Speaking as one who formerly identified as a feminist, of the reasonable ‘small-f’ variety, when it meant equal opportunity for education, employment, the same pay for doing the same job, and equal consideration when it came to things like credit, I have always been baffled by how the raving ‘Capital-F’ feminists chose abortion as the hill to die on. I was also baffled by the rabid male-hating by influential Capitol-F feminists like Andrea Dworkin.
(Ladies, the male of our species may have their moments, and a very, very, very few of them are creatures which any sensible woman should run screaming, or at least murmuring a polite excuse and expeditiously leaving the room … but the rest of them are very nice, if occasionally a bit eccentric in their hobbies and inability to load the dishwasher and remember where they left the toilet seat. They fix things I rather adore men who can fix things. It’s an endearing quality, as far as I am concerned. They are also stronger than us, and they willingly kill large bugs and spiders.)
Society
Credibility Falls
How the mighty are fallen from earlier glory: in the 1990ies, CNN was the scrappy, creative underdog in the TV news business. No name anchors and reporters, bare-bones no-frills sets, go anywhere, cover anything reporters and camera crews. In the first Gulf War, they were Johnny-on-the spot and the news source to watch for war developments, if my memory serves. And now, some knowledgeable commenters and bloggers wonder openly if the only reason that CNN’s viewership isn’t crashing more steeply than has been reported is because of the channels’ ubiquity at airports and other public venues. Once upon a golden time, it seemed only logical for the owners/managers of airports and the like to have contracts with CNN, and no one objected much because it was CNN, a responsible and political neutral source of news.
The Internet Rewards Crazy (Rerun)
(This is a reposting of posts from two and seven years ago. Unhappily, this post’s themes are more relevant than ever. The Internet seems to be changing human social relations, business, politics and civil society in significant ways not all of which are clear. Perhaps the nature of what is happening will be better understood with time.)
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Crazy, overconfident; the opposite of the judicious, scientific, skeptical temperament.
Extreme opinions.
Stubborn.
Bombastic.
The opposite of thoughtful.
On the Collapse of a National Narrative
To the surprise of practically no one outside the Establishment Mainstream Media and a handful of social justice race-warriors who live to perpetuate the ‘White Americans Are Teh Most Raaaaacist Evah!’ meme, the Jussie Smallett racial beat-down-and-bleach soaking has been confirmed by local law enforcement as a put-up job, arranged and paid for by the so-called victim … who, whatever his talents as an actor, has absolutely no skill for creating a convincing narrative, never mind coming up with convincing verisimilitude and corroborative detail required of a snow-job like this. That’s because he is an actor, I surmise not a writer or a skilled political operative. Hiring a pair of body-building Nigerian brothers to do that particular deed … I guess it’s true there are jobs that ordinary Americans just won’t do.
Why So Much Anger and Resentment?
2018–The Year of Living Hatefully is the title of a recent post by Roger Simon:
Practically no one was happy. Or if they were, they didn’t show it. All they wanted to do was vilify the opposition or even their neighbors. Democrats hating Republicans (see the new movie “Vice”) and vice versa were just the tip of a rancid iceberg. Never Trumpers hate Trumpers and the reverse, Sanders supporters hate Beto supporters, Antifa hate the bourgeoisie, the Proud Boys hate Antifa, FOX hates CNN and MSNBC hates FOX…It goes on and on. Families and friends split from each other. People shut up at work for fear they’ll be fired. Thanksgiving is a festival of hostility, Christmas (when we’re allowed to speak its name) is only slightly better.
Roger attributes the toxic atmosphere in large part to the decline in religiousness. I’m not convinced by that explanation; there are plenty of examples of religion as a cause of mutual hostility as well as cases where it has served as part of a cure.
One factor in the development of the toxic atmosphere, IMO, has been the cult of “self-esteem development” carried to an excess…this seems to have resulted in a large number of people who simply cannot stand challenge or disagreement.
Still, there are plenty are angry and hostile people who are old enough to have missed the era of self-esteem indoctrination.
Another factor is social media,which seems to lend itself to the formation of on-line lynch mobs, as I discussed in my post freedom, the village, and social media.
Economic fear and uncertainty surely also plays a role. Although Roger remarks that “all this (craziness and anger) is happening in a country awash in affluence, also as almost never before, with close to full employment for all ethnic and racial groups,” it remains true that many people are highly disappointed in their failure to advance more economically, and many who feel that their children will be less-well-off than themselves. Economic factors aside, there are also many who have been severely disappointed in their relationships and blame this disappointment in large part on society.
A friend of mine once remarked that “if someone is bitter, then he is publicly announcing that in his own eyes he is a failure.” I thought this was a profound comment, and by that measure, there are a lot of people in America today who consider themselves to be failures.
But still, there are a lot of people who are doing very well economically, who seem to have excellent relationships/family lives, but who also have a lot of anger at a large number of their fellow Americans.
Also, I remember something Ralph Peters wrote many years ago:
Man loves, men hate. While individual men and women can sustain feelings of love over a lifetime toward a parent or through decades toward a spouse, no significant group in human history has sustained an emotion that could honestly be characerized as love. Groups hate. And they hate well…Love is an introspective emotion, while hate is easily extroverted…We refuse to believe that the “civilized peoples of the Balkans could slaughter each other over an event that occurred over six hundred years ago. But they do. Hatred does not need a reason, only an excuse.
This also is, I think, a profound remark. And today’s intense focus on group identities has surely led to much more viewing of people as avatars of a group, rather than individuals–making it that much easier to despise and attack them.
And a significant part of American academia is endlessly busy manufacturing new and revised group identities, and stirring up resentments based thereon.
Do you agree with Roger that 2018 was the most Hateful year in recent history? If so, what do you see as the primary causes and the potential remedies, if any?