Snow Woke—Disney’s Female Empowerment Fairytale

Apparently the Snow White remake bombed at the box office. We could just go with the standard “get woke, go broke” traditionalist assessment. Rachel Zegler comes off as the female equivalent of Andrew Tate—as being angry, entitled, selfish and toxic—which isn’t appealing to a broad audience.

But, before we get into the remake, let’s talk a bit about the original Disney animation of the fairytale. The character deviates quite a bit from the Grimm version. For a start, the fair-skinned protagonist is half the age (7 rather than 14) and there’s no “true love’s kiss” in this original version. Furthermore, she’s a sort of blank slate archetype—not some ideal 1930s homemaker mothering a bunch of dwarfs. In short, the adaptation then was not completely true to the source material and created an image of feminity relevant to that time.

The Grimm version was darker in tone and featured a prince weirdly obsessed with a dead girl in a glass coffin. The dwarfs did not have distinct personalities. And Snow White awakened when the poisoned apple is dislodged from her throat when a servant carrying her coffin stumbles. And it was at this point the prince professes his love and proposes marriage—which she accepts.

The latest Disney live-action takes liberties in a very different direction. It is even less true to the original (other than elimination of the Disney romance) and reimagines Snow White being a sort of feminist militia leader who leads a bloodless insurrection against the usurping queen. But the “mirror mirror on the wall” remains and a poisoned apple—despite the heavy edit of the script where an empowered woman replaces the worn damsel in distress trope.

Why People Don’t Like Snow Woke

People enjoy new takes on old genres, like Shrek or Furiosa and also powerful female characters such as Ellen Ripley in Aliens, Sarah Connor in Terminator or even Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games. They were relatable, we saw them develop, circumstances made them tough to survive, and audiences loved them. What they don’t like is preachy dialogue or lack of any real character development. A Mary Sue, a hero with no weaknesses, is unrelatable. It is the problem with Superman and with the many woke adaptations of stories.

We like the image of a woman against the machine.

Christian movies have a tendency to be bad for the same reasons. They can come off a little campy or forced. Sure, it may work for drawing your ideological camp, but it isn’t a compelling story for the unindoctrinated or the broader audience. Which is not to say that movies about Christianity can’t be great for entertainment. I love gritty true stories like that of Hacksaw Ridge or profound, like Silence, will have anyone at the edge of their seats—the key being relatable characters.

Zegler is a bit much. Totally insufferable in the eyes of some. And she plays a part that is equally annoying. The departure from the source material is just too rude. Sure, there is room for an update, but you would never reinvent Rambo as well adjusted pacifist in a mission to avoid too much sun exposure. Disney dumped the essence of the original and replaced it with another tired ’empowered woman’ cliché. You wonder if Zegler herself wrote the script with lines like, “I’m not waiting for anyone to save me” or groaner, “The fairest isn’t about beauty—it’s about justice!”

Oh well, at least even apologists for woke seem to understand that it is just bad. They did not even bother accusing the audience of being racist or misogynistic this time around.

Smash the Symbolism!

What is truly lost is the symbolic depth of the original tale. Snow White was beauty and purity contrasted with the vanity and evil of the obsessed queen. They gutted what made the Grimm tale a significant message about the triumph of innocence over the destructive power of pride. This, obviously, is too nuanced for a superficial sexual organ obsessed militant far-leftist to understand. The producers of the new film replaced purity of motive against cunning with a banal competition for power.

It’s not even moral inversion. They totally lost the point. It makes me think they lack any layers to their being. It’s all about their grievance and getting back at those they’ve scapegoated for their own misery. Like the evil queen, with all the power, they envy the beauty and peace of others and attempt to kill it with their poisoned apple. Snow Woke is the toxic fruit. Zegler is an icon of their privileged ‘diverse’ female with an entitled chip on her shoulder and not the slightest bit of appreciation for all the good men who made her ignorance possible.

This is not to say those who are fixated on the literal whiteness of the actress are any better. Grimm was not writing about racial supremacy anymore than woke supremecy, if anything the original story was about our transcending politics and Zegler would be perfectly suited for the role if she were able to embody that spirit. But our culture, in a desperate need of critique, it dichotomizes everything—divides the world into friend or foe, as if life is a zero-sum game and there is never anything to gain through fusion of opposites.

Zegler is as Puritanical (and Pharisaical) as a religious fundamentalist. She reframes a rescuing prince as a stalker and romance as weird. More rigid than a patriarch, more domineering than the system she is taught to loath. A preacher rather than an actual protagonist. Basically, a young idealist who wields her moral certainty with a convert’s passion, and yet stumbling into hypocrisy under scrutiny—reaping benefits of every institution she claims to reject.

The Female Power of Beauty, Gentleness and Grace

A few years ago, I was in the checkout line and suddenly noticed the cashier. She was beautiful, pale or ashen-faced, with hair that was jet black, pleasant smile and yet there was something uncanny valleyish about her appearance. I could not quite put my finger on it. But then she spoke. This would send a shiver through me. Never before did I have that sort of feeling simply by hearing someone talk. There was a certain quality to her voice that was almost child-like, soft, pure, and really threw me for a loop. And it occurred to me that this young woman was a real life Snow White. I had not thought this would actually be attractive in person, but it had me momentarily smitten.

As it would turn out, in a later conversation, I learned she was mixed race, Filipino mom and dad of some kind of European descent, which is likely what gave her this stunningly feminine appearance. Now, no doubt this gentle exterior was cover over a tough and capable individual. She drove an old pickup truck and lived apart from her family with a sister, and may well have been a teenager or in her early twenties. In many ways she is like Zegler (who is herself a mix of Colombian and Polish heritage), but this real-life Snow White wielded her beauty, gentleness, and grace as a quiet strength that captivated without preaching, Zegler’s strident zeal turns a timeless tale into a soapbox, losing the feminine power of subtlety for a hollow shout of self-righteousness.

This is what outspoken angry feminists fail to grasp, forcefulness isn’t the only kind of power. My petite wife could never command me to do anything. I’m 50% bigger than her and have twice the upper body strength, I would shrug it off. But she does not need to force me to do anything. She overpowers me by other means. For example, early on, before we were married, she convinced me to stop drinking so much soda, she told me water is a symbol of her love “pure and clean” and when I drink it I could feel her love. I didn’t need to be told twice.

When I look at my baby daughter I would do anything for her. She’s so vulnerable—there is a strong desire to protect and defend her—I’m drawn, not compelled.

So what does female empowerment really mean?

Is it empowering to a fish to be out of the water?

A visual representation of society telling individuals they need to be something else to be happy.

Humans are wired for their base biological and physical functions. Reproduction is a big part of this. It becomes clear after you see process through from courtship to baby in a carriage. Early in the pregnancy, given our financial goals, my wife had considered sending the yet to be both child to be raised by her mother. But as soon as the bundle of cuteness arrived, along with the appropriate hormones, it was never a question. Family is empowerment. My sacrifice, as a father, is more rewarding than the toys I could buy for myself as an independent bachelor.

We’re relational, not rational.

Therefore, the things we think will make us happy do not give us long-term fulfillment—the woke Zegler types are privileged, given preference as women or minorities, and yet always unhappy and looking at what others have and they do not. They are a paradox, enjoying female privilege—then miserable and wanting what men have.

It is toxic, it is their impurity of spirit, and it destroys their natural beauty and potential for true empowerment.

In all honesty, I don’t really have a problem with Zegler’s passion or outspokenness. I guess I tend to prefer women with a real personality and feel she is right on the Gaza issue. But what is wrong is that she’s not the right character to play what is supposed to be an embodiment of purity and the power of innocence against evil. Snow White isn’t supposed to be Mockingjay or a story where physical force met with force—but of a different kind of power.

Ultimately, the 2025 Snow White stumbles not just as a film but as a misguided anthem, with Rachel Zegler’s shrill militancy drowning out the subtle power the Grimm tale once whispered. The original’s purity and even Disney’s 1937 grace knew strength isn’t loud—it’s captivating, like the cashier whose soft voice and uncanny beauty stopped me cold, a real-life Snow White wielding gentleness over force. My wife, too, overpowers me not with commands but with a love pure as water, turning a stubborn man into a willing protector, and just as our daughter’s vulnerability stirs my soul to shield her. Zegler’s remake, obsessed with preaching justice over enchantment, misses this: true feminine empowerment doesn’t need a megaphone or a militia—it’s the quiet, relational magic that binds us, a truth the poisoned apple of ‘Snow Woke’ chokes out, leaving a hollow echo where a fairytale’s heart once beat.

