Love Is Patriarchal

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As I ponder my responsibilities, bringing a daughter into this world, my patriarchal protection is a given.

The West has been so successful at privileging women that many women do not comprehend the risks of true equal treatment. Feminism is only possible as a part of the patriarchal duty that men feel to protect women. What it amounts to is using male power to enforce standards that are friendly to women, that allow them to walk freely in the street in all manner of dress (or undress), and ignore the reality of what has existed outside the walls of patriarchalism.

Even the idea that sexual assault is a bad thing is an extension of patriarchalism where natural desire must be restrained by structures created by men. A buck in the rut doesn’t ask permission. Hormones direct it’s behavior and only the bigger male can ward off the advances it will make on a doe. It is a hierarchy that is built only on strength. Moral conscience is built off the idea that there’s a big man up there who cares about property rights; who says that a body belongs to someone and is therefore not ours for the taking simply because we desire it.

Yes, eventually this evolved into an idea of everyone owning themselves that we now assume is simply the universal truth. However, nothing in the animal kingdom suggests this is the case. The real world is often a brutal and unforgiving place. When a new group of male lions takes over a pride they will kill the cubs of the previous males. And human morality developed in a very similar manner. This was the default, whether the Psalmist’s fantasy about bashing the heads of an enemy’s infants against rocks or the book of Deuteronomy giving some rules for the treatment of war brides:

When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God hands them over to you and you take some of them prisoner, and if you see a beautiful woman among the captives, desire her, and want to take her as your wife, you are to bring her into your house. She is to shave her head, trim her nails, remove the clothes she was wearing when she was taken prisoner, live in your house, and mourn for her father and mother a full month. After that, you may have sexual relations with her and be her husband, and she will be your wife. Then if you are not satisfied with her, you are to let her go where she wants, but you must not sell her or treat her as merchandise, because you have humiliated her.

Deuteronomy 21:10-14

To our modern ears, this is horrendous. There is no asking for permission. And, other than saying to wait a month, the men were free to rape their captive females. But the reality is that this was a radical step in the direction of protecting women from physical violation. One hopes that this delay would’ve ensured a more compassionate and gentle approach rather than some blood-soaked orgy during the heat of battle and immediately after her male relatives were slaughtered. As grotesque as this seems, it was better for her to belong to one man (with some rights after he rejects her) than to be passed around as a mere sex object in the manner of a Japanese comfort woman:

CLAVERIA: (Through interpreter) A Japanese soldier got his bayonet and started peeling my father’s skin while saying, tell us the truth – your child is part of the guerrillas with the owners of that empty house.

MCCARTHY: As Claveria pleaded to let her father go, a soldier wrenched her arm. Birdlike, petite, Claveria strokes a badly set bone as she picks up the story of how she followed her mother’s screams up the stairs.

CLAVERIA: (Through interpreter) I saw my mother lying down with her skirt up, and there was a Japanese soldier on top of her. I ran. My two youngest siblings took little sticks and started hitting the soldiers. The Japanese soldiers then snatched away the sticks and bayoneted both of them.

MCCARTHY: They died. Claveria believes her parents were killed when the village was torched. Japanese soldiers hauled away two older sisters to a garrison and took Claveria to an infirmary for her injured arm. She does not recall how long she was there recovering, but she remembers a soldier named Terasaki. One day, he told Claveria she smelled, but she refused to take a bath, saying she had no change of clothes. Ordering her to wash, she says he gave her a uniform to put on.

CLAVERIA: (Through interpreter) I was to be taken to the garrison where my two sisters were. Before we reached the garrison, he raped me. I thought that I was going to die because I was in so much pain.

MCCARTHY: Terasaki would be the first of many Japanese soldiers to sexually assault Claveria, who was not even a teenager at the time. She was 12. She said her sister Meteria had been driven half mad by the trauma she’d experienced at the garrison. Claveria was shocked when she caught sight of her there.

CLAVERIA: (Through interpreter) She was burned with cigarette butts and boiled sweet potatoes. When one soldier after the next raped her, she put up a fight, but my sister was not brave. She refused because she was in so much agony from all the abuse.

MCCARTHY: Claveria believes her other kidnapped sister was moved to a different garrison. She was never seen again. Historians have estimated that at least 200,000 women were forced into sexual servitude during World War II, mostly in areas occupied by Japan, prominently Korea. The women were euphemistically called comfort women, and the organized system of comfort stations to supply soldiers sexual gratification ran from Seoul to Singapore. Writer Evelina Galang has documented women captured in the Philippines.

EVELINA GALANG: And these are women as young as 16 years old – really, some of them 8, 10 years old. In the Philippines, historians estimate that there were probably about a thousand women and girls taken and put into military sex slave camps.

Men can be monsters. Worse than animals. And, in many parts of the world, immodest dress is taken to be a sign she wants it. Morality does not hold back the aggression of the rapist. No, rather it is the role of other men to restrain evil. Women are protected by their fathers, by their husbands, and by institutions that represent these men. Political structures were created by men and are defended by men. Yes, even if women were granted the right to participate. E.g. even if Kamala Harris takes the patriarchal role—she is still acting in a patriarchal manner and will need the strength of men to impose her will.

