Sweet Liberty* a blast from the past from September 2011
I have some experience with revolutions, partly because Portugal never believes a thing worth doing is worth doing only once. I get PTSD at the sound of Green Acres because Porto had one reel in its local broadcast station. Green Acres. When Lisbon got cut off, they played it back to back. This meant that someone had taken over the main broadcasting station in Lisbon.
(Okay, here I should explain that Portugal had two broadcast stations. Yes, I had a deprived childhood. [Yes. I spelled that right. I’m quite sure it’s an I.] Only one of them broadcast during the day at all, and that limited hours. So usually my experience was come home from school and watch something on lunch break and… ack… Green Acres. I wonder who is in now.)
For those who wonder why I’m “obsessive about my Portuguese background” – I’m not, but this kind of childhood experiences mark a person. I think this is why I’ve always been fascinated by revolutions. The ones that go right. The ones that go wrong. And the ones that go very wrong.
I read obsessively about the French revolution, the American revolution, the Russian revolution, and other, less obvious, revolutions. Like… The industrial revolution, or even the agricultural revolution.
Societies don’t change easily. People don’t change easily. Societies are worse than that. They’re slow to change like dinosaurs whose signal has to travel from head to tail and if it’s in full careen, it’s going to take a while to stop, let alone turn around.
One of the things I’ve noticed, in recent times, is that revolutions have another issue, particularly social revolutions of the non-bloody kind. Knowing you’ve won. Knowing it’s now, not thirty or fifty or seventy years ago.
Often when I’m talking to people, particularly people of an academic bend, I find myself wondering what world they’re talking about. It’s the silly little things, like “Oh, a woman would never dare say/do that,” when I saw women do it just that morning. Or “the neighborhood will get upset if there’s a non married couple” – what, like that one, that one and, oh, yeah, that one?
I will grant you that every once in a while, one comes across a person or persons who seem to be a blast from the stereotypical past, but my kids schools’ have more trouble with unwanted pregnancies than with girls being sent home to put on a longer skirt.
One of these effects of “delayed realization you won” keeps annoying me. Lately there have been any number of women writers complaining that they’re not proportionally represented as science fiction writers. They’re not being taken seriously and this is because they have vaginas. Etc. etc. etc.
Now, I’ve been this field for ten years as a published author. First of all let me get out of the way that there are some prejudices in this field, usually evinced by people you wouldn’t expect. For instance, I was pushed rather strongly fantasyward, in part because I had the v word. (Yes, verve.) And a friend of mine who is a physicist, was told that she should write fantasy, not science fiction, because she was a woman and therefore had the heart of a fantasy writer. (To which Rebecca Lickiss answered that yes, but it was in a locked drawer, and besides the statute of limitations had expired.)
There are other, more subtle prejudices. Some people told me they never read women writers, because they can’t write action. Weirdly, when they read me, they have no problems. I don’t worry about it. I just wait till they come around.
And btw, any male writing in romance or a romance-germane field, like certain forms of urban fantasy gets the opposite pressure, I’m sure. It’s all part of no one having a perfect life, and other people having certain expectations. My husband, for instance, had trouble placing his space opera (still hasn’t) because it’s character development oriented. (Yes, he actually got rejected by someone who told him it read too much like Bujold. No, I’m not joking.)
However, claims that women are discriminated against in fantasy always make me laugh. And claims that women as writers are discriminated against make me laugh even harder. And then there’s the post at MGC two days ago, and the comments – my Lord, the comments. Part of what got to me was seeing my friend Dave Freer getting attacked for making a perfectly reasonable and polite comment. Well, I was brought up to think part of my job was to give voice to those who didn’t have one, whether they be battered women in Portugal or silenced and demonized males in the US.
First let me establish there was a time I called myself a feminist. This is because I believed in the equality of women. I still do.
