This phenomenon touches on many themes we have explored on Ethics Alarms: double standards, hypocrisy, Big Lies, mainstream media complicity in disinformation, the increasingly unavoidable conclusion that a large mass of progressive activists, pundits and public figures are just plain terrible people—our culture’s “bad guys.”
Item One: Bill Maher on David Koch
In his monologue on this week’s Real Time on HBO, the former comedian-turned-permanent-Leftist-asshole commented on the death of billionaire Republican donor and philanthropist David Koch from cancer at age 79 by saying (to the usual hoots of approval from his usual seal-clapping audience),
“Fuck him… I’m glad he’s dead…I guess I’m going to have to re-evaluate my low opinion of prostate cancer…As for his remains, he has asked to be cremated and have his ashes be blown into a child’s lungs. He and his brother have done more than anybody to fund climate science deniers for decades. So fuck him, the Amazon is burning up, I’m glad he’s dead, and I hope the end was painful.”
Of course, this was on a comedy show as part of a stand-up routine, so it’s all OK; it was just a joke, right?
I am reading similar sentiments from the Deranged Facebook Borg, but Maher is on television, and a major entertainment company employs him. I don’t understand how an ethical, responsible American and human being can continue to pay premium prices to a company that allows itself to be associated with pure hate like that, no matter how much they like “Westworld.” Have some responsibility for the culture. Write HBO and tell them that you are cancelling your subscription until it publicly rejects that kind of rhetoric in the public square. I wish I had a subscription so I could cancel it. I wish I didn’t oppose organized boycotts so I could launch a Facebook page and organize one.
Rick Moran wrote, quite correctly,
Forget ideology. Forget politics. How does a civilized human being get to the point where voicing such sentiments is believed to be acceptable by anyone in society — even political allies? Thinking such thoughts is bad enough. Most of us would be ashamed of ourselves for celebrating anyone’s demise and hoping “the end was painful.” It’s barbaric. The words are disconnected from conscience in a way that makes Maher less human.
Celebrating the death of a political adversary suggests that the deaths of adversaries are to be desired, and thus sought and facilitated. I am not aware of any similarly ugly sentiments coming from the other side of the political spectrum, while the projection of violent ends and painful beatings has been a continuing theme from the “resistance” for years.
In contrast, President Trump and those who support enforcing our laws were accused of inspiring the El Paso killer because the shooter adopted the term “invaders” for all immigrants. This dishonest effort to blame the shooting on Trump’s language required all sorts of deceit, as well as withholding the shooter’s manifesto so the public couldn’t connect the dots that proved what a grand lie the accusation was. The shooter regarded all immigrants, including legal ones, as “invaders.” Neither the President nor anyone else outside of the lunatic Right has ever used the term for anyone but illegal immigrants, who are, in fact, invaders by definition. The shooter did not advocate killing immigrants, but frightening them into self-deporting with mad acts such as his: he explicitly rejected genocide in his largely unseen manifesto. Never mind; those are just facts, and what matters to Democrats, as their Presidential front-runner so sagely reminded us, isn’t facts, but truth.
The real truth is that in Left-Land, double-standards reign.Thus the news media and Democrats howled that a single word—invaders—neither implying nor suggesting violence, prompted mass murder in El Paso. When one of their own acolytes directly extols death and painful death as a desirable means of eliminating adversaries and prevailing in policy debates, it is shrugged off as amusing.
Item Two: Marcie Blanco on men.
On the NBC News website, Marcie Blanco—I she’s the Marcie Blanco who co-wrote “Girls” (I can’t tell because NBC won’t let me stay on its site without allowing ads), but it doesn’t matter; the issue is that NBC would publish such bile—writes this:
Men need heterosexuality to maintain their societal dominance over women,Women, on the other hand, are increasingly realizing not only that they don’t need heterosexuality, but that it also is often the bedrock of their global oppression…Historically, women have been conditioned to believe that heterosexuality is natural or innate, just as they have been conditioned to believe that their main purpose is to make babies — and if they fail to do so, they are condemned as not “real,” or as bad, women…
As a snapshot of 2019 America, these stories present a startling picture. Men continue to coerce, harass, rape and kill girls and women — and go to extreme lengths to avoid responsibility for their actions. On the other side of the issue, girls and women are challenging heterosexuality, and even absconding from it altogether….While men stew in their mess, women are rising. They are taking back control of their lives and their bodies and they are questioning the foundation of the patriarchy — heterosexuality — that has kept them blindly subordinate for centuries.