There will not be a feminist left in Europe if Islamists take over. That is not to bash Islam or say they would kill off all women who did not submit. No, it is to say that feminism cannot exist outside of the Christian West. The notion of individual rights, that people can independently make their own decisions, cannot exist only on paper or it is impotent. It requires men willing to sacrifice themselves to preserve this egalitarian ideal for their wives and children. Self-sacrificial love is not natural nor a priority in every religious patriarchal structure. Feminists cannot exist in Islam because only the respect of patriarchal institutions gives them power.

The alternative to the current patriarchy is not the absence of patriarchy, men (or those who act like men) will always rule, but the real choice is what manner of rule we wish to live under. It really is survival of the fittest outside of the walls of civilization. Chants of “down with the patriarchy” are about as meaningless as shaking your fist at the wind. It misunderstands the world. It assumes that nature will simply obey our voice because we’re angry and believe rights can exist outside of the structures that guaranteed them for us. It is only in the absence of rule by men who care about more than their own sexual gratification that the value of this benevolent form of patriarchy is known.

Truth Be Told—Who Really Cares About Waitresses?

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Early on in this site, I spent significant time trying to explain the power of description and how bias works.   The underdogs are the ones who are assailed by less favorable language by those who have power in the group.  A good quality can be twisted into something bad or propagandists can cast the exact same actions in a very different light—which is what these two examples capture:

Bad when Trump proposed it.
Good when Harris copies it.
Only difficult when Vance suggests it?

When Trump proposed an end to taxes on tips the focus was on the ‘cost’ of allowing servers to keep more of what they earn.  But when Harris copied the idea, suddenly there is no concern for revenues lost and it is all about her “fight” for the little guy.  Likewise, when JD Vance offered a $5000 tax credit for children it was “difficult” and yet when the Harris campaign did the same it was all about newborn cuteness.  I mean, think of the children!

I suppose we should just be happy that the Democrats are finally coming around to the conservative idea of letting us keep more of our hard-earned wages.  It makes so much more sense than minimum wage hikes and giving everyone food stamps.  Of course, this means less power in the hands of the politicians, who love to run campaigns that scare their constituents about the potential loss of benefits.  

Trump had previously made the mistake of enacting an across-the-board income tax cut. This gave the media propagandists opportunity to claim it was a “tax cut for the rich” since those who pay more get a bigger cut proportional to the amount they paid.  That’s fair.  If you pay more how are you not entitled to more?  But everyone who paid in got a cut and the middle class a higher percentage, as outlined here:

According to IRS statistics of income data analyzed by Americans for Tax Reform, families earning between $50,000 and $100,000 saw their average tax liability drop by over 13% between 2017 and 2018. By comparison, those with income over $1 million saw a far smaller tax cut averaging just 5.8%.This pattern of middle-class tax reduction was also seen in key swing states.

For instance, taxpayers in Pennsylvania earning between $50,000 and $100,000 saw their tax liability drop by over 14%, while households with incomes over $1 million saw their tax liability drop by just 3.1%.Taxpayers in

Colorado earning between $50,000 and $100,000 saw their tax liability drop by over 13%, while households with income over $1 million saw their tax liability drop by just 4.5%.

Clearly everyone was getting a cut, and the middle-class got a higher percentage back than the rich, but the media coverage obsessed with the dollar amount people kept—rather than the percentage being cut—to distort the public perception.

The Trump-Vance ticket has learned and is now outmaneuvering the left.  Most people know that keeping more of their own money is efficient and much better than a new government program.  It is just that the Republicans didn’t sell it. 

But this time, with an idea to end taxes on tips and another to help all young families, the typical deceptive spin doesn’t work.

Harris had no choice but to try to outbid her opponent. 

The problem with this? 

Harris was the tiebreaking vote on a bill that sends IRS agents after waitresses.  Now, yes, the Democrats will claim that they need the 80,000 agents to go after ‘the rich’ since they know CNN, MSNBC, and NY Times would never run a story linking a poor minority woman being audited to DNC policies, yet it in this case is too hard to deny who the true beneficiaries are.

We should question the sincerity of those who only introduced their policies after the other side did.  At best, they’re like the kid who cheats on the test by copying off the smart student in their class.  At worst, they are simply saying whatever it takes to get elected and have no intention to do what are now proposing.  We can’t trust the ‘journalists’ to set the record straight or give unbiased presentation of facts.

Go listen to the interview and see if the headlines match with the reality.

The most frustrating kind of misinformation is factually based. 

They lie by structure or omission, by presenting the costs and not the benefits, and sadly it works because people aren’t able to read through it. 

They did this with Trump’s tariffs, stories zooming in on the few who were inconvenienced and ignoring the many long-term benefits.  But the criticism ended when Joe Biden took over the policy, suddenly it was silence—just necessary to push back against China and finally rebuild some of our deteriorated manufacturing strength.  Nothing changed about the actual policy or benefits, only the presentation.

Now the choice is yours, do you go with the side that originated these steps in the right direction or with those who lied about Joe Biden’s declining mental health, saying he was “sharp as a tack” until the debate made the truth undeniable and now would have us believe they’re telling the truth?