This doesn’t mean that women should be exactly the same as men. Or that they should behave exactly the same way. In fact, any such notions were pretty much dispelled by the time I came of age in the seventies. The average man and the average woman are very different creatures. And I strenuously object to such things as the fire fighters tests being rewritten so that you don’t need to do a fireman carry to pass. OTOH I heavily endorse any woman who is able to pass non “rewritten” tests being a fire fighter if she so wishes. And that’s because the median of anything is not the only person – there’s also the extremes. For instance, bad as I am at spacial reasoning (sad that) I am miles better than some males (okay, none that I’ve met, but I’m sure there are some. Maybe they were hit really hard on the head.) In fact I pretty much occupy the far outlier extremes of a bunch of categories (and I’m not saying which extreme.) As such, I am sympathetic with outliers. And I think letting people do what best suits them, without judgement, censure or barriers is best for everyone.
I believe in equality before the law not equality of results.
I still believe the same things, but I’m not calling myself a feminist, partly because the word has gotten corrupted. A lot of people seem to think the only way to elevate women is to degrade men. Others seem to be on a permanent hunt for offense, including attacking perfectly innocent words – no, history does NOT mean his-story. Please, study some linguistics.
This is many flavors of wrong, for many reasons, but the main reason is that it leads to a sort of permanent revolution. This reminds me of when the French revolution had got rid of every aristocrat either through beheading or immigration and had started attacking as aristos people who could read. Or people who dressed better than the others. Or people who used the word “roi.”
This is the sign of a revolution that has become its own reason to exist, and which will consume its own partisans, until it all ends in a sea of blood or until it’s stopped at last by a “strong man” of some sort, and suppressed for good. And at that point no one complains, because, frankly, it’s a relief.
Part of what disturbs me about this is that the justification for the “permanent revolution” is that we “could lose all the gains tomorrow.” You know, like if we don’t jump behind the latest harebrained “offense” campaign, next thing you know we’ll end woman suffrage (and good riddance, women have suffered enough! – Yes, yes, it’s a joke. And yes, I’m aware there is no joking in feminism. Another reason I no longer use that word.)
But the advances are fragile in another way. Much as I hate to say this, women’s gains rest on two things – one of them is safe contraceptives. The other is a stable western civilization. (No, I’m not even going to argue that. You want to live anywhere else in the world, be my guest. I wouldn’t, though.) And both of them can be lost more easily than you think.
Western civilization can be demoralized and subverted from within by a contingent of males who feel like women exist to punish them. Males who have been treated as criminals or morons or both from kindergarten on. Males whose education and employment figures, if reversed (i.e. if women had the same stats men have in the US today) would be a real offense and a call for investigations and remedies. Males who, btw, have never discriminated against anyone (most of them, at least) and whose fathers and, for that matter probably grandfathers, never discriminated against anyone.
These males can very easily see how women are treated in the rest of the world and, if pushed enough, form a concerted effort to subvert the current rules of behavior. (And no they haven’t done it yet. They haven’t even THOUGHT of doing it, yet. Again, don’t get me started. I lived in a country that is Western but only just. I know what discrimination is better than most people my age or even slightly older.)
I love the women who say it’s just the way the pendulum is swinging and that it’s right for it to go to far in the direction of privileging women. Let me enlighten you – if this is a pendulum, it’s one that has men as its favorites. Men are physically stronger and more aggressive. Any devolution from civilization to barbarism, or even any prolonged disruption in the economy that, oh, say, interrupts the production of contraceptives, and men will have to be very, very good not to be in charge. And if you’ve been pushing your little pendulum with glee and joy, don’t be surprised if they push it as far as they can the other way, till you’re in a world out of your worst nightmares.
You’ve won the revolution. Do you know what the mark of a GOOD revolutionary is? He knows when to put down his musket and go back to his farm. He knows when to shake hands with his neighbor who was on the other side. He knows when to make his rule so just, so fair that no one would contemplate returning to the former rule.
And he does not look for counter revolutionaries under ever bush and hallucinate that the war is still ongoing. Because then they just lock him up and beg the old regime to take over once more. Or start looking around for a Bonaparte.
Since I and my sons and my potential grandsons and maybe even granddaughters have to live in this world too, I beg you to come to your senses.
According To Hoyt 
Sarah, in the years since you first wrote this it has become more obvious to the Reader (maybe he was a little slow) and others that it’s the revolution, not the cause. And the purpose of the revolution is to tear down Western civilization.
The purpose of the Marxist Revolution is the utter obliteration of anything that is not Marxism. It is permanent “revolution”, Nihilism in the naive believe that Marxism will somehow flourish once every other possible thing is eliminated, yet Marxism is so weak it must have no competitor of any sort.
