI. The careerists in the FBI are at risk from ongoing internal investigations (FISA, etc.). You don’t think they’ll be happy to work with Bromwich to skew the investigation to an end that disadvantages the president? There’s lots of opportunity for this investigation to go south.
There are lots of good ideas for putting our society back onto a sustainable path.
I can understand and sympathize with those who are so frustrated with female voters.
I think it is actually never married and divorced women. My ex-wife is also conservative but I have not heard anything about her opinion on this.
She was once slightly molested as a child when a delivery man ran his hand up her leg but that was no secret.
My present wife, who is my second and third wife (we were divorced for 25 years) is even angrier about the Kavanaugh thing than I am.
I tend to think this is an example of recovered memories, which tend to be vague and to be created during therapy. In adult women, the therapy is often for alcoholism, in college aged girls it is eating disorders.
The other factor are the lies about the house remodel that she says prompted the therapy.
It was in 2008 and the house appears to be a rental, not the residence. Two doors might suggest a duplex.
Then the ” fear of flying.” She flies all over the world for vacations.
I’d set the franchise on the question of whether or not you’re a successfully independent citizen, productively contributing to the future of society. If you’re reliant on others for your upkeep, whether by way of welfare or some other means, well… You don’t get to vote.
In other words, I’d turn the whole “No taxation without representation” idea around to where it makes sense–“No contribution to society, no say in how it runs”.
The way we have it set up, so that the unproductive elements of society can vote to rape the productive elements of the fruit of their labor is insane, and will not work out over the long term. It can’t, and that’s one of those “unfortunate facts” that keeps coming back, again and again.
To a degree, I’d also suggest that a way should be found to tie the franchise to the future effect of your current life: If you’re a doped-up drug addict whose sole contribution to society consists of consuming the largesse of others via welfare, and shitting on the sidewalk, welllll… No vote for you, unless you change your life around.
However, if you’re a woman who wants to remain a stay-at-home housewife, living off the labor of your husband, that’s a hell of a different sort of dependency, and there should be a means of recognizing that fact, as well as rewarding the behavior which is (hopefully…) creating the next generation. Raising kids is a hard job, and really ought to be considered the equivalent of full-time employment, in terms of determining someone’s dependency…
If you want to live your life child-free, and not raise the kids that will be taxed to support your ass in your elder years, you need to be paying higher taxes now to compensate, and should lose your right to vote on issues that are going to affect the lives of those kids. You emphatically should not be able to opt out of raising kids, and then vote in politicians who are going to commit the children of others to having to pay off trillions of dollars in debt, either.
I think there very badly needs to be a mechanism by which we can balance the inter-generational books, so to speak. You should not be able to do the things that have been done over the last few generations, particularly under the Obama crime crew. The current lot of crooks in office has committed future generations to paying off debts for trivial things in the here-and-now, things that are not going to benefit anyone in those generations. Going into debt to pay for something like the Grand Coulee Dam is one thing, because those that are committed to paying the dam off are going to have the use of it. That’s moral–What isn’t moral is to spend billions of dollars from the future to pay for subsidizing unproductive behavior today, or to run up markets to make speculators wealthy.
Unfortunately, nobody really thinks in these terms, and we should be.
We are mostly on the same page, Kirk. Something which lying Chrissie and the fake feminist movement have obscured is that a sustainable society has to be organized around the woman as mother. Women are key! As Mark Steyn has observed — The Future Belongs to Those Who Show Up. A sustainable society needs enough babies, and it needs those babies to be brought up to become productive citizens. The role of the mother is essential!
It is beyond understanding that women in the “Feminist” movement have denigrated the importance of the stay-at-home mother bringing up her children, and instead have lionized the childless career woman and the working mother who dumps her unfortunate baby in a crib factory while she spends long days in a cubicle farm. Simply not sustainable!
Perhaps the unhappiness so evident in women like lying Chrissie is that, at some deep level, they know they are not fulfilling the indispensable role that thousands of generations of evolution have prepared them for. There will always be women like Boadicea and Catherine the Great — and all power to them. But a society can survive without Marie Curies and Queen Elizabeth I — it cannot survive without mothers.
The NY Times is running an article termite colonies with no males.
No consideration of the reason why sexual reproduction evolved.
Tanya Dapkey, an entomologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said that there was much to learn from successful “societies in nature run without any input from males.”
Yup, that’s the agenda.
There is also in a related piece that these colonies may develop in locations where there are no enemies.