Add that Harris is trying to introduce disastrous price controls and could end up creating food shortages as happens when central planning replaces free markets. If you think inflation is bad, then wait until more food-production businesses start to close, like this fruit farm and market, due to the increased compliance costs and lack of profit. We can’t afford four more years of economic mismanagement.

Anticipating November’s Delivery

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In November, as the world tunes in to know who will be elected president, my wife and I will anticipate something else. 

We expect a baby girl, our first child together and second that Charlotte has brought into the world.  It has been my joy to raise our son, but having this miracle of life unfold before my eyes is still a powerful experience.  How a moment of intimacy can create such potential is just completely amazing.

There is no greater role in the world than a woman who takes her pregnancy to term, motherhood is simply the most important job there is.  In a century nobody will care about who won the popular vote or their policies.  Truly, short of a civilization ending nuclear war, they’ll remember Trump like we remember Taft or Harris as we recall all the many noteworthy accomplishments of the Harding administration.  But old folks then will remember their mothers.

The most powerful position in the world is not one with four year terms.  A President can reallocate resources, make things more or less difficult, wage war and destroy, but only mothers produce new life.

Early in our relationship, when marriage had become a possibility, Charlotte was excited about the prospect of a mixed baby.  That is a combination of my German genetics “long nose” with her own.  But as months waiting turned into years that initial enthusiasm had wore off and, by the time she arrived, it was all about financial goals.  We couldn’t afford a baby—we could barely keep up with rising costs due to inflation!  

Besides that, we are both getting old.  The world seems less stable now than ever, my own skepticism has grown and I’ve become untethered from assumptions that brought me easy answers in the past.  Our son was already here, we weren’t bringing a new life into the mess.  So maybe it was better that we didn’t bring a child into this to suffer the hardships and pain that we have?

I’ll also admit that my wife, despite having given birth once, had a flat belly and that is completely desirable.  We all want to hang onto our youthful appearance.  Men tend to prefer women that are in shape or pleasing for aesthetic reasons.  Why ruin that?

However, a bottle of wine and nature have won against rational concerns.  No, those anxieties about how to raise a child in this environment did not go away and, for the first time ever, abortion entered my mind as an escape of this enormous responsibility.  This could all just go away with a ‘medical procedure’ and nobody would need to know, right?  Of course, that momentary reflection was swallowed up by excitement.

No, we don’t know how all of the details will work out.  Our hopes of moving Charlotte’s mom here didn’t pan (only the parents of US citizens can be petitioned) and we’ll have to adapt as we go.  We have no regrets, the kicks we feel now soon to give way to cries in the night, diaper changes and all of those steps of development.  But in the end this is the only legacy we will leave to the world—the only future we have.

Preparations are underway for the inaugural moment when this winner against the odds will emerge.  We want our daughter to have the very best introduction to the world we can provide—a safe and stimulating environment.  We’re stocking up on diapers and bottles, have a crib and car seat that can double as a stroller, friends and family will celebrate—the anticipation builds!

Saved In Childbearing

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My own views have migrated from spiritual imagination to sustainable compared to the unsustainable.  Civilization was built by the participation of many who assumed roles that fit their qualifications and now is on the brink of collapse as we deny nature.  We’re on a path that is unsustainable because we deny nature.

What is nature?

Nature is that, as we mature beyond the age of childhood, inborn sexual desires lead us to seek a partner.  And, when successful, “A man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Gen 2:24 NIV) The purpose of this joining of man and woman? A multiplication from two to three, four, five, or more.  That is to say that in marriage we’re fruitful.

The point of this blog is not to be preachy or tell anyone what to do, rather it is to outline a problem and share a few Bible references for fun.  Scripture is part of the tradition and foundation of our civilization and could help us to diagnose where things are possibly going wrong as we stumble.  All across the developed world population collapse looms and it will be a disaster for little old you.

This is a topic even more important if you’re irreligious, think this is all there is, and aren’t aiming for “treasures in heaven,” because it could impact your retirement plans.  This is purely a numbers game how it plays out, if there aren’t enough people to make stuff or provide services, there is nothing for you to buy—your current lifestyle might be the high point of your life.

But even if you are ‘heavenly-minded’ there is still plenty of reason to reconsider some of the attitudes that I’ve witnessed within conservative groups.  Truly, fundamentalists need to fix their courtship gambit more than anyone else.  There are plenty of women in those circles who are ‘married to Jesus’ and are really only married to themselves, their idealistic visions—and in total denial of the real cause of their lack of success.

I call out women, in particular, because they are the true gatekeepers of romance.  If you are a half-ambitious guy you just know this, I’ve been turned down so many times that I have lost count.  There were some, basically average, girls who would sooner get cancer and die than go on a first date with me or a man who did not fit a long list of superficial or social status requirements.

Yeah, it worked out for some of them, but a great many wasted their fertile years trying for unattainable perfection.

What does the Bible say?

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. (2 Timothy 3:1-7 KJV)

I don’t think this is the end of all, but it might be the end of us.  Typically verses like those above get applied to those who are outside the group.  It is “the world” that is full of narcissistic self-seeking types.  And indeed the secular-minded have led the way as far as being unbound to any natural responsibility.  But the church is often guilty of the same things albeit covertly and wearing a righteous disguise—in the manner of the Pharisees:

And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!  For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’  But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)—then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.” (Mark 7:9-13 NIV)

What Jesus is addressing is how the most pious of his day would use sanctimonious claims to override practical commands.  In the example he gives they were claiming to be saving their resources to give to God and thus not able to take care of their parents. It was an excuse.  They used the missional as a cover for their big neglects closer to home and, likewise, many today say that they are fully dedicated to God’s kingdom by doing fun projects in Uganda—but are they loving their brothers and sisters in Christ?