Mule Marbles.
I suspect even mules are smarter than that.
I’ve heard that mules are smarter than horses.
I heard they have a fondness for dragons as well.
Fondness toward Dragons?
Not really. They just “have a way” of telling Dragons that they’re more trouble than it’s worth to eat them.
Most Dragons respect them for that.
A Donkey is not a mule.
Quite true.
A mule being the offspring of a horse and a donkey. Almost always sterile, but some rare individuals still turn out to be fertile.
What I’m really surprised is that someone hasn’t tried to collect all the rare fertile mules and tried breeding them. (or at least I’ve never heard of someone trying.)
My vague recollection is that fertile mules are always female. So a would-be breeder would still need “input” from either a horse or a donkey.
There are “male” mules, but they are sterile if they are bred (shoot blanks), so they are gelded anyway to keep them from acting like stallions. Females are more common, for very low values of common. As in four verified fertile females, one of which wasn’t exactly a mule. Since the 1500s, globally, there are sixty or so reported (not confirmed) fertile female mules.
If Western feminists want to be taken seriously by anyone with two brain cells to run together ever again they need to bare minimum defend Western Civilization from Islam. But they won’t because they’re utter cowards. I can understand being afraid of attack-I don’t want to die by having my head sawn off either -but they’re more terrified of being unpersoned for wrongthink by their own, because their NPC programming teaches them that Islam=brown people and criticizing/holding them accountable=racist.
Put down the musket and shake hands?
We ran the defeated and unreformable Torries -out-, to Canada or England. Probably why the American Revolution succeeded so well.
Also why Israel had best actually achieve its current war goals. Else that fracas will be unending. Which is exactly what the enemies of Israel (and of all Judaism) want, permanent war.
“Never press a beaten foe too hard”, per Sun Tzu. But they -must- know and believe they are truly -beaten-. Then, and only, then, can you consider giving them an out, once, and only if, the are looking for that -defeated- out.
The vilest war crime? Not fighting to win.
What I’ve read is the Torries pretty much self deported. Encouraged?
Maybe that is what we need to do with Hollywood and others who are screaming “if Donald Trump becomes president, I’m leaving”? After all, all of us saying “Please! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” was so effective the first time around.
A few of them did leave — and then came back when they found out what it was like to actually live in those Wunnerful European Socialist Paradises. Especially when they had to deal with [country] National Health.
Dang few.
Noticed the vocal known Canadian actors and comedians did not decamp back to Canada. Hm. I wonder why? MAiD? Maybe?
Perhaps we should treat such statements, if made in public, as enforceable contracts, voidable only by mutual consent. Think of the wailing and gnashing! 😉
The horse is dead, stop beating it. Liberals know their are no consequences for their actions, and if you try and hold them to the filth and utter bilge water that comes out of their mouths, the little simple minded children will hold their breath until they turn blue, and blame you for giving them a seizure. They are not thinking adults, that is why they are Liberals.
“…hold their breath until they turn blue, and blame you for giving them a seizure”
OK, so it will be amusing. What’s the downside?
My favorite was a young man who said he was going to Canada if Trump won. When asked about it later he said he couldn’t qualify for immigration. Seems they have immigration standards…
Canada has standards? Who knew? 😛
OK, they might have standards for immigrants, but they don’t seem to have any for politicians…
People who retire in Portugal last about a year on average (there’s outliers, yes, but–) usually first medical emergency. Including a… broken leg?
They certainly aren’t giving up on all kinds of permanent revolution.
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2024/06/09/forget-stoves-the-biden-admin-is-working-overtime-to-phase-out-all-your-gas-appliances-1464676
https://dailycaller.com/2023/07/19/portable-gas-generators-in-the-crosshairs-of-the-biden-admins-regulatory-onslaught/
Better ramp up on alternate parts and fuel production.
Look at the nonsense about “incels”.
Sure there are guys that are bitter that they can’t get a date or get married, but every unmarried man is some sort of monster?
Oh, apparently some idiot called a married man an incel in spite of the idiot knowing that the guy was married.
“form a concerted effort to subvert the current rules of behavior.”