The Displaced Aggression Of Ruby Hamad

As someone who prefers getting news from non-Western sources, I occasionally read Al Jazeera for some perspective, and that is how I came across an article, “Imane Khelif and Western delusions of white innocence” and had to hit back. For the remainder of this blog, I will identify as a minority woman to obtain maximum victim points, and so I don’t need to pull my punches.

Editorials are often wild swings, some are so off-balance and contrived that they invite a counterpunch. I had no idea who Ruby Hamad was. But her profile reveals a Syrian-Lebanese woman obsessed with ‘white’ European women and how they are loved more than her. She has made her name through her racist and misogynistic attacks on ‘white’ feminists. It’s a little bit weird given how white she is. But hatred is not always rational—she only has a platform because she helps ‘woke’ white leftists with their self-loathing.

In response to the recent outcry, about the two Olympic boxers who had previously failed their gender eligibility test, Hamad politicizes. She rides on her favorite hobby horse—that being ‘white’ women—and she tries to reframe the discussion as being about the protection of ‘white’ women rather than a matter of maintaining integrity and fairness in the competition.

Now typically I’m sympathetic to those trying to break free of US hegemony and who are tired of their national stability and desire to self-govern being constantly undermined by US-led Western powers. European colonizers are responsible for the current disorder in many parts of the world. And, I also believe the Palestinian voice should be heard and that their innocent population should be protected by international law like any other occupied nation, and the killing of children and non-combatants in Gaza is horrendous.

Victims aren’t just Israeli — nor are ‘people of color’ the only ones who suffer injustice.

However, Hamad does exactly what those on the Zionist side do to Palestinians—with a broad swipe she tries to make all people in a place share guilt for what governments have done. In essence, she has exactly the same attitude as Israeli spokespeople who claim that all in Gaza share in the blame for the Hamas incursion and—outraged that we care that Palestinian babies die—then turn the attention back to the suffering of their own people on October 7th.

It is a whataboutism. A deflection. And doesn’t deal with the actual issue.

This does highlight one aspect of the controversy, that being the solidarity with the two athletes centers on racial or religious identity rather than their gender. Those who most vehemently deny the complexity of the gender question are Arabs (or Taiwanese, in the case of Lin Yu-ting), which suggests their political partisanship and that the racial motivation is a projection that is entirely their own Hamad believes that it must be about white women because this is how she thinks. But it is really about how gender is defined to keep competition fair.

Hamad flails in her attack. She makes the row about the Italian boxer crying—which totally reinvents the chronology and ignores the reality of where it all started. People had already been talking about the disqualifications of Khelif and Yu-ting, by the International Boxing Association because of failed gender tests. It had nothing to do with how they looked, where they came from, or the race of the women pounded by them. It is, rather, everything to do with alleged XY chromosomes and higher testosterone levels, and fairness to female athletes.

But the truth does not need to line up with her narrative. An Italian woman, who has a darker complexion than Haman, is now made into the token example of “white woman tears” for being upset after a disappointing loss to a physically superior opponent. Imagine that, someone who put an enormous amount of time into their sport, then forced to quit the fight after 46 seconds due to the strength of the blows that were landing, having very strong emotions…

Scandalous whiteness!

Had silly Hamad spent 46 seconds thinking instead of trying to force the evidence to fit her own toxic ideology, you would have missed this rhetorical beat-down.

The biggest irony of this all is that Hamad is in complete alignment with the old imperial left—who, by far, are the most meddlesome of the political elements of the West both in the world and domestically with a constant barrage of moralizing emotive nonsense. Like concern over ‘misgendering’ a trans ‘man’ who is competing as a woman and is born a woman at the same time they tell us we can’t question the gender on birth certificates or passports.

The self-loathing face of white privilege.

It is truly only the privileged people who have the time to virtue signal and stir up division between people, the rest of us need to work and provide for our families—hoping these lunatics don’t start another war.

What makes this personal is I have a good friend who is Algerian and is one of the most beautifully feminine women I’ve ever met. Had she not been a devout Muslim (who, unlike Khelif, wore the traditional dress which always included a Hajab) there may have been been good chance of a romantic relationship between us. So this notion that European femininity is somehow different or more vulnerable is plain ridiculous. Khelif is no more representative of Algerian or Arab femininity than I am Britney Spears.

Ultimately this is all political. Hamad does not care about boxing, certainly not things like safety or fairness. She is just another myopic and mean-spirited partisan who only cares about injustice when it comes to her people. She’ll never write an article about the Arab abuse of their foreign help (many of them vulnerable women of color) nor is she intellectually curious enough to know about the slave trade of Europeans (yes, many women) by Muslim Arabs who raided shipping and became enshrined in the anthem of the US Marine Corps: “To the shores of Tripoli.”

Incidentally, the ‘Barbary’ pirates capturing US sailors for ransom led to the re-establishment of the Marines. At the time, the US was not oriented towards global dominance and only started along that path of being a sea power because of this provocation.

Muslim Arabs, before they were conquered themselves, pillaged the Christian Middle East and subjugated all in their path. No, this is to villainize them or say that ‘white’ is better. What it is to say is that conquest is human and we’re all guilty of the best and the worst parts. The only real difference between myself and the Hamad types is that I want to escape the tribalism of the past while she thrives on it. I envision a world where everyone wins whereas she can only be happy when those who she declares “not white” rule. She’s not truly anti-colonial, she is simply enraged that her own tribe lost the civilizational struggle to those she believes are inferiors.

In addition to this, she is like the angry PhD candidate, also from a Syrian background as I recall, and as vile as Hamad, who—despite a progressive feminist lean—was very racially prejudiced and to the point that she scorned me for my once having a black fiance—told me she would never go with a man who had been with a black woman. This is what makes me amused when Hamad gestures towards the African American grievance. Blacks may have been second class in the US, but they would be far worse off in the Arab world she represents.

The truth is that men beating women is as acceptable in Algeria as it is across Arab and Muslim regions. I believe this is why intelligent women from these places have such cognitive dissonance. They believe, on the one hand, this religious cultural identity makes them better. But then, on the other hand, they’re also battered and afraid of the men in their own places. They’re resentful. They would love to be treated as a Western woman and protected. This is why they want to see the women they envy to be hurt. It is displaced aggression:

Displaced aggression is a statistically robust psychological phenomenon. It involves a specific form of attack prompted by rumination on anger-inducing experiences and/or revenge-related thoughts, which might lead to the expression of anger on innocent people. Often, victims of aggression will not seek to confront the actual source of aggression (the original provocateur), and instead bully subordinates in an effort to relieve themselves of the stress that they carry.

Incidentally, in a conversation with a black female neighbor, she described the toxic reality of the community she left and how much she loves to live amongst us ‘white’ rural people who encouraged her rather than trying to tear her down and ruthlessly compete. Her mother, an alcoholic, used to deride her with the slur that she was ‘white’ for showing a little bit of ambition and self-respect. This black woman wisely chose to bring her children to the safety of a community still governed by a culture of self-restraint and looking out for the vulnerable.

White women are targets of jealous rage. Hamad would be better to acknowledge the true origin of her self-loathing and challenge the framing that makes her only care about the tears of those who look like her.

Hamad’s book “White Tears Brown Scars” is an attack on feminism and the West’s culture of protecting women. She popularized the phrase “white women’s tears” as a way to downplay and dismiss the suffering and display of emotions by white women. It is dehumanization. Making her sexual rivals into manipulative animals that do not deserve our empathy or concern. A license for calloused and cruel disregard in response to actual injustice. What it really amounts to is an attempt to normalize the abuse of women who step out of line—which is allowed in the Islamic culture that produced Hamad.

Ruby Hamad should clean up her own side of the street first before commenting on ours.

But I reject her, with her displaced aggression, because it is not okay for men to beat women—despite what her Syrian–Lebanese culture or the Quran says:

Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the husband’s] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance – [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand.

This is key to understanding the big difference in attitudes between Christian and Islamic traditions, I know the Old Testament treats women more as property of men—like the Quran—but the Gospel radically changed the conversation. St Paul tells husbands to sacrifice themselves for their wives like Christ died for the Church.

My wife tells me you couldn’t walk around in her home country like American women do, go out in revealing clothes, alone. She claims men where she lives would take it as being an invitation for assault and they would likely find your body in the ditch. If it is ‘white privilege’ or some form of imperialism for women to be able to stroll safely through their own community, then so be it. I’m not going to apologize for valuing the tears of my wife, the woman I love, over Hamad’s bitterness about not being able to find a man like me. I’m quite alright with a daughter who cries.

