Beautiful cultural diversity

Ah, those wacky Papua New Guineans*.

*Pic is generic of burning woman, not PNG event.

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Jack Malebranche revealed

as Jack Donovan.

Shoulda known the shit-disturber was Irish. :)

The author of Androphilia, well interviewed.

Examples:

Our culture’s strategy for integrating women into the workforce has unfortunately been to strip men of any distinct virtues, qualities, social roles or responsibilities. This is one of the great tragedies of our time, and time will tell if this gender neutral society thing is really sustainable, practical or even truly desirable.

Most people who throw around the word “misogyny” a lot are completely hysterical.

The gay community embraces everyone and doesn’t expect its men to be anything but gay and “proud” of it. There is no pressure to be a “good man” because gays aren’t held to the same standards as other men.

Modern gay culture is a by-product of marginalizing homosexuals, who “came out” in cahoots with the various forces who want to dismantle western culture—the culture that marginalized them.

Gay culture shows homosexual males how to behave like clowns, how to get laughs at their own expense, or to get laughs by gossiping or insulting others. The gay community celebrates “fabulousness” and shows homosexual males how to be the center of attention, no matter what kind of attention. It shows them how to be beautiful and popular and desired in the way that high school girls want to be beautiful and popular and desired.

I’m an advocate of holding homosexual men to the same set of expectations as other men, in the traditional sense. They should be expected to be strong and self reliant, they should be judged by their achievements and their actions, and they should be expected to have some sense of honor. They should be expected to do the right thing and take responsibility for their actions without resorting to the shirker’s response of blaming society for their personal failings

The whole thing, here.

My usual disagreements with the man remain,
mostly products of the historical experience
of growing up in different times.
But he is always well worth listening to.
An impressive young fella.

His upcoming work:




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The Battle of Algiers, continued

Robert Avrech writes:

"The Palestinians are a lucky people.

Because their enemies are Jews."

Rather than fellow Arabs.

Fascinating stuff, history.

HT to the articulate Shrinkwrapped.

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Chronicles of the open-minded liberal

Chilling stuff from Hollywood. Stop the H8TE.

Some actress named Susan Egan (seen above in some Disney play). All for diversity of views, as long as they don't conflict with hers.

A perfect Orwellian example of enantiodromia. And of the evil progressive slogan that the personal and the political are one. She is so liberal and tolerant that she becomes an agent of inquisitorial revenge and can't even see it. Awful woman.


'

My own anti-semitism

The current war between Israel and Hamas has brought to the surface --or at least highlighted what was already plain to see-- the great reservoir of Jew-hatred in the world. If you are pro-Israel, as I am, the coverage in the MSM is incredibly one-sided. It almost beggars belief.
And the "collateral damage" of anti-Jewish protests and violence is downplayed by the same media.

In the current liberal West, racism is the most evil crime, hands down. Part of Western suicidality is an internal shame at being white and a granting of moral supremacy and instant victim credit to any group of non-Whites who claim it. The only moral ground, tenuous and never achieved once for all, that Whites can hold is if they embrace this tale and proclaim it. This alone would be enough to explain how the Israel/Hamas issue gets narrated.

The sentimental idea that any human group is without serious defect is ludicrous. Nothing in history or experience provides any evidence of it. So why can you not have a poor opinion, even an active dislike, of a human group? Ethnic, religious, racial groups included. In fact, this kind of dislike is a human universal. I am of the opinion that it is a necessity for group survival to believe that your group is better than all others and to dislike some others, most often your neighbors. Why? Because almost every group in history (White liberals excepted, at least on the surface) believes this. And without that bulwark of self-confidence, you cannot stand against them and theirs.

But, back to Jew-hatred.. Or, as it is formally called, anti-Semitism.

I am mostly a Jew-lover. I grew up with Jews (my language is peppered with Yiddishisms), I have worked well and happily with Jews, and my family is now partly Jewish. I know more about Judaism, and like it more, than a lot of Jews. And I support Israel, even more than some Israelis do.

But, some of me dislikes Jews. As Jews. I do not cringe about this, nor am I ashamed of it, because in the three and a half instances I will note, members of this human group annoy the hell out of me precisely by the behavior involved, combined with their Jewish identity. It is in those moments that my anti-Semitism appears.

Two point five of the instances involve behaviors not unique to Jews, but when Jews engage in them, it is as Jews that I dislike these people. Their Jewishness is part of my reaction. Another is one which only a Jew could carry out.

Two point five of these contexts provoke me to irritation and dislike, but nothing more. So Jew-"hatred" is not involved, not even close. The third offends me, makes me angry, and I find myself wishing I could find some way to damage these people.

Enuff with preliminaries.

Item one: Well-off and successful American Jews who invoke the Holocaust or some other narrative of Jewish suffering to inflate whatever blockage, inconvenience or slight they feel into a genocidal crime, hoping to induce in me and other Gentiles a sense of guilt or shame. Being on the receiving end of this kind of manipulation only makes me resent them as Jews. Jewish victim groups. Upper middle class American Jews who want to make some kind of equivalence between being excluded from a country club and being herded into cattle cars...well, it burns me. So patently self-serving and rather obscence, actually.

