Two Sides Of A Lie

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

When I was in highschool, back in pre-history (the 1970s were pretty barbaric!) the hotness in psychology and sociology and frankly in public discourse was Freudianism. It had been completely internalized by then, proceeding from the halls of academia to the popular imagination.

If I had a dime for every time I was told I only wrote poetry (or novels. And boy, were they wretched) because I was sublimating my sexual impulses, and how I’d be “normal” and well adjusted if I simply slept with everyone who asked, I’d have…. well… I’d never have had to work, and I’d still be spending those dimes.

I know there are people here who are older than I, but I don’t know to what extent that pervaded the US back then. And I suspect the young people never really encountered it in that form, because by then it had sunk even deeper into popular culture and become non-explicit. It’s the underpinning of movies (boys/men only care about getting laid. Women…. well, behave like no woman ever, see any of the series where all women care about is getting laid, too.) and tv and books, but it’s not clearly articulated.

It was pretty pervasive and impossible to ignore. There was a sub-genre of “intellectual” books and movies where the murderer killed because he didn’t have enough sex, or not his preferred type of sex, and “cold” women (who didn’t want to indulge whatever crazy sexual fantasy the guy preferred) were guilty for every mass murderer ever as well as every other social ill.

There was also the gross subset, the reaction to which causes the spasm of accusations of child abuse in the eighties: the idea that if children were exposed to all kinds of sex very young they’d not have repressions (or in the lingo of the day “hangups”) and would therefore be perfectly well adjusted and jealousy, envy and aggression would just vanish. (This was perfectly integrated in the Communist Manifesto where Marx explained why if people gave him everything and every woman slept with him, the world would be paradise. And okay, sure, I exaggerate, but not by much to be fair.)

It really was everywhere. It’s still everywhere, but not completely articulated as “if>then.” And since it’s mated in people’s heads with the whole (also unspoken) Marxist concept that for every situation there is an oppressed and an oppressor, and if something is wrong, you must find the person/group to blame for it, it’s going to be a load of trouble as we try to right this ship and recover from the 20th century.

In most problems, there isn’t a clear cut oppressed/oppressor dynamic. My instinct for just about everything is to blame the government, and it’s amazing how often that works, but mostly that is because most human problems have their basis in how humans are — the human condition, if you will — but governments throughout history have tried to “improve” on that, and the accretion of bad ideas just builds and builds and builds, till yeah, it’s the government. Then that changes and we get other bad ideas accreting. Mass solutions fit nobody.

Anyway, what brought this rant about was this:

There is a link above the image, which gives you the context, but that’s not the important part. The important part is one of the answers to this, which was so wrong it wasn’t even wrong. As in it was literally “None of this makes any sense” and it had its root both in freudianism and Marxist dualism, both of which, by providing a facile veneer of intellectualism to very simple thinking have penetrated the back-mind of the west to the point they’re like a sort of brain parasite, eating away at what still functions.

As for the tweet above, there is nothing wrong with it/no falsehood detected. Those are indeed the sounds of vibrant goblin neighborhoods the “diverse” and “vibrant” areas of our towns, ever more infused with newcomers, newly arrived from third world shitholes.

The problem was that in the comments, someone who I’m sure thinks he’s “right wing” and “conservative” took offense with the fact that all the examples of bad behavior she cites “are male.” First of all, I can’t find where she mentions the sex of the overdoses. And I believe the “he” for schizophrenic is more in line of the old grammatical rule that if you don’t know the sex referred to it’s “he”. Second, as for males beating females, way for this “based” and “Chad” dude to tell everyone that he never actually lived in a poor neighborhood. Because, yeah, males beat females. A LOT. It takes a high degree of Western civilization for the opposite to ever happen. Reason being for males to get beaten, they must HOLD BACK. Which means they have internalized “men don’t hit women”. Now, sure, some other guy piled on saying she doesn’t have some chick yelling at her daughters, and a cat fight. But AGAIN way to tell us you’ve never lived in a poor neighborhood. Those dulcet sounds get lost in the death-like-screams of some woman getting beat within an inch of her life. Or on Saturday night, multiple women getting beat within an inch of her life. Because the imports from the third world take full advantage of males being bigger and stronger than females, and take out their frustrations on their wives like American men might relax by playing video games, or watching a fairly violent movie. It’s just what they do. Particularly on a weekend night. (Having grown up in a western but strange country and in unenlighted times, this happened in the village too. Drink a little, beat your wife, and other chilling that happened on weekends. Not in my family, but that was why we were Odd. Also why our women were known and feared, because we must have some weird magic.)

Anyway, the point here is that out of a cogent point this guy saw only “she’s attacking males.” Because he feels — possibly rightly — oppressed, so it must be females doing it.

Then he segwayed into this very weird thing about how she was only mad at men because she couldn’t get a “Chad” to sleep with her and had to sleep with inferior males.

I’m not going to reproduce his response, because he also threw in a bit of anti-semitism, because why not, if you’re going to be an idiot be an idiot all the way. Also, of course, since all oppression is binary, if he isn’t rich it’s because “reee! Jewish financiers control everything.” So, of course. But if you page down through the answers, you’ll inevitably find him.

The point is that it’s a bizarre response. The Marxist duality is so ingrained in the idiot that he can’t even read what’s actually written. Like the left, he just scans for pronouns, and if those are bad and denote “bad” things, then the poster must be anti-male, instead, of you know, having lived in low rent neighborhoods and correctly reproducing the noisiest type of malfeasance you can hear in those neighborhoods. (Because most of them are stocked with third world males.)

AND THEN when assigning the reason why a woman would do that, (Why she “hates” males, because that’s what he thinks) he must default to stupid background Freudianism. I.e. if there’s any evil or any envy or anything wrong, it’s because someone isn’t getting as much/the kind of sex they want.

This reduces humans to the most basic, instinct-driven animal.

It is by the way wrong, if you wonder. Heinlein might have said that everything humans did was a mating dance, and maybe he was right, in the sense horoscopes are “right” and all sorts of models for societal things are “right” — like the fourth turning one, or the strong/weak men one, or– — in the sense that if you abstract past a certain point and ignore non-conforming data everything will fit. But I can tell you that while I’ve done things to attract a man’s attention, including at one point putting stick on labels with eyes on his monitor, and perching a saucy vintage ladies hat on it, with a label underneath saying “the other woman” it’s mostly THAT man. Telling stories isn’t a mating dance. It’s what my brain does to amuse itself so it doesn’t die of boredom. And making say little stuffed animals would be very weird as a mating dance, since guys don’t even see them. (Not to mention painting rocks. Or refinishing furniture, which would scare off most guys, and just causes the one guy I care about to tell me to stop doing it because it makes my asthma worse.) And if Dan is doing programming as a mating dance, he’s doing it wrong. Not to mention the weird side-obsessions he gets into and then MUST tell me about. Last week he was “shopping” for a camper van. NOT REALLY because we don’t want one, much less can afford it, but he dropped down that rabbit hole, and HAD to tell me everything about it.