AmerIndians lived 10,000 years isolated from Old World diseases and their immune systems weakened as a result. Their descendents have fewer autoimmune diseases as a result.
But once exposed to Old World diseases, like smallpox, they were almost wiped out.
@ Mike K,
The way I heard that interpreted is that the New World human immune system was primed towards dealing with parasites more than diseases, not that they were any weaker than the Old World.
Another issue is that there were far fewer commensal animals kept in the New World; you don’t have the hothouses for disease you had in the Old World, where people kept varieties of animals right in their living quarters. There’s nothing like China’s agriculture, anywhere in the New World, where the pig/duck/people cycle for influenza hypercharges the disease as it swaps hosts.
I don’t think it’s particularly wise to frame things in terms of superiority, when the reality is more like “Better adapted to conditions”. Old World immune systems are apparently less adept at dealing with the heavy parasite loads encountered in a lot of New World environments, while the locals did just fine with those conditions.
“If you want to live your life child-free, and not raise the kids that will be taxed to support your ass in your elder years, you need to be paying higher taxes now to compensate,”
No. Let me keep the property taxes I pay for the schooling of other people’s children.
@Newrouter–Nope. You don’t get to free-ride on the backs of other’s children by way of voting yourself largesse from the public fisc. Like Angela Merkel, you’ve got no stake in the future, and thus have no say in it, either.
My personal opinion is that if you don’t reproduce, you’re opting out of civilization in a fundamental sense. That’s fine by me, but that also means you don’t get a say in what goes on in that future, or in the present.
What you want is immoral in the extreme–You’ve given no hostages to fortune, spent no gold to venture into the future, and yet… You think you have a right to have a say in how it’s all going to be run. No.
This is the fundamental breakdown in our civilization–Those who run it have no skin in the game. You go look at the elites, and start counting noses for how many have actually served, or whose kids have served. By and large, the participation rate in the military is enormously bigger in the demographic groups that aren’t getting a say in how things are to be run. Likewise, people without kids voting to do stupid crap like lock up resources from exploitation, and spend mind-numbing sums on things that aren’t long-term investments like infrastructure. Most of the Obama trillions of debt went to ephemeral crap that won’t make a dime back, like Solyndra. Why should you get to do that to the generations coming after you, enslaving them in debt-peonage to make your life easier?
I really am not going to blame a lot of the coming generations, who are the ones who will have to pay for all this bullshit, if they decide that they’re going to leave Great-Aunt Melody out on the metaphorical ice floes of the late 21st Century and onward. God knows, too many of the preceding generations have run up the bills so badly that they will, in a general sense, deserve that fate.
Kirk, you make some good points. There is no place more beset with parasites than Africa, though. I’m not sure that argument works.
My partner in practice spent four years in Libya as a lab tech in the Air Force. He was the Orange County expert on parasites., Every pathologist would call him when they found a new one.
The point about animals is a particularly good one. The new Americans killed off all the megafauna when they arrived.
The African slaves brought malaria and the anopheles mosquito with them. Neither were native,.
The north American got their revenge with Syphilis.
“@Newrouter–Nope. You don’t get to free-ride on the backs of other’s children by way of voting yourself largesse from the public fisc. Like Angela Merkel, you’ve got no stake in the future, and thus have no say in it, either.”
Right. So I must contribute to the degradation of society via funding public “education”? Dude the only way to kill this cancer is to kill big EDU!
@Newrouter,
You stated “No. Let me keep the property taxes I pay for the schooling of other people’s children.“, which ain’t exactly in line with your next post. The pitfalls of public education what we’re debating here with what I’m getting at–Society has chosen to fund the schools via property taxes. Everybody who owns property pays those. You don’t get an out because “No kids”. No doubt, you don’t mind those property taxes going to uses that you actually benefit from, either–What should the parents say about paying for things they can’t use, do you suppose?
Now, if society chose to pay for schools through parental fees, which was the case throughout history right up until the 20th Century, well… Then, you’ve got a case for it. So long as we’re gonna do it this way, you don’t.
You want to really get down to things, then there needs to be a toting up of generational debts. What was expended by the generations of your forebears that went into your education and then, what did you draw from the public resources they created? What did you create in turn, to pass on? What are you going to cost the children of others, in tax expenditures, when you’re no longer capable of working for yourself? In the grand scheme, are you a negative or a positive on the balance sheets of life?