There is some subversion going on right now, though I don’t think it’s what you’re referring to. The “men’s red pill movement” and the “passport bros” are basically an attempt to buck perceived issues with the current system of male-female relations here in the US (and West in general). In the case of the passport bros, it’s basically saying, “Screw this, I’m out of here,” and leaving for a potentially more welcome location.
AFAIK, both movements are still fairly niche.
“In the case of the passport bros, it’s basically saying, “Screw this, I’m out of here,” and leaving for a potentially more welcome location.”
junior, I think you’ll find that the “passport bros” are just an extension of the “mail-order bride” bros that I saw back in the 80s. They became “passport bros” after running into two related phenomena:
So they’re taking themselves overseas where they think the culture war / legal system will work in their favor. Sigh.
Son One lost his first engagement when the U.S. basically prohibited any immigration from Brazil.
It might actually have worked if he’d married her anyway, had her sneak across the border, and then knocked her up. Lord knows we have more illegals in this country than legal immigrants.
I’m sorry to hear about that. My nephew recently married a Brazilian woman. It was a real pain to get permission to let her into the US for the marriage. His mother (my sister) told us that apparently the State Dept. doesn’t like letting Brazilians into the US for some reason.
Can’t say for sure, but at one point I’d heard that it was because of The Big Guy. And I suspect it was because the Brazilians weren’t willing to cough up the 10% vigorish that Uncle Joe was trying to shake them down for.
My thought at the time was that it might have been because they didn’t like the then-president of Brazil, who was decidedly less leftist than the guy he replaced, and who subsequently replaced him.
yep.
We already have a Brazilian illegal immigrants.
Some of the passport bro people might just be updated mail-order brides for the modern day. But some of what I’ve seen suggests that the male red-pill movement is also involved. Many of the discussions around it involve guys who have had repeated bad experiences while dating in the US, and believe that they can do better overseas (some appear to have; others have made a huge mess of their life). And at least some of the female “empowerment dating influencer” types see the passport bros as a threat (at least to the influencers’ viewers).
I don’t know whether the mail-order bride guys of the past had similar experiences. But regardless of any similarities, there’s no doubt that there are passport bros *now* who explicitly see it as a way of evading what they believe is a broken relationship system in the US. That fits with an attempt to subvert the system, imo.
Marriage doesn’t necessarily mean that the poor schmuck isn’t involuntarily celibate. It unfortunately does happen.
While that’s true, it’s a small enough percentage of all marriages that if you call a married man an incel without knowing anything about him and his specific marriage, you’re almost certainly going to be wrong.
Some stats. I cannot verify how accurate they are, but some stats:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1367096/us-sexless-marriage-by-generation/
Wow.
This one gives sources and definitions.
Even qualified for answering a question on the phone– I sure wouldn’t tell someone my sex life if they called up to ask– there’s a lot of reasons a minimum-of-sixty-year-old might not have had sex in the last month, or even three months.
Remember that I stopped answering any phone surveys when they made it clear that “my husband is deployed” was going to be recorded as “divorced or separated.”
https://relationshipsinamerica.com/sexually-inactive-marriages/
Even so, that’s not a great article, because the author can’t stick to her subject, and wanders all over the place. Just a few paragraphs down, under the heading “Sociodemographic Factors”, we find her claiming that sexlessness is higher in, among other categories, “Currently unmarried individuals” and “Those who are religiously observant”.
Well, yes, if you’ve suddenly started talking about individuals who are not having sex, rather than sexless marriages, then it makes sense that those who are not married would be less likely to have sex than those who are. First, the religiously observant who are not married are likely to be choosing to abstain from sex — not all of them, but enough to shift the statistics. And second, even among those who don’t feel a religious duty to abstain and would like to have sex, there’s always the question, “with whom?” Those in a steady relationship have that question answered for them just as much as married people do, but that leaves plenty of people who might want sex but don’t have anyone to have it with at the moment. And again, that’s going to shift the statistics towards the “sexless” end of the category.
But all of that has nothing to do with sexless marriages, the thing the article is supposed to be about. The author really needs to learn to stick to a topic; shifting the subject halfway through like that is similar to motte-and-bailey styles of lying. In this case, it clearly wasn’t on purpose, but it still reduces the value of the article immensely.
