What this author presents — a Koranic justification for the physical abuse of women and children — is outrageous. But I want to remind you that while it is forbidden de jure in our culture, it is nonetheless far too frequently a de facto reality. No one is quite sure how many women in the US die each year at the hands of their husbands or partners. This site suggests somewhere between 1,000 to 1,600 — and they admit that their numbers don’t take into account the number of suicides that occur in order to get out of an intolerable situation.
The problem of domestic violence is complex. Unfortunately, the feminists who have the leash on this movement are largely from the left. Thus, they don’t think guns are a good solution for anyone, including women who are being abused and whose abuse cannot be effectively stopped by the police or legal system. They are also given to calling all such women “victims.” As I used to point out (before I left the field), wives are not victims; they are partners. Only children can be victims. In our country, we choose those with whom we mate.
Wendy McElroy notes a Supreme Court decision, Castle Rock v. Gonzales, a case which ruled that people cannot demand protection from the police. You can read the story at the link cited, but notice that three children died because “protection” is a private matter:
The post-mortem discussion on Gonzales has been fiery but it has missed an obvious point. If the government won’t protect you, then you have to take responsibility for your own self-defense and that of your family. The court’s ruling is a sad decision, but one that every victim and/or potential victim of violence must note: calling the police is not enough. You must also be ready to defend yourself…- - - - - - - - -
Given my own experience as a battered woman, and after having counseled more than 3,000 abused people in eight years of work with them, I think the Supreme Court was correct in this decision. The government’s job does not include protecting us from those we choose as our partners... or, for that matter, protecting us from the line of work we choose to pursue.
[In a related instance, that is why I did not think our government had any business paying for the protection of Ayaan Hirsi Ali while she was here. She chose her path as an outspoken critic of Islam in a country full of fundamentalist, trigger-happy Islamists. The outcome was a given but she chose it. I admire her courage, but I don’t think my tax money ought to pay for her guards. If we are going to protect her, why are we not paying for protecting our neighbors? Whether you know it or not, there are men (and women) in your town doing malicious damage to the bodies and hearts of those they proclaim to love. Yes, women can be abusive, but their husbands/partners are not in the same jeopardy as the wives/partners are. For men, the shame is often overwhelming and much harder to bear. For both, they are in the most danger when they leave the situation. And for pregnant women, physical abuse is the most common cause for death.]
That’s why McElroy (a former battered woman who lost the sight of one eye) is right: “you must be ready to defend yourself.”
In fact, I first heard those words come out of the mouth of a police officer talking to a battered woman. I was in the car with him and the woman as they were being driven to the Emergency Room to be treated for the injuries they sustained in court at the hands of her abuser, whose case was being heard. The guy went after the judge, too. I sat and watched it unfold, knowing what was going to happen. I’d warned the police ahead of time that he was an untreated schizophrenic and that he should be in some kind of restraints in court. They promised me that would be the case but when court time came and he walked out to stand before the judge, there were no handcuffs, no leg irons, and the man was visibly angry. It was like watching a nightmare in slow motion. I could see he was going to blow; meanwhile the judge and Commonwealth’s Attorney were talking, oblivious to the powder keg standing next to them.
When he exploded, he was lightning fast. He turned toward the court benches, spotted Mary immediately and reached over to the heavy microphone nearby, which he heaved quite accurately, hitting her in the head. Then he began to run toward the bench where we were sitting, but by then Mary was in motion. She had been trembling since he’d first come into the courtroom. As soon as he turned, she stood up, and was nailed by the microphone. It cut her head but I don’t think she even knew it; she was up and running. He reached her and began to tear off her dress, raining blows on her head. She tried to climb the curtains of the window nearby. The only people who tried to stop him were the above-mentioned Commonwealth’s Attorney and the policeman who was injured in the attempt. All the other men sat there watching. The abuser was only seriously stopped when he turned from his wife and started for the judge. Then the Sheriff’s deputies came to life. The man was brought down quickly as he began to climb the stairs of the judge’s dais. He was returned to the holding cell.
We ended up in the judge’s chambers where His Honor was bellowing for a warrant for attempted murder. Mary, the wife, was holding her dress together, and wiping blood off her face from the microphone blow. I reminded the deputies of my previous warning and added that since he was now out of control, they ought to put him in leg irons for the short walk to the van and the return to jail.
Did they listen? What do you think? It took them five hours and many men to track him down and bring him in. They had put him in handcuffs before leaving the cell, but that was merely a perfect example of fighting the previous war. Handcuffs don’t keep you from running.
And it was on the trip to the Emergency Room that the policeman was advising Mary to get some protection so she “could defend herself.”
My point is that while this editorial below is egregiously wrong-headed, western culture still condones far more family violence than you would think. In our world, men (and women) who resort to physical violence to settle differences are often either ignored or tolerated until it is too late.
Interestingly, the first psychology paper put out on domestic violence (in the late fifties or early sixties) focused on the neuroses of the person on the receiving end. It was called “The Wife Beater’s Wife” (see pg 117ff). I read the original paper while I was still being threatened. Needless to say, it had a profound impact on my view of things. This link brings you to Judith Herman’s book, “Trauma and Recovery”, where she remarks on the original research findings. Interestingly, these early researchers focused on the wives of abusers because they couldn’t get any cooperation from their husbands. Needless to say, the women they studied were indeed clinically depressed, but no one thought of this as situational — it was obviously her problem.
Things have changed a lot since that first paper. Courts are more cognizant of the inherent dangers of simply leaving (as I said, the time when women are most at risk is after they leave. They’re much safer if they stay.). And I don’t blame the police who hate to do “home visits”; these interventions are dangerous and frustrating for the officers who have to respond to the call. But police departments in the US have learned to separate the couple, even if it means putting the victim in jail should she refuse to press charges. That’s a reality check and believe me, battered women don’t live anywhere near Reality.
And so we come to this editorial in The Yemen Times. Believe it or not, an abused woman in Yemen could read this piece and agree with it completely. Such is the nature of trauma: as an object of violence in the end she turns on herself.
If you want to respond personally to the author, by all means do so. Here is his email address: Majed Thabet. Please be civil — not for his sake but for your own moral sensibilities.
“There Must Be Violence Against Women”
By: Maged Thabet Al-Kholidy
This title may sound strange, but it’s actually not just a way to attract readers to the topic because I really do mean what it indicates. Violence is a broad term, especially when used regarding women. In this piece, I want to shed light on those instances where violence against women is a must.
First, we should know the meaning of the word violence. Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English defines violence as “behavior that is intended to hurt other people physically.” However, the term violence mustn’t be confused with other concepts and terms such as gender inequality or absence of women rights.
Occasionally — if not daily — we hear about events occurring in Islamic and Arab societies. Some human rights organizations recently have attacked violent acts against women, standing against any type of violence — even that between a father and daughter — and citing the cases of some women as examples.
Consequently, they offer solutions such as complaining to the police, taking revenge or leaving them men, who are either their husbands, fathers or brothers — with no exceptions.
One such case involved a woman whose husband allegedly had beaten her. Without revealing the husband’s reasons for doing so, such human rights organizations immediately urged the wife to complain to the police and the courts, while at the same time generalizing the instance and other similar solutions to any type of violence.
If a man and woman are husband and wife, the Qur’an provides solutions, firstly reaffirming any logical and acceptable reasons for such punishment. These solutions are in gradual phases and not just for women, but for men also.
For men, it begins with abandoning the marital bed, by opting to sleep elsewhere in the house. After this, they may discuss the matter with any respected person for the husband’s or the wife’s family, who could be in a position to advise the wife. If this also does not work, then the husband yields to beating the wife slightly. They do this because of a misunderstanding in the Quran, as the word says Darban, which is commonly understood today as beating. However, in Classic Arabic it means to set examples or to announce and proclaim. The more accurate meaning of this last one is that the husband finally has to set forth, to make a clear statement or proclamation, and if these measures fail, then divorce is preferable.
Similarly, wives may take actions such as abandoning the marital bed, following by leaving the husband’s home for that of their parents, brothers or any other relatives. They may do this more than once, but if such action fails, they may not continue to live with their husband and via their relatives, they may request a divorce.
Despite such instructions, beating is considered a type of violence, according to human rights organizations, which urge women to complain to the police. I just wonder what kind of families our societies would have if Muslim women started doing this regarding their husbands.
Relationships between fathers and daughters or sisters and brothers also provoke argument from human rights organizations, which propose the suggested solutions for all relationships. Personally, I don’t think fathers or brothers would undertake such behavior unless there was a reason for it.
Fathers are responsible for their daughters’ behavior, but human rights organizations deny this too. Brothers also should take action regarding their sisters’ behavior, especially if their parents are too old or dead. If a daughter or sister makes a mistake — especially a moral one — that negatively affects the entire family and its reputation, what’s the solution by such organizations?
According to them, women should complain to the courts about any type of violence against them. Likewise, should fathers and brothers complain to police if their daughters or sisters violate moral, Islamic or social norms?
Fathers should handle their daughters via any means that suits their mistake; thus, is it better to use violence to a certain limit or complain to the police? Shall such women then complain to the police against their fathers or brothers? It’s really amazing to hear this.
In some cases, violence is necessary, but there must be limits. Those “good human rights organizations” don’t make any exceptions in their solutions because their aim is to serve society. Will it be a better society once we see wives, mothers, sisters and daughters going from one police station and one court to another, complaining against their husbands, fathers, brothers and even sons?
As the proverb goes, “If the speaker is mad, the listener should be mindful.” This proverb is good advice for every man and woman not only to keep their ears open, but also to avoid the misleading propaganda of such organizations, whose surface aims hide other destructive ones to destroy society’s religious, social and moral norms. This matter requires consideration.
Dear readers — especially women — don’t think that I hate or am against women; rather, I simply mean to preserve the morals and principles with which Islam has honored us.
I hope my message is clear, since it’s really quite relevant to the future of our societies, which must be protected from any kind of cultural invasion.
