Patriarchy and fertility

July 22nd, 2016

We observe high fertility in those nations and cultures where patriarchy is legally and socially enforced, in particular Muslim Afghanistan and Christian Timor Leste. Affordability of family formation has little effect. Clearly males in patriarchal societies are highly motivated to have children. They will do whatever it takes so that they can afford a family.

Thus, if pro social behavior in a patriarchal society is rewarded by a wife and the ability to support a family, you get highly motivated workers and soldiers.

Some people have argued that this observation is psychologically unreasonable “The guys I know don’t want children”

Henry Dampier explains why males in our society don’t want children in his 2015 article “Why no one wants to be a patriarch”

If you want men to join the legions, you make it so that the clearest path to power for a typical man will be to join up with the legions, serve his time, and then marry and be fruitful on his plot of land. If you want men to form households, you given them rights over those households and the families that issue from them. …

… Men lost the right to use legal force against their wives and children in stages. …

… the disciplining doesn’t really go away from society. The switch is just passed on from the father to the policeman and the schoolmaster. The state’s hirelings retain the right to discipline children, although wives tend to be permitted to run wild, especially nowadays, restrained only by their desires and sense of self-interest.

The disciplining also changes from spanking to drugging, often heavy drugging of untested chemicals onto children. …

The reason why no one wants to be a patriarch today is that patriarchs have no more legal authority. They have no formal power over their wives or children. They only have influence. Influence is both fickle and distinct from power. When a child misbehaves in the modern world, there are only a few paths that a parent can take. They can verbally discipline the child (more likely to work in a higher-class household than a lower-class one), they can illegally or semi-legally beat them, they can take them to a psychiatric professional of some kind, or they can feed the kid to the justice system. Schools have their own corrections systems of varying levels of effectiveness.

Further, paternal heads of household can be deprived of their assets and children at any time at the arbitrary whim of their wives. The wife can commit adultery, and the man can still lose his property in the ensuing divorce. The children and the wife alike can be wildly disrespectful to the head of household, and the man has no recourse other than whining.

I was the boss of my family and I found being a patriarch and having children hugely rewarding. But then I am a grade A asshole, and I am not afraid to commit illegal acts, though I tend to consult lawyers on ways to weasel out or buy my way out if caught, before I commit them. It is hard to be a patriarch if you are a nice guy, or if you have respect for law and social pressure, because marriages on the Pauline model are illegal, being marital rape and psychological abuse. Marriage as it has been understood for thousands of years is illegal and criminal, so of course the population is collapsing. Workable families are similarly illegal. Indeed, these days any sexual interaction with women is illegal with the notable exception of hiring whores and escorts – whores, escorts, and porn stars being the only women who are likely to give you explicit verbal consent moment to moment.

Extrapolating my subjective experience, and the subjective experience depicted by Henry Dampier, fully explains observed fertility patterns, for example the very spectacular collapse of Japanese fertility.

People don’t want children as assets. Never have, never will. If you think we can modify fertility with the tax system read Luke 15:11-32 and 2 Samuel 15:2 – 19:6 to gain an understanding of human nature and the human condition.

The problem is that children can be taken away from a man and used as hostages against him. That is why men do not want children.

Marriage and family is outlawed, thus only outlaws have wives and families.

Tags:
Posted in culture, economics | 66 Comments »

Western Civilization

July 21st, 2016

Western civilization is a bunch of things that tend to come together.

Christianity (forget that “Judeo Christian” crap, Judaism still has the problems Jesus complained about)

Classic Greek art, culture and philosophy (hey, compare our comic books with Greek statues, then compare with Indian statues or Japanese comic books, and no one except us and the Greeks does philosophy)

Western music descended from seventeenth and early eighteenth century composers, in particular and especially Bach. If you are fan of country and western, or Elvis, or whatever, it still a lot more like Bach than it is like anyone else’s music, except, like the Japanese, they have adopted western music. Indeed pretty much everyone has adopted western music, but they are all imitators and continue to be imitators. Note how much Engrish there is in East Asian pop music. Any music you hear is derived from someone, who derived it from someone, who derived it from someone, who derived it from Bach, and classic western music, such as the concert the Russians put on in Palmyra to remind us that the west was victorious, is that western music that is most directly derived from Bach. I think Handel is better than Bach, but everyone in the west winds up copying Bach even if they are punk rockers who do not know they are copying Bach, and pretty much everyone in the world winds up copying the west.