Philosophical Candidates

Remember, as a child, those day-dreams of a life unrestricted by parental control, where it would be video games all night, ice cream, pizza, and soda all day? What is amazing is upon reaching adulthood the thought of this lifestyle is disgusting. First off, it would be horribly unhealthy—in the sense that those who indulge bulge. Second, a party every day is totally unsustainable, someone has to do the work to keep the lights on and put food on the table.

Many people become more conservative as they mature and start to realize the value of the limitations they once spurned. Yes, an adult will modify what was taught to them by their parents and community. And some grew up in social environments where there was not much worthy to be preserved. But to totally throw away everything inherited from prior generations is a terrible mistake. Only an ideological extremist believes stripping it all bare is necessary and good. It is wiser to build on what works.

That is not to say that the tradition passed down can’t become stifling and overbearing or limiting our potential either. There must be a bit of flexibility, some Oikonomia, or means to adapt the rules as the need arises. However, the opposite ditch, of discarding everything and starting from scratch very quickly becomes chaotic, everyone does what is right in their own eyes, and it soon requires authoritarian measures to enforce the vision. This is the thing Nietzsche warned about—our morality is not self-evident and we should think long and hard about those monsters that we will release with our neglect.

This wasn’t a sacrilege, it was a lament of what happens when you yank the foundational rug out from under a moral system.

Cultural revolution, while always promising to upend systems of oppression and usher in a new utopian age, ends up being worse than what it is replaced. Yes, “All animals are equal” may be the founding cry, but is very soon after modified by opportunists who sadly are now unrestrained by those institutions despised and yet there for a reason. The only good thing is that this out-of-balance off-kilter, ‘we know better than all who came before’ attitude, tends to implode on itself if given time. The Soviet Union only lasted as long as it did because of Christian ethics within the population.

Two Visions For Our Future

Recently, with the decline of Joe Biden and a failed assassination attempt against his rival, the Democrats decided it was time to make a change up top. It is her time now—that is to say Vice President Kamala Harris—and there is plenty that could be said about her career thus far, but there is one peculiar repeat statement she has made that really deserves our attention:

“What can be, unburdened by what has been.”

This strange little mantra has been widely panned by the right. This is more Kamala word salad, they chortle, and yet—while she does sometimes explain things like a school teacher talking to a kindergartener—it is not gibberish. This is something Harris has apparently put some thought into and is something with a meaning that we should try to unpack.

What does it really mean to be unburdened by what has been?

I’m not going to sinisterize.

Most on the left I know have a glowing hope for the future and could never imagine that their philosophy could lead to Gulags. I do not believe Harris intends it this way, but it does hint heavily of Marxist thought where we are to be liberated or emancipated from all that came before. On the surface, this is an inviting thought. Imagine a world with no abuse, no poor, everyone has their needs provided and has complete freedom. This would be wonderful—and this is what every cookie-cutter college leftist has in mind as the end product of their efforts.

So how does the unburdening begin? Well, it already has. If you have been paying a bit of attention, everything normal is now being called fascist. Believe that women exist as a category and isn’t something a man can ‘transition’ to? Fascist! Maybe you like the nuclear family and see it as a praiseworthy social convention? Fascist! How about a border where there is reasonable control over who is allowed in and who is kept out? That makes you literally Hitler! And Harris has embraced this side of the debate, she announced her pronouns and the nature of her politics.

None of this is to say that Harris is a terrible person. I simply don’t want a leader unbound to existing ethics or any standard of decency, or who can write off Constitutional law as being a “what has been” product of wealthy white men with some of them slave owners and thus should be discarded. Sure, it may be a document with flaws, and could possibly use more amendments too, but it is better than nothing and represents the will of the people who signed onto this national project to this very day—white, black, Native, or immigrant alike.

What was established is for our benefit. It is no more a burden than a wool coat in the blistering cold. To think that we know more than every other generation that came before us, that science and technology have made us into gods, is delusional.

Furthermore, the left’s unboundness means they do not care about precedents (except as a tool to restrict their rule-obeying opponents and the ends justify the means. And they mean well. They plan to fight injustice. But this script has played out many times before and is the very thing that tradition is a bulwark against. At the very least those who believe what “has been” has value will hesitate and consider before they destroy the foundations of civilization.

Make America Great Again

Donald Trump rolled out his red hats and MAGA slogan in his 2016 campaign. The message was simple, a repeat of Ronald Reagan’s “Let’s make America great again” encouraging answer to the total economic disaster of the Carter years. As he said, in the 1980 Republican convention:

For those without job opportunities, we’ll stimulate new opportunities, particularly in the inner cities where they live. For those who’ve abandoned hope, we’ll restore hope and we’ll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again.

Trump knows a good brand and borrowed it from the best Republican leader since a guy named Abraham Lincoln. The progressives lost their minds. They dug up the one time it was used by the KKK. And couldn’t decide to condemn with “America was never great” or be offended because “America is already great and how dare Trump suggest anything otherwise!” If you were playing a game of “wrong answers only” this harsh criticism of MAGA as white supremacy would make a bit of sense.

When the left says, “Do you know who else said make America great again?” and then goes on to associate this benign statement with all manner of evil, they’re poisoning the well. There is zero reason to interpret this slogan as Trump’s desire to bring back Jim Crow or the racial policies that were once championed by Democrats. But this does whip the left into a frenzy and it keeps them from deviating and making an independent decision whom to vote for based on the actual positions of candidates.

What does Trump mean by “make America great again”?

Trump is a businessman, his interests are mostly economic, rebuilding our industrial base, bringing back gainful employment for blue-collar workers lower taxes, and less red tape standing in the way of entrepreneurial spirit. My wife, who opened a store in her home country, complains that the US is not a free country and is appalled by the many layers of taxes and requirements. This is what dooms many to working for “the man” or corporations that can afford compliance costs while drowning their competitors with cheap imported foreign goods.

The legalism of US law would make a Pharisee uncomfortable.

From a 2016 Trump campaign speech on jobs and the economy:

Jobs can stop leaving our country, and start pouring in. Failing schools can become flourishing schools. Crumbling roads and bridges can become gleaming new infrastructure. Inner cities can experience a flood of new jobs and investment. And rising crime can give way to safe and prosperous communities.

Had Trump’s first term not been sabotaged by COVID and blue state shutdowns, there is no doubt this would have been fulfilled. In fact, by the third year of his presidency the minority unemployment rate reached record lows. Even NPR, while downplaying it, could not deny these numbers Trump touted were real. Biden’s only success comes from not rolling back those tariffs the fear-mongering media had so roundly criticized. It is strange how the success and failure of policies is determined only by who is employing them, isn’t it?

No, Trump’s not woke. He believes in hiring based on qualifications. He doesn’t want to continue world policing and the massive expansion of government programs. This is why he is the enemy of those who derive all of their power from the administrative state and sap our resources. He is keenly aware that a free flow of cheap labor, while it helps elites who want nannies and landscaping at a discount, pulls down wages for those who do not come from wealth. Even a Senator named Barack Obama understood this:

If this huge influx of mostly low-skill workers provides some benefits to the economy as a whole—especially by keeping our workforce young, in contrast to an increasingly geriatric Europe and Japan—it also threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put strains on an already overburdened safety net.

Make America Great Again is not about a swerve in the direction of Nazism or some new form of ethno-nationalism. It is about restoring the economic conditions that had allowed our grandparents to buy their home and a car on a single income. Back in 2015, Bernie Sanders had blamed open borders on a right-wing conspiracy, that will make everyone poorer, but now the left is saying that normal border security is racist. What changed? Why are these Democrat policies, like the immigrant cages during the Obama administration, demonized under Trump?

Compassion means disincentivizing illegal crossings where human trafficking is a concern requiring sorting facilities.

It is really disorienting for those who soak propaganda like a sponge. They never see that Democrats did this full 180 on multiple issues where they had been right. Trump is right about the border. It should be the top priority. Just the Fentanyl overdoses alone are a reason. I’ve lost a former high school classmate and football teammate this way— 83,000 Americans died in 2022 alone—and it had ironically played as much role in the death of George Floyd as a knee on his shoulder. Why do we even talk about that dozen killed in a school shooting or Ukraine in light of this?

Reform, Not Revolution

Progressives tear at the fabric of civilization without understanding the consequences of their actions. They believe that the erasure of history, destruction of monuments, or the degrading of religion (see Paris Olympics) is a path to a better future. But this amounts to cultural vandalism and is ignorance of the positive contribution of these religiously created values we’ve internalized. There is truly nothing that is written on the substrate of the universe that says slavery is wrong or that genocide is evil—the stopping point to “unburdened by what has been” is a return to animalistic impulse.