I suppose we could blame St Paul for being seemingly all over the map on marriage and if we should pursue it.  Then again, maybe the point of 1 Corinthians 7 where he makes singleness a higher calling is simply for the sake of encouraging those who did not find that special person and basically reminding them they have greater freedom to do God’s work while not married.  But it is abundantly clear that church growth comes through the production of children.  And women, those most likely to be led astray, play the most vital role in this: 

I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. (1 Timothy 2:12-15 NIV)

Again, I don’t expect anyone to believe this, this could simply be the misogynistic blathering of an entitled Jewish guy who found Jesus as a means to advance his social agenda.  But, if you’re a Christian, then what exactly does “Women will be saved through childbearing” mean so far as the church today?

First, this is an allusion to Mary and her role in the salvation of the world.  According to the Gospel, God chose to come into the world through the natural means of pregnancy and birth.  Second, it tells us something about the vital role of women in the church and matches or supersedes any speaking role.  This absurdity that shaping the world comes only through opening our mouths is why many women sacrifice their potential as the literal creators of the future.

Motherhood Is Most Important 

Feminism measures value in only the most masculine terms.  It tells us that the natural and traditional role of women is worthless and that women need to compete with men for money and political power.  But the core of this ideology is an attack on motherhood and doing that one thing no man could ever do—only a woman can give birth.

But the degrading of motherhood is not only a matter of women being told that they need to be toxically independent of men economically, but also in turning children into a burden, a parasite and something to be exterminated before they have a chance to say, “Momma.”  Birth control and abortion send a message that the next generation is not important, that it is a liability rather than an asset, and there is nothing further from the truth.

During COVID the same people who told us to mask up or we’re killing Grandma or had made shrines to George Floyd continued to lead the assault on the youngest and most vulnerable population.  It makes no sense, old people will die no matter what we do to protect them.  Black women terminate their pregnancies five times the rate that other women do, but the topic of the day is black lives matter and protecting others through our own self-sacrifice?

The reality is that the war on motherhood is sacrificing our own future.  We really should be thinking of our Grandma and what the world will be like if we don’t follow in her footsteps by raising the next generation.  The reality is that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and can only be sustained through population growth.  Even if it were paid for, money has no value unless there is someone to offer their labor in exchange for it.  That savings of dollars is useless without any qualified people to fill positions.

Our narcissism will catch up to us one way or another.  The short-sighted pursuit of a career will have consequences.  Taking the pleasures while denying the responsibilities that nature has intended will inevitably lead to a snapback.  We can artificially cheat the system for only so long before nature starts to push back to eliminate a threat.  History is littered with those who thought themselves to be gods only to be humbled.

The Sustainable Church

Evangelicalism, in particular the focus on conversionism, the Bible out of context of the religious tradition that formed it, and a focus on activism, has eroded communities and put the primary conduit of the Gospel (children of Christians) in second place to information distribution efforts.  The true Church is about Communion, about bringing a little of the heavenly kingdom to Earth, it is about households being saved.  And that is where a woman’s role of bringing new life into the world—which is what sustains any ‘spiritual’ movement.

We need less talk.  Rather than push more speaking roles or more of those glamorous foreign adventures, as if this wasn’t only what St. Paul and a handful of others did in the early Church, there should be a move to what has been most effective for centuries and truly where grows a community of the faith.  We need to give the men who wish to be married and provide for their wives and families the opportunity to be fathers.  We do it by normalizing the natural good again.

There is an overabundance of glory-seeking men and women, desperate for higher social rank and more attention.  They love to have their name on a prayer card while living on the dime of others.  They’re too busy with information warfare to realize that the most powerful witness of Christ is love closer to home.  It was the ‘important’ people who Jesus had condemned for ignoring the bloodied man left for dead along their path or stepping over Lazarus as they went about their business—they thought themselves righteous and were on the road to hell.

There are many reasons why the Christian West is dying and declining birthrates are the biggest contributing factor.  This is partly due to the emphasis on missionary work rather than the ministry of motherhood.  We would save more people—save even our own future—if we shifted back to fruitfulness and being multiplied.  If you have a worldview to spread you don’t do it with tracts shoved in faces.  No, you do it by doing it or good old-fashioned procreation.  So get married young, have many babies, and you’ll be blessed in your old age.

The role of mothers is as important as any man in the church and most will find out too late why that is.  Don’t be one of those who has only regret to accompany them in their twilight years.  You’ll need to decide if holding out for Mr Right is truly worth postponing your greatest calling.  Many men, currently banished to singleness, would make good husbands and fathers if given a chance.

Sight, Sources, Statistics and Science

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Social media provocateurs love to push popular controversies to generate clicks on their sites and get those heated comments sections.  The question about the gender of two boxers in the female category of the competition was that perfect story.  It was not straight up or settled, but generated a lot of strong opinions on both sides.