If there are men and women out there who are SOLELY interested in sex and who do everything in the interest of getting laid, I’ve never come upon them, or not outside a specific, late teens early twenties age range.

If humans were only interested in sex and sex solved everything, then humans would still be in a cave somewhere, and the most daring activity would be to raid the next band for women. Sure, great development of arrows and flint knives, not to mention clubs. (It just occurred to me the pursuit of getting laid always involves clubs. Sigh. I need more coffee, don’t I?) But you know? baskets, pottery, fishing, etc. would long since have fallen by the way side. (Hey, other humans are tasty, no need for anything else.)

But here’s the thing: A lot of the people who think they’re “fighting back” against the leftist culture that reduces humans to sex objects and pits a human group against the other are still refusing to think.

We were all taught Marxism and Freudianism to such an extent most of us aren’t aware how much of it there is, lurking in the back spaces of our minds and polluting everything.

Be aware that the reverse of a lie is…. still a lie. And fighting lies with lies perpetuates hell on Earth, just a slightly differently-targeted hell.

But in the end, in the war between men and women everyone loses. There isn’t some perfect third group (regardless of what idiots say) to come and take the spoils. And women “winning” the superior position or men “winning” the superior position still lose the important part of relationships and marriage which is trust, confidence, and the ability to absolutely trust the other. The big advantage to being a species with two sexes (other than reproductive) is the ability and need to enter a symbiotic relationship with someone who is different. Which in turns makes it easier to deal with all that aren’t “us.” And therefore communicate and expand, and yes, colonize, which has been the advanced edge of civilization.

Don’t kneejerk to “it’s men” or “it’s women.” In the current system no one wins, but the two sides are kept forever at the other’s throat. (Okay, the Marxists win.) And things get worse every generation.

We need to look beyond the binary, and — to evoke Rex Stout — to look at humans as having other interests beyond the instincts we share with dogs.

Otherwise the Marxists and popular Freudians win. And nothing changes.

180 thoughts on “Two Sides Of A Lie”

  1. Um, I’m about your age (a couple of years older, I believe) and I didn’t see that Freudian stuff in my US high schools. Skinner’s behaviorism, yes but hardly any Freud – and certainly not the sexual-repression-explains-everything stuff. Maybe it was in the US in the 1950s and 1960s and I was too young to get smacked by it. Or maybe it was a Portuguese or European thing.

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    2. It was that way in SF/F in the sixties and seventies, so I’m going to guess it was the narrative here, but perhaps in different places/circles. (As in this is not A country, it’s a lot of them, with a lot in common. So some places might have been spared the stupid.)

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      1. Oh man, 1970s SF is a trip. Anne McCaffrey has several short stories from that time period that she outright stated were to hit the soft-core porn market (one of which she repurposed to make a much less rape-y series, and another of which was Pern getting some weird sex things built in.) And as far as sex goes, her stuff is definitely on the mild end.

        I’m not particularly fond of most SF from that time period, especially as many of the writers also decided to keep the “women = dumb” from the pulp area. (Looking at several big names, here.) The outliers who didn’t make it all about sex are noticeable. (James Schmitz especially.)

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        1. Also you can tell the population bomb thing was big. Her early Talented stories, with Jerhattan and the folks from the Center assisting with monsoons and earthquakes and such.

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          1. When I was a kid, I used to love Decision at Doona. Tried re-reading it as an adult and bounced, HARD, off of two things. First, the overpopulation nonsense. She did a decent job of portraying what living in an overpopulated world would be like (think crowded apartments with thin walls with far too many noisy neighbors), but the underlying assumptions are just too much for me to swallow these days. Partly not her fault, but still.

            And the second thing is harder to put into words. But I remember getting a feeling of emotional manipulation from her stories, with Decision at Doona among the worst. (Not the worst, though). The good guys are Pure and Noble, the bad guys are Corrupt Scheming Scum, and very little in-between. Now, perhaps my memory is being unfair and she’s more subtle than that. But even though I enjoyed her stories when I was a child, as an adult I’ve been completely unable to read them. Every time I pick one up for the nostalgia filter, it tastes like chocolate-frosted sugar bombs, but I’m now an adult who’s acquired a taste for medium-rare steak.

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            1. Meh. Sure overpopulation triggered the need for colonies. She could have picked anything that portrayed the trauma of being forced to return. When it was written, overpopulation was a “thing”. Like global warming is now. Like the new ice age was in the ’60s and ’70s. Heck even Heinlein did for “Farmer in the Sky”, and “Tunnel in the Sky”. Sure we know all are bogus (including global change caused by humanity). The theme is the underlying premise that humanity is bad, and the story proves that wrong, in two books.

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            2. I read J-line to nowhere long before the Doona book, so…

              I need to reread the Doona book and see if my memory “it’s the @#!+ Central Planners again” hold up.

              Huh.

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              1. My ebook version doesn’t have the word “planners”, and only three hits on “central”. None of the hits are related to government.

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            3. I just reread two Pern books (one being the last one that wasn’t a collaboration with her son) and found parts of it grating because of the affectations. Look, they don’t say, “dogs,” “cats,” “horses,” or “cattle,” they say, “canines,” “felines,” “equines” and “bovines.” Isn’t that scientific?

              Yet reality creeps in here and there, as when a girl barely makes it to Hatching because her father plans to marry her off as part of his overall territorial ambition. It’s not stated overtly, but it’s plain that the notion of, “woman as trade good for the Family” is already making a comeback among the “enlightened,” descendants of the original colonists.

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              1. It’s not stated overtly, but it’s plain that the notion of, “woman as trade good for the Family” is already making a comeback among the “enlightened,” descendants of the original colonists.

                ………………

                Kind of jarring definitely in the prequel to the original series books, even after the Pern origins are learned. Look at how little is known at the tiny seaport where the Harper series starts. I took the premise as “look what could happen”.

                But also have to remember, why this happened. Thriving colony. None of the “women are trade goods for the family” (neither were sons). Then the population is devastated. Which repeats for generations. Get built up again, and is slapped back down. To the point where they lose their origins, and for most the population, literacy. At first, it would have been biodiversity of the survivors. Later? Family all the way. The Weyer not being a prestigious option? Started prestigious. Why it declined also has it’s story. Why the information doesn’t instantly spread over the rediscovery of their origins? Not like they have an internet. Or that there is a literate population. Information is spread, but it isn’t believed far and wide.

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                1. The interesting thing about the novel about the foundation of Pern is that I think McAffrey herself was showing us a ‘darker’ side to the founders, or maybe a ‘dangerously naive daydreamy side’.