My take isn’t so much a value judgment on your life or the lives of others, but the question is more “Are you returning as much as you take, in terms of resources?” At the end of your life, the balance sheet should show that you gave as much as you took, or gave back more. Anything else is fundamentally a theft from those who come after you, with the additional moral burden that you didn’t even have the balls to rob them face-to-face.
If you’re in balance, live your life how you will. I don’t care–But, if you don’t have kids, don’t come back in your dotage and expect the children of others to take care of you, either. Have the decency to acquire enough resources and save them to enable you to live out your elder years on your own terms, without recourse to using the state to force others to take care of you.
“But, if you don’t have kids, don’t come back in your dotage and expect the children of others to take care of you, either.”
Right. I have to pay for other people’s kids “education” but those children have no obligation to support me? Bless your heart.
@Newrouter,
Let’s see… Average property tax spending per household across the US is $2,197.00, of which varying fractions go towards education, depending on state. Average cost per day in a California nursing home is $267.00, totaling $97,455.00 for a year’s worth of care.
Granted, those are averages and proxies for costs, because there’s a bunch of crap left out like the subsidies Medicare gets from young taxpayers who aren’t bloody likely to ever participate in the programs, but the fact remains that you paying for educating your neighbor’s kids in school is a pittance compared to what the costs are going to be for those few kids that are paying taxes in your elder years. When Social Security was started, there were 16.5 workers per recipient during the 1950s. We’re down to 2.9, as of 2010, and the projections start getting really… Interesting, the further you go into the future. About the time I start drawing on the system, if I live that long, the ratio may well be 1:1, or even slightly reversed. How the hell that’s going to work out, I have no idea–But, the raw fact is, those kids you’re so proud of not having? They’re not going to be there to ease the burden on the ones who are.
What can’t go on, won’t go on. How all that gets worked out? I have no idea, but I can guarantee you that your blithely “child-free” attitude of today ain’t going to be earning you many points when piper asks his due. The math is not in your favor, because I really don’t see the people you’re expecting to pick up that burden doing so willingly. The euthanasia movement is likely to gain a lot of adherents among the coming generations. To be applied especially to those without issue to speak for them…
Not all children turn out well. Perhaps some parents should be taxed extra. Some people who don’t have children are extremely productive and pay much more in all kinds of taxes over their lives than does the average parent. Perhaps very productive childless people should receive tax rebates.
This controversy about property taxation is an artifact of govt-run schools and the system of property taxation that has evolved to fund them. Conservatives sometimes argue that tax systems should favor people who have children. That’s not much different than leftist arguments for graduated income taxation to favor people with lower incomes.
Using the tax code for social engineering per the values of a political consensus might do some good in a Rawlsian world with an omniscient, uncorruptable state. In the real world with imperfect information, corruption and shifting consensuses it might be better to minimize the use of the tax system for income and wealth redistribution and other purposes that are likely to lead to economically suboptimal outcomes. How about a tax system that minimizes complexity and disincentives to wealth creation and doesn’t try to nudge people’s behavior in politically approved directions? We would probably end up wealthier. People in wealthier societies have more and better options for retirement and their children’s education than do people in poorer societies.
No matter how you collect the taxes, any and all structuring that creates imbalances in between the generations is simply not going to work out over the long haul.
You could, for example, look at the societal malaise in Europe–Much of the issues over there stem from the fact that the welfare state locks young people into non-productive dead-ends for a lot of their lives, because the people in the system that are “above” them in age and precedence don’t get out of the way fast enough to enable the next generation of workers to get jobs and start their lives. This is one massive reason why the ethnic European birth rate is so damn low, well below replacement rate.
So, there you have one expression of the problems that stem from improperly set intergenerational transactions. You have kids, then you should either ensure that there’s a place for them to begin their lives, or you need to accept that you’re killing your society. The problem is soluble, but the issues require definition and actual solutions.
Here in the US, things aren’t quite that bad–Yet. They will be, because of the idiots we’ve put into office who insist on paying today’s bills with tomorrow’s money, plus interest. I don’t know what these geniuses are thinking, but there’s going to be a point where the whole house of cards comes tumbling down, unless a miracle happens. About the only thing I can think of that’s realistically possible is an enormous investment and return in space-based industry and resource extraction, and even if that does happen, it’s going to be a narrowly-run thing on the timing of it all.
We badly need to start tracking these things, and paying attention to them; creation of inter-generational debts should be banned, and you should not be able to sentence your grandchildren(or, worse yet, the grandchildren of others…) to indentured servitude in order to pay your debts.