For myself, it is fairly evident that these two boxers do have a competitive advantage or they would not have won in their respective divisions.  I mean, that’s not even a matter of dispute.  An advantage is how anyone wins an athletic contest and it doesn’t mean they cheated.  However, when not only one but two people with the same extremely rare and potentially enhanced condition—both get the gold?  What are the odds?

Only one out of 500,000 people in the world go to the Olympics.  But, of course, nothing is ever that simple.  Those who live in small countries, like Algeria or Taiwan, have a far greater chance of representing their home countries simply because there are fewer people to fill the same spots.  And then not everyone in the world is competing to be in the Olympics.  Most of us don’t try out.  It is sort of like my being sixth while wrestling in the Eastern National AAUs—many superior to me simply didn’t make the trip.

But to go to Paris and beat everyone?  There is a reason why we give precious medals to those who do.  It is one thing to be that PhD who identified as a breakdancer and ended up scoring zero, it is quite another to get on the podium.  There were 124 boxers in the female category, divided into six different weight classes, and went through three qualification tournaments.  This is certainly not an easy road.  The champion is one out of every woman in the world who can make that weight and is into boxing.

There is speculation that those two boxers who had been disqualified from IBA fights due to failed gender tests—and masculine appearance—is they may have a disorder called Swyer syndrome.  This isn’t a fact, but it would explain why they would have been declared women at birth and always identified as women.  Those with this very rare condition have a male Y chromosome despite their female sexual hardware and offer no male advantage.  

However, it is also possible that the two have Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, which impacts 2-5 out of 100,000 females, which means they would have characteristics of a female outwardly but also have male testes that are undescended.  Severe AIS wouldn’t confer an athletic advantage, according to the sources I’ve read, and yet that does not tell us anything about milder cases.  

Still, the conversation can’t end there, we have other possibilities:

Some press reports have mentioned 5alpha-reductase type 2 deficiency.  This rare syndrome is best reported in the Güevedoces in the Dominican Republic.  Affected XY individuals are apparently female at birth because they can’t activate sufficient testosterone to the much more potent dihydrotestosterone to masculine in utero and thus appear female (the default gender in the absence of masculinising hormones).  However, they have testes in what appear to be labia.  At puberty, the testes produce much more testosterone sufficient to activate receptors and masculinise the child.  Such subtleties are beyond the capacity of most regulatory bodies to accommodate.

The chances of two women with these rare chromosomal disorders somehow making it to the Olympics would be incredibly low.  For example, Swyer Syndrome is around 1 in 80,000 births.  So multiply those odds by the chances of getting to the Olympics and then take that times two.  The number is incredibly large.  There is a far greater chance of being struck by lightning.  If the XY chromosome is present in these two—along with higher testosterone levels—the fact they dominated the field, given what coaches have said, should be considered proof of a potential unfair advantage.

Sources Please Vs. What We See

Much of the smirking response of mid-wit “sources please” types—who simply went along with the ‘official’ International Olympic Committee (IOC) narrative—comes down to many of the slightly dimwitted “I see what I see” types misidentification of the issue as being about transgenderism.  When the real issue is whether or not these athletes have intersex characteristics and thus an unfair advantage in female competition.

Yes, the right is too reactionary.  However, not without cause, they know too well how the NCAA and corporate media denied that Lia Thomas had an unfair advantage as one born a man and still having a penis as well as the rest of a man’s hardware.  And they correctly see that these two Olympic boxing competitors have a masculine appearance.  They had incorrectly assumed that this was just another case of a man cheating his way to the top by pretending to be a woman.

However, that misunderstanding of some is being used as a strawman of the real issue, the real argument is source versus source.  Specifically, the fact that these two athletes were disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for having male XY chromosomes.  These laboratory tests took place in Turkey and India  So, despite the attempts, by bigots, to smear the IBA as being corrupt for ties to Russia.  But the reality is that no organization is totally without political ties and there’s a reason why the IOC has never banned the US for our military aggression around the world.

So it really comes down to who we want to believe.  The IOC rests its entire claim of gender, on legal documents, passports, and birth certificates, provided by the country of origin, and says this gender assignment makes the boxers women.  By contrast, the IBA cites biological science and test results and tells us these two ‘women’ have XY chromosomes.  Right off the bat, the criteria of the IBA are science and laboratories whereas the IOC is relying on political entities.  Should we follow the science or believe those appealing to non-scientific evidence?

At this point, the mid-wits completely lose the plot and rely on their confirmation bias rather than logical deduction.  They’ll simply refuse to acknowledge the obvious, that the official IOC criteria to determine eligibility is entirely inadequate for solving this riddle; that the IBA at least has what appears to be scientific evidence, and thus this is a question to be answered in the lab rather than the court of public opinion—so they double down on their insults trying to deflect from the real issue.

But, in the end, this isn’t about science, what we see, statistics, or sources.  No, it is about partisan politics that blind many somewhat intelligent adults to what even a child could see.  It exposes those “sources please” mid-wits as just another level of ignorance.  And social conservatives could help themselves a whole lot by not jumping the gun and not oversimplifying complex issues.  Both sides are guilty of false dichotomies and believing misinformation.  Lastly, those who are suggesting that I-man Khelif is representative of Algerian femininity are guilty of the bigotry of low expectations.