Hat tip: Western Detonator
88 comments:
Dymphna:
"I just wonder what kind of families our societies would have if Muslim women started doing this regarding their husbands."
Y'know, I was wondering about that also...
I don't recall any Koranic "solutions" allowing a wife to clobber the snot out of her husband.
(Maybe it was lost in the translation I read).
It must be in there, though, or maybe in the Hadiths, because this fellow asserts:
"In some cases, violence is necessary, but there must be limits."
The "limits" seem to be reached when SHE contemplates whaling away on her lazy, good-for-nothing lout of a husband.
Someone tell me again how and why Islam is the world's fastest growing religion?
What worries me about violence against women, is what is happening to teenaged girls. My daughter is not abused, neither am I. No one in my family has had to live in fear of being raped or beaten by a husband or father. We are non drinkers and quite comfortably assertive as women. There are 5 females to one dad/husband. That is why what I see happening to my teenaged daughter. She is currently in a juvenile detention facility for constant violations of curfew and running away from home. Her big draw is a boy given to violence and abusive language. I have had to install keystroke loggers in order to keep an eye on her. The boy is now 18, and he manipulates her to the point that she has no will to say no. I have never seen anything like this. It is just a matter of time that it escalates from abusive language to actual violence. Nothing I say matters. Nothing her father says matters. I am hoping that the time away from the boy while in detention will set her straight. She is also going to be ushered into the Outward bound program. My question, I guess, isn't really about my daughter, just opining about the current culture of violent relationships cropping up with young people.
I keep thinking that there needs to be a sort of underground railroad for battered muslim women. Some sort of system that wouldn't rely on taxis. Breaching the cultural and linguistic barriers is the big problem. I just want you to know Dymphna, after reading this, I was moved to tears. I haven't worked with too many battered wives, although I have translated and interpreted for abused Russian women.
Myself, I have been deeply fortunate to be married to a kind and gentle man for 25 years. I was abused violated by my father as a child. But my children have never experienced this, themselves. I have always taught them that they were not doormats, punching bags or toilets for men to relieve themselves into. It is sad that the feminists are nowhere on muslim misogyny. I guess they must be too busy hiding out in their Ivory League Towers to do anything.
jewel:
"In some cases, violence is necessary, but there must be limits."
Perhaps your husband, your daughter's father, should beat the boyfriend "slightly" to just beyond the limits of consciousness.
Thus spake Mullah Bilgeman.
PBUH
(Pour Bourbon Upon Him)
"I did not think our government had any business paying for the protection of Ayaan Hirsi Ali while she was here. She chose her path as an outspoken critic of Islam in a country full of fundamentalist, trigger-happy Islamists. The outcome was a given but she chose it. I admire her courage, but I don’t think my tax money ought to pay for her guards."
Dymphna -
I cannot agree with this. I can think of few better uses for my tax money than to protect so stalwart a pillar of the Counterjihad as Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I'd certainly rather have it expended for that than to pay a bunch of FBI agents to attend a CAIR sensitivity indoctrination workshop.
Of course, they could always buy her a 1911 and a case of .45 ACP and send her to Gunsite for a week ...
Dymphna: "western culture still condones far more family violence than you would think"
The case you described represents paralytic passivity, rather than the act of condoning. The event described by you does not represent an expression of Western culture but the symptoms of the death of Western culture; where tolerance has been turned into literal nihilism.
And as you hint yourself, if the violent untreated schizophrenic had been a woman, the reaction had been no different. Actually, if it had been a women, they probably wouldn't even have handcuffed her in the second step.
So there's no condoning of violence against women in this. But there's condoning of violence and criminality in general. And wife beaters never get celebrated and praised, as so many other violent criminals. I cannot speak for America, but in Europe wife beating is down there with the other hate crimes (it's in breach of one of the sacred ideologies: feminism).
The existence of wife beaters does not tell more about our culture than Abu Ghraib tells about the American military in general. Nevertheless, both things are regrettable. And in the former case, as you pointed out, it is often not dealt with as properly as in the latter; which is a disgrace (and the effect of our glossocracy).
Conservative Swede:
And wife beaters never get celebrated and praised...
I wish. American rap music, popular among all the races in the American underclass does indeed celebrate hitting women. Only they aren't called women or girls, they are "ho's"--i.e., whores.
And the whore attire so popular among teenage girls reflects this trend. Abuse of adolescent girls by their boyfriends is supposed to be a sign of affection:
"Jealousy means he loves me."
Casual violence is on the uptick; we now have 'trash and dash' or 'slash and dash' as pasttimes for bored "youths." In a nearby university town with some limited Mexican immigration, once popular places are becoming no-go areas because of the random violence at night. And it isn't Mexicans; it's white and black underclass teenagers dressed in their ghetto gear and out for a good time scaring the squares.
Now the high schools in the town are banning large (and I do mean LARGE) white t-shirts on the young men at their schools. These shirts are the uniform of gangs in LA.
The police, who initially pooh-poohed the whole thing as random acts of violence have now taken to putting plain-clothes detectives in undercover operations in the formerly "nice" areas. It seems to be working -- though belatedly, since the city fathers and the police did not want to believe what was staring them in the face. The need to avoid reality is not limited to abused women.
BTW, lesbian violence can be every bit as ugly and damaging as it is in heterosexual relationships. Women are not as massive as men, but they sure are every bit as sadistic as the local bully and the variations of harm they inflict is phenomenal.
Having been a policeman, many years ago, I can assure you, if I had a choice between responding to a call for a domestic disturbance, or having an impacted wisdom tooth extracted...without anesthetic, I would have chosen the extraction every time. Each situation was different, with complex personality matrices involved, and either the man or the woman could be the attacker, but most often it was the man.
I will say this, after dealing with situations like that, and having divorced a physically and verbally abusive wife, I still despise and detest a woman beater, and always will. I don't care how someone wishes to justify physical violence, especially man on woman, it doesn't fly with me. I will always view any man that beats a woman as a creature undeserving respect or protection, and as an object of derision and scorn.
I heard a woman's screams from a neighbor's house one night, and ran to render aid. Her boyfriend, an alcoholic doctoral candidate, and someone that I didn't like, was beating the stuffing out of her. I restrained him, roughly, asked her if she was alright and did she want to call the police or an ambulance. She said no, she just wanted him to leave her alone. Since it was his house, only the police had the authority to do that, so I escorted him to the backyard, using a kansetsu-waza elbow lock. I let him know, while punching his kidneys with my knees, that everytime he saw blood in his urine, for the next few days, that it was only a sample of what I would do if he harmed her again.
She wouldn't leave him, no matter how badly he treated her.
I'm not going to go into, or listen to, any long dissertations, like the one in this thread from Al-Kholidy. There is no, and can never be, any justification for using physical violence against a woman by a man, except for self-defense. I don't care what cult or religion the person purports to believe in, or how angry or frustrated they are in their personal lives.
Jewel:
Outward Bound sounds like a good idea. Just make sure it's a sound group with good references. Some of them are, and some are sadistic.
You say you cannot understand your daughter's attraction to this guy but then you relate your own abuse and violation as a child. Unfortunately there is a law in generational relationships that is as firm as anything in physics: what is not processed and metabolized when it happens to a child will be passed on, whole and undigested, to the next generation or the one after that.
This "secondary PTSD" has been described in the literature regarding the emotional states exhibited by the grandchildren of the victims of ethnic cleansing.
I don't know your daughter's situation, but my guess is that she was very intuitive and observant as a child. Ninety per cent or so of communication among family members is non-verbal anyway, so she could simply have internalized whatever you hadn't metabolized from your own childhood. Thus, it operates out of her conscious awareness but has a direct effect on her choices. For example, this "bad boy" might be someone she sees as keeping her safe because he's badder than anyone else.
I would suggest that you read Judith Herman's book, linked to above. It's called "Trauma and Recovery" and is available in paperback in almost any bookstore.
Herman is a psychiatrist at Harvard and is well-known in the field of abuse.
If you email me, I can give you more reading and perhaps some referrals in terms of organizations, on line information, etc.
You are in a most difficult position, painful and helpless at the same time.
Bilgeman--
While the solution you suggest sounds..umm, satisfying, it is basically a tribal solution and pushes us back a little further from civilization.
_______
Paul Green--
You are not alone in your opinion about taxpayers taking on the obligation of protecting Hirsi Ali. Most of the commenters -- maybe all of them -- on that post thought it was our sacred obligation.
However, I don't agree with the foundational philosophy behind that good will gesture. It's simply more government and official protection for her would open up a Pandora's Box. That's how we got that boondoggle Secret Service protection for former presidents for as long as they live.
However, I would like to see a coordinated private fund-raising. We did it for Katrina and for the victims of the tsunami (and the latter *were* victims. Hirsi Ali is not). Money freely given from individuals is beneficial. Government money is tainted with the rot of coercion.
no2liberals:
Amen.
Dymphna:
"While the solution you suggest sounds..umm, satisfying, it is basically a tribal solution and pushes us back a little further from civilization."
It does? That's odd. I've always thought that certain of our tribal solutions worked so well and were so effective that we were able to arrive at civilization because of them.
Always reckoned that was one of 'em. Brother no2liberals seems to agree.
And BTW, since you apparently have a professional interest in this area, I have lived and worked in near-exclusively male environments for 25 years.
I have NEVER heard a fellow boast about beating his wife or girlfriend. Lord knows I've heard boasts about everything else concerning their female intimates. But that, at the least, seems to be a taboo that still holds.
Hmmm. "taboo"...tribal thang.
Majed Thabet Al-Kholidy wrote:
If a daughter or sister makes a mistake — especially a moral one — that negatively affects the entire family and its reputation, what’s the solution by such organizations?
Muslims could do what Jews and Christians do – shun an offending woman. A Muslim man could publicly disown her. In many places, a family escapes shame by disavowing the offending person and staying away from him or her. Shunning is an old monotheistic tradition; Muslims could start practicing it.