The frontal lobe of the brain is developed by the myths and moralities that progressives do everything in their power to destroy with ridicule and sacrilege. And it will inevitably go much further than anticipated. We rarely have enough appreciation for what we have been given. Everything is taken for granted until it is gone. And when there is a vacuum that is left to fill, and the ‘demons’ waiting in the wings will come rushing in:

When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation. (Matthew 12:43-45 NIV)

Christianity led to equal rights in the West, the abolition movement, is a product of St Paul advocating for Onesimus or telling the Galatian church, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The left assumes the values it has are universal. They see only the faults without giving credit.

The progressive left, by contrast, denies all limits and conventions. Their “can be” may seem good at first glance. But is opening Pandora’s box, it is releasing what previous generations have built social structures to contain and could end up being more like a trip on Event Horizon. America has been good and bad, had moments of greatness and failure. We should tune the ideal it was founded on, not tear it down to start all over again. There is much to conserve in “what is” with an eye to improvement. Veer not too far to the right or left.

At least with Trump, morally corrupt as he may be, he comprehends that our inheritance is not a burden. For him, there is something that can be recovered “again” from the past generations even if those lessons were not perfectly applied to him. He’s a grandpa, he has seen trends come and go, old enough not to care about what is currently popular. Trump may have some narcissistic traits, at least that is the character he plays on television to the roar of the WWE crowd—but he isn’t trying to be God.

Conspiracy Central

Conspiracies happen all of the time. It is not a surprise that people plot evil schemes and would be more strange if they did not. But it doesn’t mean that everything that happens is a conspiracy. Being old enough to recall the black helicopter theories and warnings of imminent UN takeover. Who can forget the FEMA camp claims and those pictures of ‘coffins’ Barack Obama’s administration would soon be loading us into? Strangely many dates come and go, but none of those who push these wild global plots come forward later and say, “You know, I may have been wrong about JFK being the Antichrist… “

Wild conspiracy theories are about political ideology more than evidence. It is oftentimes a product of those who feel disempowered and seek uncomplicated explanations. The left, for example, hallucinates nebulous things like systemic racism or white privilege. Not entirely claims without any merit and yet if it is used to explain every outcome—if you see it lurking behind everything people do—then stop, get some help! The fringe right likewise, turns to fantasy when reality is too hard for their simple minds to understand. Inflation can’t just be about the Fed printing trillions of dollars devaluing currency, no it must be fires at food processing facilities!

There is always a motivated misunderstanding of evidence that is involved beneath this kind of claim—a misuse of statistics and facts to form grandiose theories.

The common thread of conspiracy theories is that they can’t be disproven. They are all established on faith, firm belief evidence connecting all the dots can be found and can shape-shift as needed. If one part can be disproven they can simply move the goalposts or deny the evidence is legitimate. If someone does not want to believe that the moon landing happened you could show a Saturn V rocket, introduce them to one of the astronauts, thoroughly explain all of the alleged irregularities they see and they’ll still believe that it was faked.

It is a matter of political orientation, not facts or plausibility, and stems from assumptions and a general mistrust of the system.

To the conspiracy-minded folks, everything becomes a conspiracy, there can never be an accident, or a lone wolf attack, no such thing as coincidence in their world. Sandy Hook couldn’t be a deranged (drugged out) Adam Lanza. No, to Alex Jones it must’ve been a false flag with the casualties being crisis actors rather than real people. And some of those hunch I understand, this is what happens when every tragedy is treated cynically as an opportunity by control-freak politicians.

Why did we go to war with Iraq after 9/11?

Is it so hard to believe that the CIA may have played some role in the JFK assassination when they do regime change all around the world?

The real issue I have with Q-Anon, where all is a hidden criminal plot (and everything is going according to the plan) is how it sucks the oxygen out of the room for discussion of real observable corruption. The far-flung theories, worse, are used to discredit those reasonable concerns about the expansion of government power and proliferation of unaccountable agencies. We should be far more concerned with what those with power are ‘legally’ doing in plain sight—and not giving them cover of cockamamie theories they happily use to dismiss us all as crackpots.

That’s the irony here, the conspiracy theorist is aiding the conspiracy. For example, fact-checks of “Covid is a bioweapon” were used to strawman the reasonable questions about a possible Wuhan lab-leak. This is why we couldn’t have a serious conversation.

So why do the kooks need to speculate so far beyond the evidence? Why can’t they stick to what is known or factual, the most plausible explanation, rather than always having to gallop to the craziest possible conclusion? In some cases it might just be stupidity, that they simply aren’t very good at tracking normal human motivation. But in many cases, it is just a form of resentment, they are unserious people—with a massive inferiority complex—who both need to distinguish themselves and also discredit those who did attain more.

It is basically the working-class equivalent of pulling the race-card.

And yet this is not entirely without cause.

They’ve endured globalism, they have seen their jobs outsourced, prices rise and wages stagnate. This was not the America that was promised to them. A place where their own dreams would be the limit. They see things going the wrong way, opportunities drying up for people like them, as a flood of new faces replace the familiar. There has been a sort of conspiracy against them, but not in the way they imagine. Yes, in many ways, they have been screwed over by their betters—so perhaps that is where the deep suspicion originates?

BAY-BEE, Identity Language and Oppression Narratives

The nurse pronounced baby as “BEE-bee” in our prenatal class and it got me thinking of how language develops. Words will shift to reflect their usage. The meaning eventually match with the reality when we attempt to disguise unpleasantness in flowery speech or try moral inversion. Cultural values will shine through and snap understanding back where it was prior to the manipulation.

How did “bAy-bee” become “BEE-bee”?

The latter evolution in pronunciation is cuter and therefore a better representation of the subject matter. The word never will change the thing it describes. Yes, words influence our perception, they also change to reflect a new understanding of the things that we are describing. For example, the word “baby” only changed in pronunciation for me when considering the little human now within my wife’s belly. It was no longer an abstraction or vague category, but a tiny vulnerable ball of loveable life.

When we experience something firsthand it is harder to deny what it is. We can use the terms detached and technical to distance ourselves from the emotional content. Say that a baby is just a clump of cells or some kind of parasite—up until the moment when we finally hold it in our hands. To keep up the charade after this would be delusional or psychopathic. It is not human to see an infant as anything other than precious. The political lexicon becomes irrelevant.

A Tangled Ball Of Words

Words trigger emotions. I was thinking of this as a tear formed while the instructor in a prenatal class described the ideal of “skin to skin” and a soothing environment. Some of this reaction may be feeling the weight of my wife’s pregnancy. But it also has a lot to do with my own identity as the “premie” and “fighter” who struggled for life. Discussion of baby care today compared to what it was for me. The thing is, while my experience certainly impacted my development, I don’t have memories of the trauma. It probably only looms large as a part of my personal identity because my mom told me what I went through and reinforced it. The I gave further shape and form to it by attributing many of my struggles to the events of my birth—everything from my delayed growth to difficulties with focus in school.

However, it is impossible to know, outside of creating a genetic clone, if I would have been much better off with a normal birth or with more human touch rather than being in a plastic box with ‘stimulating’ music. This had some impact, no doubt, and yet there is the bigger psychological complex I’ve built on top of this named thing. Like an irritant in an oyster, it provided a nucleus to attach all of my insecurities to and blame for my failures and shortcomings. With a normal birth would I have been more like my more accomplished siblings and less a mess?

However, it is very easy to reverse cause and effect to give ourselves an excuse for our being lazy and taking of exceptions. We become the label that we apply to ourselves as much as it truly describes us. We act the part. Things of identity, like race, sexuality, religion, are as much a construct or fantasy as they are facts. We live up to our name to an extent. My mom would often tell me that my name meant “strong-willed” and it might be one of those self- fulfilling prophecies. If we tilt confirmation bias in a direction it isn’t a big surprise if our character develops that direction. It is like strapping a young tree to influence where it grows.

In a sense, nobody is truly “born this way,” it is a statement discredits conditioning and culture too much. But the environment itself doesn’t make us where we are as much as those descriptive words that reverberate in our heads. A child that is called “stupid” by a parent or teacher may spend many years trying to sort through their doubts. My dad letting me look over his blue prints and then giving some affirmation when spotted an error made by the engineers is likely what led to my being confident in my abilities and a career in design. Our reality is influenced by use of language.

These are just personal observations, but it is also backed up by other sources that put it more succinctly:

Language is not just a medium of communication; it’s a lens through which we view the world and a mold that shapes our identity. From shaping cultural perceptions to influencing personal identities, language’s role is pivotal in constructing our social and personal realities.
Language as a Mirror and Molder of Reality and Identity

Language is more than a mere tool for communication.

It’s a portal through which we perceive and interpret the world.