The Displaced Aggression Of Ruby Hamad  

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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.

I guess Istanbul is now white?

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.

Guess which one is a woman of color?

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.

Stunning and brave!

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.

The Unfairness Of Competition

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The other day I looked across the gym and saw a familiar grin. 

Oh, Ydran decided to pump iron! 

My son, still twelve years old, isn’t the most committed to strength training or conditioning and prefers to spend his time lounging at the pool.  But with Junior High football being right around the corner he (completely of his own volition) was putting some work in.  I gave a salute and then we both continued with our respective workouts.  

However, what really impressed me was the weight he had on the bar.  His bench is right around 100 lbs, for reps.  And this brought me back to when I started lifting weights.  I can recall doing the same weight, except in my Junior year of high school!  And also how some of the football players would curl my bench weight, as in literally take what I had on the rack and use it to curl.  But it was not totally embarrassing for me  I only weighed 112 lbs as a Senior.  It shows what a difference his genetics make.  With a bit of work ethic, he’ll be an athletic freak—while I never was going to be great.

As for myself since school? 

I’ve put on enough mass to make up for the sunken chest (which was a consequence of my traumatic birth) and am above average in terms of bench strength—even after being effectively reduced to zero twice due to my neck injury and having to rebuild.  With my current body weight around 180 lbs, I have recently broken a personal record with six solid reps of 225 lbs.  Which is more than most men will ever do and a result of discipline.  I was determined to overcome my limitations.

Still, given where he is now, with a little bit of effort and a few more years, he will do more than what I’ve ever done.  He’s just athletically gifted, has very good hand-eye coordination, and is already big and strong enough to give some serious competition.  It is only a matter of time until I won’t have any advantage.  Fair or not he will be better than me at everything he wants to do and probably with less overall struggle.  So long as he will remain healthy he is destined to crush me in any competition. 

There is no such thing as an even playing field in sports and competition.  If we were all built the same, with the same opportunities or abilities, every contest would end in a tie—there couldn’t be winners or losers.  But we do have differences in size, speed, endurance, and even in motivation and desire.  Some had parents who pushed them, gave them more opportunities, and made sure they had the best nutrition and coaching, and that’s what gave them their edge.

So what is fair or not fair?

PIAA vs Aliquippa vs Southern Columbia

Pennsylvania has some hard-nosed smash-mouth high school football.  In particular, the towns of the coal region have produced dominant players and programs.  The Red Tornados, of Mount Carmel, is the storied winningest team in the state (6th in the nation) with a total of 899 wins.  But, have taken a step back, it is their neighbors to the North that are setting records today, and that being the Tigers of Southern Columbia with six consecutive State Championships.

However, on the complete opposite side of the state, in a Pittsburgh suburb, they have another team with an incredible tradition of winning, the Aliquippa Quips.  

Southern and Aliquippa started in the class A, small school category, they’ve battled in the State Championship game and online it is clear there is some bad blood on the side of the Quips, being humiliated 49-14 in the final back in 2015.  But what has really been grinding their gears is that—as the result of new PIAA rules intended to help maintain a competitive balance—they’ve been bumped up multiple classifications (the Tigers only going up one) due to transfers and success in the post-season.

The same exact rules apply to both teams and yet have impacted the Quips more dramatically and this has led to cries of foul—and a big whataboutism.

Their player safety is the first reason they’ve argued.  Despite Aliquippa having walloped an undefeated Selinsgrove Seals team, in the AAAA championship, earning them their latest bump in classification, and despite their having a roster with quite a bit of D1-destined talent for a typical small school—the Quips’ loyal fan base has been viciously accusing the PIAA organization of favoritism and their cross-state rivals of being a cheater for avoiding reclassification.  But there is zero evidence for either charge.  It seems that the reality, under all this bluster about player safety or fairness, is that they want to keep beating on a weaker field year after year.

They’ve taken it to court and have won their first appeal.  But the PIAA is fighting against this decision with their own appeal and who knows where it will go.  What I do know is it will likely be a matter of prejudice, not merit or metric, that decides the case.  

Racial overtones hang over this, as well as the fact that this is East versus West, the Tigers with their rural population while the Quips come from an urban community.  Southern Columbia sits in a cornfield, near the beautiful Knoebels amusement park and resort, representing a vibrant community of Elysburg and on the edge of the economically depressed coal region.  While jobs and a better place to live is a big enough draw—there is very little doubt that a few parents do move into the school district only for the sake of their child’s athletic future.  However, being on the edge of a big city like Pittsburgh is a massive advantage for Aliquippa.

There is talk now of a new “Southern Columbia rule” which effectively will target the Tigers specifically for their unprecedented success within the current regime.  Is it sour grapes or retaliatory rules?  Who knows.  But both of these powerhouses insist that the work they put in is what makes the difference. It is true to an extent.  The Tigers, under the tutelage of Jim Roth, went from basement dwelling to the point of nearly eliminating the football team to totally mauling their local schedule and stacking up trophies for decades—coaching with discipline got the ball rolling before it became a dynasty that creates its own weather.

