Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

By John Ruberry

In an op-ed from last month that was credited to the Washington Post editorial board–ominously, it was published to mark Thanksgiving Day–readers are warned about the continuous ideological divide among young people. 

Ideological polarization is now a mainstay of American politics. Millions of young Americans went home this Thanksgiving and potentially found themselves in uncomfortable situations with relatives — especially uncles, apparently — who love former president Donald Trump, hate vaccination or think the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection had very fine people on both sides. 

Of course, the Washington Post doesn’t mention in that op-ed the many failed and unpopular leftist policies of the Joe Biden administration, such as reckless spending and an attack on fossil fuels that have caused the worst inflation rates in decades, open borders that have migrants sleeping in police stations and worse, an American-weakness approach to foreign affairs that has led to wars in Ukraine and Israel, and ramming anti-nature transgenderism down our throats.

Locally, our major cities are becoming unlivable because of rampant lawlessness caused by full-time criminals who are emboldened by catch-and-release Democratic so-called prosecutors. 

When, you are a liberal, you are never wrong. Never. Just ask a liberal about that.

More from that editorial:

The problem with polarization, though, is that it has effects well beyond the political realm, and these can be difficult to anticipate. One example is the collapse of American marriage. A growing number of young women are discovering that they can’t find suitable male partners. As a whole, men are increasingly struggling with, or suffering from, higher unemployment, lower rates of educational attainment, more drug addiction and deaths of despair, and generally less purpose and direction in their lives. But it’s not just that. There’s a growing ideological divide, too. Since Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, the percentage of single women ages 18-30 who identify as liberal has shot up from slightly over 20 percent to 32 percent. Young men have not followed suit. If anything, they have grown more conservative.

 However, that polarization is the fault of libs. Yes, I said it.

Look at what Axios, in a biased piece, said in 2021. The stats come from a Generation Lab/Axios poll:

Between the lines: Democrats argue that modern GOP positions, spearheaded by former President Trump — are far outside of the mainstream and polite conversation [bold print emphasis mine].

  • Some have expressed unyielding [again, my emphasis] positions on matters of identity — including abortion, LGBTQ rights and immigration — where they argue human rights, and not just policy differences, are at stake.

Women are more likely than men to take a strong partisan stance in their personal choices.

  • 41% of women would go on a date with someone who voted for the opposing candidate, compared to 67% of men.

A woman named Lyz, who has a Substack titled Men Yell at Me, doesn’t think the Post op-ed goes far-leftist enough. Her post has the headline “Liberal women should not marry Republican men.” Lyz used to be married to a conservative man. And her idea of “compromise” is that liberals–by now a theme will be apparent here–are always right. 

The use of the word “someone” here is particularly nefarious, because it’s not just “someone” being asked to compromise. It’s women. It’s women being chided for not partnering with men who do not agree that they should have the right to an abortion, equal pay, a living wage, and childcare for those inevitable children they ought to have. (Because, in case you missed it, there is a moral panic about women not having babies as well.) It’s women being asked to martyr themselves on the cross of heterosexual marriage in order to prop up the status quo.

I’m a conservative and many of my friends are. Not one of us doesn’t believe in “equal pay.” Some conservatives are pro-abortion–but almost no liberals are. I could go on, but for the sake of brevity I won’t. 

Returning to marriage: Successful relationships involve compromise. And that does not mean changing your political stances. What happened to, “We agree to disagree?”

Some liberals–maybe most–don’t get it.

“It’s my way or the highway,” leads to traffic jams filled with cars with no passengers.

Dan Bongino often says, “The problem is we as conservatives think liberals are people with bad ideas. Liberals think conservatives are bad people with ideas. There’s a big difference there.”

Indeed, there is.

John Ruberry, who has been happily married for nearly three decades, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

I’ve written a lot about the military’s recruiting crisis, and the overall military retention issues. Most of the retention problems are brought on by the military’s own stupid policies (such as cutting training pipelines, treating people like garbage, and focusing on killing babies instead of foreign terrorists) and others are assisted by members of Congress, most notably John McCain pushing for the changes to the military retirement system.

In an odd twist of fate, the Navy gave me a set of temporary orders to help assist in recruitment efforts in the town I grew up in. Over the past week, I interacted with both high school and college students, and the results were a bit surprising.

I accompanied two other Sailors for a few hours recruiting at a high school not far away from me. We sat at a table outside the lunchroom, handed out the main recruiter’s business card and some other Navy paraphernalia, and answered questions.

Image generated by Bing…I don’t look this good in uniform :)

The first thing I noticed is that despite it being winter and cold (it was 25F when I walked in the school), many of the students were in basketball shorts and even the occasional booty skirt, which I define as a skirt that barely covers your rear end. I had long pants, long sleeves and was wearing a jacket and I was still a bit cold since we were next to a window that leaked a lot of heat. I don’t even want to comment on the grooming standards, because there really were none.