Yet, al-Kholidy’s comments also reflect why Islam is greeted with suspicion and hostility throughout the world. The actions of al-Qaeda are a moral mistake that negatively affect all of Islam and its reputation, yet where are the calls from the mosques to put members of al-Qaeda through honor killings to remove the stain of suspicion from Islam? Indeed, why hasn’t al-Kholidy called for the honor killing of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? Why doesn’t al-Kholidy regard the September 11 attacks as an embarrassment for Islam worthy of honor killings against members of the Muslim Brotherhood?
Al-Kholidy claims that a war has been declared against Islam. Has he ever stopped to consider that the real war against Islam is declared by al-Qaeda and not by any non-Muslim (unless, of course, members of al-Qaeda are by definition non-Muslim)? Has he ever stopped to consider that the leaders of al-Qaeda affect the reputation of Islam more negatively than any loose woman ever could? Majed Thabet al-Kholidy is a young man with much to learn.
My first thought when reading this was a memory of something I read a couple years back. A Hispanic woman who converted to the religion of peace stated that she did so because in Islam the men are so much more respectful of women.
I grant that they don't call her a "ho" or make rude comments to a woman, but I wonder what her feelings would be when she experienced the other side of islamic respect.
Men who physically abuse women are lower than whale feces at the bottom of the ocean.
Bilgeman--
I noticed my inconsistency in my reply to no2 liberals as soon as I posted it.
I guess my hesitation comes from the "taboo" of talking about it out loud. It is perhaps wired into the male psyche to protect the women, but in our litigious and feminized culture such protections are double binds for men today.
You are fortunate to have worked in a mostly male environment. It is not nearly as complicated to manuver in that situation as it is when there are men and women involved in a work situation. Of course, it's not politically correct to say that, so I won't.
But at least you didn't have to worry about sexual harrassment charges.
I liked no2liberals direct approach, but I am afraid that his neighbors just learned to be more quiet about the mayhem ever after...and he's lucky not to have been sued.
alexis--
I think the honor killings are reserved for women's perceived moral looseness. Other offenses can be erased with a blood payment of some kind.
It's a very complicated set of rules. Jesuitical comes to mind...
First things first:
THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN.
Be that as it may, rest assured that any woman who feels the urge to initiate violence against me will get smacked down hard. I will not tolerate it in either direction. Now onto this Islamic tripe volcano.
Fathers should handle their daughters via any means that suits their mistake; thus, is it better to use violence to a certain limit or complain to the police? Shall such women then complain to the police against their fathers or brothers? It’s really amazing to hear this.
In one neat paragraph, Al-Kholidy justifies "honor" killings and reinforces how shame should prevent lawful prosecution of spousal abusers. How easy it must be for those in a position of inherited power to forget that some traditions weren’t meant to be continued.
Next off: Extreme credit where credit is due.
Dymphna: In our country, we choose those with whom we mate.
This is one of the most brutally honest admissions of responsibility I have ever heard from an American woman. Thank you, Dymphna for your candor. I hope the reason why will readily become apparent.
Jewel: That is why what I see happening to my teenaged daughter. She is currently in a juvenile detention facility for constant violations of curfew and running away from home. Her big draw is a boy given to violence and abusive language.
I have a few questions for American women: What is it about the Bad Boy™ that is so damnably irresistible? They beat the crap out of you, they cheat upon you, they disrespect you in front of their friends and pretend you don’t exist when it suits their whim. Yet you still are drawn to them like a moth to the candle’s flame. You tell yourself, “If he really loves me he’ll change.” All the while not bothering to understand that by rewarding this lout with your affection you’ve already precluded any chance of him changing a winning strategy. Nursing your wounds, you repeat to yourself the ageless bromide, “If it doesn’t hurt, it can’t be love.” WAKE UP, if it hurts, it isn’t love.
Here’s a clue: Your bad boy ain’t gonna change. He’s happy just the way he is—thanks to your ministrations—and all the more so if you throw yourself at his feet. He’ll keep on hurting you right up to and until the point where you draw down a .45 and blow his worthless arse straight to hell. Should you dare to ask yourself just why the heck there are so many jerks out there: Remember one thing about these Neanderthal rectal cavities:
THERE WOULDN’T BE SUCH A HUGE SUPPLY OF THEM IF THERE WASN’T SO MUCH DEMAND.
Don’t even ask me how many times I’ve been given the female kiss of death, sweetly formulated as, “Oh, you’re such a nice guy.” Evidently, I’m so much like your brother that bedding me would seem like incest. Go figure. Consistency is boring. Predictability is boring. Fidelity is boring. Having your husband come home every night right after work is so boring! But, put on a leather jacket, talk disrespectfully of women, act as if the weaker sex is your next cringing victim and heaven help the man who steps between such a specimen of male chauvinism and the nearest starry-eyed female.
Bitter? No. Disgusted? Yes. American women, in particular, have a lot to learn about what they should look for in a mate. The fact that so-called “liberated” women everywhere are not up in arms about the repulsive nature of shari’a law speaks volumes of just how much abuse they’re willing to accept from their partners. What the hell, a supposed “feminist” like Germaine Greer has defended FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) as “an attack on cultural identity”. What more capitulation do you wish to see from those who should be most defiant in the face of patriarchal-based domination? Let’s get one thing perfectly clear, feminists need to finance a MME (Muslim Middle East) lecture tour for Loreena Bobbitt. Those village elders who have no problem with some witch woman using a freshly broken shard of glass to scrape away the most sensitive part of a young girl’s genitalia need to have their own sexual organs maimed in similar fashion.
Am I done? No. I’ll stop here only because it is difficult in the extreme to continue without using far more inappropriate language. I’ll close by saying that—despite my utter detestation of violence against women—I no longer stand amazed at how many wives and girlfriends get the crap beaten out of them. Feel free to ask me about how my next door neighbor was almost blown away by her disgruntled macho boyfriend.
(More comments to come.)
As an old feminist, one thing that's really shocked and disappointed me about the feminist movement is how it's morphed into pacifism. This wasn't always the case. Back in the day (late 60's, early 70's), feminists studied martial arts. It was assumed by all the women I knew, that we wanted to be able to fight back.
Now that attitude is rare among feminists, though not entirely gone. Now women in official positions are enabling violence. For instance, the Bay Area Women Against Rape have a program where rape victims are matched with a rapist (not their own), and she helps him understand what he did. In return, he gets brownie points for his parole hearing. In other words, naive rape victims are helping rapists get out of jail early, possibly to reoffend. These guys know what to say, they don't necessarily believe it.
After I was raped and nearly killed by a Mexican illegal, I discussed with a couple of different social workers and my therapist, who was treating me for PTSD, the possibility of my studying martial arts. All 3 women abruptly changed the subject. My boyfriend taught me how to shoot, and I've carried a handgun ever since.
Zenster, you're right.
I think that there is a spiritual problem here - some women, and some men also, are infatuated with evil. Why do you suppose so many women idolized Hitler?
First off as a Free Speech Issue I would support protecting Ayaan Hirsi Ali or anyone else targeted for death for speaking their mind. This BTW includes Muslim speakers saying things I don't like too. If they were threatened with death I would support their defense, from the public purse. Even if they say things I abhor.
Freedom of speech is too expensive to lose. So I support paying for Ali's protection for that reason. No one should face death for speaking their mind. Period.
Secondly, Zenster you raise an important issue. And Jewel perhaps this might relate to your case as well.
Theodore Dalrymple's "Life at the Bottom" deals extensively with abused women and the dynamic. He describes how a young girl of 17 with an abusive boyfriend is treated, and his discussion with her. He predicts the past actions (astonishing her, but he's seen it thousands of times) and future course of events. "I can look after myself" she protests. Dalrymple points out that men are stronger than women and she replies that statement is sexist.
One part is that feminism leads to overestimation of young women on how they can "handle" male violence when they are seriously outclassed physically, even if they learned martial arts. Men are just stronger.
But Dalrymple's main observation was that without a social and moral structure for relationships, and clear boundaries and limitations in how they progress and are formalized, the sheer transiency of them leads to innate violence due to jealousy. Women take the abuse as signs their partner loves them, and don't come to their senses until relatively late in life, in their thirties or later. The men in turn understand the transiency of relationships, they are often unfaithful, and project their own lack of commitment and exude possessive jealousy sure to boil over into abuse.
Dalrymple reports that women find "ordinary" men who are not wandering, and therefore not jealous and abusive, as "boring" and "lacking excitement." This includes his nursing staff who as respectable working women nearly all suffer from or escaped from abusive relationships. They too find ordinary men "boring."
Dalrymple further reports that the police in the UK do nothing to combat abuse. Even when witnessed themselves, only assault on police themselves brings action (matching what Dymphna reports).
What Dalrymple does NOT say but I have found (in my own observation about relationship patterns) is that bad boys have an overwhelming attraction versus ordinary men because of women's better social position.
If making the wrong choice in men is seen as life-ending or nearly so, with perhaps poverty and ostracism, then a Jane Austen style 'Pride and Prejudice' careful assessment of the merits of Mr. Darcy is in order. And ordinary men in all stations in life have advantages over the bad boy.
But if women have the perceived opportunity to simply exit any relationship, why 'a walk on the wild side' to quote Lou Reed is in order. Bad boys are violent and exciting. Particularly if all relationships are transient. The bad boys are generally more masculine in appearance and behavior than ordinary men. They produce envy (at least for a while) among female friends and peers. And the perception aided by feminism is that exiting from relationships with bad boys is cost-free.
I am struck over and over again how nice and respectable women got involved with bad boys that killed them. I don't think Jewel did anything wrong or preventable with her daughter's involvement with the bad boy. Natalee Holloway went willingly with her murderer (allegedly) bad boy Johan Van Der Sloot. Laci Peterson married her murderer bad boy Scott Peterson (who had another girl Amber Frye on the side). Laci Peterson married her murderer, bad boy Drew Peterson. And of course, Amy Fischer and aging bad boy Joey Buttafouco.
Excepting Fischer none of these women were stupid. Each seems to have overestimated their ability to control bad boys. And society failed them by not teaching women to avoid bad boys because getting involved with them is dangerous despite the obvious attractions.
What is clear to me is that reading Dalrymple, looking at the urban black population, rules of relationships, marriage, social stigma for unmarried women, costs of bad boy engagement have all collapsed. Even rappers notice and understand that to the baddest bad boy go the spoils, labeling women with obscene names due to this dynamic. Even a bad boy will lose to a badder one. Given the collapse of legitimacy in the UK alone (50% nationwide illegitimate) this is clearly cause for social concern.
We need clear social boundaries, expectations and social peer pressure among women to eschew bad boys, and an end to transient and jealousy-violence inducing relationships.
Dymphna:
I think the honor killings are reserved for women's perceived moral looseness. Other offenses can be erased with a blood payment of some kind.
I think so-called "honor killings" are a traditional custom in search of a reason for them. Men do it to show that they can.
My comments are aimed at Mr. al-Kholidy, for I would be surprised if he doesn't eventually become aware of what we are saying about him on this forum. He may lack the balls to participate in this forum, but I think he will know who we are soon enough.
Speaking of blood money, though, where is it? Osama bin Laden's father was of Yemeni origin. Majed Thabet al-Kholidy is Yemeni, so there is a tribal connection. Given his distant family connection to al-Qaeda, where is his personal contribution for the necessary reparations for the atrocities of September 11, 2001?
Under bedouin custom (and for that matter, Welsh law), the behavior of one's relatives is a collective responsibility. In sharia, the offense of murder is an offense against the victim's aggrieved relatives, not (as in Anglo-Norman law) an offense against the State. So, what will al-Kholidy do to ensure that Islam's reputation is not negatively affected by al-Qaeda?
Does Majed Thabet al-Kholidy have no tribal honor?
1389 to shorten up my remarks above, it is likely the innate preferences of women unconstrained by outside social factors that drive the bad-boy attraction.
Consider the bad boy. Is he not more masculine than other men? More aggressive? More laden with testosterone? If sexual selection is based mostly on aggression, will not an aggressive son by him do far better reproductively than a son by a man lower in aggression and testosterone?
This has been the nature of sexual selection until Judeo-Christian monogamy under the Catholic Church. Which posits one man to one woman (formally) and punishes mistresses (formally). It is not perfect. But it mobilizes resources at the bottom more effectively through eliminating male reproductive bottlenecks and giving most men a chance at family and reproduction.
In a post-Christian society the return to the bad boy is inevitable. And the violence that goes along with it.
Dymphna, thank you. I know that some Outward Bound programs are filled with sadists, but that hasn't been the case in our county.
As for dealing with past abuse in my life, let me tell you, I did, and much earlier than my sisters, who are dealing with all kinds of anger and relationship problems. When I was 18, I left home for the Army, but I had bottled up all this self pity and anger for many years. I was lucky that my best friend knew a psychologist who counselled me for quite a while without me having to pay him. I knew I was able to go on with my life, when 3 years later, I met a wonderful man, and when I told him what had happened to me and my sisters, he wept. That was 25 years ago. We kept our daughters away from Grampa's lap, and luckily he lives in another state many thousands of miles.
I talked to the girls when they were old enough to understand sexual matters, and having done this helped to keep my eldest daughterss on the straight and narrow. They have been able to discern for themselves situations which might arise and to either avoid them or assert themselves with deadly force, if necessary.
My middle child has gone prodigal, however, and now she feels trapped and that she absolutely needs this boy, no matter how badly he treats her.
CS: "And wife beaters never get celebrated and praised..."
Dymphna: "I wish. American rap music, popular among all the races in the American underclass does indeed celebrate hitting women. Only they aren't called women or girls, they are "ho's"--i.e., whores."
I was speaking of Western culture! If you are going to include rap music in that, you might as well include Islam, which is just as present among us. Whatever black Americans make up, it does not count as Western culture in my book. And if whatever black Americans make up, such rap music, officially belong to Western culture (because the Americans say so), then I hereby officially denounce Western culture, and will only refer to white culture (the two things used to be more or less synonyms until recently).
Furthermore, in this rap-music-version-of-Western-culture, it's still a hate crime if a white man beats a woman. You will have to be black or brown (or possibly a wigger) to get celebrated. So this is just the usual PC stuff.
Another thing in this thread that gives me that decisive post-modern taste, is how example after example of the most brutal assaults by the worst sort of alcoholics and schizophrenics are lined up, and how it's then concluded that any violence against women and children is the worst-worst-worst (a hate crime?)
A slap in the face gets associated with a brutal assault. A Celtic cross in the bookshelf gets associated with killing 6 million Jews.
There has to be proportion in our attitudes. A century ago we had corporal punishment as an accepted and recommended part of our culture. After WWII this was defamed, and definitely after the '60s. Today in a schoolyard, the teachers dare not even touch the pupils (even when they get physically attacked themselves). Adult authority has left the schoolyards and they are now dominated with those gangs in large T-shirts (or similar attire). Great isn't it! But the important thing is that WE are good. We are so good, so goodie-goodie-goodie!
Whiskey_199: But if women have the perceived opportunity to simply exit any relationship, why 'a walk on the wild side' to quote Lou Reed is in order. Bad boys are violent and exciting. Particularly if all relationships are transient. The bad boys are generally more masculine in appearance and behavior than ordinary men. They produce envy (at least for a while) among female friends and peers. And the perception aided by feminism is that exiting from relationships with bad boys is cost-free.
BING-EFFING-GO!
Only more mobile and financially enabled Western women are sufficiently "liberated" to the point where they can view these Bad Boys™ as attractive or enticing. In much of the remaining world they are repulsive and morally objectionable thugs who are only able to obtain companionship because women are treated as chattel. When women finally realize that unbridled aggression is no longer something to be rewarded, perhaps then, they will understand that decency and moral integrity are far greater virtues. So far, nothing of the kind is true. As W_199 observed: "Women take the abuse as signs their partner loves them". This is the "If it doesn't hurt, it can't be love" nonsense that drives many of the dysfunctional reformation-oriented relationships so prevalent in modern life.
What's more, as W_199 also observes:
"... if women have the perceived opportunity to simply exit any relationship, why 'a walk on the wild side' to quote Lou Reed is in order. Bad boys are violent and exciting. Particularly if all relationships are transient. The bad boys are generally more masculine in appearance and behavior than ordinary men. They produce envy (at least for a while) among female friends and peers. And the perception aided by feminism is that exiting from relationships with bad boys is cost-free.
[emphasis added]
Here we see that supposedly "liberated" women are nonetheless entitled to "exciting" relationships but not at all responsible for endangering themselves by consorting with flat-out scum. This complete and total lack of personal responsibility is pure horseradish. For women to whine about how "all men are pigs" even as they compete to be squired about by the most crashing of boars is not just hypocritical but depraved.
Some residual sense of honor and integrity that my soul clings to forbids me any gloating over the way these cheerfully whoring bimbos scamper after their bling-laden gangsta rap felons but I can no longer summon any sympathy for the broken bones and lives that are constantly churned out by such empty-headed promiscuity. As always, you must be very careful about what you want because someday you may GET IT.
Many feminists are getting exactly what they want yet, nonetheless, have the unmitigated gall to whinge about how brutish and unfeeling the thugs that they so adore happen to be. The attraction of these macho meatheads is so superficial, the depth of their character is so minimal but, somehow, none of this deters modern women despite how such lack of moral fiber historically has been nothing short of a death knell. To quote a once famous African general:
A man whose ambitions go no deeper than vaginal penetration is indeed a shallow man.
So long as such “ambitions” go rewarded with reproductive opportunity we can only look forward to generation after generation of thuggish gits and the idiotic whores who love them.
Just a little question:
Add to this whiskey's previous comments about "alpha" males, as the 'bad boy' is, and that of "beta" males, the decent man; and the question becomes: why should the observant decent man, knowing he faces social handicapping and biological extinction, give a damn what happens to women who choose males whose intelligence and character are in service to his dick and his wallet?
Kindly do not bring in Christianity in your answer as the professional church lady is really bo different: she has only learned to use the "church" mask.
njartist:
"why should the observant decent man, knowing he faces social handicapping and biological extinction, give a damn what happens to women who choose males whose intelligence and character are in service to his dick and his wallet?"
Because it could be YOUR daughter that makes that kind of choice.
Societies that do not protect their women from what is termed "domestic violence" are not good places to live.
(Yes, I know, that's "judgemental"
and chauvinistic).
And such societies are wont to lose their breeding females to other societies that DO protect them.
Mullah Bilgeman observes that you, like Mullah Omar, must have been asleep in "Pimpin' 101" class.
1. Having been raised a good "churched" male, the typical decent guy, I have suffered the biological and social consequences. There will be no sons or daughters.
2. The logic of my question should have been obvious: the decent man faces increasingly the very real fact that he will not have any progeny to worry about.
3. Furthermore, while you were taking pimpin' classes, I was given Ann Lander's sex books and being told real women "aren't like that." Yeah, riiight!
4. Women in this society have the power of yes and no. They have said no to the decent man for several generations; males who want to be eligible must conform to what the female of the species says yes to. The "breeding" females have been lost as far as the decent man is concerned.
5. Which leaves us with the classic phrase: "Frankly, my dear, [we] don't give a damn."
So again, answer the question.
Or, to rephrase the question in whiskey's terms: why should the "beta" male give a damn about the "alpha" male's women?
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 01/09/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
Zenster:
"Don’t even ask me how many times I’ve been given the female kiss of death, sweetly formulated as, “Oh, you’re such a nice guy.” Evidently, I’m so much like your brother that bedding me would seem like incest."
First off that last line is hilarious. I think this whole "bad boy" syndrome is not just an American phenom but one that covers Europe and Russia as well, if Brighton beach is any example. I believe part of the problem is that men have become so pussified from our current PC culture that women are naturally attracted to what is left. Unfortunately these males tend to overcompensate and become Hyper-males. I happen to know a girl from an upper class east coast family who exclusively dates black male thug types. When I asked her why, she stated "she felt safe and protected with them." She also said "they know how to treat women." I think she is nuts, but its her life. I used to be one of those "bad boys". I have never struck any woman but I can tell you as I got older and dropped my old look and ways my dance card has gotten smaller and smaller.
njartist:
"Having been raised a good "churched" male, the typical decent guy, I have suffered the biological and social consequences. There will be no sons or daughters."
You were castrated? What church offers that as a sacrament?
(Mullah Bilge considers that pretty harsh)
"2. The logic of my question should have been obvious: the decent man faces increasingly the very real fact that he will not have any progeny to worry about."
There's a lot of decent women out there who are thinking almost the exact same thing, but from the other side of the fence:
"Where have all the decent guys gone?"
(You hear that a lot in bars...maybe they shouldn't be looking for a decent man in a bar, and maybe you shouldn't be looking for a decent filly in a bar, either).
"3. Furthermore, while you were taking pimpin' classes, I was given Ann Lander's sex books and being told real women "aren't like that." Yeah, riiight!"
You wanted to mate with Ann Landers?
(Mullah Bilge is intrigued and scandalized)
If she wrote the book, she filled it with her own biases.
Ann Landers knows only what ONE real woman is like, or should be like.(She might be a total freak in her private life).
Put the stupid books down, get out there and hang out in the company of women...and not like a salivating horn-dog,or a chip-on-the-shoulder social retard, but just as a person.
I spend so much of my life in the company of other men that when I can, I PREFER the company of women.
And I listen to 'em, not because i want to do the nasty 24/7 with all of them, but because I like to hear their voices,(within reason).
"4. Women in this society have the power of yes and no. They have said no to the decent man for several generations; males who want to be eligible must conform to what the female of the species says yes to."
Ahhh, grasshopper! Your horizons are so pitifully limited.
There's a lot of ways of saying "yes"...far more ways than in English, y'know.
The "product" is the same the world over, chappie, what differs is the price, the maintenance and the service.
You don't like Fords, Chryslers or Chevys?
Okay.
Then why not go over to Toyota or Hyundai or Volkswagen?
You're doing yourself no good whatsoever by standing around pouting in the domestic US showroom while you could be happily motoring down the Highway of Life in a snazzy new Daewoo.
"The "breeding" females have been lost as far as the decent man is concerned."
If you believe that to be so, then it IS so.
With all due respect to whatever you believe, though, I know that this opinion is bullsh*t.
Ted Bundy, while on Florida's Death Row awaiting execution for raping and murdering women, managed to marry a woman and father a child,(a daughter, btw...Mullah Bilge is in awe at the Almighty's keen sense of irony).
Now if a guy like THAT can get some marital bliss and procreative success...surely there's someone out there for YOU, right?
Again, if you believe it to be so, then it will BE so.
"5. Which leaves us with the classic phrase: "Frankly, my dear, [we] don't give a damn.""
If you'll permit some constructive criticism from Mullah Bilge, lose the attitude.
It ain't very attractive because it reeks of Embittered Loserliness.
And the competition is so fierce that you have to do everything you can to help yourself.
spackle:
" I believe part of the problem is that men have become so pussified from our current PC culture that women are naturally attracted to what is left. Unfortunately these males tend to overcompensate and become Hyper-males. I happen to know a girl from an upper class east coast family who exclusively dates black male thug types. When I asked her why, she stated "she felt safe and protected with them."
That's a valid point. PC or whatever the Contemporary Cultural Modern Mind-F*ck it is that we are saddled with condemns ALL violent tendencies.
It makes no distinction between "Violent and Predatory" and "Violent and Protective".
The former is destructive while the latter is essential.
When you insist, as PC does, on being "fair and non-jdugemental", you will inevitably give unmerited credit to that which is truly bad and undeserved indictment to that which is truly good.
(PC is Satan!)
Bilge
Yes, the castration of the appetite is a sacrament. This topic has been discussed on Christian blogs run by christian men. It and the negative reaction by the good christian woman are the reasons many Christian men are leaving churches. It is quite something to be raised in this dogma and watch the christian women drag the bad boys into the church. We're not supposed to give in to the lust of the flesh don't ya know.
Didn't and don't go to bars. Have been curator, president, and board member of various arts groups. These organizations are mostly women. Mostly married women.
*************
This of course brings me back to some advice a travelling preacher told mein the '80s: "You're a stud; just go out and get a woman." Translated, that means screw until you find the one you want. Unfortunately, the churched habits were to ingrained. It took over a decade to ditch the nice guy; by then, it was too late.
I think another part of the problem is that women are educated to believe that all men are indiscriminately violent by nature, and that violence is the only measure by which masculinity is judged. This, in principle, is supposed to allow the eradication of the masculine violent impulse in order to make men more like women, but the reality is that it's completely focussed everyone on violence as the primary measure of masculinity for the purposes of choosing a mate. Traditionally women would have sought a lot of other attributes - for example, loyalty, reliability in providing food and shelter and protectiveness. All of these have been thrown by the wayside as women and men have been battered with the idea that violence is the only measure of a man, so now these young women, trying to find mates, make the only comparison left to them.
I found this out from my wife, or rather through her actions. You see, she's swedish. Sweden is far more advanced with the whole feminist "ideal", to the point where some politicians have proposed a "rape tax" on men simply for being men (didn't float, so there's still sense left). The thing is, at one point in our relationship she spent a good deal of time trying to convince me - and herself - that I was this violent bad man in the mould of all bad men. Basically she tried to provoke me to violence to prove she was right (and she failed completely, I should add). I pointed to her father as an ideal of what a man might be like (he's one of the kindest, most decent men I've met, even cowed as he is by the feminists who run his university) and she eventually got over it, but it shocked me.
People do a lot to prove their preconceptions are correct. Women who have been told that all men are violent will gravitate toward violent men in order to provide evidence for the concept in their own minds.
Dymphna, Paul Green, Whiskey 199:
On the non-Government options for funding protection to people like Hirsi Ali, this is how Sam Harris chooses to do it.
PC may not be Satan but it most certainly is a parody of Christianity. Christians have faith that God and Christ exist. Our science sprang from the Christian doctrine that God created the universe with eternal laws that are not subject to change. Discovering and using these laws is akin to worship of the Creator. Thus fact and truth are central to morality within Christianity.
On the other hand, PC has faith that what is politically allowable is good, what is politically disallowable is evil, and that truth and falsehood are irrelevant. It subordinates truth and falsehood to political considerations, and is thus much more fundamentalistic in its mindset than even fundamentalist Christianity, for no sane, fundamentalist Christian will claim that black is white and white black, or that women are every bit as strong as men because to say otherwise is sexist.
When someone asks the inevitable question of "how are these politically allowable and disallowable categories determined?" then obfuscation is the usual answer. The factual answer is that Stalin's communist party internationale determined what was allowed and what was not. The practical answer is that anything that weakens liberty or strengthens communists and socialists (or feminists, greens, muslims, etc) is allowed and anything that benefits the USA or liberty or weakens communism, socialism, etc is not. Correctly identifying communism, socialism, or other isms as wrong and false religions counts as weakening them.
Since truth and falsehood are not part of the value system it is impossible to disprove PC under the PC system. It's also impossible to prove it. That's where the perverted faith of PC comes into play.
Dymphna:
One aspect of Majed Thabet al-Kholidy’s commentary that is so annoying is the Catholic Church has a tradition of providing special homes for unwed mothers so their children could be put up for adoption while keeping the young girl’s pregnancy quiet. Muslims like al-Kholidy may claim to revere the Virgin Mary, yet were they in the position of Saint Joseph, they certainly would have put the Virgin Mary to death along with her unborn infant. Reverence for the Virgin Mary indeed…
The concept of “family honor” being undermined by illegitimacy is not unknown in America, despite the drivel about America that Arabs keep reading in their newspapers. As I wrote before, Mr. al-Kholidy has much to learn.
ProFlandria said...
Dymphna, Paul Green, Whiskey 199:
On the non-Government options for funding protection to people like Hirsi Ali, this is how Sam Harris chooses to do it.
Proflandria-- I ran this information about Ayaan Hirsi's trust fund back in October.
In fact, I spoke with one of her lawyers (whose email and phone # are on the post). I explained that what the blogger world needed was a paypal button so that it would be a visible reminder to people to donate to her.
I've had no luck. And Sam Harris has to have a special page up with the info about doing wire transfers -- he can't just put up a button. Eventually, a post ages out so the whole thing has to be done again.
In a credit card economy, I don't think it works as well to have an electronic tranfer mechanism.
BTW, his site says you can donate by credit card, but I couldn't find a way to do it.
Someone enlighten me! I have all the same info plus people to ask re the status of a pay pal account at the link in this comment.
Archonix,
Interesting story about your Swedish wife. And yes, I know this phenomenon well.
You wrote:
"People do a lot to prove their preconceptions are correct. Women who have been told that all men are violent will gravitate toward violent men in order to provide evidence for the concept in their own minds."
A very good analysis. When I tell leftists/liberals how the Third World aid is counter-productive and destroy for these people, or when I tell them how bringing in hordes of Third World people is bad for both us and them and a waste of resources (given that we want to achieve something good), or when I tell them how running cars and buses on ethanol is worse for the environment than running it on petrol, I get an aggressive response. And they show very clearly that they do not care sh*t about achieving the goals they claim that they want to achieve. They do not want to hear a word about how to help and support people of the Third World or how to improve our environment. They even find such a discussion offensive.
The ONLY thing they care about is to validate their preconceptions. And any rational discussion about the issues threatens their leftist/liberal preconceptions. As in the examples given in this thread, their preconceptions are more dear to them then their own life and health. And they care even less about other people (such as Third World people). The reason that they are so hypersensitive isn't that they care about the Third World and the environment (they ostensibly do not care sh*t about that), the only thing they care about is their own preconceptions, and any questioning of that is hypersensitive to them. Modern Westerners are more egoistic and more superstitious then people ever been before in our civilization.
Conservative Swede:
And if whatever black Americans make up, such rap music, officially belong to Western culture (because the Americans say so), then I hereby officially denounce Western culture, and will only refer to white culture (the two things used to be more or less synonyms until recently).
I am inclined to agree with you that New Orleans is not part of western civilization, but that Buenos Aires very definitely is part of western civilization. Although there are pockets of western civilization in the United States, I regard America as a hybrid civilization; America has many aspects of western civilization yet is certainly not defined by it.
Many aspects of American society are either non-European or hybrid in character, and that suits me just fine. In fact, I hope that both Europeans and North Americans would be offended to lumped into the same category of “western civilization”, a phrase loaded with amorphous definitions that depend entirely upon who is writing. As much as I acknowledge my mostly European lineage, I regard Argentina, Australia, and Canada to be more western than the United States. And I regard the cultures of Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Chile, Cuba, the Philippines, and Singapore to be approximately as western as American culture. That said, Americans should not refuse to acknowledge the positive benefits of European technology, marital customs, literature, and political theory have had for the culture of the United States.
I do wonder – does the Swedish band ABBA count as part of western civilization?
Dymphna,
I agree that a Paypal button would be perfect... Why Harris doesn't use that option is beyond me.
That said, I just tried the "Monthly Subscription" option at the bottom of his post and that does go to PayPal. All yo do from there is log in to PayPal and continue. As you can register a credit card with Paypal to make payments, I believe that is what he refers to when he mentions credit card payments.
Alexis:
" I regard Argentina, Australia, and Canada to be more western than the United States. And I regard the cultures of Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Chile, Cuba, the Philippines, and Singapore to be approximately as western as American culture."
Thats a pretty bold statement. Which part of "American culture" are you talking about. If you are talking about "pop-culture" that is a whole different ball of wax.
"That said, Americans should not refuse to acknowledge the positive benefits of European technology, marital customs, literature, and political theory have had for the culture of the United States."
Who ever refused to acknowledge that? I thought that was the reason we were fighting Islam and the powers that be. And last time I looked there have been a few technologies that have come out of America that have helped mankind. I dont know where you live but what you have written has left a bad taste in my mouth. It whiffs of classic Euro-supremacy. Tell me where I am wrong.
spackle:
Actually, I come from the Midwestern United States, somewhere in the Louisiana Purchase. Far from being Euro-supremacist, I regard my comments as actually a bit condescending toward Europeans. And yes, America's "popular culture" is large part of (but not all of) American culture.
It's rather interesting how many Leftists refuse to acknowledge the positive benefits of European culture to American greatness. Have you ever noticed how much Barack Obama talks about his white relatives and his European heritage? Have you ever noticed Indians on tribal rolls who are of overwhelmingly European background who know almost no Indian culture yet proclaim themselves as Indian at the top of their lungs? Or Indian-wannabes like Ward Chuchill?
When I refer to America as only marginally part of western civilization, I'm not complaining; I'm bragging. I happen to think we've built something special.
Yeah, it is very funny to see Indian art: in most cases it is simply straight out of American Artist.
I once had an Indian artist friend, noe deceased, who was 1/16th Indian.
Alexis:
"When I refer to America as only marginally part of western civilization, I'm not complaining; I'm bragging. I happen to think we've built something special."
Such as rap culture...
This "special" American hybrid culture is what makes Dymphna say that "we" celebrate assaulting women. There is no such "we", not were I belong.
You are right. As you say, the term Western culture is too amorphous to be useful. American and European culture must be conceptually separated. And in Europe we should stop importing American culture, as in rap culture, Britney Spears, MTV, etc. The we I belong does not condone assaulting women in any way. And this is how it used to be in the civilization I belong to. To restore this state, it seems to be necessary to denounce American culture, as it has turned out. I do not belong -- neither historically or identity-wise -- to whatever that belongs to.
So you do our thing, and brag about it, and I stick to what are traditions and good manners here.
Is ABBA Western?, you ask. I think the question is better phrased: Is ABBA European? Well, of course it is. We have no problem in incorporating influences from other cultures for pleasure and joy, such as Indian food, Cuban dancing, or jazz music from New Orleans. None of this counters our values.
But rap culture is something distinctively different. It's transmission of values totally in breach of traditional European values. And it's hardly even music. Rap music does not belong more in Europe than Kwanzaa does. And in my opinion, it does not belong in the United States either, but that's not my call.
Rap music and Kwanzaa are just symptoms of a more fundamental phenomenon in the United States. I've travelled a lot in both North and South America, but I never seen black people behave so demonstratively bad, and been so proud of it, and so supported by white people for it, as in the United States.
In Peru or Puerto Rico I do not get the kind of in-your-face I'm-black- and-you-are-white attitude. In Latin America it's actually possible to be "we" with black people, there's not the kind of hard barrier.
I think it's once again a matter of those preconceptions.
Alexis:
"Have you ever noticed how much Barack Obama talks about his white relatives and his European heritage?"
Dont get me started on that topic. It seems that every half white/half black person out there is Black by default. They almost wear there white half as a badge of shame. Alas, I am drifting off topic.
Zenster -- thank you. Dalrymple says it better than I do.
NJArtist -- Society as a whole should be concerned about the bad-boy infatuation because it is destructive. It destroys the fundamental basis for Western Prosperity, that of the beta-male working cooperatively in large trust-networks on his own and own family's account. Slaves, serfs and de-facto eunuchs do not advance societies much. Imperial China created gunpowder and printing and paper money and great exploration fleets and did nothing with them. It fell to nuclear-family oriented Western Europeans to advance all those items. We need only to look to Mr. Majed's Yemen to see the costs of failure.
Women have ALWAYS had far better treatment than in other lands in the West. Bernard Lewis describes the fury and astonishment that Ottoman ambassadors had with the common courtesy that the Hapsburg Emperor himself showed ordinary women on the streets of Vienna.
This good treatment of women was not an altruistic bit of idiocy IMHO but rather the natural outcome of nearly every man being able to form a family and trusting to paternity under a society that controlled the preference for the Alpha Male by women. Feminists make a point that Western society controls female sexuality and they are right. Male sexuality also. Because the lack of control ultimately leads to the harem which is destructive.
We have not figured out in the Post-Christian society how to create rules, boundaries, cultural expectations to control the preference for bad boys or Alpha Males by women. That "Mystery" fellow and the whole Pick Up Artist community is an exercise in failure IMHO. A few men who can naturally fake being an Alpha Male will win, most will lose because they cannot fake what they are not. We will not and probably should not go back to the old social system which had numerous flaws, not the least of which was disaster for a young woman who made a young woman's foolish mistake. Neither I nor likely anyone else wants to put a Scarlett "A" on women.
We need a new culture that penalizes women by social disdain and being viewed as childish and immature for choosing bad boys. If a woman or girl is viewed as a 12 year old little girl for hanging about a bad boy, and mature and womanly and smart for choosing a nice, decent fellow, by her peers? Well the bad boy will make himself into a nice decent fellow or end up alone. Even more if the bad boy is viewed as a potential OJ/Peterson and pointedly abjured in clubs and other places where men and women come to inquire about each other. [Clearly also men and women both should be socially motivated to have fewer partners -- being so viewed as 'smart' and 'healthy' etc.]
Human beings are extremely adaptive and have many different cultures. Our own needs to adapt to encourage more male cooperation and maintain our beta-male basis or we face societal collapse. Christian morality is sadly dead, so we need something else in it's place and the role of entertainment and public culture IMHO is critical. I think it can be done, should be done, and hopefully will be done.
[One of the most dangerous trends in the West is the anger of the beta-male denied family under the new system. Not being invested he can hardly be asked to defend the Alpha's harem and that way lies disaster. That fellow 'Mystery' says often that fathers never taught their sons how to pick up women. True. He missed the main point. The fathers did not teach that which they themselves did not need teaching. Their fathers operated in a radically different environment that favored the decent cooperative fellow over the bad boy. And most men simply cannot fake being the bad boy anymore than I can fake being as tall as Shaquille O'Neal.]
"Western culture is too amorphous to be useful."
Allow me, respectfully, to call 'crap' on this one.
There are unifying principles behind 'Western' (or perhaps 'European') civilization. Principles that are not universally respected. Thing like respect for private property, respect for human rights and the like. These have roots deep in European history. If we go back some 400 years (Age of Reason/Enlightenment) we're 50 % there. If we go back a full 800 years, to the time when we started building those amazing gothic cathedrals, we hit home.
There's gold to be dug there which I don't have time to really work on. To get started, I recommend Rodney Stark: Victory of Reason.
Our Eurocrats, of course, have no idea that real European values have roots that deep. They probably never bothered to look :)
Henrik,
A concept that includes rap culture, but excludes e.g. Serbia, is of little use for me as a unifying concept. I rather speak of European culture. With that one you find more unifying principles.
Bilgeman: You don't like Fords, Chryslers or Chevys?
Okay.
Then why not go over to Toyota or Hyundai or Volkswagen?
You're doing yourself no good whatsoever by standing around pouting in the domestic US showroom while you could be happily motoring down the Highway of Life in a snazzy new Daewoo.
Bilgeman, thank you so much for injecting some truly witty, yet pertinent, comments into this otherwise morbid discussion. Your sense of humor is absolutely hilarious and spot on as well.
When you insist, as PC does, on being "fair and non-jdugemental", you will inevitably give unmerited credit to that which is truly bad and undeserved indictment to that which is truly good.
Congratulations, I have seen few better or more appropriate condemnations of PC mentality. Pangloss' analysis of PC is also quite good.
Archonix: Women who have been told that all men are violent will gravitate toward violent men in order to provide evidence for the concept in their own minds.
However pathetic this may be, there's probably more truth to it than any of us might wish to admit.
Whiskey_199: One of the most dangerous trends in the West is the anger of the beta-male denied family under the new system. Not being invested he can hardly be asked to defend the Alpha's harem and that way lies disaster.
I can only suppose that the reason such a structure works in Islam is because to oppose it means immediate death. Your observation takes on much greater significance when applied to Western civilization. The emergence of Alpha Male worship in the form of rap music and gangsta culture is definitely disenfranchising a huge subsection of more decent men. Their disengagement from enforcing what they perceive as warped social values is deteriorating into a larger malaise of overall disaffection in general. The immense damage this does to important outward personal conduct like rectitude, respect for law and order or patriotism cannot be overstated. Far greater destruction is wrought internally in the form of psychological deformation and cognitive dissonance. One can only speculate as to how much this philosophical maiming enables liberalism and its ability to embrace such blatant garbage as rap's thug culture or Islam.
Come on guys, there are plenty of decent, quality women around. Even American women, believe it or not. If you want a princess, be a prince!
Women driven for whatever reason to pursue low life men are not worth the time of day.
Somehow we introduced alphadog, betadog into this discussion, as is alpha or beta status determines the worth of the man. Not so! Good night! What a lie from the pit.
Adolf Hitler was an alpha. So was Josef 'Mustache' Stalin... Both of these guys had fantastic resumes!!!
Let's face it, we are living in a culture that has grown so incredibly shallow that it is hard to comprehend how we ever engineered and invented the toys we enjoy every day.
NJArtist: Be encouraged. Give it another try. If you live in the eastern US, try moving to Arizona, or some other similar place that hasn't yet completely lost it's way.
A story: My friend the intelligent process engineer didn't want no 'American Hog'. Read as 'feminazi'. So he went to Venezuela looking for a wife. They don't have Chevys or Hondas there, so I'm sure how to analogize them... perhaps as types of coffees... Venezuela didn't work for him. But, fortunately for him, the eastern Europeans have been moving over here, and he found a fantastic girl from Belorus. She is one living doll. A first class, and high quality women... a catholic.... They now have 3 kids...
What a wonderful outcome for my friend. By the way, she got a real catch....
We don't need no stinking 'American Hogs'.
Paul: Somehow we introduced alphadog, betadog into this discussion, as is alpha or beta status determines the worth of the man. Not so! Good night! What a lie from the pit.
The only problem is that there are a lot of women—educated or otherwise—who are buying into this moronic concept. Neither does it help that eons of evolution have reinforced selection of the Alpha Male. One would almost think—as has already been touched upon—that feminists are purposefully midwifing the rebirth of this outdated notion for the sole purpose of validating their desire to portray all men as violent pigs.
Decent American men need to stop being Alpha Male roadkill by trying to compete with these Neanderthals. As has already been noted, women that are fascinated by Bad Boys lack the basic intelligence and survival instincts to be good wives or mothers.
As to decent women who are frustrated in their search for a good man, they'd damn well better begin asking themselves just how much they've done to encourage decency in men. Playing hard to get and always letting men pick up the tab on dates only entrenches women being viewed as sex objects. Far better to be a little more direct—sexually aggressive even—and open about what you desire if you really are sincere about wanting a good man. Decent men everywhere are totally fed up with the game playing and no-win arrangement whereby women can skip from relationship to relationship out of whim and arbitrary choice. However hideous it may sound, AIDS is finally putting a halt to the promiscuity that reliable birth control made possible for women. Being less susceptible to infection, men are a lot slower on the uptake regarding this but that will only weed out the philanderers and I have a really difficult time feeling very sad about that.
Whiskey,
You say "That "Mystery" fellow and the whole Pick Up Artist community is an exercise in failure IMHO. A few men who can naturally fake being an Alpha Male will win, most will lose because they cannot fake what they are not".
You miss the point: regardless of how they say it, the point these guys make is valid (in my own experience as a Nice Guy who's tired of being alone): women are wired to desire the Alpha male. Like it or not, a woman with a choice between a "dangerous", uncontrollable rapper and a white accountant will always desire the former. She might overcome it, but I know a lot of bright, intelligent women that want an aggressive, macho (I hate that term) man.
In the end, if he turns out to be violent, one would hope they'd get smart and leave him for the accountant, but in the back of her mind...
In the 21st century, it might not make sense, but there are millions of years of evolution to get over. Believe it or not, agree with it or not, but it makes sense. And it isn't a theory that comes only from the guys you see on tv.
To bring it all back around to Islam, women like powerful men. (Can you say Clinton, etc?) If a man has a harem, it means he's rich enough to take care of several women, and virile enough to satisfy them. Evolutionarily speaking, that is a huge advantage to these men. Then of course, cultural conditioning takes over and teaches the women to accept violence as their lot in life.
Conservative Swede:
Personally, I am not fond of rap music and I loathe much of it. I don't even take "Kwanzaa" seriously. Does that mean I reject American black culture? Actually, no. Black artists and thinkers have often contributed much to American society.
Sadly, I think much of "rap" music is driven by white youths in the suburbs who reward the most outrageous rappers who use the most demeaning lyrics. I think many black rappers are really playing in a sadistic version of the old "blackface" minstrel shows. It has less to do with black culture than the black culture that sells well to white people. Take the market away from that garbage and it will go away.
Likewise, the "Chinese fortune cookie" is an American invention aimed at catering to Anglo-American prejudices one century ago.
I would thoroughly agree with you that Serbia (and for that matter, Russia) are more western than "rap music" (which I often regard as a contradiction in terms).
Still, I would argue that both "rap music" and al-Qaeda are essentially reflections of sixty years of white guilt, specifically in America. They would not be much of a threat at all to a society with self-confidence, yet they are deadly to those vexed with self-doubt. Likewise, Kaposi's Sarcoma tends to infect people with AIDS. The cultures of Europe and North America need better morale and pride in being who we are.
I regard American civilization to be a hybrid culture that has accomplished great things. We have some of the world's finest cultural achievements and yes, we also have some of the world's worst cultural disasters.
And just think -- French banlieues seem to have become the worst kind of melting pot, absorbing al-Qaeda and "honor killing", America's rap, French obscenities, and a general hatred against capitalism. Oh joy. (sarcasm intended) Not all hybrids turn out well.
C.G. Jung is said to have remarked that an American is “a European with the manners of a negro and the soul of an Indian”. His remarks may have been intended as an insult, but I still regard them as a compliment.
It's an odd turn this discussion has taken, ain't it?
God but I do love these exchanges.
"Blessed are the literate and argumentative.
For they shall have blog comments..."
Alpha male is a bad boy while Beta male is a nice guy?
A load of crap. Who told you folks these lies? Find that clown and thump his nugget for that.
Look, you want to see a violent Alpha Male?
Try stealing something or someone from him that's rightfully his.
An Alpha Male is the Captain of his own ship, sets his own course, and takes responsibility for his own destiny.
You don't get more "Alpha" than that.
Beta Male? He's a punk. An adolescent or arrested adolescent loser who hasn't got anything worth defending, and he knows it. He's not got the balls to make his mark and put it on the line day in and day out with no guarantee of success.
He's at heart a sniveling crybaby who is throwing tantrums because the world doesn't hold his breath when he gets out of bed at the crack of noon.
The essential tragedy of modern American Mainstream culture,(and I suspect this is true in Europe as well, to a greater or lesser degree;I know that it's also the case in Japan), is that it is being driven by those that market products to pubescent girls.
This market segment is when females are the most insecure, the most vulnerable, and the most apt to make really stupid decisions.
If you want the proof of the pudding, look at the media idols past that have been used to pimp make-up, hair products, clothing and other consumer hogwash to the pre and early teen female market.
It is to laugh And most adult women would cringe, if their Bobby Sherman lunchboxes, David Cassidy posters, or New Kids On The Block bookbags were dragged out of their closets and into broad daylight.
The Leader of The Pack "Thug as a Teddy Bear" is a gag so old that it has whiskers growing off it, man:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FxSM88H-G4
Look...stupid little girls can make bad choices...it's part of being young. This is fact.
We don't need to accept or validate their bad choices in the name of protecting their fragile egos, though.
Nor do we need to extrapolate from the fact that SOME stupid little girls never outgrow the phase,(and why should they when no-one they're listening to wants to tell 'em that they're being dopes?)
that ALL women have a secret burning desire to ditch the mini-van, the house, the kids and the husband and roll off into the sunset on the back of some motorcycle as "gang property".
Some do...a very few.But their rejection is nothing to cast yourself under a train about. Or stand around in Times Square in sandals and beard holding a sign proclaiming the end of Western Civilization, see?
From the Hadiths of Mullah Bilgeman:
"The Female Rule of Eights":
It is to be expected that an 18 year-old woman is still essentially a spoiled 8 year-old.
It is fairly common that a 28 year-old woman is still a spoiled 8 year-old
It is obscene and tragic when a 38 year-old woman is still a spoiled 8year-old.
If a 48 year-old woman is still a spoiled 8 year old, no one should really care...haven't we put up with quite enough from her by now?
I don't understand all this alpha and beta stuff. I certainly wouldn't regard a thug as an alpha, or an accountant as a beta.
If you nice guys are striking out with women, you're going after the wrong women. I assure you, I've always preferred nice guys. But then, women like me often get overlooked in favor of the flashy drama queens some men prefer.
I could be bitter, too, but I'm not. Because I've done well enough, even though I was never the cheerleader type. Maybe you nerdy guys should stop chasing the popular girls and take a second look at the shy bookworms. (Disclaimer: I'm too old for most of you, anyway...just giving advice.)
njartist:
"Yes, the castration of the appetite is a sacrament. This topic has been discussed on Christian blogs run by christian men. It and the negative reaction by the good christian woman are the reasons many Christian men are leaving churches."
Might I suggest conversion?
There's any number of other Christian faiths that are quite keen on procreation...in fact, they pester passersby and block traffic about abortion when they're "gettin their Righteousness on".
"Have been curator, president, and board member of various arts groups. These organizations are mostly women. Mostly married women."
Ahh, I see. I think a lot of your problem is occupational. If you were a poo-bah in that field, then it's highly likely that the good matrons may have considered you queer,(NTTAWWT).