Science: The first statement of the scientific method comes from Roger Bacon, who proceeded to do a great deal of scientific research starting in 1247. Science really got going with the Royal Society in 1660. The King made science high status, so wealthy gentlemen proceeded to engage in or sponsor science, and the pirates who were conquering what became the British empire, who aspired to become wealthy respectable gentlemen, would sometimes take a break from shaking down Sultans for bloodstained gold to do scientific research. The best thing the Royal Society did was define the scientific method, give status to anyone who applied it successfully, and, more importantly deny status to those who falsely claimed to be applying it. When the Royal Society was subordinated to Harvard after World War II. no one with authority defined or enforced the scientific method, and these days the name of science is generally invoked by those who seek to restore the demon haunted dark, global warmerers and the like
Worshipper of the demon haunted dark:

Every year 47 million species go extinct

Fan of what used to be the scientific method

Name one that went extinct in the last few years

Worshipper of the demon haunted dark gives seventeen impeccably authoritative citations.
Fan of what used to be the scientific method

None of these name or describe a species that went extinct in the last few years.

Worshipper of the demon haunted dark gives twenty three more impeccably authoritative citations.

Enlightenment “Rationalism”. Enlightenment rationalism transliterates Christian beliefs about the next world, where they can never be disproven, into this world, where they are demonstrably false, which is the opposite of rationalism. For example “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”. The Enlightenment was western civilization taking a very bad turn, which may well be the end of us all. The scientific revolution gets identified as part of the enlightenment, but this is like Marxists telling us that Marxism is scientific socialism. Science predates the enlightenment in that science got started around 1247, and the enlightenment around 1750. The high period of science, 1660 to 1945, occurred during the enlightenment, but was caused by the reaction, not the enlightenment, in that King Charles gave the Royal Society status, and the Royal Society gave science and the scientific method status. If Western civilization is to survive, the Enlightenment must be thoroughly purged and erased. Eradicating the enlightenment make make restoring Christianity necessary and possible, but the urgent necessity is the thorough and complete erasure of the enlightenment. Western civilization cannot survive the enlightenment.

Adam Smith and capitalism. Adam Smith showed that capitalism, done right, channels impulses that can be immoral and destructive, into ends that are moral and constructive. Thus, Western Civilization is inherently capitalist, and National Socialism is stupid, not because racist, but because socialist. The ten commandments consist of four that deal with God, thereby defining the adherents as a different and separate people, and six that prescribe how to deal with one’s fellow man, and in those six the rule against covetousness is the rule that is particularly and specially emphasized. Covetousness is wanting that which is someone else’s. If you see someone’s pretty wife, and think, I should have her, he treats her badly, he does not appreciate her as I appreciate her, he is too old and ugly for her, if I were to sneakily kill him and take her, she would be happier with me”, that is covetousness. If you think “Perhaps she has a younger sister who is still single”, that is not covetousness. And similarly, if you look at a rich man and think “He got his wealth by doing bad things, so he deserves to be punished by me taking away his wealth and having it myself”, that is covetousness. If, instead, you inquire how he got rich, and think about what you could do similarly, that is not covetousness. Adam Smith explained why the latter approach is usually more appropriate to wealth. Whenever you think of excessively clever rationales why the excessively fortunate do not deserve what they have, and should be deprived of it, that is covetousness, and civilizations end when the mob is empowered to give effect to covetousness.