                  The ‘charter’ the colony operates under is fundamentally flawed, and none of them seem to perceive it. It grants land rights in perpetuity, with near-total sovereignty, over the land, to the first people to stake it out. They also consciously intend to create a relatively low-tech, non-industrial agricultural society.

                  The problem is that the land supply on Pern is finite. Even if there had been no Thread, and they had been able to use all the huge South continent, that would still be true. After a generation or three, all the best land would be claimed. Another generation or two, and all the middle-quality land would be claimed. Then at last the poor jerks who got the poor-grade land would have claimed the last shreds of semi-viable farmlands.

                  And then…?

                  Then, of course, the nature of their setup begins to create feudal situations. All the good land is taken, and in a non-monetized, non-industrial situation, it’s very hard to raise enough money to buy them out, but you can expand your holdings by marriage alliances. If all the viable land is taken, your best bet is to become a minion or servant of one of the families who hold the good land.

                  There’s are routes of advancement other than farming. Some people can be craftsfolk, but that’s a finite niche. There are sailors, but again, the demand for fishermen and sailors is limited.

                  One reason I think Anne was deliberately showing us the blind spots of the Founders is that there is a scene where one of the early settlers is upset and dismayed because she’s seeing all the same stuff they thought they had left behind on Earth emerging in the new society. Completely predictable, to anyone who knew any real history or had a practical sense of people.

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                  1. Yes, agree.

                    Then thread and the dormant, not extinct, volcano blew up, which further limited what could be used for shelter and farming. Exasperating the problem.

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      2. Sexual promiscuity being normalized is one the reasons I tended to prefer fantasy to science fiction. Now of course, it’s a problem in fantasy as well.

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        3. I note that I have seen an injunction to fantasy writers that your fantasy world SHOULD HAVE reliable contraception because readers like people who are getting it on — but not children.

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      1. Yes. In psychology it was Behavorism, which, well…. I agree with Heinlein. Whenever a dog salivates a pavlovian rings a bell.
        How do I put this? It can work for behavior modification. It doesnt’ work as EXPLANATION of humans’ inner works, which is how it was pushed back then.

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        1. I’m fond of saying “Lie to psychologists.” If their models can’t take that into account, they’re not accurately modeling humans.

          Only partly tongue in cheek.

          —

          Fortunately, the younger generation seems to have avoided all this Freudian sexual hangups business by virtue of not calling anymore, just swiping.

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        2. I recently learned that I’m autistic. (I’m also ADHD, which when combined with autism … makes life interesting!)

          One of the huge problems with dealing with autism and ADHD is that the medical community (and hence government) focus on behaviorism for both diagnosis and treatment.

          But behaviorism doesn’t capture what it’s like to be autistic, so a lot of autistics don’t get identified, and those that do get subject to ABA “Therapy” that tries to force autistics to be “normal”, while ignoring fundamental accommodations that would make life considerably easier!

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          1. Some places are better than others about that. We managed to dodge the ABA junk for our ASD kid—partly because he’s what would be “mild”, I will admit, but it’s still good that we had more explanation-based teaching than punishment-based.

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        1. Fair. I didn’t go to a secondary school where any of that was even remotely acceptable behavior, and I was a strange child who didn’t go out, so I… er… missed out (?)… on it until college.

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      2. They’ve now progressed to “sexual preferences” which are your problem really. If it’s not your sexual orientation as they define it, your duty to overcome your preferences.

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  2. There’s a reason why Freud, among others, is listed in one of Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein novels as “one of the most useless gods of all.” I’ve seen this point made about Freud several times and recognize the pattern, if not the exact wordage, and it’s not typically called Freudianism by those who aren’t fighting back against it. But it is there, alive and kicking, exactly as you describe it: a brain worm eating into the Western psyche. Where’s a cultural brain surgeon when you need one?

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  3. I saw another write up on article that started all the hub-bub, and the author is an idiotic hypocrite. When I first saw the tweet (whatever) I was going to say that take is pretty spot on, and then you said the same a couple of sentences later (whew!). The local areas of lower income have a higher percentage of reported crime, but the higher income areas aren’t completely free of it either. They just tend to fall into different types of crime happening in the various areas, with more reports coming from lower income neighborhoods.

    I don’t remember much Freud or Jung being pushed in school growing up. But then again, I was fairly oblivious to the politics in school then. And what politics there was leaned a little more conservative, being a conservative area with a heavy military presence. The anti-nuclear weapon protesters were true idiots. They came through and mapped out all the ICBM missile silos once. As if the USSR didn’t know where they were. All they had to do was drive down a bunch of back roads to see them, they weren’t secrets.

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    1. I honestly don’t recall Freud being all that pushed in school, either.

      I am alternately disgusted and amused by Ms Xochotle (or however her name is spelled) Gonzalez hypocrisy in demanding that everyone else endure her own noise … while fleeing to the quiet countryside for the peace and quiet. Apparently her being entitled to peace and quiet is perfectly justifiable when SHE wants it, but raaaaacism when middle-class or working class people ask for (and receive) the same, especially when they do so at their own expense.

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      1. Oh, they didn’t say it was Freud. But there was the underlying “if everyone had all the sex they wanted, there would be no aggression, etc.” By then PAVLOV was actively taught. But the Freudianism was there, informing everything.

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        1. Zamyatin, in “We” had people able to file “mating desires” on each other, so that even something like sexual desire and availability was equalized for everyone, because it was supposed to prevent jealousy and aggression and all those emotions that caused violence. And yet, it was the main character’s preference for one of his partners who filed for him or another that started his rebellion, such as it was.

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    2. Don’t stop at the gates! It may be in the middle of nowhere, and you can’t see anybody for miles and miles, but don’t stop. Unhappy people show up a LOT faster than you’d think would be possible. And no, I never stopped, was interesting driving by them.

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  4. It sounds like I’m about a decade younger, but in the 80s in Cali we learned about Freud, but almost in a ‘look at what fools they were back then’ sort of way. We actually spent more time on Pavlov than we did on Freud.

    Yes, young people, young men especially, often get caught up in a hormone inspired obsession with sex. There’s actually a Buffy quote that seems apropos.

    Cordelia: Does looking at guns really make people want to have sex?

    Xander: I don’t know.

    Cordelia: Does looking at guns make you want to have sex?

    Xander: Cordie, I’m a seventeen year old boy; looking at linoleum makes me want to have sex.

    But, even within that narrow corridor of time, there is soooooo much more to life than just sex. We sure as heck wouldn’t have hand-held computers and instantaneous world-wide communication if everything in the human experience boiled down to sex.

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    1. Minor nitpicking, not to say you are wrong, but to adjust your analogy. The internet exploded because of Sex. IE. Porn Sites made the internet grow and fueled it’s large and swift increase. Not the only thing of course, but sex and it’s preoccupation by society did, and does fuel a lot of things. As I said MINOR nitpicking.