In other words, Men Evil, Women Better. This is pure misandry, hate, and bigotry, negative stereotyping, and provocation for any weak-minded woman—say, Kirsten Gillibrand—to set out on a vendetta. It’s a cliché to say, but still correct, that an essay or a TV rant with genders reversed from a male pundit would result in an immediate firing for cause, and probably several, plus a corporate apology. A similar screed about what blacks, Jews, Muslims, or Hispanics “want” and “need” and “continue to do” while going “to extreme lengths to avoid responsibility for their actions” would also provoke a firestorm of outrage, and serious repercussions.
How extreme can this unapologetic bigotry, hate and hypocrisy get before the good, honest, fair, non-deranged Americans of the liberal persuasion—surely there must be some— snap to and realize they belong to a movement that is vicious, unprincipled, and toxic to the culture?
It’s an important question.
Ethics Alarms 
In other words, Men Evil, Women Better. This is pure misogyny,
Actually, it’s the opposite: pure misandry.
Ms. Bianco seems to have overlooked something: most multi-celled organisms require males in order to perpetuate the species. So loathsome though we may be, she’ll need to keep a few of us around as breeding stock lest the whole thing go kapooie in less than three generations.
95% of feminist activism involves some form of “you men need to help us win.” I think they are well aware that to achieve feminist utopia, they still need men to do most of the hard work.
I’m not aware of any feminists complaining about a gender disparity in manual labor at all of the companies they want to be crowned CEOs of.
As an undergraduate in the late 80’s, my public university had a office to deal with sexual harassment and sexual assault. The head of this agency, a state employee, made and enforced a policy that defined sexual assault as sex between a man and a woman. That’s right, students at a state university were subject to a university policy that banned heterosexual sex as a crime. This was fairly common at the time and anyone who protested was dismissed by the mainstream media. I wonder why we see things like this today?
No one can deny that the goal of progressives is to destroy any and all opposition to their ideology. People like Maher seem to take great comfort in the misery of others and those that follow his lead do so because they share a similar sociopathy or fear that he will attack them. He is just a bully with no other skills to speak of other than to make his followers feel superior through his ridicule of others. He is a smug self righteous bastard that would starve if he had to work a real job.
As for Marcia Blanco, she is a self fulfilling prophecy; she hates men because men probably pay no attention to her. The pay no attention because they don’t want to hear her diatribes all the time. I can tell from her rants she is fugly. No man wants a fugly woman no matter how physically attractive she may be.
The larger issue is ‘metaphysical rebellion’. And out of that major rebellion spring the minor rebellions. To define metaphysical rebellion requires an analysis like that of Richard Weaver in Ideas Have Consequences. In the Occident, there are causal chains, they are real, they can be followed back and described, and they can be discussed. But someone must ‘be at home’ in order to have that conversation. ‘At home’ means sufficiently intellectually prepared. Willing. Capable of cooperating with restorative doctrine. If you do not have such a base or platform you are ‘putty’ in the hands of molding forces.
We are witnessing one rebellion and feeling its consequences: the Rebellion of the Brown People. It has to be described openly and more-or-less in this way (though it clangs in the ears I admit). You will have to develop the intellectual platform to resist this rebellion — or you will perish.
Concurrent with that — if the Sixties is taken as a guiding text — is the Rebellion of Woman. These are linked to fundamental perceptual transvaluations of values: radical redefinitions. Behind these as motivators stands Marxist doctrine and ‘the culture of critique’. People refer, somewhat loosely and a bit irresponsibly, to ‘the Frankfurt School’ but this can be taken as a general trope to indicate an insidious undermining of values and ideals with an acid-like, rebelliously motivated stance or ideology.
At the most fundamental level a rebellion among women is likely to be the most destructive and ‘acidic’ rebellion possible, because at that point the will of women is turned against her natural partner. This is Marxian-inspired rebellion taken to its maximum point. The currents and trends that have led to this — a unique event in world-history — can also be traced back. The causal chain, as far as I have been able to tell, arose out of metaphysical redefinitions. Perhaps my use of the word ‘metaphysic’ is a bit loose. But by it I mean fundamental or ‘cosmic-level’ definitions about this world; literally this plane of existence.