But the sore losers do have a point, talent does gravitate towards Southern like bees to honey.  One example is that outstanding quarterback prospect from my hometown who ended up there, with rumors swirling that his dad rented an apartment in Elysburg so he could play and that this kid (who ended up going to Alabama) was still spending most of his time away from Tiger territory.  And yet, with the very high level of scrutiny the program has faced I am fairly certain all is done within the rules.

The point is that there is no perfect formula and thus never a fair competition.  Yes, they all need to suit the same amount of players to play, scoring rules should apply equally to all teams, and officials should have no bias, but there are a myriad of factors that can’t be controlled or properly accounted for.  No two communities in the state of Pennsylvania are exactly the same, some schools are advantaged in ways that others are not, so there will never be a perfect competitive balance.

Olympic Women vs Algerian Boxer

The trans controversy has taken yet another turn as a female Italian boxer, after only 46 seconds, collapsed in tears and she quit the bout.  The reason for this is that blows from her opponent, an Algerian, Imane Khelif—a “biological male” according to the blazing headlines—were too much to take.  And true enough, Khelif looks like a dude and had also previously been disqualified from international competitions due to having an XY chromosome.

An Italian woman takes a beating from Algerian.

My initial knee-jerk reaction was outrage.  It was wrong that this woman would have to face this obviously masculine figure.  And yet, when I started to dig, it turns out the “That’s a man!” reaction is a little bit of an oversimplification.  Khelif has always identified as a woman.  And that is because ‘she’ was assigned to the female category at birth.  Why?  Well, it’s because, no fault of anyone, they were born without the male organ.  They are one of those very rare cases of being intersex.  In other words, the ‘down there’ expression doesn’t match the chromosomal gender rule.

So the “Well Ackshully” mid-wits, armed with this little knowledge, proudly noting that Algeria (Muslim) is a conservative country, dunked on their dimwitted counterparts who saw what they saw.  They’re right in that Khelif is officially female because of ‘her’ female genitals.  But the weird part is how these same people who believe stuff like “misgendered” despite male anatomy suddenly can’t see the controversy when this competitor is also chromosomally a male and they’ve visibly benefitted from male hormones.  The real question is whether or not it is fair they’re allowed to be in the female category so far as boxing is concerned, not if they had been described as female on a birth certificate.

A controversial Taiwanese ‘female’ competitor.

The reason that there are two categories—one for men and another for women—it is a clear advantage to being a male when it comes to high-level competition.  Caitlin Clark, as phenomenal as she is against other women, wouldn’t make an NBA roster.  That’s not at all sexist, it is just reality in the same way I won’t post up with LeBron James.  And to deny this is on par with Flat-Earthism, they can say gender is a social construct (some of the expression is cultural), and yet there’s also overwhelming hard evidence that men have a distinct physical advantage, according to The Trans Athlete Debate “Dilemma”:

Even before puberty, when the differences effectuated by the influence of sex hormones sets in, from a purely genetic perspective, biological males are significantly advantaged.

Case in point, one study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine extensively researched peer-reviewed studies on the health-related fitness data of 85,000 Australian children aged 9-17.  It found that when “compared with 9-year-old females, 9-year-old males were faster over short sprints (9.8%) and 1 mile (16.6%), could jump 9.5% further from a standing start (a test of explosive power), could complete 33% more push-ups in 30 seconds and had 13.8% stronger grip.”

Another study of Greek children, published in the European Journal of Sports Science compared 6-year-old females and 6-year-old.  Researchers found that the “boys completed 16.6% more shuttle runs in a given time and could jump 9.7% further from a standing position. In terms of aerobic capacity, 6- to 7-year-old boys showed a higher absolute and relative (to body mass) VO2max than 6- to 7-year-old females”

If this weren’t the case, if women were equal to men, why not eliminate classification based on gender and let the best athletes of every country—male or female—compete for one gold medal in each event?

No, the reality is, if women had to compete with men, no woman would ever get to the Olympics—let alone stand on the podium. 

It has little to do with work ethic or desire.

There is no point even having a separate female category if some with an XY chromosome and higher levels of testosterone are allowed in the competition.   While athletic competition has roots in male versus male combat—I am not right-wing and want my daughter to have the opportunity to participate in sports.  I believe there needs to be a return to rationality, fairness, and safe competition. 

Khelif doesn’t belong in a ring against a normal woman any more than I do.  Get real.

High-level Competition Is Not a Right 

The progressive left has got all tied up in a knot over the idea that the difference between genders is a myth—merely a social construct. 

It is a feminist fantasy that a woman is capable of everything a man can do and that the only reason women are not equally represented is because of injustice. 

We hear complaints all of the time from female athletes who believe they deserve equal pay to men who a) produce far more revenue given they are the very best competitors and b) would no doubt humiliate any female challenger.

Note, for the purpose of this discussion, I’m talking only about athletic events, not about intellectual or other capabilities.  The other differences in ability based on gender can be a topic for another day, women have distinct advantages and superior abilities in other areas.  But my commentary here is strictly about physical strength, speed, and size—where men are gifted. 

Also, my wife and I are equally valuable to each other and the family, she works as hard as I do (or harder) and both of us play important roles in our home and the local community, and yet this doesn’t change the fact I could physically dominate her—or that even her own twelve-year-old son is taller and heavier than she is.