It is plausible to argue that the key element of Western Civilization, the killer app, was the rule of law, laws that Kings had to obey, and yet, there is something wrong with this story, in that the law in England began as common law, which was not law centric, but judge centric, and the judges were, pretty much, local aristocrats, and local aristocrats pretty much did what they wanted, so the common law was not literal law written down as laws, but generalizations made by lawyers about the common moral culture of the aristocrats. So distributed power, limits on the power of kings, gave rise to laws that kings had to obey, not the other way around. A key feature of Western civilization is that it has always had a lot of nation states, and these nation states tended to have within them subsidiarity, many dispersed powerful people, rather than one king, or one all powerful bureaucracy. This gave rise to competition that mostly peaceful, though far from entirely peaceful, and the from this competition, the best tended to win, and be imitated, and worst tended to lose, and be ignored or replaced It was not the rule of law, but rather the rule of law was one of the consequences of subsidiarity, of mostly peaceful competition between powerful people and groups. The overwhelming dominance of the Cathedral over a multitude of nominally independent nation states, and the centralization of each of these nation states means that madness goes unchallenged. Doctrine goes out from Harvard, and goes unchallenged by reality. Competition made the west great, and real competition has been silenced. The megacities grow because winners and losers are not made by the market, but by government. Housing is expensive because everyone needs to be close to the man who is close to the man who is close to the man who is close to the man who is in the revolving door between regulators and regulated. Decentralization of nation states is difficult and hard to define. Independence of nation states is easier to define and easier to attain, hence the neoreactionary position that there need to be more nation states, and those nation states independent. When we have more nation states, and more independence for them, then perhaps will be able to look at them and say what constitutes decentralization.

Posted in culture | 51 Comments »

Tor compromised

July 20th, 2016

It has long been known that much of the resources for Tor are provided by US spy agencies. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, since they might want a means for communicating that no one can spy on.

However, Lucky Green, a key figure in the privacy community, has issued a warrant canary – what you issue when you are forbidden to tell people you have had a warrant served on you.

The canary fails to tell us that a US spy agency is inside his servers in a way that tells us that a US spy agency now is inside his servers and a many other Tor servers.

In a warrant canary, you say what you are forbidden to say by failing to say things that you would otherwise be expected to say.

This inclines me to Moldbug’s solution, assuming his interpreter and compiler can be sufficiently small and self contained that one can make sure that everyone runs the same one. But if the interpreter and compiler exceed sixteen thousand lines, then defending them against this sort of attack becomes difficult.

Posted in crypto | 6 Comments »

Now four sovereign nations

July 19th, 2016

Reactionaries are fond of saying there are three independent nations on the earth: America, Russia, and China. Everyone else is under the boot of the Cathedral, except for a few small protectorates of Russia and China. Each sovereign nation has its own Twitter equivalent, which enforces the values of its own state religion.

It looks like Turkey may be added to the list, probably leading the Cathedral to re-evaluate Islam.

Since the Cathedral does not realize it is a state religion like any other, but regards itself as simple truth and decency, it believes it can crush Islam without overt violence and naked repression, in the same way it has crushed Christianity without overt violence and naked repression. Supposedly Islam rightly understood, like Christianity rightly understood, is indistinguishable from progressivism. Mohammed the community organizer like Jesus the community organizer. Progressivism thinks itself scientific, as Marxists used to think they were scientific.

Which is what Turkish Universities used to preach. I am not sure that they will still be preaching that now that Erdogan has purged every single university dean and most of the judiciary.

Erdogan is purging Gulenism. Gulenism is interfaith, arguing that Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are all basically the same. Well, if they are all the same, then they are all the progressivism of progressive Jews.

But, I hear you ask, how can Turkey achieve sovereignty without nukes? Won’t America murder them all in some horrifically gruesome fashion after the fashion of the Boers and the Tutsi?

Turkey has nukes. American nukes. Supposedly they cannot detonate without US command codes, but the US has been industriously affirmative actioning “moderate” muslims into its security apparatus, so I would not bet on that.

Progressive “Jews” act like conversos. “Progressive” Muslims do not act like conversos. I think the Cathedral has been suckered by Muslim taqiyya.

Putin has adopted Orthodox Christianity as his state religion in place of progressivism, which is fundamentally western, and which celebrates the western values, culture and tradition that the Cathedral seeks to destroy and erase from history. Orthodox Christianity is our friend. Islam is the enemy of our enemy, but is not our friend.