You have of course given permission over time for women to undertake this rebellion. It comes about — in its most essential reason — because of your own weakness and your profound omission. When men realize this, and when they remediate it, then things will begin to change. If they imagine, erroneously, that the problem is outside of themself and in some other that is ‘doing this to them’, they will continue in the error. I have written about this before and I can back it up with solid argument: the one who drops the ball is always the man. There is a saying: Take care of the boys and the girls will take care of themselves. The core rebellion began in you and it extended to the female of the species. Now, she rises up in unconscious and rather blind rebellion to do you harm.
Burt then this is generally speaking what is going on around you on all sides. You are being ‘deplatformed’ to borrow a term from YouTube banning. You are made to seem invalid and this can only happen because, in one way or another, to one degree or another, you agreed to some or all of the terms.
My theory is that all the errors of the day can be traced back to ‘spiritual errors’ (metaphysical errors or turning against metaphysical truth).
Aliza, women have just learned that the male concoction of damsel in distress can be an offensive or defensive weapon.
When men give up the idea that women need special protections to ensure the survival of the species or because of some archaic belief in chivalry then women cannot claim patriarchal social order. The fact is that patriarcal ideals with respect to economic independence in the US have been extinct for over 50 years.
Government has replaced men in most women and children’s lives. That is neither paternal nor maternal it just is.
What you are saying is men have given them the stick to beat them with . They have done this by living the saying “Happy wife, happy life”.
Obviously it goes far beyond that saying. We should abolish:
Violence against women act and treat all acts if violence equally.
All child custody rules favoring women, and
Alimony.
Equality means no special treatment.
Both examples spring from the same source. To lefties, power is evil. The Kochs were powerful because 1. they had money, lots of it, 2. they were not lefties. Therefore, anything goes to bring them down. Heterosexual men are deemed all powerful (ironically). Therefore, anything goes to bring them down. It’s not hypocrisy, it’s lefty reality.
The Kochs are (or were) pretty radical Libertarians, aren’t they?
Genuine intellectual conservatism would be intellectually capable of looking into the activity of men like the Kochs and also critiquing it. Vast concentrations of capital have vast interests to defend, and those interests are not necessarily either positive, nationalist nor republican.
I don’t find anything wrong with the Kochs wanting to preserve the system that made them wealthy. Think how much taxable income they created. How much property taxes their companies paid. How much sales tax. And massive amounts of charitable contributions. There will doubtless be a huge estate tax liability. Guys like the Kochs are great. They don’t take their money and bury it in the back yard. It’s all in the economy for the betterment of anyone willing to participate in the economy.
Great point OB
I always have fun with those who throw out the trope that corporations pay little to no income tax. I ask them what they paid in property taxes on their home furnishings, auto, boat or other personal goods. Most pay zero but a corporation with physical assets in the hundreds of millions pay our the wazoo for stuff they own year after year. Even if they carry forward a loss those losses have no effect on property taxes
I have noticed that many people approach the troubling questions of our day through too-strict binaries. So, if I suggest that Koch wealth, and their use of it, might have an aspect or function that could be critiqued by a fair-minded conservative person concerned for ‘Republican values’, it will be made to seem as if I am criticizing wealth.
The Koch’s ‘wanting to preserve the system that made them wealthy’ could — I suppose you could entertain this speculation — become problematic if it led to activities that weakened, or even undermined, republican values. Taken to an obvious extreme the use of wealth would certainly be problematic if it led to, say, the assassination of a sitting president as the common American mythology stated happened when Kennedy was assassinated. A ‘coup’ in which powerful factions took control.
Do you understand that I am employing hypotheticals to illustrate a point?
Why is it that you-plural always look at things through the most simplistic lenses? Rather crude lenses I should say. I do not get the impression that you really understand the rather ruthless way that power actually functions. Why is this? I do not get the impression that you grasp the profound machinations of power even as we witness all the struggles in this present filled with treacherous machination. Sometimes back the term ‘deep state’ was used to refer to background power. Can you see the nation in a more removed, meta-political sense?