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  6. Minor nit, I’m not sure “that the opposite of a lie is always a lie”.

    Many times, it can be true but not always.

    But the strong element of truth is that statement is “doing something just because THAT PERSON doesn’t like it, can often lead to you going the wrong way”.

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      1. This observation glances off one I’ve had about Hollywood, and the story-telling arts in general: the opposite of a cliche is itself a cliche, or at least becomes a cliche after far fewer repetitions than many would suspect. Certain persons, in clearing away long-established cliches, have produced equal and opposite ones with impressive rapidity.

        Of course, not all established cliches were out of contact with reality. Their replacements have been more so.

        Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.

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        1. The original cliche usually has more staying power because it has some reason and power to it.

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  7. I recall Freud getting mentioned in health class (late 1980s-early ’90s), and in English lit. Some of the Freudian analysis of Hamlet … Great oogly moogly. Although it was nothing compared to Freud meets King Lear and so on in the honors English class in college 1.0.

    If anything, I think Jung was a bit more well grounded in reality. That typed, once I learned about the social scene in VIenna in the late 1800s, a LOT of Freud made sense in context.

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    1. There is a quote, possibly apocryphal, from an actor who played Hamlet in response to the question, “Did Hamlet sleep with his mother?”

      His answer: “Only in the Chicago company.”

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    2. I was horrified, but not particularly surprised, to find out that the whole reason for the Oedipus and Electra complexes was that children were telling Freud that they were being sexually abused by their older relatives, the older relatives said, Oh, that didn’t happen, what amazing imaginations they have, and Freud (of course) taking the word of the elders and coming up with weird theories based on that.

      So many reasons he was wrong…

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      1. Freud and the Freuds are a really ugly story. Most of his complexes seem to be either his fantasies or auto biographical. Since he lied about, well, everything it’s hard to tell. Freud was a fraud, one of the biggest ever and an ugly, ugly man.

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          1. It’s the only way I spell his name whenever he comes up in conversation online, sometimes with a note saying “and no, that wasn’t a typo, I wrote exactly what I meant to write”.

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      2. Actually the original Oedipus complex case was a small boy who had a phobia about horses after he had been in a horrible accident involving them.

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    2. My first house was a townhouse in a neighborhood working on the slippery slope. Minor crime, some vandalism (went on a trip with a friend; his gas caps were stolen before we left, and when we returned, I had two inches of sand covering my car. No idea why.)

      A couple days before I sold and left, a nearby townhouse burnt down, killing several people. Apparently they were moving in, and somebody got stupid with a cigarette. When we went out to look, my next door neighbor’s car had 4 flat (not sure if slashed) tired, eggs and ketchup all over it. A few years later when Crack got popular, that complex got to be the first one selected to try to fight the problem. Prices have skyrocketed, so I assume the druggies can’t afford to live there any more.

      The next house was still in an iffy area, but better. Mostly. Usually. Kept it 8 years. Immediate neighborhood showed some evidence of gang signs, but the Section 8 complex a half mile away was best to avoid at night.

      I finally was able to afford a house in a good neighborhood, and stayed there for the remainder of my time in Cali. (About 17 years.) $TINY_TOWN in Oregon isn’t great, but the worst of the miscreants stay away. Aside from Boy Racer (we think he does speedy drug deliveries on his motorcycle*) and the Friday Night Sign Shooters, it’s fairly quiet.

      ((*)) I keep hoping the engine will seize while he’s running flat out. I can dream, anyway. OTOH, somebody might have tried a potshot at him over the weekend. Curious timing for a handgun shot, and I didn’t see nuthin’. I think they missed.

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  9. “segwayed”

    Gotta love English. I bet this spelling actually will take over from the correct “segued” before long, since it makes so much more sense.

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  10. High school for me was early ’70s (out 50 years this year). Don’t remember politics other than Nixon and Vietnam war. We were pretty much removed from it. Did get hit with “everyone is having sex”. (Lie. I wasn’t. Wasn’t going to. Thus: Lie.) Went to college, and worked for the USFS, with my maiden name, people were shocked, absolutely shocked, I wasn’t wasn’t with the program. Even more shocked I had no idea what the hell they were talking about. (A smidgen naive.) College the guys didn’t push it. Crews did, initially. But guess no fun when the target has no clue what is happening. Never pushed it beyond verbal.

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    2. I graduated HS in 1970 and generally took geek-friendly courses, so barring the obligatory US history and a touchy-feely thing last year, I escaped the soft sciences. Any Freud was in popular culture, and I was more into RAH and company than the popular non-SF writers of the day.

      Can’t say I was terribly awake for Sociology 101 or 20?. The main residue left is that I want to call my gas grill “Max”, for the author of <i>The Barbeque Ethic and the Spirit of Carnivorism*</i>. (Hey, the cover says “Weber”. I couldn’t resist.)

      ((*)) Something like that. Better sleep aide than many other texts.

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      1. Similar. Science, math, and Spanish. Advanced biology really helped botany in college. Had already touched on the material covered. Could read Spanish for a couple of decades later (not so much now). Never was fluent speaking or listening. The other classes paid attention well enough to pull B’s and A’s, while reading fiction.

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  11. I wonder if the belief in a zero sum world leads people to believe there must be a winner in any conflict, not that it is quite possible for all factions involves to lose utterly?

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  12. I’m going to disagree with you a little bit, but it’s only to AGREE with Papa Heinlein. Which is to say, everything we do is about passing on our genes. Which is more than fornication, true. It’s the coupling up, the things we do to show our prospective mates that we can fulfill our function–providing for and protecting said mate, as well as offspring (creating offspring is fun, but keeping them alive until they can produce more is how our genes get passed down.)

    Which is not to say that folks who can’t or didn’t or won’t have children are worthless. The drives are often still there, just blunted.

    The difference is that humans are more than mindless biological drives. And we’re good at figuring out new and better ways to fulfill those drives. And remembering and passing them on. Because one of our drives is to use our brains. To find, protect, and provide for our families.

    But also, yes. The “there must be an evil actor at work” thing drives me bugnuts.

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    1. Yes, but it’s not JUST the sex. as in, it’s not “You only hate men” (no proof) “Because you can’t get a good one to sleep with you.” It’s not just “assumes facts not in evidence” it’s barking nuts.

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      1. Yes, that’s my point. Sex is only part of it, but when one says “everything we do is to attract a mate” that’s true. It’s to attract a MATE, not a sexual partner.

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        1. But it also means that because you can’t or won’t have either sex or children it doesn’t make everything else “sad sublimation” Which alas Heinlein believed, or his characters did. A mate might be even non-sexual. It can be “buying into a community” which humans arguably need more than sex. The whole social apes thing.

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          1. I’d argue that that idea goes back even further. It’s found in Kipling, too.