Truly, if I completed in the female category of power-lifting I would have elite strength and a chance for gold—as a slightly above-average male weight-lifter.

If it is a right to be an elite athlete, and if all women deserve a special category so they can have a chance to be recognized, is it fair that short and unathletic men are not represented?  Should we keep expanding professional leagues so that all can be champions?  Or is the point of these kinds of events to have only the best reach the top for the entertainment of those of us who know that we don’t belong there?

Female athletes, instead of griping about unequal pay, should be grateful that they are privileged with a second-tier category that has given women an opportunity to compete. 

No two people are equal.  There is no such thing as a fair competition.  But if there is a category for females, to accommodate their biological differences from men, then those with a clear competitive advantage because of male hormones or chromosomes should be excluded and how they identify or what is down there doesn’t matter.  Sure, the right gets things wrong for not understanding that exceptions do exist, but the left does worse and fails to comprehend that women need protection from those who are physically bigger and stronger.  The entire reason for separate categories for men and women is to protect women.

This is why we need to have criteria that go beyond the “identifies as a woman” leftist minimum. We need a standard that also considers the level of testosterone or chromosomal pairs.  If those who have very rare intersex characteristics don’t have a huge advantage, then how did two of them beat the odds to end up in the Olympics? Why even have a women’s division at all?  This is about fairness for all competitors, not about one individual.  Our participation in a competition is a privilege, not a right, and can’t be granted to all or it becomes worthless.  In the end, it is always a little arbitrary who is allowed or disallowed.

The Art of Denial

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Back in my school days, I got caught trying to make a weapon in shop class.  Being a boy, I was fascinated by those Nightsticks used by police and thought I could get away with this flagrant violation of rules.  But very early into this project the teacher, who had been around the block, confronted me and gave the cease and desist order.  However, rather than owning up to it, I went the route of plausible deniability and claimed that I was actually building a stool.

Club…stool…all semantics!

Likewise, some people when seeing many not happy with sacred Christian tradition being mocked tried to play off the display as a depiction of a Greek Bacchal Banquet. Whether you believe that explanation or not is up to you.  However, in either case, this was an obscene celebration of debauchery that had absolutely nothing to do with the Olympics.  And, no, that’s not coming from a prudish angle, rather Bacchus (not on Mt Olympus) was never a part of the Ancient Olympics.  So this clever response by apologists, like “Rev Cassie Rapko” (dutifully quoted in the Daily Mail), falls flat.

Her pronouns are…

This new official explanation repeated over and over again in headlines, that “nothing to see here” denial of the Christian imagery in this depiction, also contradicts what these performers themselves had said before the damage control effort, as reported in their own words, “took inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting to create the setting.”  One of them even doubled down on the insult in a post that was later deleted after the narrative shifted.  The back peddling and gaslighting is incredible and it just goes to how unreliable our sources of information really have become.  This is an example of revisionist history in real-time:

But you’re crazy to think this has anything to do with Christianity!

The irony of the bizarre “It’s not the Last Supper, but The Feast of the Gods,” cover story is first that the explanation before the fury (above) is still online, and second that this painting by Dutch artist Jan van Bijlert was itself inspired by da Vinci’s The Last Supper:

And it is not so much about this one act as it is the meanspirited pattern of ridicule (and very deliberate misrepresentation) of Christianity by the left in part of a campaign of debasement and demoralization.  It is cultural vandalism, not art, and should be identified as such.  The left regularly betrays the love and tolerance it claims to stand for—only to greet with a Judas kiss acting as if they’ve done nothing wrong to deserve rebuke.  

“It’s just art!”

Try that excuse for spinning out on one of those rainbow flags painted on a roadway, see how it turns out.

Relax, don’t get so butthurt!  This is just art!

At the end of it all, the hypocrisy on the part of the fake tolerant “kindness is everything” left is expected. They are the civilizational equivalent of a plague of locusts, destroying all in their path and lacking any actual moral direction.  Sure, they’ll appropriate Christian morality, most especially when it is useful for bludgeoning others, but principles are for those trying to build.  The left lacks any creative power, which is why they parody and mock what is beautiful, what is meaningful, and truly life-giving in the world.  This isn’t even speaking from a Christian perspective, what truly awe-inspiring comes from these clowns other than their stupidity?

Until it comes to respecting your sacred traditions and symbols.

The need to recognize a bunch of talentless slobs, in the name of their false diversity, equity, and inclusion, only shows a lack of culture on the part of the French organizers.  This isn’t edgy or original, and it certainly isn’t going to help those who claim to be marginalized gain acceptance, it is simply sacrilege and a lame attempt to denigrate the faith of those who make up a 1/3 of the world population in an event that is supposed to welcome all people.  The only art on display was that of deception when they got called out.

Derision isn’t love. 

Ridicule isn’t tolerance. 

Remarkable how wrong all of our eyes are about what they see.
Remarkable how wrong all of our eyes are about what they see.

They lie to our faces and expect us to deny reality like they do, but you’re certainly not crazy for believing your own eyes.  I guess I should have told my shop teacher to squint harder and see the stool rather than the weapon.  But I was not that practiced in the art of deception.

Philosophical Candidates

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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.  

MAGA is not hateful.

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.

By design, not accident.

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.  

“You will not surely die!”

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

Standard

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?