I did a very glossary examination of the Koch brothers. But there are a number of books that detail the darker aspect of their machinations. Do I believe them all, in all their details, like getting an account from the Gospel? Of course not. But I read also of the machinations of the Bush family dynasty and their connections to a great deal of murky doings. This is not merely *invented* — just as the corruption of the Clinton dynasty is not invented but has bases in fact and truth. All this material has to be carefully examined.
Therefore I repeat again: a proper and a genuine Conservative, with a proper conservative frame of mind, should be able to examine anything and all things dispassionately.
Why do I constantly have the impression that few — here — seem to be able to do this, or to be interested in doing it? It completely baffles me.
_______________
Libertarianism, I might also add, seems a possible for of personal philosophy and some libertarians I know give me the impression of integrity at a personal level. It definitely does not seem to me to be a political philosophy to guide a nation by. I think certain aspects of Libertarianism clearly result in negative results. In any case, I can make arguments against it at that level.
I don’t think we are seeing a rebellion of brown people or women. What we are seeing is the use of protected class of people to launch attacks against an unprotected group. This tactic effectively neuters any defense as long as the victimization is allowed to used as an excuse, rationalization or worse a weapon against any resistance to their agenda. It is the guerilla warfare of our time. What must happen is we eliminate all references and beliefs of what constitutes a protected demographic.
Disproportionate impact must be tossed out with the trash as it serves no purpose if not uniformly applied in all areas of commerce and life. Just how many white middle aged men are executives at BET. I know that magazines that cater to women have almost entirely female editors and senior management. I don’t care who they hire but if you challenge organizations catering to men regarding the number of female managers you should do the same where the situations are reversed.
To prevent a full scale civil war it will be necessary to eliminate the ability for any one group to claim they have been victimized by others.
When I hear about systemic racism or misogyny I will demand names of local people or local processes that are part of the systemic victimization strategy from those who make such claims. You cannot claim systemic anything if you cannot point to something that affects you directly. You cannot says racism is everywhere if you cannot or will not name those people you believe to be racists. Once the processes or people are identified only then can we begin to debate the merits of the claims. I will no longer stipulate that racism, sexism or any other ism is rampant throughout our society. Stipulating to systemic racism automatically gives the left the win.
There is no going back once you agree that racism and sexism is all around us.
Here is something I rant into today…
…and that is just a small piece of the conversation.
So much hate, so little time to combat it.
Life is too short to spend any of it on Facebook.
THAT!
Now that you have earned their hatred all you have to do now Steve is actually develop a reactionary program grounded in solid ideas. 🙂
In the meantime: bite them!
It’s typical of the progressives in the above comment thread to openly lie about the people with dissenting opinions and when you point out their lies they delete your comment.
I’ll post more of the debate in the next day or two.
So I suppose his just and democratic society will be what he and his minions decree it to be. Any disagreement will be met with derision, ridicule, and if necessary incarceration.
“Reactionary.” A brilliant piece of misdirection. Let’s call anyone who doesn’t agree with us or considers us a serious threat a “something or other” that has little or no meaning so we can drape it with all sorts of negative connotations.
Where have all these Commies been for the last forty or fifty years? Hiding in plain sight?
Answer: you paid for their education. 🙂
Teaching the nation’s children about Marxism and being paid with taxpayer dollars.
Yep, And they are sitting on school boards making curriculum for district-wide implementation. Also, in local, city and state governments setting policy on issues such as diversity in the work force, sexual orientation as protected classification, and gender discrimination.
jvb
As promised, here is some more about the Facebook discussion I talked about above.
Politicians In A Political Bubble
There will be more later, much more.
This is why they are accelerating in losing the mass in the middle ranges. Male asses have had bad effect on my life, but so have female ones. I’m not interested in joining her misandry (typo there by our host)
Okay, your identifying group (gender, preference, race, religion, whatever) was treated badly. Well, guess what, every group gets treated badly, sometimes multiple times over the ages. If yours were treated badly for a hundred years, that doesn’t mean you get to treat the OTHERS badly for a hundred years in return. The ones you’d abuse, or their grandchildren, are NOT guilty of abusing your ancestors. You know that such treatment is bad when done to you, but you doing it to others is much worse. The original jerks didn’t know any better, That only perpetuates the problem, amplifying each cycle until we’re at effigies and stage murder and further.