            “But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same,

            And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail, The female of the species must be deadlier than the male. She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast May not deal in doubt or pity — must not swerve for fact or jest.

            These be purely male diversions — not in these her honour dwells. She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else. She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.

            And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unchained to claim Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same. She is wedded to convictions — in default of grosser ties; Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! — He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild, Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.”

            How much of that is because for so long women’s status and place in society was reliant on their ability to have spouse and/or children is an interesting question. Men who couldn’t find a spouse or children also generally had lower status, but they at least had a bit more ability to find a place.

            The idea that women who can’t have children have sublimated that desire in order to pursue other ends is old, but I wonder if that’s just because until recently pursuing other ends precluded having children, and vice versa?

            If it’s not given to you as a choice, but as circumstances, can it really be called sublimation, or just adapting to the circumstances?

            Liked by 1 person

  13. I’ve heard it said that Freudian psychology is primarily an analysis of Freud’s own personal hangups and doesn’t apply to most people.

    Marxism is pretty much the same.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. back in the day, a girl I was pursuing told me I should read Lacan — she was hot and I was young and fit so shoot me. Lacan managed to merge Freud and Marx into something that actually made both Freud and Marx seem logical and sane. We didn’t last long since I did have some standards.

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        2. he’s probably the biggest French intellectual since Sartre. That’s not an endorsement. Freud is still huge in France and Lacan is a big reason why. BS doesn’t begin to describe him.

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        3. I’ve heard of him as someone whose name gets thrown about in academic literary analysis.

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          1. “Thrown around” as if his was a Magic Name to explain anything you wanted to explain? [Evil Grin]

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            1. Probably given the quality of the work cited. They no doubt think they are citing him like physicists cite Einstein (never having heard of a different physicist.)

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      2. Pointing out to socialists that incel nice-guy types are making the exact same argument for other people’s strange as they are for other people’s money and wealth usually goes over pretty well. 😆

        Liked by 1 person

    2. The problem is that both Marxism and Freudism were turned into religions that worked their ways from academia into broader society, laying waste to everything they touched, and continue to touch.

      Liked by 1 person

  14. Still a lot of Freudian nonsense (redundancy alert) embedded out there.

    Joel Huffman (of Boomershoot fame) has a regular feature on his blog where he highlights current examples of Markley’s Law: As an online discussion of gun owners’ rights grows longer, the probability of an ad hominem attack involving penis size approaches 1.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Hell, that’ll happen the first time a left-wing liberal pipes up. Somehow the two concepts are inextricably linked in their narrow little brains, and they can’t imagine anybody thinking differently from themselves.

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    2. I’m always amused at myself when I look up into a ridiculously large pickup truck and see a woman driving it. Totally breaks my “you must be compensating” train of thought.

      And, no, I don’t really believe that, but I do think it.

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      1. Since we’re pretty rural, about the only class of pickup truck that’s maybe male-centric is the one where the system is arranged to put out black smoke under acceleration. (AKA “rolling coal”.) Don’t usually look for the driver, but such a jerky thing seems to be the province of young, dumb, and arrogant.

        Since we’re in an area where Subarus do not have obligatory woke bumper stickers (hell, local people buy them because they’re good in snow and ice*), stereotypes for vehicles and drivers don’t work well. On the other hand, Harley (or similar big bikes) with ape-hanger handlebars do seem to be ridden by guys. I doubt such handlebars work well for a smaller rider…

        ((*)) For the metro area west of the Cascades from us? Lots of lesbian-oriented commercials for that Subie dealer.

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        1. Yeah somehow the Subaru Outback became the official vehicle of those of the sapphist persuasion here in the Northeast. I have a Crosstrek and when we went up to visit the inlaws in VT we joked that it was a stealth vehicle as we blend in with all the other Subarus.

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        2. A good friend and his siblings mostly drive Subarus, because as Air Force brats they spent some of their formative years with a father was stationed in Noth Dakota, and he bought one to deal with driving in the ice and snow.

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          1. I loved having a Subaru when I lived in the Midwest. It could stay outside at -10 F and still start, got good traction on packed snow and in slush, and carried everything I needed/wanted. The only time I had a traction problem was on frozen liquid manure. And the Subaru got right back out of the ditch without any problems.

            There’s a reason the local term was “slicker than frozen pig poo.” It is very slippery.

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        3. Yes, we now have two Foresters, one a ’12 base model and a midlevel trim ’16. (Got access to retirement money…) Foresters seem to be popular among the fold pharte sett (raises hand), and lack of bumper stickers seems to be universal here.

          The ’16 is stealthy west of the Cascades, unlike the Ridgeline. I could take the old Silvarado, but the Honda is too attractive to thieves, and I don’t have a bed canopy.

          (GMs are close to nonexistant in the county. All the GM-non-Chevy dealers crashed and burned with the 2008-9 Autogeddon, and the dealer that had the Chevy franchise lost it*. So, nearest Chevy/GMC dealer is > 100 miles away, so nope.

          ((*)) The local owner was conservative, which of course had nothing to do with the liberal dealership chain snagging the Ford, Toyota and Dodge/Ram dealerships in town. (But the big chain doesn’t sell the Honda nor the Subarus in town.)

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          1. We have two Hyundai Santa Fe for the same reason. Rainforest ’19 and Lava Orange ’20. Not that we see that much snow.

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            1. Both are white, along with 75% of the Foresters (and similar shaped small SUVs). I have to be careful to remember where I parked…

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              1. Same with the Rainforest (dark gray green) Not so much for the Lava Orange (more accurate description of the color is Sunrise or Sunset, Red Orange). Definitely not red, not when sitting right next to a red car.

                Won’t be getting a newer Santa Fe, as things stand now. Not that we don’t like the Santa Fe, we love them, we have 2. But … They changed them starting with 2021. Button, not a stick, for the automatic settings. Subaru, Chevy Traverse, Mazda, etc., had already gone to this by 2019. So not a surprise. Also bigger. Took the Santa Fe XL, made it bigger and renamed it. Then took the Santa Fe and made it the Santa Fe XL. They also offer a Santa Fe plug in hybrid. Sigh. Nope.

                Not against a hybrid. Better than an electric dependent. But no way getting a plug in hybrid. If it can’t generate the power required, forget about it. May not have a choice when it comes down to it. Oh, well we’ve kept rigs well past the expiration date before.

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                1. White small SUVs (almost tried unloading groceries into a Dodge today. Sigh.) and grey metallic pickups. Two of my neighbors have grey ones, and so is ours. Three different brands (Ford, Ram and Honda) and they all look the same color. At least the other neighbors have white pickups (also common, but not quite so much).

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                  1. 😂

                    Bought a green teal GMC pickup. “Different color!” we thought. There are green teal pickups everywhere. (This one we still see around town. The license plate is memorable. It is now doing landscaping.)

