My Little Spat with Caitlin Johnstone on "Rape Culture"

Yes, in fact Caitlin Johnstone is a leftist journalist I admire greatly. Her well-documented and witheringly logical reporting on the Dem/MSM Russiagate scam has been spot on, as is a lot of her writing on US foreign policy. Johnstone is a leftist who does not jump on just any left bandwagon to trash the Trump Administration, and because of this she's hated and mistrusted by much of the left. She's even been called "alt-right", which is pretty hilarious given that she's a socialist, but par for the course in this climate.

But recently, and just now with the Kavanaugh Confirmation Clown Show going on, she put up a piece that referenced "rape culture"--the sophomoric and easily debunked feminist concept that claims women in America and other developed Western countries are living in cultures that tolerate rape.

Given that there are and have been actual rape cultures in history, that rape is a serious crime, and that, further, there are many men now in American jails who are there because of bogus stories concocted by ethically challenged women--given all this, and the unprecedented Kavanaugh circus, I called her out. Below is her original post graphic and parts of the ensuing spat. I don't disagree with some of the points made in Johnstone's's original post, but do very strongly disagree with her irresponsible use of "rape culture".

On this topic, it is Michelle Malkin who talks sense, not Caitlin Johnstone.

E.M.























Oh, and by the way, GOP--CONFIRM BRETT KAVANAUGH THIS WEEK, YOU WIMPS.

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

There's No Going Back from this #MeToo Clown Show

Diane Feinstein, who knows how to hold onto a letter.
So surprise. With Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation falling apart, another liberal woman has stepped forward to accuse Brett Kavanaugh of misdeeds in the distant past. Her name is Deborah Ramirez. Unfortunately, even the ultra-liberal New Yorker, has to recognize her new #MeToo story isn’t very compelling. Which didn’t stop them from printing of course. Read:

She was at first hesitant to speak publicly, partly because her memories contained gaps because she had been drinking at the time of the alleged incident. In her initial conversations with The New Yorker, she was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty. After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough of her recollections to say that she remembers Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Ramirez is now calling for the F.B.I. to investigate Kavanaugh’s role in the incident. “I would think an F.B.I. investigation would be warranted,” she said.

Hey, me too, with legal standards like this, I’ve got things from my past, times I’ve been groped and abused and stolen from, that the FBI should investigate. I should call The New Yorker. Or my local Democratic member of Congress. Oh, wait. I’m white. And male.

Rod Dreher sums it up at his blog:

So the FBI is supposed to investigate whether or not a drunk college boy pulled down his pants at a drunken college party and exposed himself to a college girl who was so drunk that she can’t clearly remember the event, and had to take six days to think about whether or not it actually happened? It was so devastatingly traumatic to her that she had to ponder for a week about whether or not it happened, and whether or not it was Brett Kavanaugh?

This is what they’re throwing at Brett Kavanaugh now?

Let's be very clear. Both Ford and this new "accuser", as well as Diane Feinstein and her unhinged party, are doing irreparable harm to all the women who are actual victims of sexual assault. That's the real harm now sinking its claws into America's psyche. And given how this has all played out, there's likely no going back. Thanks to our identity politics left, the bar for accusation has gotten so insanely low that literally millions of Americans are being pushed, whether they like it or not, toward an attitude of deep skepticism regarding claims of sexual abuse.

For myself even, who tries hard to keep my judgment from being clouded by political considerations, I have to admit that going forward part of me, hearing an accusation made against a man, will pose the question, "Is this woman of the left-liberal persuasion?" and if the answer is Yes, I will be dismissive of the accusation unless she has very concrete evidence. It's wrong finally, that it's come to this, but this team has brought it upon themselves. Too many of them, even the most prominent, are on the verge of explicitly acknowledging that if an accusation serves their political goals it must be treated as true. All sense of due legal process is lost.

Consider this tweet last year from a female columnist at a national woman’s magazine.

Say what? But it's clear what "slips" like this reveal. Namely, this attitude is already deeply entrenched in many American women's thinking. And in the verbal repertoire of many beta men who are in it for the hugs it gets them. If this attitude weren't so entrenched, after all, the absurdly belated and memory-impaired Ford accusation against Judge Kavanaugh wouldn't have been given the attention it has.

How can there be justice in a society that allows a clown show like this to put on the garb of justice? There cannot. Shame on these women. The people they're harming most are women who have really been victimized.

All I can say is: VOTE IN THE COMING NOVEMBER MIDTERMS! Get your friends to vote. This unprincipled left needs to be kept as far away from the reins of government as possible.

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Bats

What is a bat if it is not a meat moth having a fit under the moon; if it is not a small furred contraption on the verge of going unhinged?

Indeed a bat is a haunted rubber toy dancing to a strobe light; it is Hecate’s own hand-puppet.

Bats are defiantly stuck in the 80s, as you know. Their ears are physiologically incapable of registering names like Britney, Gaga, Kanye. “Who?”

They burst from the hollowed trunks of long-dead trees like text messages sent from the cell phones of Hell.

Will the iPhone 15 be able to decipher these floppy hissing missives? The iPhone 20?

“Look forward 2 seeing u. Sooner than u think. ;) Alison”

No, your Mother can never, neither can your anxiety-disordered Aunt, nor your little sister Carrie when she found the severed gopher’s head in her lunch box--none can shriek more piercingly than the smallest bat.

Was denkst du, Fledermausmann? Müssen wir noch Heidegger lesen?

(As a teen I dreamed such dreams, and if only I had such courage now, I would fulfill these dreams: A one-room museum displaying only the cleaned and mounted jaws of the various bat species, under each jaw a photo of the bat and a sonnet in its honor.)

A bat is a mole in a manic episode. A mole is a depressed bat.

Bats hang while they sleep upside down. Bats sleep while they hang upside down. Bats hang upside down while they sleep.

Sentence 3 is the best.

And you, Kay Thiesenhusen, where are you now?

This and 42 other important public service announcements can be found in my book Idiocy, Ltd.

Whether Dorky Dem or Sellout GOP, the Trump Opposition Dare Not Speak What It Really Opposes

A friend of mine was criticizing the New York Times for publishing the recent Anonymous Op-Ed purportedly written by a covert resister inside the Trump administration. The Op-Ed, if you haven’t read it, shows the writer gushing in self-congratulation about undermining the president’s agenda. Yes, the same president he or she works for.

My friend made his criticisms in an online thread and asked for comment. His basic position was that the Times “couldn’t be in the anonymous author business and remain credible.” And that whoever in the Trump administration wrote the piece, if indeed it’s authentic, isn’t doing American democracy any favors.

The discussion touched on Trump’s narcissism and then on how our different branches of government are supposed to function.

I post parts of the thread here.

E.M.

MYSELF: I agree with your basic assessment of why the NYT Op-Ed was out of line. As for the other issues, I suspect we’re in agreement too.

It's the legislative and judicial branches that are in charge of countering the executive when and if the executive is out of line. To praise anonymous "Resistance" operatives who brag in print about working inside the executive branch itself is to praise borderline traitors to our democracy. The voters elected Trump to fulfill his policy agenda, and neocons who think they know better and expatiate on how they're subverting what the voters want--well, you do the math.

As a Trump supporter, sure, I see the narcissism. But narcissism is often a personality trait of people who end up in leadership positions. Obama was and is a monumental narcissist. Obviously. But that said, how would the country be reacting if an Obama administration employee wrote something like that NYT editorial? Most of the media would be apoplectic, and the word "treason" would be popping up everywhere, especially on the NYT's Op-Ed page.

The thesis that Trump is somehow "more dangerous" than Obama is undemonstrable. Trump hasn't yet dragged us into a regime-change war, he hasn't decided to dictate trans bathroom policy to the whole country's public education system, he hasn't sat on his hands to allow North Korea nuclear and missile policy to shift into overdrive, or let China continue building military bases in the South China Sea.

Some narcissistic leaders are dangerous by being wimps too in love with the sound of their own "reasonable," diplomatic speech. Neville Chamberlain. The gay Obama narcissism. Other narcissistic leaders sound dangerous, but aren't as dangerous in the long run.

FRIEND: Eric, this time, it appears the middle is in agreement with your perspective in terms of the actual people and their jobs. Regarding any president, there is the office and there is the man. They are not the same. Trump the man is a personal embarrassment to me. The Office of President is a great responsibility. If Trump’s hires are back-stabbing him, they should stop that, come clean, and front stab him. And get fired. If Trump orders crazy on rice, each person in the process who refuses to bring crazy on rice should be fired until someone either does the crazy or he wakes up. What Trump supporters need to wake up to is that none of these internal resistance people are Democrats or liberals. They are Trump appointees. They are Republicans. And that has to be galling.

MYSELF: The problem we Trump supporters see is that this back-stabbing to some degree is inevitable, given that Trump is going to staff his administration with Republicans, but at the same time most Washington Republicans are not on the same page as him. They're neocons in foreign policy and free-traders in economic policy. While his voters support him, much of the Washington GOP sees the Trump presidency as a crisis for their party--not because he's "crazy" so as much as because he's not following the Agenda. If he were following the Agenda, they could live with the "crazy".

Similar with the Democrats. The claim that Trump is "dangerous", a "threat to world peace", a "racist"--it's fed largely by a combination of two things: 1) Trump is not following the Agenda (the same Agenda the establishment GOP wants); 2) the Dems are truly the party of people with Daddy issues, and Trump looks and sounds like all the Daddies rolled into one.

On both sides, most of the people screaming opposition to Trump are not screaming about what they really oppose in him, but rather reaching for something else to scream about that sounds more marketable. The GOP establishment can't come out screaming "This guy is not following the Agenda, America!" because the public will respond "Yeah, that's why we voted for him." And the Dems can't come out screaming "This guy's a DADDY who just laughs at what I say about racism and he even told me to take off my pussyhat at the dinner table!" They can't come out screaming this because the non-Daddy-issues public will laugh them to scorn. So they pretend to be serious instead, when even they know they're just acting out. At the dinner table.

In short, neither Dem nor GOP opposition to Trump dares speak honestly about its actual motives.

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.