Item two: (This is one unique to Jews). When a Jewish scholar takes his shared Jewishness with Jesus to point out to Christians that they have completely misunderstood Christ. The argument comes down to shared blood and the same attitude you used to find on stupid t-shirts: "It's a Hebrew thang, you wouldn't understand." A smugness that irritates me.

Item three: (And this is the strongest by far for me). Jews in America, especially, who adopt a leftwing or progressive stance which makes the very country that has welcomed them the source of all the world's evils and do what they can to damage it. The ikon here is Noam Chomsky. Or Howard Zinn or Saul Alinsky. The ACLU and its war on Christianity. But Hollywood Jews and the armies of Jews on the left are included. What makes this different from my dislike of leftists generally is that I deem it a special case of ingratitude approaching betrayal. What other Western country has been as welcoming to Jews as America? To be an anti-American Jew pushes deep and dark buttons in me.

And the fourth is the pushy Jew, the kind who, in a discussion or even on line in a store, reacts with an unrelated and arrogant aggression. That's not something I run into very often, but when it happens, the person involved becomes not just another jerk, but an Other Jerk, an alien. The ordeal of civility.

So, there it is.

One of the good things I have learned from my years in psychology, especially Jungian, is the value of differentiation: to try to calibrate emotional assessments of provocative phenomena into discreet parts. So, as I said, my attitude toward Jews is at least 90% very positive. And I have had and have personal connections with Jews who exhibit the stereotypically positive traits of their people: a warmth, generosity, loyalty, humor, intelligence, and related straight-forwardness which has a particularly Jewish feel.

And even with Israelis, who are famed even among American Jews for their abrasiveness, I would take them over the surrounding Muslim sea any day of the week.

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An easy life

I am sure Matt Lauer gets up early and works hard, but to do what he does and make 13 million (or is it 16?) a year...Seems to have a very nice life, with a nice family. And despite my lack of appreciation for the general milieu, I can always overcome that to appreciate a particular man. He is a lucky and fine lookin' fella, in terrific shape and wears his jeans well.

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Later on

We don't hear much about Nelson Mandela's South Africa, now that the days of apartheid are over and the majority black population governs. Apparently the place is a mess. Can you spell "Rhodesia"?

I had yet another politically incorrect thought the other day. Colonizing. We all know that the Europeans pretty well colonized the planet over a period of several centuries. And we are all told it was a bad awful terrible thing.

But what if the Europeans had suddenly transcended their human nature and become post-colonial liberals and never colonized anyplace? What if they had left the rest of the planet alone? Would Africa and the Americas now be great tribal theme parks? Would the Ottoman Empire still rule the Balkans, the Aztecs still lord it over Mexico?

Now there's a fertile matrix for alternative history.

PS Note that the Ottomans got their empire and the Aztecs their by...colonialism and/or outright invasion and conquest. Do Turks feel bad about their history? Do Aztec descendants in Mexico think they got what was coming to them? Hmmm.
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Daily absurdity

I have very bad car karma. I have to park my car on the street. It gets dinged and vandalized. One got stolen. People back into it, side-swipe it. Etc.

This week, some thug broke the passenger window and ripped off my radio/CD player. So it's in the shop. Insurance provides me a rental car. BUT. I live in neighborhood with area-specific parking privileges. My rental car will get ticketed. This has happened before.

So. I go down to the parking and traffic place to get a temporary permit to park in front of my own house...

I fill out the forms, and hand the woman my license. She tells me, "We don't accept a driver's license as proof of residence."

You know, you can vote for frickin' President on the strength of a driver's license, or satisfy Homeland Security that you can board a plane, but the bureaucrats of SF do not find this document important enough to give a you a temporary parking permit.

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Crisis in Canada

Canada is little less than an abusive police state. This, from folks who ought to know.

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Jan 1 2009

I have never been a fan of New Year's. Some folks hate Christmas; I find the whole hoopla about a new calendar unmoving. So I will not indulge in the rituals of reminiscence and prognostication. Except to say that 2008 was a decidedly mixed bag: moments I would not have missed, and moments I could very well do without. But as so often in life, they are linked together. To want one is to accept the other.

I normally spend this time of year at home in SF. Currently I am back East to help attend to the family matter of aging and ailing parents. It is sobering. I thank God for my siblings.

I am with my Dad, who is now just a barely audible echo of the man he once was. I don't think he knows who I am now. For this New Year's it's just me and him and his caregiver.

Instead of the mildly cool and wet days of January by the Pacific (47 and cloudy today), I have the pleasure of hearing the wind howl outside the house, over a sunny rural landscape covered in snow, with the temperature at about 15 and a windchill factor that makes it feel like -2. Getting to the gym today --a pillar of my sanity-- will not be the usual ten minute walk but a longer drive in the heated up car.

Thank God for movies on the Internet.

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