                    Bought a blue teal Chevy pickup. Again “Different color!” we thought. Nope. Not as frequent as the green teal but also not exactly unique.

                    The Rainforest green, isn’t particularly unique. Different than most brand mixed green colors but have to be side by side to see the difference.

                    The Lava Orange is different from other brands. Others have orange but definitely not as red. But it is definitely orange. The Lava Orange looks red until put against red.

                    It was really funny when we were at Rocky Mountain Park. Was on the old road up to the summit Visitor center. Kept passing another Santa Fe. They finally parked behind us in the shade. Not as noticeable. They joked “What were the odds of two red Santa Fe’s on the road?” We laughed. “Not quite. Not red.” Next stop we were in the sun. They stopped. “OMG! Not red!” I have seen one other Lava Orange since then. But they are not frequent.

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          2. I still haven’t forgiven or forgotten the murder of Saturn. (grin) Those were great machines. Saturn Vue, a small but roomy SUV with a big 250hp high-torque V6. Thing accelerates like a startled cat. Great snow car, even without AWD. Easy skid recovery. And mine has lasted more than 350,000 miles.

            Problem was, Saturn was more “Chevvy Killer” than “Japan Killer”.

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            2. I bought a new silver blue 2002 Saturn L Series sedan back in 2001, as much for its safety record as anything else. I drove it until 2009, and my son then drove it until last year, when he took it in to check out a problem with a sluggish response and was told that it had developed a coolant leak into the engine. Also there was an issue with the head gasket. Between them, a death knell for the car, as a replacement engine was simply not financially feasible. 

              My son had taken excellent care of that car and he was very upset to lose it. The only things wrong with it up to then were that the odometer was faulty, but not worth fixing, and one rear window slipped occasionally – that was remedied with rubber shims. Otherwise that car was in pristine condition inside and out. It had well over 250,000 miles on it. I finally just donated it as is to Habitat for Humanity. They sold it on and sent me a proof of donation receipt good for a tax deduction of up to $500.

              It was definitely a good and faithful servant of a car, and will be remembered fondly.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. We bought a 2004 new Hyuandai Elantra, Nov. 15, 2003 for hubby’s weekend back and forth commute car when he was stationed in middle of nowhere, 500 miles from home. Chose it not only for mileage (savings in fuel more than paid for itself VS driving the Dodge Durango or the Chevy 4×4 pickup), but we knew it’d be son’s car in 20 months (if dad was transferred back home by then). Hubby put 48k miles on it in 16 months. Son drove it until 2020, when it was traded in at 140k miles (for comparison son has < 15k miles on his 2020, bought Jan 2020. Son doesn’t drive far.), for $200. Interior was rough (usable), and car had tiny dents all over top, hood, and trunk (parked under Giant Sequoias, those cones are the size of golf balls and just as hard). While driveable, just enough wrong did not want to self sell, dealership didn’t think it cost worthy to do so either. But by then this was the family’s 3rd new car from them, so they gave “something”.

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                1. When we moved here from Silicon Valley, we needed a 4WD vehicle ASAP. Late September ’03, and the in-stock Fords and Toyotas were more than we wanted to pay. (High trim levels, all of them.) Spotted a bottom end Chevy the Sunday before the house deal, and by luck, it was still available a couple days later when we got the funds from San Jose and finished the Oregon house deal. From then to Sept ’18, I put about 70k miles on it, with lots of Medford Costco trips, ones to MIL in NorCal, and once to the Midwest. In Sept ’18, something crapped out and 5mpg was an aspirational goal. Rather than getting it fixed, I sold it to the repair shop (fixed and turned into a parts-gofer, and got the ’19 Ridgeline I had been planning on getting at year’s end. (We intensely dislike Lithia dealership group, and they snagged Toyota, Ford and Ram. GM anything was gone from 2008 Autogeddon, and Nissan never set up shop here.)

                  Among the two Subarus and the Ridgeline, in a dozen years, we’ve put on about 90K miles. The ’12 Forester got a 5K road trip to visit family in the Midwest, and the ’16 handled my frequent trips to Medford for medical fun and games. (Local eye surgeons are up to cataracts and diagnoses, but the surgical specialists specialists hang out in south Medford.)

                  Each of the Subies has about 40K miles, with the ’16 getting most of the market trips. I take the ’12 once a month (or when $SPOUSE does one her rare trips to town).

                  The Honda handles bigger stuff, and in extremis, can tow the 16′ travel trailer. If I had expected we’d get the trailer, I might have held out for an F150 or a Chev 1500 and dealt with the dealers in Lakeview. The Honda can do it, but it’s unpleasant to tow such. OTOH, the trailer is great emergency housing, which is why we bought it.

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                  1. Lithia dealership

                    ……….

                    LOL. Would rather deal with Lithia than Kendal, locally. Kendal has the Subaru dealership.

                    Shepard is who we went through for the current Hyundai’s.

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        4. “Apes” come in various heights, partly due to rider variation and partly due to local laws. (Many states regulate the height from seat to grips.)

          I possess a 1997 Valkyrie–I considered putting “mini-apes” on it, but decided to forego the headache-inducing cables-and-controls-transfer necessary to change the bars out.

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      2. Never owned one of those oversized pickups, but if I did, my response to anyone making the obvious and puerile comment out loud would be, “Why yes, I am compensating for something. Well spotted. I’m compensating for the fact that I can’t run 60 miles an hour while carrying a thousand pounds of cargo.”

        While I’m on the subject of cars and their Freudian implications (note that this is just for fun), I want to mention that people often get it wrong about sports cars and minivans. People think that the guy driving the sports car is bragging about having had lots of sex. Nope. The guy driving the sports car is out looking for sex. The one driving the minivan is the one bragging about having had lots of sex.

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      3. One of my favorite “So much for the stereotype” moments was when I followed a large pickup into the library parking lot. The truck sported a large US flag on one side and a Stars and Bars on the other. The gent who got out was wearing a Trump 2020 ball cap … and was black as the ace of spades. I’d love to have seen the looks on the faces of the VileProgs and their Liberal kin at beholding the sight.

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        1. The first, and so far only, political event I attended in my life was a Tea Party event in 2012. There was a mixed-race couple (I think he was white and she was black) holding hands behind a sign saying “Hey MSM, we dare you to report this!” While I was talking about their sign to another attendee and commenting on how there are a lot more black people with conservative opinions than the media lets on, I heard from behind me, “I know! I’m not supposed to exist!” Turned around and there was a young woman, black, with a big grin on her face. Don’t remember how the conversation went after that, but I remember her opening line.

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  15. Fish fry coming up.
    If only Freud was right, Marxism would work, and Mommy wouldn’t hate me, wouldn’t that be Dazzling?…. Sarc.

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  16. Reminds me of the argument that “Women can get a sexual encounter anytime they like, so if they aren’t married it means they’re too picky about men.”

    I’m still not sure whether the guy who was arguing that was serious or trolling me.

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    1. As my sister said to me when I told her the joke, ‘With one of those she can get all of theses she wants’, “Ewwww, who’d want what over half of what theses are hooked up to?”.

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    2. Well, I had a dear elderly lady at a place where I was singing assure me that I’d never, ever marry because I was just too intelligent. If I could hide it better, she said, I’d be able to find a husband.

      I remember that I found something tactful to say, and slipped away as one of her friends came to see if she wanted more coffee.

      So I’d guess his comment could be serious, if he took the same tack as the dear elderly lady.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Alma, it’s the obvious fact that if a woman says no, that’s the end of it…. she has to say yes, or it’s a crime.

        Nowadays, the poor schmuck has to wonder if he’ll end up in handcuffs even if she says yes at the time.

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    3. I can’t even figure out what the argument is, even if I grant his premises.

      Women can get a sexual encounter anytime they like.

      Thus, they do not need to marry in order to get sex.

      Therefore, they’ll get a million offers for marriage as soon as they’re of a legal age, and if they don’t say ‘yes’ to the first one, they’re too picky??????

      Sense, this makes none.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. It was even worse because he kept trying to disguise the argument he was making by calling it “relationships” “A woman can have a relationship whenever she wants.”

        As though a hookup with Skeevy Steve from the bar is interchangeable with marriage to Reliable Rick from church.

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    4. Women gatekeep sex, and men, commitment here in the U.S.

      So Women can get a sexual encounter anytime they like, so if they aren’t married it means they’re too picky about men.”

      That’s crazy talk.

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  18. We had a psychology course available in high school. I think it covered various schools of thought. I was going to take the course on Freud, but slipped up and took a course on Fraud instead.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. Freudian psychology still pervades _fiction_ to an astonishing degree, because it is a dead solid perfect structure for a story. A person is troubled, they fail at life, they are unloved. With the help of a wise mentor they examine their inner self. They learn their failures and trouble are due to their own self-sabotage, and they are unloved because they do not love themself. They dig deeper with the mentor’s help and learn the original trauma which is at the root of their unhappiness and failure. Having achieved self-knowledge they are made whole. First act, second act, third act. Boom. I predict that even when the workings of the brain can be modeled and understood completely, fiction writers will cling to the Freudian model. It’s just too damned useful.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. And one’s life experiences EXPLAIN one’s personality. As if such experiences could not result in half a dozen consequences for one’s personality — if it was not pre-existing and merely manifested.

      Liked by 1 person

  21. My beloved is cleaning the garage (he’s building a var.do) and found a bunch of stuff. One item was an issue of an old APA, and in my contribution I commented we were getting a mortgage, and when the banker learned we’d been dating for 5 years and only recently married, said, ” And you weren’t living together?” I said in the APA I felt like an an anachronism. This was somewhere in the late ’80s.

    Liked by 1 person

  22. OK, I read the “quite in the library is racist” article. The author, who was raised by her grandparents, is the daughter of Communist/socialist activists. And she’s Puerto Rican. When things got too loud for her to write her novels during 2020 (lock down with a family with small kids), she moved to a nice place in Upstate NY. So yeah, her take on “why can’t we party all the time and listen to our music, you hatey racists” rings pretty hollow.

    The noise of real poverty, or of sliding poverty? Loud cars, screaming, screaming fights, blasting music to cover the sound of drug deals, although in my case no gun shots. (Military people had started moving in because there was no, zilch, other place to get an apartment, and several of them were fresh from Southwest Asia. They took a dim view of gunshots. The dealers and meth cooker decided to take their fights elsewhere.)

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    2. So she’s Puerto Rican but her name is Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs). Is she LARPing as a Mexican too?

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  23. It’s not that people are “only interested in sex”, it’s that people at least subconsciously are strongly interested in reproduction – because we’re all descended from those who cared enough about it to reproduce. Reproductive selection is by far the strongest evolutionary selector, so no one should be surprised if almost everything that humans do is to that end, one way or another. Not sex, but successful reproduction, which for humans takes at least 15 or so years. We try and conduct our lives in such a way that the likelihood of that happening seems to be maximized. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t look like that. :) But remember, we’re evolved for what was going on up to about 15 years ago, not what has gone on since. Things like social status are hugely important in mate selection, so we are strongly wired to engage in social status competition. Which works in a tribe of 100 or so people who have very little. It makes us hyperactive and insane in a population of 8 billion.

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  24. Yeah, I internalized that “men don’t hit women.” It takes SEVERE provocation for me to do so. And I can remember the one time I did. (Wasn’t my wife or girlfriend.)

    Googly eyes on the monitor I could handle. I was NOT pleased when my wife-to-be thought it would be cute to spread glitter all over my keyboard. (Had to buy a new keyboard – we did NOT go to the movies that week.)

    Clubs don’t require convincing the woman in question to get drunk. However, it occurs to me that said application of clubs is what directly led to the phrase, “Not tonight, I have a headache.”

    Who’s in a superior position is really irrelevant when you’re having a roll in the hay. It keeps changing. What doesn’t change is that the hay (like sand on the beach) gets EVERYWHERE.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. You used the verb ‘segwayed’ where you intended to use ‘segued’. At least your readers knew how to correctly pronounce what you intended.

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    1. Thank you Mr. grammar person. I see your first comment is to chide me for a typo.
      So, when writing I take dictation from my internal monologue. “Writing as I hear” is actually one of the most common typos around here.
      The fun part is that I can’t “hear” the difference between leave and live for instance, having only learned English at 14. So I often confuse them in typing. Yes, I know the difference between the words, but my fingers take dictation from my defective ears. It is what it is.
      IF I proof, it takes me an extra hour, and frankly my real job is writing fiction. Also, I post these for free. Yes, people choose to donate, but they don’t HAVE to pay to read these posts.
      Don’t bitch about the free ice cream.
      My books get proofread.

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      1. Yeah, my first comment. you wanted adulation first? That was a totally neutral editing comment. But hey, vituperation is it’s own message, isn’t it?

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        1. This is not vituperation. It’s explanation.
          If I sound annoyed, you should perhaps consider how many of these I get.
          Also, not neutral “At least your readers will know how to pronounce it” was snide and uncalled for. So, perhaps notice your tone before getting aggrieved at the site owner’s very mild slap back?
          Just a thought.
          Vituperation? BAH. You have no idea.

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        2. But hey, vituperation is it’s own message, isn’t it?

          One which you seem to leap to quite impressively.

          Maybe if you weren’t so utterly humorless, you’d feel less abused.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I didn’t want any kind of adulation. When have I asked for adulation, guys? I’d check to see if you lot were sick.
            I just didn’t expect a total stranger to jump up and be snide at me. In my living room.
            Also Btucker, perhaps you need to see what real vituperation is. I didn’t call you a single name.
            I’ll open up by tell you to take your opinions, fold them all in corners and put them up your jumper.