It has to stop.
So you cannot fully forgive an abuser. I get that, I have hates too. Not everyone can manage sainthood, secular or not. Forgive their children, or their grandchildren, so the Hatfield kids don’t have personal reasons to want revenge. Maybe their children can forgive you for destroying their family’s bakery. You cannot stop a hatred cycle by fiat, it has to be a gradual draw down by both sides to last and become only legend. Slow and steady wins the race, but this wrathful wave has become as dangerous to the body politic as Jim Crow.
It is more fundamental.
Andrea Dworkin (from The Boston Review):
I discovered through a reading of Dworkin that her basic argument — her existential rebellion — is against what Nature does with the female of the species. Her basic argument is therefore contra-nature. For it is a fact that man’s culture, and technology, and idealism, has saved women from the fate imposed by Nature.
Really dumb typo too. I was so concerned about not misspelling misandry that I typed the wrong word entirely.
So is that a correction, or just a worse misspelling?
Not throwing stones, but substituting a correctly spelled (but incorrect to the meaning) word is sort of a meta error, no? Or was it some sort of irony, and therefore intentional, if only at a subconscious level?
Or is a cigar just antisocial behavior? Particularly if used in, say, the Oval Office, in some other orifice than the one nature (or Cuban employees of Corporación Habanos) intended?
And one wonders what keeps slick awake at night…
I just call it “stupid and careless.” It’s only been relatively recently that I had the occasion to use “Misandry” at all.
…how is THAT answer going to keep me awake at night…?
Wait… you now have occasion to use the term ‘misandry’ when you did not before… and we are off to the races!
“When So Much Of Hate”
Did you mean to have the “of” there?
And it almost sounds like Marcie Blanco is saying that sexual orientation is…a choice.
Thanks, extraneous word there. Fixed.
Why? Because we’re all Nazis, Jack, and it’s already been established that it’s okay to hate Nazis, punch Nazis in the face and, eventually I’m sure, kill Nazis.
All I have to say is Ginsberg. I see this same thing from the right with regard to her.
Oooh, I think that’s a bit off. I’m not talking about social media assholes, now. Name me a prominent, national figure who has openly wished for Ginsburg’s death, and for it to be painful.
Ok, you have a point on that one. I have seen lots of people in the social media asshole category, can’t recall if I have seen that coming from an establishment figure.
Re: Bill Maher is a Jerk;
Bill Maher is a jerk, has always been a jerk, and will always be a jerk. He was funnier when he skewered the Left and the Right equally. I blame his current incarnation on Dan Patrick, Texas’ current Lieutenant Governor. Shortly after September 11, 2001, Maher was on ABC with a panel talking about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. One opined that the 19 people responsible for downing 4 planes and indiscriminately killing over 4,000 people was an act of cowardice. Maher, talking off the cuff, questioned whether it was “cowardice”. He said to the panel, “I don’t know what it is but it certainly wasn’t ‘cowardice.'” Impolitical at the time for such a comment, but he didn’t support them or justify their actions.
Well, Dan Patrick, in his own little way, made great hay out of the comment, accusing Maher of supporting terrorists and the 9/11 terrorists. ABC canned him, canceled his show, and Dan Patrick went on to become a member of Texas congress and now Lieutenant Governor. He (Patrick) is a loathsome individual. After the incident, Maher descended into what he is today, a nasty, vulgar, anti-religious bigot, and all around horrible human being.
jvb
I notice that enivormentalists have used the Amazon forest as a causs belli since becfore I was born.
Recently, this meme spread, claming that the media was ignoring the Amazon wildfires.
* Therer has been plenty of coverage of the Amazon wildfires.
* Slash and burn agriculture has been done, both int he amazon and elsewhere, for thousands of years. As a matter of fact, people used to burn down parts of Yosemite Valley every year to harvest acorns.
* The wildfires will not do any permanent damage to the Amazon basin. After all, look at Yosemite Valley today, over a century after the slash-and-burn era before the 19th century.
The “lungs of the planet” stuff is also junk science. True, the Amazon rainforest alone produces nearly 20 percent of the world’s oxygen. However, the decomposition of organic plant and animal matter in that rainforest actually consumes about the same amount of oxygen as the forest produces.