If it turns out that Turkey is defecting from the Cathedral, it is possible that the Cathedral may come to doubt that importing three hundred million black male military age Muslims screaming for infidel blood and white pussy and giving them affirmative action mortgages to move into green leafy suburbs will turn them into tax payers and mortgage payers to replace the missing grandchildren.

But more likely they will just double down on madness, deciding that the way to defeat Erdogan is to turn these guys into middle class mortgage payers and tax payers even faster.

Posted in politics, war | 19 Comments »

RNC convention: No riots, no floor fight, Trump in charge.

July 19th, 2016

The headlines and stories about the floor fight were written in advance. I heard what I presume was the floor fight live.

The speaker called a vote that the troublemakers should not be given the opportunity to sound off, that that part of the proceedings should be skipped. Thunderous ayes. Two or three nays, perhaps four people shouting as loudly as they could. Maybe there were some quieter nays that I did not hear. “Sorry folks”, says the speaker, “the ayes have it.”

Mighty short floor fight.

The headlines and stories were also written in advance about the rioting outside the convention, but, of course, they had to ditch those stories. If anyone rioted he got squashed so fast that the newsmen could not spot him.

According to the news

And so, when those Never Trump delegates shouted for a roll call vote, the acting convention chair—Arkansas Rep. Steve Womack—ignored the chant and declared the rules approved. The “ayes” had it.

Before Womack could move on, he was shouted down, as pro- and anti-Trump delegates went back and forth on the floor, screaming in a battle of wills.

Bullshit. The anti trumpers shut up.

The Ayes had it.

I based the above comment on video coming from the convention organizers. On you tube, there is a different video, taken by the anti trumpers, which sounds a lot more disorderly. On the anti trumpers video, the shouting goes on and on. But on the anti trumper video, I see no one shouting except for short periods even though I continually hear seeming shouting. There is a discrepancy between the video and the audio. I would say the seeming shouting is just background conversation with the amplification turned up.

The only disorderly bit was four people chanting “Roll Call vote” for 33 seconds, and then falling silent because they could not get a critical mass of people to join them. Mostly it was one woman who looked like a classic social justice warrior waving her arms to coordinate the chant, and another man chanting and clapping in time. The waving and the clapping was an attempt to lead a mass chant. Two leaders, two followers. When they could not get any more than two following them, they wimped out.

So, what we now have is a straight up civilizational battle between the force of order, the strong leader of men who can effortlessly impose peace and order, and the forces of disorder, Obama, Hillary, and the news media inciting black people to kill white people.

And, as I will say in every politics post, this is the last presidential election in which the candidate who stands for killing white people might lose, or even have their point of view contradicted. If Hillary wins, the presidential election after this will be between a cuckservative who supports killing white people, and a leftist who supports killing white people with a lot more enthusiasm.

But today, order prevailed. The total absence of trouble outside the convention tells me that the warrior class has already accepted Trump as the rightful ruler, which makes it hard for the priestly class to depict him as illegitimate. I am pretty sure that the Cleveland police got stand down orders, which they creatively reinterpreted.

Trump is a credible commander in chief because he is obeyed, victorious, and has the support of the warrior class. He says he is a winner, and that story, told with confidence, becomes true. He wins. There was peace and order in the convention, and around the convention.

Posted in party politics | 10 Comments »

Another prediction: No kayfabe at the Republican National Convention.

July 17th, 2016

At the coming Republican National Convention Trump will be officially nominated as Republican candidate for president, in a process more like a coronation than a vote.

A long distance outside the coronation, there will be small, and exceedingly peaceful protests. Anyone unpeaceful will be hammered down so hard and fast you will scarcely get a chance to see him.

The reason I predict small and exceedingly peaceful protests is that the left is universally unpopular and loathed. People only show up for a left wing protest if they expect the police to take a kayfabe fall, and the judiciary to let them off in the unlikely event that they get arrested for riot, smashing stuff, beating people up, and stealing stuff. They only vote left for ecb cards and obamaphones. With the Republican National Committee capitulating to Trump, it is clear that the police, who have always favored Trump except when very directly ordered to take a fall, are not going to take a kayfabe fall, and the judiciary are not going to let rioters off. Law and order will prevail, triumphantly confirming Trump’s promise that he can provide law and order.

If Trump can quell the Republican National Committee, quelling race riots is easy. If quelling race riots is easy, Hillary’s program of inciting hatred and attacks against whites and police will blow up in her face.

For nonwhites and single women, the Democrat/cuckservative program is ECB, SSSI, and obamaphones. For white males, the Democrat election program is “Vote democrat or we will send around the blacks to burn you out of your homes and rape your children”. Thus the demonstrated ability to provide law and order is YUGE.

Trump is white’s last hope of collective defense, short of a military coup or armed revolution. We shall see collective defense on display around the Republican National Convention.

Posted in party politics | 28 Comments »

Trucks gone wild

July 16th, 2016

Our rulers’ position is now clear. We should learn to live with terrorism. Unlimited immigration will continue, and it is unthinkable and morally abhorrent to object to anyone in the world moving to America and living on crime, welfare, and voting left. The continued existence of borders and citizenship in a world dominated by progressive ideology is an unprincipled exception. Open-borders absolutists are perfectly correct that there is no coherent way to argue that racial discrimination or hereditary aristocracy are unjust without also concluding that anything short of completely open borders is equally unacceptable. The logic is inescapable.

Thus, if a black criminal is killed by police and it less than perfectly clear that the killing was justified, his picture is all over the news, whereas if a Muslim kills a child, we never see the child.

Well then, what will it take to stop terrorism? Truck control?

Notice that despite extremely strong gun control in France the terrorist (who entered as a refugee) had a fine collection of weapons in his truck. Not only is it hard to stop individual criminals from getting guns, it is considerably harder to stop large organized groups from getting guns.

Recall that Saddam allowed his people to own full auto weapons. Since he could not stop his enemies from getting full auto weapons, he had little choice but to allow his loyal, or at least not actively rebellious, subjects full auto weapons. If Frenchmen were allowed to own and carry full auto weapons as Saddam’s people were, the truck incident would likely have had a different outcome. But it would still have been pretty nasty.

But of course we don’t want a state like Saddam’s, where civil war is barely held in check by state terror. (Though it would be an improvement on today’s Iraq, where civil war is not held in check.) Nor Mindanao, where civil war is held in check by the threat of state terror, by state terror recently past, and the imminent likelihood of more to come. We want a peaceful high trust society. And to do that, have to remove the Muslims. Dump them on the shores of Africa.

Very few Muslims are inclined to blow themselves up in a pizza parlor. But every single Muslim, including the moderate friendly nice Muslim next door who would never dream of exploding in a pizza parlor, supports and sustains a society where the man who blows himself up in a pizza parlor is holier than you are, where the jihadi gets the girls, where a terrorist can hang out and it is hard for police to find him, let alone surveille. him.

For over a thousand years peoples, cultures, religions, civilizations, empires, nations, and Kingdoms have struggled to find a way to coexist with Islam. None have ever succeeded. We will not be the first.

Posted in war | 11 Comments »

Defense of capitalism:

July 15th, 2016

Reactionary future criticizes capitalism from the right.

Capitalists have power independent of the state. They are apt to use that power politically. Example George Soros. By and large, capitalists overwhelming back the left.

But, if they back the left, they are sucking up to power, or like the NGOs, serving the state when the state wants a smidgen of deniabity. For example you cannot see daylight between George Soros in the Ukraine, Harvard in the Ukraine, and the State Department in the Ukraine. In the Ukraine, it is perfectly clear that George Soros it taking orders from the State Department.

Charles the second said that science and the scientific method was high status, and rich people all over the place proceeded to apply the scientific method and sponsor science. Harvard says that equality is high status, and all the rich people attempt to tap the untapped potential of women and nigerians.

The State Church keeps capitalism in line with no problems.

Posted in economics, politics | 38 Comments »

Separation of Church and State has failed catastrophically.

July 10th, 2016

Same problem as anarcho capitalism. The vacuum is apt to be filled. And today it is filled with an official government belief system that daily becomes more extreme, and is enforced more coercively.

In retrospect it is clear that in England the demand to disestablish the Anglican Church came from a competing religion, then called Evangelism, descended from Puritanism, which was already most of the way to becoming the state religion of England though it continually changed its name in the process.

The history of official religion in the US is more complex. When the United States was many separate states with a common defense and a common foreign policy, back when people said “The United States are” rather than “The United States is” there was absolutely no separation of Church and State, for each state had its own state religion, and the seminary of the state religion of Massachusetts, charged with promoting and enforcing the state religion, was Harvard.

After the English restoration the religion of New England became aggressive, political, this worldly, and bent on conquest and domination. They forever resented the English restoration which had disempowered them and purged them from lucrative positions in the Church of England and in the English government. Whig history began as their plan for reconquering England and the world.

The state Church of Massachusetts was state church of New England, and New England set up its Rome, its Papacy, in Massachussetts. The civil war and the Mormon war was New England conquering America – and then, following the civil war, denied it was a religious institution and proceeded to apply the doctrine of “separation of Church and state” as a very thin coat of white wash over the state religion of Massachusetts being enforced on everyone in America. And after World War II, everyone in the world, except those protected by nuclear weapons, Russia and China. There is a direct correlation between one’s alma mater’s proximity to the Boston-NYC-DC corridor and the height of one’s position in the government and ruling class of one’s country. Outside of Russia and China the only substantial resistance comes from Muslims. If you are Muslim a tranny nonetheless wins your song contest, your universities are run from Harvard, two thirds of the youngsters attending university are women due to affirmative action for women, and shortly after they attend university they find themselves covered in semen from head to foot and are told that they are liberated. Approximately half of all Muslims are moderate Muslims, and if you are a moderate Muslim you support the gay parades, you have only one wife in the event you have a wife, and if you do get married you will probably marry a women nearing the end of her fertile years, and are failing to reproduce. Immoderate Muslims, most of whom support Islamic state or some faction equally violent, are getting laid, marrying young women in their most fertile years, and having numerous children.

Ann Coulter famously said “Kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”. Predictably, the US government adopted a policy of killing their leaders and converting them to progressivism, which policy is not entirely failing, but is having considerably less success and more serious problems than admitted. Conversion to progressivism is not keeping up with rate at which real Muslims, the ones that make women submit to their husbands, breed.

By and large, I tend to focus on power at the bottom – that women interrupt their boss tells me that they are hired for reasons other than their contribution to profit, that businesses are forced or morally pressured to hire women, and then stuff them into parts of the business where they cannot do too much immediate damage. Blacks walk down the street like aristocrats, taking up lots of space, while white males walk like serfs.

I also write a lot about female sexual preferences. Sexual selection, female choice, results in a positive feedback cycle, hence the peacock’s tail. I expect my readers, unlike Harvard alumni and Word Bank economists, to know the difference between positive feedback and negative feedback, to, unlike the typical Harvard alumunus, understand why the peacock’s tail is a really bad thing for peacocks, and to know that positive feedback is apt to have extremely bad consequences, and almost always needs to be broken and disconnected in the most direct way possible.

But this post is about power at the top. It is, however, also about my favorite topic: Positive feedback loops. And if you did not get that the peacocks tail is a manifestation of a positive feedback loop and that the peacock’s tail shows that women should never have been emancipated, do some homework before commenting. Seems that these days all they teach in university is how to hate white males, even if your degree is nominally in computer science. If your degree is in computer science, you damn well should know what a positive feedback loop is and why it is a bad thing.

During the reign of Charles the First of England, there was a remarkable outbreak of holiness. By and large, the holiest people tended to get the preaching jobs in the Church of England, and, since there was not a whole lot of entertainment and social events other than going to church, they persuaded other people to be holy.

To some extent this holiness was genuine and sincere. On the other hand, since Church of England jobs had good pay and status, it was to some extent pharisaical, and became increasingly pharisaical. And this pharisaical holiness started to increasingly resemble nineteenth century leftism, alarming the King, so Charles the First set to appointing Bishops that opposed and suppressed left wing pharisaism – or perhaps Bishops that, like Charles himself, enjoyed a good time and were not particularly holy. And this led to civil war, which the exceedingly holy won.