That being said, the more surprising thing was the aimlessness of most of the students I interacted with. Our conversations would go something like this:

Kid: “I’m interested in joining the Navy.”
Me: “Great! Did you have a specific rate or job you’re interested in.”
Kid: “Not really, what’s available?”
Me: (Remembering there are 89 ratings in the Navy) “There’s lots of jobs! What sort of things do you like to do?”
Kid: “Meh, I don’t really know.”

This wasn’t just one conversation…it was the overwhelming majority of conversations. I mean, who the heck can’t tell me what they like to do??? Even if it was “play computer games,” I can turn that into “Would you like to fly drones?” The body language was also telling. Almost nobody looked me in the eye when we talked. Fidgeting, nervous, and just anxious in general. Since I was speaking to mostly juniors and seniors, the effects of being the high schoolers that grew up in COVID lockdowns were quite noticeable.

I spoke with the guidance counselor as well for some insight. She is assigned by the state, which specifically puts guidance counselors at schools to assist in career development. That’s a good thing, considering my guidance counselors were worthless when I was in high school. The one at this high school did everything from arrange ASVAB testing to factory tours and industry placement, on top of assisting in college applications and FAFSA forms.

It sounds like a much-needed change. The guidance counselor had similar experiences to mine with kids not having any clues about their direction in life. Most of them had to be pushed to do something, anything, to at least get somewhere. It wasn’t that they were opposed to one thing or another, it was that they didn’t have the desire for…anything, even stuff you would think is fun. We’ve already heard the rates of sexual intercourse and alcohol use are down among high school students. These are good things, but what we’re not catching is that teens are choosing to do…nothing. It’s similar to the “lying flat” movement in China. Teens today aren’t having sex, partying, going to the movies, working jobs, or…much of anything else.

Given that, it’s not surprising the grooming standards dropped. If you don’t have to impress the other sex, why bother dressing nice? Or combing your hair? Or picking out half-way fashionable clothes? Or taking a shower (yup, saw that too…). If you don’t care about much of anything, then much of anything goes. While plenty of people focus on the physical standards and obesity as issues, what I saw on the front line was a lot of aimlessness, of kids drifting through life without a clue, simply unsure of themselves.

I wasn’t that way growing up. As a junior, I knew I wanted to do engineering of some kind. Most of my peers were the same, having at least an idea of what they wanted to do for the next few years. My senior year I settled on electrical engineering, and I stayed that course in college. I currently have one kid in high school focused on the medical field, and whether she becomes a nurse, doctor, or some other job, she at least has direction and purpose.

More than anything else, our high schoolers need right now is a bit of direction and purpose. That might fix the recruiting crisis and a whole lot of other problems at the same time.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

It’s been a long time since I reviewed a Doctor Who Episode and most of those reviews are only found on the wayback machine as I’ve not bothered to retrieve them from the old blog so we’ll make this short and to the point:

Plot: The cute and cuddly Meep fleeing pursuit has fallen right into the hands of the Temple/Noble family. What danger does he bring, besides the Doctor?

Writing: Russell T Davies adapts this story from a 4th Doctor Comic Book story (You can read that here). It had actually been already adapted into a Big Finish audio four years ago by Allen Barnes staring Tom Baker (you can buy that here). Being familiar with both my take might be different than others without that familiarity. Given the limitations of squeezing’s the story down to 60 minutes of TV rather than the much less expensive visuals from the comics or from the imagination generated by the audio AND given the complexities of fitting this into a newly returned David Tennant he does an admirable job. There are a lot of balls in the air and he pretty much keeps them in said air. There is one elephant in the room that needs to be discussed but we’ll deal with that in a bit.

Acting: After four years of limbo David Tennant shows how it’s done again and Catherine Tate has not lost either a comic or a dramatic step. Nor has either lost a tiny bit of the chemistry they exhibited from day 1. The supporting cast does a good job as a whole but Jacqueline King REALLY shines and threatens to steal every scene she is in. I think Miriam Margoles overdid it as Beep but again you have the limits of squeezing a long story into a shorter time frame so the character couldn’t develop so it might not have been a reflection on her.

Best moment: The Trial great stuff very doctory.

Worst moment: The coffee business, seriously he couldn’t come up with better than that? Lame.

Funniest Moment: Donna’s blaming the Doctor for giving the money way

Ah HA Moment: Donna’s realization that she gave away the fortune to be like the Doctor harkened to Rory’s moment in Vampires of Venice where he notes people take stupid risks to impress him.

Oh Brother moment: The Meep pronouns business, was tempted to shut it off right there.