Imagine how our understanding of colors evolves when we learn names for shades we previously couldn’t distinguish.

With each new word we acquire, a facet of reality emerges from obscurity, offering us a richer tapestry of experiences.
The Dynamic Relationship Between Language and Reality

Neither of those sources are academic or truly authoritative, but do say what I’m saying in a different way and thus useful so far as my goal here which is to provoke thought. New use of language reframes the world. It can amplify our efforts and transform society as more people begin to see the world through the lens we provided. Memes do this, as do pounding of propaganda headlines, it is why “fact-checkers” exist—all to reinforce a particular narrative.

With so much power in our words there is plenty of reason for cunning and conniving people to exercise this for their own selfish ends.

They take advantage of insecurities and level accusations to shame or confuse the innocent.

Wordsmiths, they could turn a baby into a villain and murderer into a saint—beware.

His talk is smooth as butter, yet war is in his heart; his words are more soothing than oil, yet they are drawn swords.
(Psalms 55:21 NIV)

There are some use the guise of compassion to gain control. Their promises are about attaining power. They seek only to bind us and yet many people are blinded to these motives because their identity has been hijacked by these nefarious actors.

Categories Are Social Constructs

The structures and constructs of language are entirely fabricated. There is no person who is “black” or “white” by birth, no, rather these are categories we create, clans that we join, and always artificial divisions. We are often grouped by others using various label words and internalize the divisions as being inseparable from our own experience, in that we identify with other “rednecks” or “blue-collar” types as those ‘like us’ and yet also *become* like that. Nothing requires a rural person to use country slang or go buy a massive diesel pick-up truck, some of the markers of this lifestyle (chewing tobacco or dress) can impact opportunities. This is about politics, not genetics. It is about the strength of an identity group that helps us gain power for ourselves. Being a victim of an “ism” is a lever, a social tool or means to build a coalition against others.

The individual without these groups, that is denied the right to put their fist in the air in solidarity with others ‘like them’ is weakest and most disadvantaged in this game. That is the irony of the “systems of oppression” language. Those who describe this kind of problem are actually creating it more than they are simply observing. In the same way that observation in quantum mechanics is an influence of reality (collapses the wave function), the ‘study’ of human interaction is an interaction and is a product of our bias as much as it has basis in reality. Those who are concerned with the existing ideas (of racism, sexism, or heterosexism) steal attention (and thus disenfranchise) victims of systemic heightism and those who lack privileges in ways not discussed, defined or even recognized. The individual is the most vulnerable, a minority of one, and frequently abused by recognized groups. Bullies travel in big groups—victims are often alone.

This line of questions quoted below is most likely well-intended, but is exploitative:

1) “Language both mirrors reality and helps to structure it” (2). Explain and give an example.
2)Racism, sexism, heterosexism, and class privilege are all interlocking systems of oppression that ensure advantages for some and diminish opportunities for others, with their own history and logic and self-perpetuating relations of domination and subordination (3). Explain what this means. Do you agree/disagree? Why?

3)What are the economic impacts of constructing race, class, and gender?

Sandwiched between the lines of this effort to build awareness (indoctrinate) are a pile of assumptions that, in the end, only serve to darken these artificial dividing lines.

It is rewarmed class warfare rhetoric, Marxism, and is basically designed to feed envy or feelings of being an other and disenfranchised. No, this is not to say that prejudice or abuse is entirely a social construct. What it is to say, rather, is that their worldview, segregated by these simple binaries, is too compartmentalized and minimizing of other factors.

There isn’t one group of oppressor and one group of oppressed.

There is no hierarchy of victimhood.

Everything depends on the context or situation. A Jewish student that is harassed on a college campus because of the IDF dropping bombs on Gaza is not privileged in this moment even if they are ‘white’ and rich. Nor is it anti-Semitic to characterize the decades long campaign against the Palestinian people as an ethnic cleansing. Labeling terms like “terrorist” or “occupier,” while useful to an extent, rarely explain accurately and are dehumanizing ends of conversation.

The whole point of claiming the existence of “interlocking systems of oppression” is to make anyone who dares to question their narrow perspective a part of a monolithic enemy rather than an individual with life experience to be respected. It is truly the educated left’s own version of a conspiracy theory where anything they don’t like is part of some invisible system that can teased out of the statistical categories they created to emphasize identities based on color and physical features. If some in one of these groups lag behind then some other group must be at fault.

Building humanity requires the de-emphasis of meaningless boundaries and formation of bonds based on behavior. Skin color is not synonymous with culture or the choices one makes that shape their outcomes. Yes, we must identify mistreatment of people on the basis of appearance, but this isn’t black and white, nor is it oppression to apply the same standard to all. Indeed, some people are treated unfairly, but many end up being marginalized for antisocial behavior and yet claim to be victims of oppression when the chickens come home to roost.

Call A Turd a Baby…

Bringing this full circle, the word “baby” is cute (and the pronunciation of the word is becoming cuter) because babies are cute. The language of description is merging more and more with the reality adorableness that we perceive in a human child by our instincts. Using the word “baby” to describe an adult does not make them cute. Albeit pet names, used to convey fondness, do imdue the quality a bit or at least will hijack some of the sentiment that associated with babies. However, this is something that can only be stretched so far before the absurdity is too obvious.

In this regard language that is used in an attempt to counter popular perspective, or overrule accurate description, will eventually take on the meaning that it was supposed to erase. The language police can only temporarily remove a stigma (albeit never long enough to make the effort worthwhile) and it is because the unpleasant reality will always bubble to the surface again. In fact, “special needs” today probably carries more negative baggage than the use of the words slow or retarded in the past.

Likewise when a person is accepted at the university or get your job simply as a result of the particular identity group they belong to rather than only on the basis of equal qualifications this leads to an asterisk with the accomplishment—even when equally earned. New terms like “diversity hire” will spontaneously and organically come into existence as a result of need to delineate between identity and merit based. These, sadly, are far more damaging stereotypes applied to minorities who are outstanding by their own right.

Just as one cannot relabel a turd as a baby and expect people to cradle it once the truth is revealed, one can’t just apply credentials or distinguished titles to someone thinking this will change a lack of qualifications. It will only degrade the meaning of words and in the long-term will do nothing to solve the socio-economic divide.

Calling someone a fisherman and giving them a pile of fish is not the same thing as teaching them how to fish. You can’t simply declare reality as the left believes they can. Turds are only cute when the term is used ironically to describe something truly cute.

An Affirmative Reaction

The Supreme Court has finally ruled against the practice of blatant racial discrimination in university admissions. This, after Harvard and other schools, in pursuit of filling quotas, would find means to select against qualified Asians to meet an ideal for diversity based on skin color.

The Affirmation Fairy…

African Americans, at least as a collective whole, have suffered disproportionately and this is a historical injustice that is not easily solved. Much of our success later in life has to do with the homes and communities that we were born into. The values we receive via our culture make a huge difference so far as outcomes.

I remember a viral video, a few years back, that lines up a bunch of young people on a grassy field. The announcer asked various questions, such as “Take two steps forward if both of your parents are still married,” and those who could answer yes advanced. The results of this survey were framed as ‘white privilege’ and yet none of the statements had anything to do with race.

Social inequality is certainly not a black-and-white issue, many children of European and Asian ancestry lacked a father in the home, worried about fitting in, did not feel safe at night in their neighborhood, worried about having enough to eat, and lacked access to private education or tutors. I once begged my mother to take me out of public school after a rough patch. I changed my hairstyle as a response to classmates who made note of my ‘Mennonite’ side part. I decided to quit college rather than go deep into debt.

Am I underprivileged?

Exactly how much am I disadvantaged as a learning-disabled child of two high school dropouts, with a father who had to be away all week to support our family?

There problem with all “affirmative action” is that it is a vast oversimplification of a very complex and multi-layered problem that may be more about culture than color. We simply cannot account for every factor or rate every single subcategory of ethnicity and culture for statistical disadvantage. For example, do we know the college graduation rates of Americans of German ancestry or Irish and Italian? Are a proportional amount of these ethnic groups represented?

Furthermore, our own disadvantages can be advantages, in that they can provide u much-needed motivation. Sure, having money may mean a trip to Harvard and a certain level of success. However, the same is true of those who are tall and athletic. Jeff Bezos, at 5′-7″ tall, may have benefitted from having some ‘short man syndrome’ or that extreme desire some have to compensate for the discrimination they faced for physical characteristics that were beyond their control.

Affirmative action is wrong in that there is no way to rank hardships. It is wrong because it isn’t addressing the root causes of social inequalities, even as defined by the privilege police, in that we’re not talking about things like fatherless homes or inner-city violence and cultural forces that discourage the behaviors that aid in academic achievement. You can’t wait until a person is eighteen, then wave a wand of university education and credentials as a solution to these underlying issues.