The problem is the welfare state. Let people keep more of their own money, give them back more responsibility for their own lives, and they will create more wealth and make better retirement and other decisions for themselves than third parties can. Taking people’s money and funneling it back to your favored group, whether parents or poor people, is likely to have a worse overall outcome. And as a practical political matter, since many voters are not parents, it’s going to be difficult to sell the idea of favoring parents.
The welfare state is Lyndon Johnson’s legacy to us. Kennedy was going to s=drop him from the 1964 ticket.
Life Magazine had an editorial meeting to finalize the special issue they had for the next week. The meeting was held on the day Kennedy was assassinated.
The issue was canceled.
We are living with the result. It is worth reading Caro’s biography of John, all four volumes.
He is still working on the fifth. I hope he lives long enough to finish it.
The welfare state was and is popular, and was even more of a cinch once the Supreme Court gave all political power to cities in their one person one vote travesties, which of course not coincidentally lines up exactly with when these things got written into law…
Economics, we have strayed. Most of your massive debt comes from your massive military and the endless police actions all over the world. That needs to stop, and will.
“Most of your massive debt comes from your massive military and the endless police actions all over the world”
Completely divorced from reality, as usual.
“@Newrouter,
Let’s see… Average property tax spending per household across the US is $2,197.00, of which varying fractions go towards education, depending on state. Average cost per day in a California nursing home is $267.00, totaling $97,455.00 for a year’s worth of care.”
Miss my point: If I subsidize their 12+ years of “education” their social responsibility is to subsidize my infirmity. But that only works in a homogenious society not the multiculti/tribal society we being forced to accept. Your CA stuff is bs because it is grifters raiding Medicaid.
Well, I am certain that will come into consideration, when it gets totted up against the trillions in national debt that was run up on your watch as a voting adult… Not f**king likely.
When that bill finally comes due, don’t expect your treasury bonds or 401K plan to last very long under the onslaught of confiscatory taxes those kids you aren’t having will be more than happy to vote against, remembering in gratitude all that you did for them as children. Oh, wait… They were never born, were they?
In the final analysis, your generation voted to rape the future; don’t be surprised that when and if you reach that future, you get raped right back.
Not sure if you want my opinion – don’t know if I am a “strong woman”, let along “contributor”, but I risk it.
I think the whole circus is a disgrace: in this order
To democratic process.
To widely-hold respect of Senate as an institution.
To Republicans in Senate – for their cowardly, traitorous behavior.
To gender relations.
Who would now trust a woman crying “rape”?! It will equal in public’s mind with “crying wolf”.
Who will now believe in getting rewarded, promoted in your profession on merit?
Who will now consider think the noble principle “innocent till proven guilty” still current and operative in our justice system?
I am completely disgusted.
Not the only one disgusted, Tatyana.
There are real victims of sexual assault – but there are so many fake accusations, some of them hyped up by the mainstream media, that I am certain those real victims are getting lost in the chaff.
And apparently, the presumption of innocence goes bye-bye, once you have enough shrieking demonstrators with signs and stupid pussy hats outside the main gate.
Completely divorced from reality, as usual.
At least we only have one troll. Powerline got over run after the election.
Althouse still has mostly the same old ones, mostly with new names. You can recognize them, of course, just like I don’t need Pennie’s name to identify his comments.
The entire debacle just goes to show that we have a significant number of people in the US electorate who should scare the hell out of the presumably less crazed “other part”.
Latest thing? Colorado Senator Cory Gardner’s wife was sent threats and a video of a beheading, and the names and addresses of his family members got posted online. We are not that far from this crap actually going to full-scale violence, and then we are likely to see the same sort of low-level violence that typified the failed “urban insurrections” in South America during the late 1960s and early 1970s. My guess is that the Left is going to keep pushing with this idiocy, egging each other on and on, until someone actually goes after family members the same way they shot up the Congressional baseball game.
After that? All their persecution fantasies and LARP BS is going to come true, and you are going to see a paroxysm of counter-violence that’s going to make Pinochet’s Chile look positively benign. The loons are too deeply embedded for anything short of that to be either workable or likely.
Once you convince the establishment types that their family members are at risk…? It won’t be more than a few scant hours before they go full-bore Pinochet, and you’ll watch your civil liberties evaporate right along with a significant fraction of the capital-L Left. These idiots are pushing for another Civil War, and they’re going to get it.