The elephant in the room: I didn’t mind the transgender child nor even how it was handled in the dynamics of the family. It seemed for a moment like Davies was reverting to his 2005-2012 form keeping making his “social agenda” points in the background while concentrating on story but alas no this is 2023 and not 2005 and like the Jew hating anti-Semitic Muslims of England who would not have dreamed of being so open about their “death to Israel, death to Jews” back then Russell Davies apparently feels freed from having to hide is social agenda and thus makes not just Donna having a child the basis for saving day but having a “non-binary” child being it. In fact the whole “you would have gotten this if you were a woman speech” was the type of in your face preaching that Davies would never have tried decades ago. Alas that means no change from the last three years except we get to be preached to with a higher quality writing and a better cast

I strongly suspected this would be the case and thus was not so much disgusted as disappointed.

Bottom line: I really thing The Star Beast suffered from the format. If this has been made as a two part story from the Tennant Era I think Davies would have done a better job with it and given more time to develop characters from the Noble family to Beep itself that would have at least diluted the preaching. An original story would have been a better choice for the reboot but taking it as it was my judgement is this:

If you grade the episode based on the last five years of the series it’s clearly better than anything fans have seen since the last episode of the Capaldi years and many will react accordingly but alas I’ve been following the series for since the I was in high school (graduated in 1981) so I’m grading it on based on actual Doctor Who. It’s pretty much a lower mid range Tennant episode say Unicorn and the Wasp or 42.

You know type you watch once or grab a scene to repeat online but not the one you’re dying to repeat or seek out. Only the return of Tennant & Tate make it memorable.

3 3/4 stars of five but I’d bet real money if Davies had another 30-40 minutes to play with it would have reached 4 or maybe even 4 1/2.

Bonus review Children in Need Doctor Who special Destination: Skaro: (takes place before the Star Beast) As it’s only 5 minutes long I’ll include it in its entirety at the end:

Plot: You all know that the Daleks were the Mark 4 Travel Machines, but what ever happened to the Mark 3?:

Writing: Davies mini episode is as close as a primer to how to write a Doctor Who episode as it gets. If there is a flaw in this mini episode I don’t see it.

Acting: Julian Bleach hits it out of the Park as Davros and plays the straight man to perfection. Mawaan Rizwan was hilarious and David Tennant brings back his Doctor in style. Again as good as it gets.

Best Moment: The look on Mr Castavillian (Rizwan’s) face when Davros re-enters the room and sees the Dalek.

Worst Moment: I really don’t get the liking of “exterminate” as a phrase

Ah HA moment: The “Canons are rupturing” is a playful homage to the fans pissed of at Chibnall redoing the entire canon of the show.

WTF moment: The tip of the multi claw adaptable thing should not pierce the “wood” of the TARDIS shell

Hmmm moment: It’s plain that the Tardis interior redesign revealed in the new show (kind of meh) has not taken place yet from the glimpses we see.

Bottom line: Five Stars, Worth watching again and again and it doesn’t get any less entertaining the 17th time around.

UPDATE: Being a sane and rational man that this episode was set before Davros’ accident that made him into the character we know to cut down on the costs involved in the makeup etc for the Children in need special.

And then I saw this video from the Critical Drinker which had a clip from Russell T Davies saying that this was in fact a Davros redesign:

“There is a problem with the Davros of old in that he’s a wheelchair users who is evil and I had problems with that. “

Seriously?

Back in the days before Mr. Musk bought twitter wordpress I could tweet and/or retweet something and it would show up on the blog.

But since that avenue is no longer valid here are two tweets that are worth your time.

The first one comes from those favorites of the left. There is nothing the left loves more than Jews who will take the side against Israel. If you are decide to carry that kind of banner odds are you will never be short of funds.

But I do have a bit of advice, if you’re going to actually pretend to believe in the Torah don’t choose verses that you’re afraid to read in public, to wit:

Now if it was me, I would have picked a different verse, but this lady was too obvious, not only does she highlight the verses she wants to ignore making sure that everyone will see this video but by choosing these verses she not only confirms Israel’s historic claim to the holy land predating all others but makes sure that all will see that as a mandate from God.

That one is pretty good but the 2nd one is even better.

Now I’ve argued that when it comes to Transgender people, you can’t assume that because people have a mental illness concerning other things. I speak from the experience of both working with and carpooling to work with such people.

But as this tweet demonstrates, you can’t assume that said mental illness and delusion WON’T cross over to other things:

As a devout straight white Catholic male who has lived in Massachusetts all his live and has worked in Marlborough MA let me tell you that in 2023 I have a better chance of being beheaded here than this person does.

The frightening thing to me isn’t the obvious idiocy on display, but the fact that seeing this over 136 thousand people actually bought it.

Cue John Cleese: