Proceedings

Part of the Princess Bush (tibouchina) outside the local library. I actually set foot in there today; first time in years. Portable library card on my keychain.  The purples of the Princess Bush never fail to catch my eye. Can something be both luridly and chastely beautiful?

Read the proceedings of the first meeting of the Foundation for Male Studies back in April. A lot of academic BS even from pro-males, but Lionel Tiger had something good to say. "We're here to rediscover the obvious. Is this something grownups should have to be doing?" LOL. The malignant effects of feminism, especially its ideological form, continue to weaken the culture. As another speaker said, "The feminists have won, but will never admit victory because that would rob them of their victim position, which is the source of all their power." I really cannot call to mind another culture in history in which proclaiming yourself a victim gets you more power than the really powerful. Except the Khazars.

If this is a patriarchy, why are boys and men in such trouble? I wonder if the so-called Battle of the Sexes is actually a war and only one of them can win. Several of the conference speakers hastened to assure everyone that this is not a Zero Sum game. Just cause you don't want it to be don't mean it ain't. Remember which one of the denizens of Wonderland said, "All have won and all must have prizes!" (See below)

I was saying to Gloria's sister the other night that we sometimes discuss similarities between Japan and Britain, two countries with strong world-stage pasts who now seem to be falling apart with a kind of post-imperial cultural nervous breakdown. Perhaps the whole West is doing that. Who could have imagined a world in which men and boys are in trouble compared to girls and women? One of the several revolutions of my single lifetime.

(Later in the day, on Syfy's Warehouse 13, HG Wells comes back to life. And we discover that he was actually a woman. So now we have a character, HG Wells, who was really a man, historically, played as a woman. And we are supposed to think this is so cool. It is not. If we brought back, say, Oscar Wilde, and made him a resolutely heterosexual male. A black guy. Would that be cool? How about making Jane Austen a gay guy. You can hear the screaming. Fuck. )

The Koran burning story illustrates the problem with Islam. If you go ahead, Muslims will rage and this will strengthen their sense of power. If you stop, they will know that they have beaten yet another weak infidel and this will strengthen their sense of power. If you oppose Islam or avoid opposing it, it increases their power. Like the Ground Zero Mosque: opposition to it only inflames Muslims' sense of persecution and thus heightens the justification for their aggressive stance. If the mosque (oh, sorry, cultural center with a 10,000 square foot prayer space) gets built, then they have lorded it over us and that increases their aggressive self-confidence. To my knowledge, Islam is only stopped by one means. And the generally admirable General Petraeus should have kept his mouth shut.