It’s a “throw it all at the wall and see what sticks,” and for that matter may be AI written.
Main filtering option I use is “has links to claims, and lots of htem, from different sources.”
If it was doing the usual trick of “tons of links, but they’re all to our own website” I definitely wouldn’t have bothered. ^.^
I thought it might be AI-generated, but there are a few places where there’s a turn of phrase or a joke that I doubt could have come from AI. Though either way, the responsibility for the article still lands on the author’s shoulders. Like that lawyer who screwed up so badly that even my father heard about him: he generated a brief with ChatGPT and failed to check it before submitting it, so it had citations to non-existent cases — and the judge called him out for it in court.
I particularly noticed the part where she quoted an article showing 2-10% of marriages being sexless generally, but 16% of marriages not having had sex in the month prior to the survey. Yet she doesn’t bother to speculate on the reasons why those numbers are different. Whereas I look at those numbers and conclude that if they’re accurate, then 6-14% of sexually-active marriages go through a drought from time to time, but get over it. Some very common reasons might include:
Point is, I was not impressed with the article, or the author’s lack of curiosity.
Practicing fertility awareness, and there’s a month with an irregular cycle.
Yeah, lots of reasons for the … well, copying the tactic of “so, five year old, do you always get to eat all that you want of what you want?” method of number padding.
I’d also want to know the definition of “sexless” they’re using; the one time I heard the term actually defined, it was a couple that was having intercourse less than once per month.
My marriage is healthy and we enjoy our physical relationship, and yet there were times when we would have, temporarily, met that definition. Specifically, the first few months after our first baby was born. He kept us awake so often that anytime we had a bit of peace and quiet at night, sleep was a far higher priority than sex, for both of us. In fact, I once commented to my wife that I was amazed anyone managed to have more than one child. Not because they wouldn’t want to have a second after their first, but I was wondering how they managed to find the time and energy to actually conceive the second child!
So until I know whether I’d agree with the definition of “sexless” they’re using, I’d take those numbers with a grain of salt.
Sleep is highly underrated.
Boy howdy, do ya got that right.
It’s not all bitter men, there’s shortage of good marriage partners due to modern culture combined with an abusive legal system if the wrong partner is chosen. Combine that with the DEI/ESG hiring practices killing career opportunities in the corporate/military area, many are just saying f-it and not pursuing a family life or lowering expectations. Plus there are many cheaper distractions that didn’t exist 30 years ago.
There are also more just dropping out and heading to the hills away from everybody.
I was waiting for something like this to happen.
https://tinyurl.com/429yxyka
A church in a black community in Connecticut had a couple of murders nearby. So the pastor asked his local community to step up. And it has.
40 resident volunteers, all security trained and with CCWs, patrolling the streets. They wear bodycams, and have drone support to keep an eye on things and monitor the community for incidents to investigate.
The mayor is complaining, of course.
The article mentions that the group has been contacted by people in other parts of the country who are considering trying something similar.
Be real interesting to see how soon DoJ/FBI labels them an “extremist militia”.
That community needs to disband their city government and law enforcement; or at the very least, flush that mayor down the toilet for gross criminal incompetence. If the government refuses to protect you, they lose any right to a monopoly on the use of force for protection of their citizens.
Correct; like every elected official, from dogcatcher to DA to POTUS, they were elected to do a job. If they refuse to do the job, from catching feral dogs to arresting and prosecuting criminals to securing the border, it’s time to remove them. Brandon? Who mentioned Brandon? 😡
It will spread, how do you think the mafia got their start? Protecting Sicilians from other ethnicity’s gangs that would prey upon them. It’s one of the ways all gangs get started. A Major reason why all this bullshit with the Soros DA’s will blow up in their faces, same with the open border. They don’t see the second, and third level consequences to their actions. Barbarians don’t believe you are as smart or powerful as you say you are, but they will take your money, and your women, and then your life.
Not that I disagree, but I fail to see how that relates to my post. What will spread, removing the lazy bastards? Is that a Bad Thing (TM)?
Church-based or local militia/police.
“Call the church!”
“Call the police!”
