Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

Ukraine War Fallout: Toxic Masculinity & Microaggressions are SO last week

Posted: February 27, 2022 by datechguy in culture, war
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In peace we can make many of them ignore good and evil entirely; in danger, the issue is forced upon them in a guise to which even we cannot blind them. There is here a cruel dilemma before us. If we promoted justice and charity among men, we should be playing directly into the Enemy’s hands; but if we guide them to the opposite behaviour, this sooner or later produces (for He permits it to produce) a war or a revolution, and the undisguisable issue of cowardice or courage awakes thousands of men from moral stupor.

C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters #29

One of the most interesting side effects of the war in Ukraine is the sudden shift in the left on several things.

Last week the left was telling us that armed citizens are dangerous and no regular person needs a gun

This week the left suddenly deciding that civilians armed with military weapons as a good thing.

Last week “Toxic Masculinity” was a curse that universities needed to purge using tools like Critical Race Theory to get this poison out of society.

This week the Masculinity of standing up to Tanks, Air Bombings and Fleets demanding surrender is something to produce awe and admiration.

Last week running away from Truckers who were honking horns at people was a good thing as US democrats overwhelmingly supported Trudeau

This week not running away from bombs etc and declaring “I don’t need a ride I need ammunition” is the template for how leaders should act.

This week you see everything from the Simpsons to Hollywood stars to members of congress celebrating the brave Ukrainian people.

But last week if you took the average Ukrainian now fighting the Russians, a white Christian who doesn’t believe in gay marriage, defines a woman by her sex and if asked tells you there is only two genders in the US, those same people celebrating them today would demand they be cancelled and or fired from any public position they hold.

The optimist in me would like to say this is because reality tends to trump woke stupidity and the realty of an actual war causes one to brush aside all the foolishness that people insulated from danger embrace.

But the realist tells me that the left understands that the fall of Ukraine would be a disaster politically for the left and their message worldwide and so they will jump with enthusiasm to defend them. That is defend them rhetorically, not in person of course That’s just as well a person who needs counseling for microaggressions is not likely to cope with battlefield conditions.

BTW if you are a true believer in the whole woke canon and are shocked and disgusted by this sudden volta face of the elites and their followers have no fear. Once the war is over and the danger to Ukraine the left’s political viability is past, all of those things that they are now celebrating will once again be beyond the pale.

Unexpectedly of course.

The Mask is the left’s Golden Calf

Posted: February 21, 2022 by datechguy in culture, Uncategorized
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The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything: 

Emile Cammaerts, paraphrasing Chesterton

PJ Media wrote the post I’ve been meaning to write for weeks:

Seitz-Wald is correct. Urban Democrats especially have taken mask-wearing to a whole other level, making the kind of mask you wear sort of like gang colors. That’s not an easy identifier to lose under any circumstances.

Beyond that, masks always gave liberals a sense of superiority over the “rubes” in flyover country. They “followed the science” — until the science said something else and then they simply pretended it didn’t and continued to mask up.

Now they’re fighting a rearguard action to keep the emergency going. On one level, it’s truly pathetic. Finding meaning in life by wearing a mask proves Thoreau’s point of the “mass of men living lives of quiet desperation.”

But losing the mask also denotes losing control of the rest of us. For a left-wing authoritarian, that’s got to hurt.

You see the reason why they call it “virtue signaling” is that you’re just sending a signal, you don’t have to practice actual virtue and for the left the Mask has become the ultimate in virtue signaling. All it takes is to see that piece of cloth around one’s face and viola not only can you show you are of the right groupthink but you can identify others who are with you.

Much easier than those Christian virtues, of charity, faith, hope and the pesky business of loving your neighbor, particularly your enemies

Here is the MSNBC quote:

Masks are the left’s latest golden calf and it will be just as merciful a god as the first one was.

A Funny Vic Power Story that Says a Lot About How Far We’ve Come

Posted: February 18, 2022 by datechguy in baseball, culture
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My wife bought me both Bill James Historical Abstracts for Christmas the 1985 and the 2003 edition. The newer one had a story about Vic Power the premiere defensive first baseman of the late 50’s and early 60’s that made me laugh out loud and when I repeated it told a story about how far we’ve come on race in the US.

Power was a very dark skinned Puerto Rican player who came up in the early 50’s just as the integration of baseball was taking place. He as I noted (and as his stats at baseball reference.com can tell you) was a spectacular fielding first baseman winning gold gloves every year from 1958-1964 a six time all star in four years (some years two AS games were played) who could hit a bit often in the top ten of hitting categories and leading the league in triples once.