Asterisk Graduates…

The true underlying message of affirmative action was that minorities, specifically those of African descent, couldn’t be successful without the help of the government. As liberal arts universities continue to seek to fulfill a narrow color-obsessed definition of diversity, using quotas rather than qualifications, they unintentionally degrade all of their minority graduates—even those equal in merit to the non-minority graduates.

The idea of a “diversity hire” or a person not equally qualified to others who applied and yet are given preference only because of their special category of race or gender, is a direct consequence of discriminatory affirmative action programs. People know how to read between the lines (albeit often unfairly) and will diminish accomplishments that weren’t actually earned or can be perceived as being unearned. It is why we do not see the work of those ‘born into wealth’ as being equal to that of those who are self-made.

A classic example of the patronizing white saviorism that is lurking behind divisive equity campaigns.

Just as a university degree would lose value if everyone were simply given a diploma for breathing, admitting some primarily on the basis of skin color devalues the effort even in the eyes of those who benefit. It only serves to feed an idea of black inferiority, that they need a ‘white savior‘ to swoop in and rescue them from their plight, and is grossly unfair to all who were truly qualified on the basis of merit—but will still deal with the asterisk due to systemic compensatory color preferences or racially discriminatory quotas.

The hate crimes against Asians, like the murder of Yao Pan Ma, rarely receive coverage as other racially involved crimes.

You cannot defeat unfair discrimination with a new kind of unfair discrimination. It is not right that overqualified Asian students were being overlooked because of their race or on some kind of subjective basis that the worth of their own “lived experience” is less than a person of African origin. Many Asians have overcome extreme hardship, faced intense pressure at home and hate crimes (often underreported for going against the typical racial narrative), yet won’t ever express this due to cultural reserve—why should they be punished for the success of their peers?

Two-tiered or lower standards for some will never achieve the goal of equal outcomes.

Favouritism Forbidden…

We’re living in a time of moral inversion, a time when those who lived a life of crime and abuse are treated as victims simply on the basis of their outward appearance. It is as wrong as the favoritism of preferring the wealthy over the poor for the potential benefits:

Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.
Leviticus 19:15 NIV

The problem was favoritism, preferring one party based on who they are (what they can provide for us) rather than the actual merit of the case. Fairness of judgment, not equality of outcome, is the goal.

Christians were told not to judge by a person’s outward appearance:

My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
James 2:2-4 NIV

Many, trying to make a show of their own righteousness, take a Scripture like that above and turn it into a call for social justice or a special preference for the poor or otherwise disenfranchised. However, this kind of reverse favoritism totally misses the point. Trading one kind of perverse judgment for another is not a virtue. No, it is a virtue signal and something people do for the social benefit of merely appearing to be an advocate for those recognized as being disadvantaged. Even if sincere, this is a misguided approach that goes against the instruction not to show favoritism.

Affirmative action, in the end, is just a new form of white supremacy that is expressed as patronization. It frames differences in outcomes solely in terms of identity groups while neglecting to correct the factors causing the inequal results or truly helping people to cross over these unhelpful, artificial, and arbitrary divisions. Jesus taught more of a gracious meritocracy, where our behavior did matter and we would ultimately be judged on how we treat other people irrespective of their deserving or appearance. In this regard, our equality comes only in repentance and our obedience to the law of Christ—not by force of courts or legislation.

We do not save the world by trying to force others into compliance or control outcomes. Rather we change ourselves and become an example of impartiality and love to all people. Honest and fair equal opportunity is having the same requirements for all and not preferences tailored to some at the expense of others. You cannot rob Peter to pay Paul. We shouldn’t love bomb some, even to make them feel better about themselves, by removing opportunities for those who truly have earned their place.

Shedding Identity

There was a time when I could simply say “I’m Mennonite.” That is what I was. It was my religion, culture and ethnicity wrapped up into one tidy package. It was as real to me as my gender and first name. But now, having left the denomination of my youth behind, it is really difficult to buy-in to a new identity or at least not to the extent of feeling a significant attachment to the distinguishing title.

We live in a great identity crisis. We might celebrate more identities than ever, and yet somehow along the way, we have lost the very meaning of the words that we use to define these identity categories.

What is an identity?

An identity is a word used to distinguish one from another. Or a statement of what we are in comparison to the whole group. Are you Catholic or Protestant? Black or white? A Republican, Democrat or Independent? And whether it is identity or not has much to do with the emotional weight that we place on these categories and terms. In other words, blue-eyed is certainly a category that some of us belong to, but is not currently an true identity marker.

There are also various kinds of identity, there are those inborn or assumed—Charlotte, due to her inherited genetics, is Kankanaey, and would be no matter what she believed about herself or if she prefers that another term be used. Then there are those types of identities that are less about our immutable being and more about what we are doing. By contrast, trucker or truck driver is an identity, and even comes with a license to prove it, but it is not something that is actually written in a CDL holder’s DNA.

Identity is never something we can select for ourselves. I can claim to be a Dill Pickle and even legally require the moniker be used in reference to me. But this is never going to change what other people will perceive me to be. Identity is something that others construct, with us, and not only a thing that we independently choose for ourselves. Put another way, a rose by any other name is still a rose and even if we paint it blue. And blue does not become yellow because we switch the color identity labels either.

Our “I am” identity…

I’m sexually attracted to the female form and this has dictated my priorities and activities throughout the years. But, as important as it is to me, I don’t tout my ‘straight’ preference as being my identity. I am many things, but my sexuality is not something to hang my sense of who I am on. There are no hetero pride parades for this reason and no need to fly a special banner in front of my house to announce my preferences either. Sexuality is not who we really are.

So, when someone says “I am gay,” my mind always must go to the question, “you are a sexuality?” The reality is that this identity is about far more than what they do in bed. It is about the community or lifestyle and an identity built around being their status as an exception. Being “gay” is just as much about the social aspect as the orientation. It is not just something you only do in private. No, it requires a public display and solidarity with others like you. If it were simply about sex there would be no parades or neverending need to be legitimized by others. Identity is bigger than the individual.

And trans is simply the next level. Those calling themselves “trans” may (in direct contradiction with their biological gender assignment) self-identify as a man or a woman. But those who are truly male or female simply are and there is no need for hormones, reconstruction of genitals or to exaggerate gender stereotypes with weird provocative displays. On the other hand, no matter how much surgery is performed on the body of a ‘trans’ person they will always be trans. The more trans people try to force others to recognize them (despite our own eyes) the more they will stand out as being different. Which is truly the point.

Identity is about our distinguishing ourselves from the larger group. It is also about what is the most important thing to us. If a person were ask who I am I would probably start with my given name. That is where I am oriented in society, as a product of my parents, and also gives others a shorthand to address my person. Then I might mention my role as a husband and father as those things are currently the most meaningful parts of my life. Of course, also in the mix is my religious affiliation and occupation. Sexuality, while very important, wouldn’t even make the top of the list.

Furthermore, there is no need for anyone to defy their own eyes or be forced to recognize anything about me against their will. Identity is not only about what I declare. A large part of real identity is what others recognize with no coercion. If I had to demand that my son call me daddy or that my wife appreciate my bad cooking the same as she did the work of a master chef, would their bending to my will really make me any more legitimately those things? No, it would certainly not! It would make me a bully and look very insecure.

The Identity Gambit…

Special identity is a way to gain advantage over others. In the past it was about having the right privileging title or family pedigree. Now it has become a no holds barred fight between various victim categories. But in both cases it was about unearned respect, about people who did not do anything noteworthy enough in their lives to be recognized and thus invent illegitimate reasons why others must genuflect to them. These frauds are enabled by those who have twisted morality and a corrupted political system.

People can lie about their identity for many reasons. Impersonation of a police officer, for example, gives a person false authority and ability to manipulate the unsuspecting. Or stolen valor, in the case of those who, for attention, dress like and pretend to be a military veteran. Sure, the act is usually off, since these posers don’t have the requisite qualifications, but it fools enough people that they get the payoff of the true identity—or at least until caught. Then again, prancing around and pathologically pretending to be a girl is now extremely lucrative for some men.

Pretending to be a doctor or airline pilot is something children do innocently and yet it would be silly to legally recognize this as not to make them feel bad. True identity is not an act or a costume we put on.

Shedding identity…

Identity is powerful. For example, a person calling themselves a “gangsta” or “thug” is declaring a whole package of behaviors and dress styles. It is a choice as well as a habit, they could change and yet their momentum is in a particular direction. They have been conditioned, for years and years, by culture and peers, to assume this posture towards the world.

There is some truth to the statement, “you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.” We have many things instilled in us, accents to tastes, but this is not written into our DNA and doesn’t mean it is an “I am what I am” excuse. We will send children to speech therapy if they have an impediment rather than let them be their true selves. We can and should modify things that an identity is built from. This notion of a genuine self that can’t be changed is ridiculous.

Right now there is a Ukrainian vs. Russian war. The narrative we’re being sold is that there is a vast difference between the two sides—that this is a fight between freedom and democracy or authoritarian rule. We are told the Russians are barbaric and cruel, the Ukrainian’s heroic and capable. But both are from the same Kievan Rus origins, speak a dialect of the same language, and truly have much more in common with each other than they do with us. Furthermore, the regime in Kiev is hopelessly corrupt, and had been shelling those trying to escape this rule for years prior to the Russian invasion—it isn’t a distinction worth dying over.

Ukraine vs. Russia is more like the US Civil War than WW2.

The reality is we are not bound to identity, especially not to those that are more about what we are currently doing rather than our actual being. We choose our divisions as much as we are born with them. Sure, we can’t help what side of a border we are born on nor if our personality traits are judged as being masculine or feminine. But we can decide what is most important to us. And, more importantly, we can pick identities that are greater than sexuality or gender. We must reject this idea that we can’t change or improve while also accepting what we are and were born to be.

Many people get off from being contrarian and offending others, they especially enjoy being able to force others to go along with their language games. But, in the end, their ‘preferred pronoun’ is a distinction without a difference. We will remain what we are no matter how we dress it up or how much we compel others to go along with the delusion and falsehoods we peddle. It is only in our spiritual transformation, in finding a bigger purpose, that we can be free from needing the approval and attention of others.

More and more I have no identity to cling to outside of being who I am. I am what I am and don’t need to hide behind a special label or find my place in the world. While many in my religious past hold conference in search of their identity and as many converts in the tradition in which I currently participate tout the Orthodox adjective in the manner some do they/them pronouns, I have little interest in joining them in this inane competition. St Paul, in Galatians 2:38, would have us shed our divisive identities for a joint identity in Christ.

A Rose By Any Other Name

It is hard to feel unique in a world of 7.75 billion people. Due to mass media we are also more aware of this and also now have all of the best in the world there to compare ourselves to. We see the best athletes, the most beautiful bodies, those with wealth and power day in and day out.

At the same time, many young people did not have siblings to share the attention of their parents, only were given affirmation in their formative years, a participation trophy for showing up and—special as they are—don’t need to follow rules or ever answer to anyone.

In other words, we have a generation with deep insecurities, worried about their place in the vast sea of humanity, and then also raised to be self-absorbed narcissists.

Unlike the past generations, where you could be a big fish in a small pond, yet also needed to learn respect for boundaries and how to share or negotiate with others.

Unlike the meritocracy of the past, where you needed real accomplishments to earn privileges or praise, we have conditioned young people to believe that their satisfaction should come without sacrifice or effort.

It is very little wonder why so many of them are unfulfilled, dissatisfied with life, and out there seeking cheap distinction.

Distinction—Cheap or Valuable

We all know names like Elon Musk, Serena Williams, or Ron DeSantis. They are leaders in their realms of popular culture and sport, business or politics. And we can probably agree that some of their success is an inheritance of genetics, good fortune or the opportunities granted them.

However, what they are doing, like them or not, is producing results and with this are being rewarded for the things they do. They have outcompeted many, they distinguished themselves by showing up for work and by putting the time in. It is for that reason their recognition is earned. They do the things we care about and we make them famous for this unique resume.

Earlier this week I saw a story about Rose Namajunas, a diminutive female UFC fighter with a very big attitude that earned her the nickname “Thug Rose” in school, and how she’s being featured in a Victoria’s Secret ad campaign. The message “all expressions, no definitions,” with the word “undefinable,” do certainly fit her outsized personality and the mean head kicks she can deliver, all the while being very emotional.

The point a marketing strategy is cynical, it is to tickle ears and encourage more consumption of a particular good or service. Those who produced this advertising campaign did it trying to target a certain demographic in the hope of profit. And that target is probably not those who will ever have the same work ethic and skills as Rose, but is those who crave the same notoriety and ‘undefinable’ uniqueness.

We all wish to be significant, to distinguish ourselves from the pack, to be appreciated and loved. There are many who are looking for a shortcut or feel entitled to these things, they want the same acceptance, recognition and rewards as those at the top. They buy expensive clothes, the latest smart phones or cars beyond their budget, all trying to gain attention through their appearance rather than actual character.

There is hard-earned distinction and there is the cheap kind. There is the content creator who shares of their substance and then the one who destroys things for clicks. There is the pleasing gift of Abel and that unworthy offering of Cain. There is that real fulfillment which comes from making contribution and then the imitation that is outwardly prideful, expresses itself loudly, while truly being an envious, bitter and impoverished soul.

Personal Pronouns and No-name Jerseys

Penn State football has a long tradition of not putting the names of players on jerseys and this is to reinforce the notion of selfless team effort over a bunch of individuals only in it for themselves.

Success on the field and in life depends on our plugging in and sometimes putting aside our own preferences for the good of others. We can get more done by working together, respecting the established system, rather than demand that everyone makes special accomodations for us.

Yes, there is a time for grievances. We also should be a reasonable give and take so far as how individuals and the members of the group interact with each other.

And yet this idea that we should rewrite cultural conventions, negotiated over many centuries, simply so some ‘woke’ Karens can have power over others, is not a grievance I can ever honor. It is not reasonable for a person to decide the pronouns that apply to them or force us to go along with their newly invented categories.

We don’t need to be Amish, severely limiting individual expression to maintain community cohesion, but we also don’t want to keep on this path of total atomization either. There’s a reason why the barn raising religion is able to flourish while the rest of us are headed for Babal, confusion and collapse.

Rose By Any Other Name

This morning, pondering how the categories of mental illness are a bit arbitrary and how much I dislike how these labels pigeonhole people, there was the thought that my given name was the best possible diagnosis of me. I mean, I’m Joel. I don’t need a personal pronoun when I already have my own name and identity completely my own.

Ironically, the same people who want to have new pronouns for themselves also seem to revel in their mental illness as well. Anything to be different. It is a sort of humble-brag, a title of distinction of our era, to talk about your PTSD or bi-polar disorder. If you are the right person, if you can make yourself a part of the right identity group, then your self-declared victimhood will be treated as a virtue.

It goes beyond moral inversion. People think that you can slap the right label on a person and it will make up for their deficiencies. If only they were described right, if we would see their pink hair as an accomplishment, then they would love themselves. Of course, this is a lie, people so into themselves are always a black hole and no amount of love given will fill their deep void.

It is the spirit of those who are content to remain nameless, who get their numbers called for what they do for the whole, that actually matters. People will know what is great and what is not no matter what label is applied. I can never forget what W.E.B Du Bois wrote to a student:

Do not at the outset of your career make the all too common error of mistaking names for things. Names are only conventional signs for identifying things. Things are the reality that counts. If a thing is despised, either because of ignorance or because it is despicable, you will not alter matters by changing its name.
The Name “Negro”

We can manipulate and massage language all we want, give people all the fancy titles they wish for, but in the end none of this word play can take away or lend to their value. If you want recognition contribute to the whole and your name will be known. Not to the whole world, but to those helped by your deeds. A rose called by any other name is still a rose.

A Short Response to Systemic Heightism

The following is intended both as serious and satire. The serious part is that the statistics are real, shortness is practically a crime. The satire is how little those who typically decry such things care about forms of discrimination not as popularized and yet as established in fact as any other.

Systemic heightism is everywhere. This discrimination against people on the basis of shorter than average stature is something that is deeply embedded into culture and our institutions. For men, in particular, it means a lifetime of being denied opportunities for some and height privilege for others.

Shortness and Statistics

In terms of available statistics, and actually proven discrimination, short men are most disadvantaged of any group of people both in history and modern times.

There is a distinct wage gap driven by height:

“…researchers estimate that each additional centimeter of height is associated with a 1.30% increase in annual income. In other words, a person who is 5 feet 6 inches making $50,000 per year would expect to make about $2,000 more if they were 5 feet 7 inches, and $4,000 more if they were 5 feet 8 inches.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2020/04/16/your-height-has-a-big-impact-on-your-salary-new-research-seeks-to-understand-why/

It isn’t only a matter of income either, but status: 90% of CEOs are of above average height. Try playing college sports, let alone get an athletic scholarship, if you’re below average height. Even in the Bible a man named Saul was made king simply for being taller than average. Meanwhile, David, a short man, was ridiculed, and had to literally kill a giant to prove his worth.

Many short men are never given the chance to prove themselves and this is especially true in the realm of romance. Women on dating sites openly, and rudely, dismiss short men writing in their profiles things like “must be 5′-10″ or over to ride.” Of course, most women are more covert in their height discrimination and simply ignore potential suitors who who don’t meet their requirements.

Some women say what others conceal, but the preference is proven in the numbers.

A 2006 study, by the University of Chicago, found that a man who is 5’6” needs an additional $175,000 to be as desirable as a man who is approximately 6′ tall and only makes $62,500 a year. Talk about an uphill battle. Not only do short men get paid less, on average, but they also need more money in order to get an equal opportunity to be considered desirable to women.

Given that single men have a deceased life expectancy, presenting a 32% greater risk for men, being especially short is basically a death sentence.

Getting the Short End of Stick

Deniers of systemic heightism try to explain away the discrimination by victim blaming. They will often claim that lack of confidence that is the real issue. However, this is adding insult to injury. A short man can’t even be confident without risking an attempt to diminish him on the basis of his height. An assertive tall man is considered to be confident, to have leadership potential, while a short man with similar qualities will often be accused of “small man syndrome” or having a Napoleon complex.

Napoleon was often pictured with his tall elite soldiers and not actually unusually short.

Even in language, terms like “great stature” indicate something good, while phrases like “short tempered” are indicative of a flaw in character. And not to forget those many common expressions, like “getting the short end of the stick” or “coming up short” that associate shortness with inadequacy or misfortune. There is even implicit heightism expressed in the statues of famous people being enormous in size. It is inescapable, ‘bigger’ is typically paired with ‘better’ and nobody cares about the harm done.

Over the course of a lifetime a short man will have endured being last picked in gym class despite his tenacity, friend-zoned by women who admire his character and yet are not at all romantically interested. He’ll literally be overlooked by his employers and routinely denied promotions. It will cost him years of his life. But there will never be reparations, never even be a bit of sympathy, because nobody sees shortness the same way that they do gender or skin color.

The Long and Short

We’ll never have social media campaigns to affirm shortness because it would just seem too silly, plus even short men (already self-conscious) would reject the effort. I mean who really wants to be praised, falsely, for a characteristic that makes less attractive than others? It is better to just deal with it, use the disadvantage as motivation, prove that a guy can be short of stature and still a bigger man than most. That is the best and truly the only way to overcome adversity, to show the world who you are.

Maybe this is why the most powerful and influential men are actually on the shorter end of the scale? Many actors and a significant number of billionaires are of average or below average height. Maybe it is because they knew that they would be overlooked without going 110% in everything they do? The long and short is that we can forever wallow in our disadvantage or we can turn it into a strength. No, it does not make it fair, nothing ever is fair, still nobody will ever come to the rescue of short men.

The worst thing we can do to anyone is pity them and make them dependent on our help to be actualized. It is the true racist, and the real sexist, who assumes that some need their help or uses their ‘sensitivity’ to such things for their own socal advancement, a person dealing honestly will value character above all else and not allow themselves to be biased one way or another, favorably or unfavorably, on the basis of outward appearance.

Elliott Rogers is a poster child of grievance culture and where he was the real problem.

In the end, hurting people come in all shapes and sizes. It is impossible to quantify and rank such things and completely a fool’s errand to try to compensate people for every disadvantage they face in life. Furthermore, in trying, we make the problem worse in that we actually reinforce the feelings and the perception of inferiority in those we’re trying to help. It also leaves those not receiving this special treatment, and as disadvantaged or more, feeling even more neglected.

Sure, absolutely, a little awareness of the unique difficulties some encounter can go a long way to helping. And yet grievance is often a tool used by toxic and controlling people so they can have their way without putting forth the required effort for success themselves. There’s a vast difference between pity dating a short guy and giving him a chance despite his lack of statute. We should help people because they are people, not because they tall or short, black or white, male or female.

Short men, by dwelling on their grievance, will only exasperate their disadvantage. It may be cathartic to whiny and complain, but it doesn’t bring a person closer to feeling accepted. Having ‘pride’ events, marches declaring we matter, even months where members are extolled, can never actually produce the legitimacy that those snared in their grievances crave. It is only in finding our identity in something else that we’re free.

What Is a Woman?

Put away those pink vagina hats, feminists, 2017 might as well be 17 BC, this is the current year, now wearing such a monstrous thing on your head is a clear sign of bigotry and transphobia. How would those ‘women’ with penises feel? A pussyhat is worse than a Confederate battle flag or MAGA hat and completely insensitive.

A decade ago answering the question of what a woman is would be easy for most people. My mom is a woman. That’s what we call the part of mankind that is able to give birth: A womb-man.

But, in the age of far-left ‘woke’ politics, this isn’t so easy anymore. And this is the reason why, Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Supreme Court nominee, when asked, “Can you provide a definition for the word woman?” replied, “I can’t, not in this context, I’m not a biologist.”

Now, some are calling this question a trap, which it is. It is a question intended to reveal the true character of Brown Jackson and it has. Brown Jackson has shown herself as someone beholden to far-left extremism and unwilling to state a basic understanding that doesn’t need a biologist to get it right.

This is someone whom we are supposed to trust to make judgements on such matters, being interviewed for a job that is all about providing the final legal interpretations. Will she also refuse to weigh in on the language of the law because she’s not one of the writers? “I’m sorry, but I can’t rule on this, I didn’t write the Constitution.”

Alas, I think this is a selective lack of basic comprehension of what even children can figure out. And we all know that it is not fair for a biological male to change his name, take some hormones, and then dominate women. However, in the current ‘woke’ political paradigm one must pretend that a man competing as women is somehow stunning and brave.

The true irony of all this is that the pushers of the very same identity politics that moved Brown Jackson to the front of the line, which is completely about dividing people up into categories as a means to exploit their base tribal instincts, nominated someone who claims to suddenly be unable to distinguish women from men.

Man, I Feel Like A Women

And as far as the appeal to credentialism, I’m not sure any biologist would want to be declared to be transphobic and a bigot. It would be a quick route to losing their job or funding, being cancelled, to risk offending the most powerful of marginalized. Let’s hope this USA Today clip doesn’t represent a scientific community consensus or we’re in for a rough ride:

If this is indeed true, if there is “no sufficient way to clearly define what makes someone a woman,” then the solution to the alleged pay gap is to have more men identify as women, right?

If Jeff Bezos becomes Jen instead, would that be a huge victory for women?

Would it then be sexist to question the business practices of Amazon?

All of this is absurd. A word that can’t be defined is meaningless. We might as well remove it from the census form as it would be impractical to consult a biologist to help decide what gender we on a given day. If it is that difficult to define woman, then we may all be women and who can say otherwise? Who hasn’t sang along with Shania Twain, “Man, I feel like a woman”?

Transgenderism is truly a bigger threat to the special privileges of women than anything patriarchal. It is essentially to say that the category does not exist, that anyone who identities as a woman can be a woman, and therefore all should have access to those spaces typically reserved for women. Lia Thomas has arrived to erase the best efforts of women.

Loss of Meaning and Purpose

The one thing that is hard to define in this postmodern age, where a woman can’t even say what it actually means to be a woman, is our direction. Even with the rejection of God and questioning of truth, a prior generation of academics and scientists could agree on basic definitions enough to advance.

However, as this nihilistic deconstruction of meaning (and thus purpose) continued, as the very things that built civilization have become progressively eroded over time, it is become increasingly difficult to form a productive consensus. If many can’t even be objective about gender and what it means to be a woman anymore, how will we decide anything if this goes further?

Language is becoming detached from the meaning. This is a wedge driven by those perpetually stuck in dithering indecision, who are often insulated from real world consequences, who can afford to live in abstraction and denial. But it is not sustainable, we can’t build strong and safe bridges while declaring engineering and mathematics to be racist.

At some point there is reality, cold and harsh, that doesn’t care about our feelings.

Our elites are basically like those ridiculed for their debates about how many angels could dance on the head of a needle. They have become totally impractical, useless as far as executive decision making and a real threat to social order. Those unable to settle any matter definitively, let alone those truly more complex and nuanced, can’t build a future together.

It is a luxury, the ultimate privilege, to never have to define or decide anything and still be able to live.

The guy, trying to impress his date with his wokeness beside me, doesn’t actually live by the dogmas he is spouting, he can yammer on endlessly about his theories, but to sustain a relationship he’s going to have to make a commitment to something, eventually, or no woman will keep him around for long.

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Irregular Ideation

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." Albert Einstein

grievance culture