And pretty soon each candidate for office was even holier than each of the other candidates.

And pretty soon pharisaical holiness developed a striking resemblance to twentieth century leftism, the twentieth century labor movement and the hippies, Which alarmed Oliver Cromwell, who, like Stalin, found himself outflanked on his left, so he cracked down on it, a good deal more vigorously and more successfully than Charles the first did. Cromwell is both a villain to reactionaries, for executing a great King, and a hero to reactionaries, for putting a stop to leftism, and for equipping General Monck with a praetorian guard, the Coldstream guards.

Cromwell’s leftism did not go all the way to twenty first century leftism and celebrate sodomy, but the wind was blowing that way, as men ever more holy had to denounce yesterday’s holiness. The war on Christmas and the war on Marriage began under Cromwell, foreshadowing the twenty first century celebration of sodomy.

After Cromwell died, General Monck staged a coup, and to this day the Coldstream Guards, who were originally his praetorians, guard parliament. General Monck restored the monarchy, and the monarchy, Charles the Second, purged puritans from state institutions, including the Church of England.

This pissed off the puritans no end. Charles attempted to purge New England’s ruling institutions, but whereas puritans were unpopular in England, pretty much everyone in New England was a puritan, and the puritans eventually regained power in New England by a revolt that England let slide, and eventually legalized.

And having regained power, they proceeded to get holier and holier, until they were holier than Jesus (abolitionism and prohibition). And here we are.

Posted in culture, politics, war | 115 Comments »

Teaching boys to be beta

June 29th, 2016

I was watching “Troy”. And for the first hour it was totally great. The mother of Achilles, who has the power of prophesy, and is believed to be a goddess or something similar, prophesies that if he goes to war with Troy, he will die in that war, but his name will live for a thousand years.

This is actually conservative, for Achilles was part of the collapse of Bronze age civilization, three thousand years ago, and his name still lives.

And Achilles, being warlord, a king, and a hero, and the greatest warrior ever, and a living legend, and incredibly brave and manly, naturally decides to go to Troy.

He goes to Troy, and after the first battle, orders his men to loot the temple of Apollo. So his men dump a kingly share of the temple loot in his tent, part of that loot being a dazzlingly beautiful girl, a virgin dedicated to Apollo tied up in his tent.

And then he just … he … he just totally fails to act like a man. In addition to being famous, and a hero, and the greatest warrior ever, and a living legend, he is also unbelievably handsome. But I swear, that there is no way that girl would voluntarily bed him in real life, if he acts like that.

Now I am old, and fat, and no one terribly important, and I look like Jabba the Hut, but if I had had a few hours with that girl in my tent, she and I would have been going at it like weasels in heat. (Voltaire said all he needed was ten minutes, but I think he was lying, and in any case, I am not as good as Voltaire.)

Everything Achilles does prior to going into that tent is totally, unbelievably, impossibly manly. Everything he does in the first hour of the movie is totally, unbelievably, impossibly manly. And then he goes into that tent and he is just …

You know why boys are no damn good with girls these days. Because they watch movies like that. They are taught to respect women. But women do not really want to be respected. And what is this girl that Achilles should respect her? We see him disrespect King Agamemnon. Until this scene we only see him respecting mighty warriors who have earned it by their courage and their prowess, or King Odysseus, whom he respects for his cunning. What has this chick done to earn respect?

After that scene, I just could not watch the film any more, because I just could not see Achilles as a man. Just some kind of cuck. Real men just don’t treat women like that. It is not just that it will not get you laid. It is unmanly. It is wrong. It is gay. It is effeminate.

OK. In the workplace I have to treat women like that or be fired, but it burns. OK, I bend to power and grit my teeth and suffer the humiliation, but the whole Achilles story is that he does not bend to power. Show him acting like a cuck, then there is no story any more.

Achilles does not respect King Agamemnon. He does not respect the King of Thessaly. He does not respect the champion of Thessaly. He does not respect the troops of Thessaly. He does not respect the ambassadors of King Odysseus. Why is he so damn respectful to some speaking temple loot?

Posted in culture | 129 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »