Partisan blinders, once again

Tags

#conservative, #nro, #politics, #republicans, clinton, democrats, hillary, rand paul

It is a peculiarity among American political writers not to ever take their own side to task. I’m not talking about just the politicians or operatives of either party; I am talking about (ostensibly) independent writers who never criticize their own guys, and in fact studiously ignore the fact that their own side has the exact same faults the other side is accused of having.

Here, for instance, conservative writer Kevin Williamson observes that politicians are useless. This is a fairly conventional and non-controversial opinion in America. But what makes his article remarkable is how he says that only Democrats like the Clintons, Obama, and Biden have no marketable skills, while discussing how Rand Paul as well as a few backbencher Republicans you’ve never heard of are physicians, going on about how Paul can give services to Third World children unlike all those stupid and lazy Dems.

This has two problems. One, he overlooks that all of these people are lawyers, and lawyer jokes aside, this means they do actually have a means of vocation if their political careers suddenly came to an end. But the more important error is that, of course, Williamson studiously ignores certain other lawyer/politicians such as Ted Cruz (R-TX), George W. Bush (R-TX), Rick Santorum (R-PA), and Marco Rubio (R-FL). It also ignores certain politicians with no discernible skills outside politics whatsoever, like Rick Perry (R-TX), Paul Ryan (R-WI), Scott Walker (R-WI) and Jeb Bush (R-FL). Note that all of the above have, or have had, presidential ambitions; the last on this list will likely be the 2016 GOP nominee. Backbenchers they ain’t.

Would Williamson prefer any one of these men to be treating Third World kids? He says Obama probably can’t change a tire. Would he like to argue that Ted Cruz could, with a straight face?

This sort of partisan willing blindness is a peculiar characteristic of American pundits and talk-show shouters. By contrast, writers in the UK love taking their “own guys” to task. For instance, conservative British writers are often the hardest on David Cameron; Tory conservative Andrew Stuttaford, Williamson’s colleague at NR, certainly qualifies. It’s also true of Labour-aligned writers, who never stopped heaping scorn on Tony Blair for his various misdeeds.

In any event, because of this fatal weakness in Williamson’s article, his unwillingness to consider how most of his own side are guilty of the same thing he accuses Dems of… his entire article can be summarily dismissed as just another piece of slavering partisan hackery. Which is a shame, because the problem of our landed aristocratic elite who have no careers other than being elites really is a bipartisan (or perhaps even, nonpartisan) issue that does need to be discussed. Because at the end of the day, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton have practically no differences in lifestyle or outlook, which means the 2016 election will ensure the continuance of the same rotten status quo either way. Why don’t we talk about that more instead of the same-ol, its-only-a-problem-if-the-other-guys-do-it partisan sniping?

Female abuse of male children, and the definition of “statutory rape”

Tags

abuse, rape

Today brings the latest story of a female teacher sleeping with one of her male students, and as expected, it brought on the usual salacious promotion of the story by the media because the female teacher in question is hot. And, once again, it brought on the commentators asking the question: Why is she being charged? After all, the student probably considered it the luckiest day of his life.

These sorts of comments are inherently sexist, because they carry the unspoken assumption that only male teens could possibly consent to sex with their teacher.

When stories emerge of male teachers sleeping with their female 15-year-old charges, the condemnation is universal and the criminal charges have zero controversy. The beast forced himself on her, we say. Or he used brutal psychological manipulation on her tender mind. Whatever the case, there is no question he deserves to burn in hell for unleashing his filthy desires on a pure and clean teenage girl.

What these comments always ignore is why we need a separate criminal classification of “statutory rape” to begin with. After all, if the male teacher really did force himself on the girl like a brute, we wouldn’t need the qualifier of “statutory.” Simple “rape” would suffice, right?

The whole point of “statutory” rape is that it involves a consensual sex partner who is not yet mature enough to really consent to the act, especially not to a person who is supposed to be their elder.

And 15-year-old girls are often more eager to get into the act with their male teachers or other adult authority figures than we are comfortable admitting to ourselves. To deny this fact is to deny ever knowing a 15-year-old girl in real life. I say this as someone who went to a high school of some 1600 students. Teenage girls are often, how do I put this delicately… randy… and while there are plenty of horrible cases where teachers brutally rape unwilling girls… there are plenty of others where the girls are very willing, or even initiating contact themselves.

Does that make it ok? If your 15-year-old daughter came home one day and told you her new boyfriend was her science teacher at school, and how she started it and loved him, would that somehow make it ok in your mind?

No, it wouldn’t. But the traditional definition of “rape” isn’t accurate, since she was willing. Hence, the concept of “statutory rape.” And every young man knows it is as serious as “regular” rape, and to avoid high school girls like the plague… hence the rise of the term “jailbait.”

Right. And so it is here. I have no doubt that the 15-year-old boy in this story was more enthusiastic than imaginable, and might have initiated contact himself. But her participation in the act with a male piece of jailbait is still the “rape” part of “statutory rape.”

And she deserves every last day she is going to spend in prison.

The most crucial decision of your life is your mate selection.

Tags

infidelity, losers, love, relationship, relationships

Not career. Not where you will live. Not what church you’ll attend. The biggest decision of your life, with the most lasting ramifications, is who you chose to have as a long-term partner.

No other force in your life will have the negative influence of a loser partner or the positive influence of a loving, supportive partner. You can be a hard worker, clean liver and fantastic parent. All that will go to shit if you chose to marry someone who is none of the above.

No spouse or partner can be perfect, of course. No person is absent of negative qualities. But there sure are some who are absent of positive qualities, and the biggest challenge of the young adult is to weed these people out and quash any feelings of infatuation they may develop for them.

The most common examples of people ruined by poor mate selection are women whose lives were turned to shit because they chose to marry some loser of an omega male. These are the men who cannot hold down a job because they have no vocational skills, and also because they can’t drag themselves to the workplace at 8 am every day. They just don’t have the strength of character. In addition, they are also lousy parents because they are just too selfish, impatient, or and/or just plain evil. The only things they are good at are playing video games or pursuing some other useless hobby, drinking, doing drugs, gambling, cheating, and spending other people’s money. They are gripped by delusions of grandeur and believe they simply “deserve” the good life without having to put forth any effort. Any failure on their part is always blamed on some other person or outside force — NEVER themselves, heaven forbid! And the only talent they have is the art of lying, always able to worm their way back into people’s good graces so that they can keep the freebies flowing.

There are rare examples of good men stuck with lousy, cheating omega women, of course… when this happens, these marriages follow the same script, just with the genders flipped. But it’s far less common. And this can certainly happen in gay and lesbian relationships as well, only often without the added penalty of children in the mix.

Whatever the case, if you decide to ignore your own better judgement, as well as the likely strongly worded advice from your friends and parents about the moral character of the piece of trash you are with, and marry him anyway because you love him… well, here is a representative example of what your life will entail. Give it a read.

This is a site where women vent about the “homewreckers” they believe ruined their marriage, but with very few exceptions, the other woman is only incidental to the story. Who their loser husbands wound up cheating with is not important as, generally speaking, these omega-male husbands are trying desperately to cheat with anyone they can find.

The site’s typical story features some schlub of an omega male that the wife keeps taking back over and over simply because she’s convinced that love is everything, and this story fits the bill to a T. There is little out of the ordinary of this story… it is really the same as hundreds of others posted to this site by heartbroken wives. The only difference is that this particular wife also blames the husband, much to her credit.

According to the wife, the guy follows the typical omega routine of being unable to hold down a job. She mentions specifically how after their son his born, he went and got a job… which he held for all of one month. He said he quit because he didn’t like how he was being treated. In addition to this fine employment record, the guy is a drug user and dealer, having even gone to prison for a felony conviction. He parties all night and sometimes does not come home until 8 am. And his looks! I mean, just look at this specimen.

Seriously?

Because the wife failed so decisively at the biggest decision of her life, see what her life is now:

Single mom of no fewer than four children, all with the bad genes of this deficient individual. Working 16 hour double shifts back to back. Stuck with the above manchild as the main man of her life, and you know she will keep taking him back even after she posted the article I linked to. No hope for any better life for herself or her kids, ever. No chance of ever getting a better man because she’s always either at work or at home and, let’s face it, she chose to love this piece of trash instead.

And this is the secret the movies don’t tell you: love really is a choice.

I’m not talking about infatuation and I’m not talking about lust. Those are indeed out of our hands. But those are fleeting and immature, and we have those feelings for many different people throughout our lives. I am also not talking about the love you have for your children, which is outside the scope of this post. Who you chose to have a mature and lasting love life, on the other hand, is indeed a conscious choice. As I’ve been hammering home for this post, it is the most important choice of your life.

So while I do have pity for this wife, it is in the end her own damn fault that her life is in the shitter. She’ll point out that she’s a hard worker, good wife and fine mother. I’ll say yes, that’s true, but because you failed at love, you got what’s coming to you. What happened to you was not “unfair,” I would tell her. It wasn’t due to an act of God. Your current situation was the utterly predictable result of your own conscious decisions.

Worse, because of her epic fail, she has condemned her poor children to a life that is far worse than it could have been, and stuck with genes from a man with no good genes to his name.

The turd she married didn’t magically turn from a prince to, well, a turd overnight. He was like that all his life, believe me. She knew. She knew about his drinking and his lack of employment. She knew he was self-absorbed, no-account and shifty. She knew all this and yet allowed herself to fall in love with him anyway.

We say people can only blame themselves if they make other poor life decisions. If they drop out of school, get into drugs and join a gang, we say they have only themselves to blame. We should say the same about those who make poor decisions in love, and wow, did this wife screw the pooch on that decision to Whitney Houston levels.