“Call…the Church Police!” 😛
“No one expects…”
Well, everyone know how that ends. 😁
(Still don’t see how it relates to the idea of “throw the bums out”, but whatthehell…)
You throw the bums out because they aren’t doing the policing job required. Community-based militia/police arise when a vacuum exists for the protection of that community (church, locality, corporation, etc.) That vacuum also exists when the existing police/military (or those who control them) become predatory and a greater threat than the actual criminals.
OK, got it. It was cautionary regarding potential second- and third-order problems; I don’t disagree. But that can be addressed after the initial problem is solved; among others, the San Francisco Vigilance Committees in the 1850s showed it’s possible to address the problem without becoming a greater problem (although I doubt if that particular solution would work today).
The answer to a problem, even if the solution can lead to more problems, is not to ignore the problem but to recognize the potential “bad” results and address them if they happen. I thought all of that would be understood, because there is never a final solution, only temporary solutions with accompanying problems of their own; the trick is to anticipate such problems and try to have a plan to deal with them. There’s a military maxim that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy; that applies generally, and the corollary is that your planning must take it into account if you want to succeed.
Second and third stage consequences to their actions, often times the vigilantes are worse then those they tried to replace. And yes I agree throw the bums out, but that is hard to do when it is the bums doing the counting.
A possible solution to this problem was demonstrated in Athens, Tennessee in 1946. Their example should be an inspiration to us all.
“Athens Tennessee”. Or San Francisco in the 1850s. As a local issue it can be made to work, but when it’s a national one, such as we seem to have today, that leads to a general rebellion, which we’re trying to avoid, the cure frequently being at least as bad as the disease.
Such organizations usually start well-intentioned. But the longer they run, the greater the possibility for issues. Sometimes a vigilante group turns into a death squad. That seems to be avoided for now with this group, as they’re taking steps to make sure everything is above board. Hopefully it will stay that way.
The other big issue is what happens when the government starts to competently and prooerly resume it’s functions. At such time, community enforcement groups are no longer needed, and should disappear into the background. Unfortunately, groups that have been around for a while frequently don’t like the sudden loss of power, respect, autonomy, and “perks” that happen at that time. As a result, the transition back to civil authorities doesn’t always happen smoothly.
Athens, Tenn. was actually not a bad example of a semi-3S solution. Once the bad guys were out, everyone settled back down instead of trying to takeover for themselves.
what’s all this then Amen!
The government never had a right to a monopoly on use of force. The power to enforce the law has always been in the hand of the citizens. We just subcontract that enforcement to professionals. However, if those professionals fail in their duty, the citizens have the right to take back that power to whatever degree they believe is necessary to insure their safety and the safety-of their families and community.
If the government doesn’t like it then let them get off their DIE/ESG asses and do their damned job.
We are actually seeing this play out in Texas when it comes to the illegal alien invaders. That is the greatest proof that this Biden Administration is completely illegitimate, and have abdicated their Constitutional responsibilities to the point where they are using the DoJ to initiate prosecution of Texas for trying to even slow the flood of invaders. 150 years ago, this would have been grounds for a coup or outright war. Actually, it still is grounds for that.
Biden usurped the office, and refuses to perform the duties. Worse, his regime attacks any who seek to perform the duties that he shirks.
And the whores in the press vilify anyone who tries to point out that Biden and his demons are not doing their job.
PJ Media picked up on it. Democrat Nightmare: Armed Black Hartford Citizen Patrols Take to the Streets – PJ Media
Somebody told your husband he ‘reads like Bujold’? High praise indeed! 🙂
“For instance, bad as I am at spacial reasoning (sad that) I am miles better than some males (okay, none that I’ve met, but I’m sure there are some.”
/sarc on
Like Joe Biden? Who can’t find his way off a podium without falling off it, or out of a room without being walked out by a designated care-taker?
/sarc off
It’s interesting that suffrage is not a portmanteau of “suffering” and “rage”.
Contraceptives have given women a whole lot more options. Although even today they’re not exactly what I would call universally “safe” or effective for all women. Some of the side effects can be gruesome (hemorrhaging), or heartbreaking (unable to conceive after discontinuing them.)