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            1. “I’d check to see if you lot were sick.”

              Sarah, by now, you KNOW we’re sick….. 😏

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              1. okay. I was highly gratified when the vet today spent time loving on Indy and telling him how pretty he is. We demonstrated on how he likes his little paws held by both of us, and she melted….

                Liked by 1 person

      2. I also might note that I searched for contact info to convey that first info privately. Found none.

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        1. I predict that that you won’t last long here and no Sarah likely won’t ban you.

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          1. But but but, he searched for contact before leaving a snide remark! I should be grateful. And put up a contact for the endless stream of “you forgot a comma!”

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          2. He won’t last long on the internet in general. People who have nothing more interesting to say than to point out typos, and who can’t STFU about said typos are one of the most universally hated.

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          1. Do we use that same email to alert you to issues with your tone, issues with the artwork, fedposts, is-this-a-post, carping about carp-ings, bad gun takes, blackpills, and accusations of Mormonism?

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  27. Onnan unrelated note…

    When Trump was in office, Kim in North Korea was falling all over himself to get Trump to visit. Now I’m reading in the news that Putin has visited for the first time in two decades.

    And the Saudis just dropped the requirement for Petro-Dollars.

    Yeah, the adults are back in charge… /sarc

    Liked by 1 person

  28. I forget whether this was a meme or an actual post (this was a few weeks back and I haven’t been able to find it), but on FB somebody posted something to the effect of “The only reason men have hobbies is to attract women.”

    The post didn’t get ratioed or roasted so much as absolutely destroyed.

    For my part, I replied something to the effect of, “I’m pretty sure that no woman in the history of the world have ever said, ‘Oh, you’re into model railroading? That is so sexy!'”

    Seriously, if I wanted to attract women, I would… okay, I haven’t the slightest idea about what to do. But God forbid men do something solely for personal enjoyment.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The Reader never read obsessively, made sawdust or played golf to attract women. In fact he is been married 42 years despite them.

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    2. Yeah, that is a bit of a special thought.

      I understand that a lot of people now are nuts, and stressed now. But, if there was not a fairly deliberate consensus, a different pattern would be apparent by now.

      I’m not sure what my forecast ensemble would look like, but that does not look like a calm well-thought analysis to me, or a calm well-thought forecast.

      Oh well, there will be people who were very much living in the moment, and thought this time whatever behavioral magic would come through for them. They may get stupid as they lose that belief. There will also be people who think long term enough to know that they will lose, and then calculate that this is good prep for after a loss.

      The state of the mess is that no matter what, all positive outcome paths include a long row to hoe. Metaphorically, there is a lot of glamorous weeding to do under the hot sun for a long time. None of this win a single election, everything is perfect then, and no more serious problems that need attention.

      The stupid, the insane, and the unethical will always show up in populations.

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    3. It really burns my tookus to see so much furor over something as stupid as ‘bump stocks’. I don’t see any good use for the damned things.

      A rifle properly designed for full-auto fire is hard enough to control as it is. Elite commandos with years of experience rarely shoot full-auto. A semi-auto trick-f*ked into hammering its trigger against your finger is just a sad waste of perfectly good (and expensive) ammo.

      I wouldn’t mind if they were declared a safety hazard and banned on that basis. Or an idea that’s just too bad to be allowed.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. “A rifle properly designed for full-auto fire is hard enough to control as it is.”

        Two words: Glock switches.

        Trying to fire a pistol full auto. What are they smoking???

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      2. I mostly agree with you here – never wanted one. Two points, though: First, I have a bloody-minded streak that wants to buy two of whatever they ban. Second, this particular case has hopefully clipped the ATF rule-making to closer adherence to text of law, which I consider an unalloyed good.

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  31. Ok, well, but…at least Freudian theory posited that humans are interested in sex. And it had roles for adults, children, men and women.

    Because right now, there seem to be young people who seem to think they’re able to ignore this whole human instinct and biology thing. And that’s causing all sorts of weird effects. I was fascinated by this NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/10/opinion/natalism-liberalism-parenthood.html?searchResultPosition=9

    Actually, by the comments on the article, in which self-identified progressives, en masse, were indignant that anyone should expect their precious children to become parents. They’re all so noble and enlightened and what not. I would think it was a prank, but there are just too many of that sort of comment.

    Ok. Like, I agree with them that it’s probably a Good Thing they’re removing themselves from the future.

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      1. Just speculating, but it may be a long-term effect of being WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic.) https://weirdpeople.fas.harvard.edu/qa-weird

        For the NYT commenters, the individual stands on his or her own merits? Family bonds mean little, maybe it’s even selfish to care more for family than for strangers? The belief may be that progressive culture is more important than received tradition? The evidence seems to point out that if you don’t have children, your descendants won’t exist. I’m just staggered to see SO MANY commenters in the NYT being proud that their family lines will end.

        It does align well with an article I read in 2009 in Foreign Policy, “The Return of the Patriarchy,” by Phillip Longman. I recommend searching for it, but I won’t put a link here, because WordPress does not like multiple links.

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        1. They don’t understand culture, nor the influence of culture on humans. They think culture is clothing and food recipes.
          This is why they think third worlders can fill in for hte children they never had. They also think people become American and live the good life by being on American soil, period. Because again,t hey fail to understand culture.
          I DON’T understand how people with a modicum of kowledge of history fail to get this.

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          1. Well, they don’t have much knowledge of history. For some time, the grand old survey courses at universities have been under attack. That means there are fewer popular history books written for the general public by the professors who teach such courses. And there are movies made where they play fast and loose with history.

            In the American experience, I would still say that assimilation does work. However, it takes generations. People marry spouses from different backgrounds, the ancestral cultures become fairy tales and grandmother’s Sunday dinner, and sports teams become more important than religion (for many people.) It’s a natural process, though, for people to move from the place their ancestors first settled. For example, “Little Italy” or Germantown in NYC are no longer ethnic neighborhoods.

            Thinking about it, though, it probably does explain why the same people (progressive NYT commenters proud of their family lines ending) are so insulting to fellow Americans who do not share their values.

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            1. Yes, but importing vast numbers at once while discouraging assimilation makes it not work. I mean, you have no idea how hard I had to fight to make my kids AMERICAN.
              I just realized anohter part of this and the oikophobic brain bug is the political correctness that forbids saying anything bad about foreign/past/different cultures. Because the left confuses culture and race, saying Aztecs were horrible murderers and cannibals is suddenly racist.

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          2. There’s a video that made the rounds a few weeks back, where a newly, illegally, arrived Venezuelan expresses dismay at how easy it was to get over the border.

            When I saw it, some wag had titled it, “Assimilation Speed Run”.

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