He was also rather outspoken and outgoing and was considered by racists of the time “an uppity nigger” (FYI Bill James notes this reference without spelling the actual word saying “uppity n-word”. I don’t believe in this N-word bullshit. I prefer to quote the actual offensive words being used, even that most offensive of words: “Semprini” , because it’s proper for us to see things as they actually were. If you are offended by their use at that time, good you should be. If you are offended by me quoting said offensive language to illustrate it, may I suggest there are plenty of other blogs out there for the weak of heart to read, but I digress…) but Power didn’t care not let such people stop him. A great illustration of this came in a story that James told of him.

He stopped by a restaurant in Syracuse to eat and the waiter walked up to him nervously saying to him: “I’m sorry sir we don’t serve colored people in this restaurant.” Power didn’t miss a beat in his reply: “That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people.”

James doesn’t relate what happened next but I laughed so loud & hard when I read it that all the people in the lunch room turned to stare, but the most interesting thing came when I was heading back from break toward my work station.

I passed by the guards station and the guard on duty was a thirty year old fellow who I knew to be a baseball fan. I told him the story and he smiled at the punch line but it was his reaction to the words of the waiter that struck me.

It was utter amazement. I’m almost sixty and while not old enough to remember ever hearing that in person I’m old enough for such a thing to be not unfamiliar to me, but to him the very idea that a person might choose to deny service to a person because of their race was so foreign and unthinkable to him that he just couldn’t process it.

I can think of no more concrete sign that we have really moved forward on race than that.

Joe Rogan, Salman Rushdie and Chancellor Kent or what freedom is.

Posted: February 9, 2022 by datechguy in culture, opinion/news
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I’m old enough to remember when the Fatwa was put on Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses.

Unlike today when phrases like “freedom of speech” are routinely redefined to suit whatever agenda the left happens to have that day in 1989 the idea of the A death sentence being publicly demanded for an author for writing a book a particular Ayatollah didn’t like was rather new and there were plenty of free speech advocates who loudly proclaimed such actions a travesty.

Much to my shock at the time there was also considerable pushback from some in the west those who attacked Rushdie. It was the beginning of what we are seeing today.

At the time I was outraged (and still am at the bounty still on his head) and considered buying the book in response to said threats. but then it hit me:

What is the difference between buying a book I don’t want in response to Islamic threats and not buying a book I do want in response to Islamic threats?

The answer: THERE ISN’T ONE. Either way I would be allowing a bunch of savage barbarians to drive me to an action I had no interest in doing. The essence of freedom is the ability to do something if one chooses or not. So I asked myself a key question: If there was no FATWA on Rushdie would I had any interest in buying this book?

The answer is and remains no.

I haven’t bought the book, I have no interest in buying the book and I don’t see myself buying the book in the future…

…but I have the RIGHT an the ability to buy the book and that right is worth fighting for.

And that brings us to Joe Rogan.

I don’t have a subscription to Spotify and never had plans to get one before the Joe Rogan business.

I am not one of the millions of subscribers who listen to Joe Rogan. I’ve listed to a clip here and there but I have little interest in his podcast in general and had no plans to listen to jump in and start listening.

When the attempt to censor his came out I was as you might guess outraged. I don’t like the idea of people trying to force someone off the air because they don’t like what he’s saying or who he is interviewing.

You can’t have freedom of speech and if you don’t have freedom to listen. I think the attempt to take away that ability to listen is unamerican totalitarian and frankly evil and the people who are pushing that need to be fought because just like redefining words didn’t stop with “marriage” censoring speech and the ability to listen won’t stop with Rogan.

All that being said you can’t have freedom to listen without the freedom to not listen and as much as I want to make sure he has a platform so the people who want to hear him can do so I have no interest in joining that crowd because I freely choose not to.

Some might object saying that is it my moral duty to listen to jump in, perhaps I will like it, perhaps I would be this harkins back to one of the best statements in history concerning this type of thing.

Chancellor James Kent, author of Kent’s Commentaries, and one of the most influential American
legal minds of all time, had a personal story that illustrates how foreign this impulse is to American law. According to Kent’s grandson: [He was] waited upon by a temperance committee and urged to give his authority and sanction to the principles and aims of a mass meeting by adding his name to the list of
those who had pledged themselves not to use intoxicating liquor, being unduly pressed after his first polite negative, he made the following reply, declining the request:

“Gentlemen, I refuse to sign any pledge. I never have been drunk, and, by the blessing of God, I never will get drunk, but I have a constitutional privilege to get drunk, and that privilege I will not sign away.”‘

Kent never had the inclination to grant legislative authority over his sobriety.

I have no intention of granting either my political enemies or my political allies the authority to determine what can can’t or what I must listen to.

If some day Rogan has a guest I’m really interested in and I choose to jump in or even subscribe, fine but nobody is going to make that judgement but me.

THAT’s freedom.

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