Yeah. I have a friend who just posted about a second failed attempt to remove part of a contraceptive device that broke off on removal, and the surgeon told her they wouldn’t try again because it “wasn’t causing any problems” (aside from the cramping and internal pain that she’s been complaining about, because that obviously doesn’t exist.)(Yes, patient services/malpractice comments and new surgeon will be involved.) And hormones? Let’s just say I got to explain to my OB that despite her never having heard about certain side effects, it is QUITE clear that they are not for me when the problems evaporate within 24hrs of discontinuing use.
It is still the choices you make in life that set you free, not laws on the books, not contraceptives. Did contraceptives make it easier, yes. They don’t work for everyone, Hence the nick name Fertile Mertle. Do not forget that contraceptives are also a choice as well as celibacy.
Maybe Chastity is a better word in this case other than Celibacy.
My understanding is that “chaste” is “rightly-ordered and rightly-directed carnal affections”, which means that you can have “a chaste wife” i.e. one who only does marital activities with her own husband, and doesn’t consider going elsewhere for them; whereas “celibate” is one who doesn’t indulge in carnal activities as all.
Or I could have those reversed.
Nope; those are correct.
So “Green Acres” was the Portugese equivalent of Soviet radio stations playing nothing but somber classical music — i.e., a signal that there had been a change at the top?
I’m imagining a movie about Portugal in that era with a montage of political chaos set to the Green Acres theme music . . .
I guess the station having a “Regime change in progress, please stand by” placard would not be appreciated by the government.
No, but it would be great in a political satire story.
The article is hilariously bad, like a parody of woke criticism. The comment section goes against them, badly.
“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is bad. The movie that introduced it to the world is worse (avclub.com)
Yes, let’s censor anything we don’t like, and if don’t agree we will hold our breath until we turn blue.
Quitters. They can do better than merely turning blue
Speaking of revolutions:
https://torontosun.com/video/d0f1be78-2757-11ef-8ed6-9615bdbe96ac/caught-on-camera-american-college-of-pediatricians-statement-on-gender
The ACP statement, TL/DR, says knock it off with the trans BS on the kids. Calling on all the other medical associations and government departments to cease and desist the child mutilation and grooming.
This is a Big Freaking Deal. You heard it here first. Go ACP!
Liberals don’t care, ‘Feelings” trump logic every time. Besides without grooming where would they get their sex slaves. I am not being Sarcastic, they are sick twisted mofo’s who should burn in hell.
Red state governors should take a page from leftists and start revoking licenses for doctors and hospitals that DON’T sign that.
Want to mutilate kids? Move to CA.
You’re going to see the Standard of Care changing rather rapidly across the USA and Canada the next couple of years.
Currently, in a lot of jurisdictions it is -illegal- to disagree when a twelve year old girl wants to have sex-change surgery. Neither the doctor or the parents are even allowed by law to try to talk them out of it.
In plenty of cases children are removed from the home and given these “treatments” on nothing more than the instigation of a teacher at a public school. Parents have gone to jail in Canada trying to prevent their kids getting done like that.
To date, nobody has said boo because of the crushing weight of government punishment that has fallen on dissenters. But since COVID, and the lockdown insanity, the mad-science jab insanity, and the massive burn-out of medical professionals both doctors and nurses, all the old guys with nothing left to lose are starting to get angry. They’re not going to go along. They’ll be happy to pick a side.
Now that the American College of Pediatricians has come out with this very strong stand against the insanity, the battle lines are drawn. You’re going to see who’s who and what’s what, right away.
Sarah linked this on Insty this morning. I can’t do much better than her tagline:
“IF THIS IS TRUE, A LOT OF LAMPPOSTS ARE MISSING THEIR ROPE”
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-price-of-truth-vs-deception-in
I am disgusted but not surprised. This is what happens when the government half-way takes over health care. Thousands of doctors and nurses are driven out of medical practice, replaced by hordes of bureaucrats. The few who remain waste their time filling out forms and checking boxes, while the clueless bureaucrats practice medicine in their stead.
Of course, the ‘solution’ is for the government to take over completely.
Now that we’ve suffered a decade+ of the permanent revolution and the increasingly surreal barrage of daily nonsense, it’s interesting to go back and read stuff from before society crossed the Woke Event Horizon. This stuff didn’t just come completely out of nowhere but mainstreamed with terrifying force and speed.
Dave Freer was mentioning the Gender Wars over at MGC the other day. I followed the comment chain attached back a few years, and it struck me how very done I am with those gender fetishists. You know the ones, they shriek that men can’t write fantasy, that women don’t get a fair shake in SciFi, etc.
It embarrasses me that I ever even bothered to argue with them and didn’t just breath fire on them from the moment they piped up. What a colossal waste of time.
One big problem with feminism, as with the temperance/prohibition movement before it, is that while it started out with some good ideas and had some reasonable reforms it wanted, it had/has a magnetic attraction for women whose main motivation is to get even with men—all men. As the reasonable goals are met, the reasonable ones drop out, until the man-haters dominate the movement. And when they run into opposition, they squeal about “misogyny” and “woman-hating.”
I had a friend who was accused of assaulting a woman at a conference. In spite of the fact that there was no evidence, his publisher immediately dropped him, and his wife started divorce proceedings.
Then the little twit came out and told everyone that she didn’t mean it, she just picked two names at random from the conference attendees to go with the name of the man she was angry at.
Oh, I didn’t mean it so sorry, no bad feelings. But the lives of two men had been destroyed. She saw no personal consequences.
Last I heard he was living out of his car. The damage can’t be undone by “Sorry.”
The court of capital opinion is judge, jury and executioner. There is no appeal.
My favorite ‘music for the revolution perpetually eating its own’ is Timcast’s “Will of the People”.
FYI, Hunter Biden has been convicted on all three gun charges. The level of cynicism on my Twitter feed is annoying. Yes, it’s quite possible “nothing will come of it,” “this is to distract people from the real crimes,” “this was just to prove to the normies Trump’s trial was fair and he can go to jail now,” and so forth. But maybe not. At least a few people pointing out this is partly because Hunter and his lawyers blew up a sweetheart plea deal, so perhaps more arrogant incompetence is incoming.
Meanwhile, Trump made a statement blasting father and son that ended with, “…but don’t worry, Joe, I’ll pardon him after I get elected for the third time. “
I would not be surprised if , close to the election either right before or right after, some Donkuloids start saying, “You know what? Trump is right! He -did- win 2020. This he is ineligible to be elected in 2024, so….”. This might be their “oh no we -didn’t- lose!” option if “too big to rig” is a thing.
If they do,and in the unlikely event someone actually manages to swear him in, the Donkuloids would keep him busy with litigation and court cases, and swamplord sabotage, so he couldn’t do anything meaningful through January 2025.
And if folks think “no way!”, come this November, and a YUUUGE landslide, which would they prefer?
.
Four more years of Trump, with probably at least one more Supreme Court pick and four -epic- years of nuking swamplords from the Deep Swamp.
Two months, maybe, of a highly ham-strung “Rump Trump” term, ending for certain in January 2025.
.
Popcorn?
The Reader thinks that since Congress certified the 2020 election results that that one won’t pass muster.
When has truth or reality stopped the current lunatics?
Recall Pelosi declaring she could “deem” legislation passed, even if it actually had not been voted? She was serious. If they hold even one of the houses of Congress, I expect them to actively try it.
Faced with their current hysterical shrieking about a “vengeful dictator” Trump, and the likelihood they outright stole 2020, and facing the very real possibility of being on the receiving end of the federal legal system, do you really expect them suddenly to -start- obeying laws?
Thanks. I needed a good laugh. That was funny.
Also, the President is the one sworn in and who serves. I think we established that after the first Vice President stepped up when a President died. (With much discussion. I believe it took a couple of years for them to acknowledge that he was President and not just a placeholder.)
With all due respect, I’m not buying it. That plan would require convincing their base that Trump was right, that the 2020 election was rigged, and that Biden has been illegally occupying the White House for the last four years. All within the span of a tight three-month window after the 2024 election, with no prior messaging and no scapegoat to justify the pivot.
The only thing the Democrats gain would be a shaky, overly legalistic argument that has a slim chance of actually keeping Trump from office. The vast majority of the country will not understand the argument, let alone buy it, and the maneuver will give the Republicans a lifetime supply of political ammunition by making them the party that tried to defend democracy from the one that admitted to corrupting it.