Or you might be one of those poor guys who just happen to set off women's "gaydar".
Too bad you weren't a cop...the Boys in Blue are not usually at a loss for attractive female company.
(Violent and Protective Alpha).
" Unfortunately, the churched habits were to ingrained. It took over a decade to ditch the nice guy; by then, it was too late."
It is never too late, bubba:
http://estb.msn.com/i/81/F811CA66AA66CDEAC424F1A62277F.jpg
A quick note to the Euros here discussing Rap music:
Don't read too much into it.
Rap music is popular today for the same reason that minstrel shows, jazz, and blues were in their days:
Talented black musicians and songwriters in poverty are the easiest pool of musical talent to exploit.
And if you really hate the stuff and want to wean your kids away from it, start borrowing and listening to their downloads.
Discuss their music approvingly with them...and most importantly, with their friends.
Listen to their friends' downloads too(You might even find some stuff you like...there ARE talented artists producing rap).
For a while, you'll be the "cool" parent, but if enough parents turn "cool", then kids will abandon that ship faster than you can say "boo!".
Then they'll discover "Afro-Klezmer" or something even more irritating to you,(that is produced by similarly musically gifted exploitable resources).
Don't ANY of you remember your own adolescence?
Fact of the matter is, Rap died the day "Yo, MTV Raps!" aired in America.
That was August of 1988.
Bilgeman:
"Talented black musicians and songwriters in poverty are the easiest pool of musical talent to exploit."
Yes, the Capitalist system is of course the real source of rap culture. Dang!
And what was that? Musical talent? Talent?? Musical?????? Are you deaf? Or is it you mind and soul that are so thoroughly destroyed by post-modern liberalism?
Latte,
"I don't understand all this alpha and beta stuff."
I agree that it's taken a bit far.
"I certainly wouldn't regard a thug as an alpha, or an accountant as a beta."
Remember Clark Kent!
Mullah Bilgeman: Look, you want to see a violent Alpha Male? Try stealing something or someone from him that's rightfully his. An Alpha Male is the Captain of his own ship, sets his own course, and takes responsibility for his own destiny. You don't get more "Alpha" than that.
Beta Male? He's a punk. An adolescent or arrested adolescent loser who hasn't got anything worth defending, and he knows it. He's not got the balls to make his mark and put it on the line day in and day out with no guarantee of success. He's at heart a sniveling crybaby who is throwing tantrums because the world doesn't hold his [its] breath when he gets out of bed at the crack of noon.
Mullah Bilgeman, you continue to impress me with your innovative reinterpretations of accepted reality. That's really the key here: Namely what is accepted or perceived as opposed to the actual.
SIDEBAR: If anyone doubts the triumph of perception over reality, I invite you to consider Ronco Corporation. Ron Popiel made untold MILLIONS of dollars by playing public perception like a first chair violinist. His Ginsu knives and Showtime Roaster were the alpha and omega of mass marketed crap, churned out like jelly beans and sold at lobster prices. His key marketing lever was the—now ubiquitous—“infomercial”. When average television viewers were confronted with a full half-hour program devoted to a single product they were all too often convinced—on that basis alone—that Ronco’s products had to be of value. After all, not even the biggest television advertisers afforded themselves such lavish programming, even if it was at 2:00AM in the morning.
Keep in mind how if the average Fortune 500 company delegated a similar percentage of earnings to television advertising, that shareholders would drop their stock like a live grenade. No viable industrial concern could possibly afford to spend such a huge percentage of revenues on televised marketing and hope to survive. Yet, for Ronco, they could not possibly turn a profit without it. What does this tell you?
Answer? IT IS ALL ABOUT “PERCEIVED VALUE”
By controlling audience and, hence, consumer perception, Ron Popiel managed to confer wholly unwarranted value upon what were—in reality—products of no more worth than a five-minute-toy. Keep this in mind as the importance of perception is explored even further in this thread.
Mullah Bilgeman, you correctly note how so much of Madison Avenue is chasing after prepubescent upper middle class white girls and, by the way, that statement happens to work on all levels. By ignoring the real source of wealth—namely, the workingman and, now, the workingwoman as well—these marketing gurus attempt to artificially neuter real Alpha Males and enthrone the far more easily manipulated Betas. Be it insecure teenyboppers or bored suburban wiggers with dangerous quantities of spare time and cash, both have seen their sense of self-importance purposefully over-inflated by slick mass marketing machines.
I cheerfully admit that you are absolutely right about who the real Alpha Male is. The larger problem is that moneyed interests have ordained witless and ineffectual Betas as the de facto Alphas solely for the purpose of fleecing them all the better. In a recent Belmont Club thread Whiskey_199 noted how the vast majority of television programming and, ergo, advertising is directed at women and gays. Your average middle-aged white male breadwinner goes largely ignored. Why is this?
I’d wager it’s because us average middle-aged white male breadwinners—yes, I’m one—are nigh well impervious to the sort of transparently manipulative drivel that these marketing geniuses spew out 24x7x365. Take your pick, Pokemon, Beanie Babies, Thomas Kincaide, Domino’s Pizza, all of them—like the InSynch and Backstreet boy bands or Britney Spears—are mass marketed crap that wouldn’t sell for beans without the impetus of supremely well-orchestrated and well-oiled opportunistic marketing machines that back them up.
This comes full circle when one considers how—without media participation or, more aptly, collusion—much of this societal and moral inversion would not be possible. Neutering the moral enabling of those who hold actual power is a priority for those who seek to promote the Post-Modern Kali Yuga of inverted values. The depravity of elevating thugs and airheads to the station of societal arbiters doesn’t just end there. The media is complicit in far more loathsome pursuits. Keep this notion in mind as an even more incredibly vile agenda is brought to bear. Consider Noah Pollak’s piece, “Video Made the Terrorist Star”
This imbalance of scrutiny is not terribly bothersome to television journalists, because it does not undermine their ability to create gripping theater. News segments, for the most part, require simple, compelling human dramas that can be delivered to the home audience in extremely small packages. The camera demands emotion and plot, not fairness, context, or intellectual rigor. To the camera, there is no right and wrong, no terrorist and victim.
This kind of reportage has created a relationship of co-dependency between terrorists and the media: The fetishization of suffering results in a morally obtuse emphasis on civilian casualties, and the ensuing outcry from world organizations and opinionated foreign governments intimidates and hamstrings Western militaries attempting to defeat terrorists. And the more that Western forces are undermined by oppositional coverage, the greater the incentive for terrorists to maximize civilian casualties and thereby keep the media pressure on their enemies. Operating without moral restrictions, Hezbollah has endeavored to do exactly that — and with magnificent, arguably unprecedented, success. Because democratic governments cannot endure in conflicts that the public believes to be immoral, the task of groups such as Hezbollah is to undermine the Western public’s sense of moral clarity in the fight. And, in too many cases, in the television news media Hezbollah has found a willing partner — as have other terror groups like Hamas and Fatah.
[emphasis added]
In full keeping with Mullah Bilgeman’s sagacious distinction regarding who—in reality—is the actual Alpha Male, we now bear witness to the media’s unbelievably vicious effort at empowering the most hideous imaginable actors. No teenyboppers or wiggers are these delightfully thuggish scoundrels. When compared with the ruthless amorality of these new media darlings, even the most hardcore gangsta rappers pale into wimpish insignificance. These truly are the ones who can upset the West’s meticulously constructed applecart. As with all things anti-Western, the media cannot help but adore those who best represent the death of Judeo-Christian civilization. No better Nielsen ratings can be had than by detailing the catastrophic descent of white man into his well-deserved decline and extinction.
Thank you, Bilgeman, for obliging me to re-examine my own interpretation of this particular reality. The imposition of intellectual honesty upon each other in the Internet and blogsphere is a supreme duty we all have to each other. I can only hope that others will draw conclusions similar to the one that I have identified in the foregoing paragraphs. It is difficult in the extreme to convey just how disturbing these ideas are, yet I cannot help but make sure they are brought to light.
take a second look at the shy bookworms.
Darn right! They're usually more entertaining anyway.
Conservative Swede:
Actually, they are talented black musicians and songwriters. Their real talent is in generating revenue.
The music industry doesn't exist to create the best music, or even good music; it's about generating revenue. If the garbage sells better than the good stuff, it's the garbage that will get mass marketed. That's capitalism.
If parents and teachers got more visibly annoyed by poetry readings than by pimp rap, I'm confident we'd be hearing a lot of poetry readings on the airwaves soon.
Manure can attract flies at least as well as honey.
Alexis, I do see your point, but what the big labels are doing isn't capitalism as such. They're colluding the limit the market through the big media agencies (RIAA and MPAA in the US, for example) and, frankly, they don't sell that much. CD sales have been dropping year on year for the past decade, possibly even longer, as the price doesn't reflect the quality. It's possible to get a number one hit with a fraction of the sales you'd require to get there in the 1970s or even the 80s because there are so few people buying the product.
zenster:
"If anyone doubts the triumph of perception over reality, I invite you to consider Ronco Corporation."
That's a good 'un, but I think I can offer an even better example.
Late 1980's Mike Tyson Pay-Per-View Boxing Matches.
For our Euro audience,(or those who weren't in that media market), in his prime in the late 1980's, Mike Tyson would consistently knock out whatever hapless palooka happened to be served up to him in the first round. These matches were only televised on a "Pay-Per-View" basis, and if memory serves, the average fee for what would fairly predictably amount to never more than 3 minutes of actual boxing was in the neighborhood of $75.00 a pop.
You might think that that was a ripoff, but Lordy, how the money rolled in! The suckers lined up around the block three ranks deep to pay the fare for a very short ride. I kid you not.
" No teenyboppers or wiggers are these delightfully thuggish scoundrels. When compared with the ruthless amorality of these new media darlings, even the most hardcore gangsta rappers pale into wimpish insignificance. "
Props to you, zenster, you followed that scent trail from where I left off right up to the tree that skunk is hiding in.
Certainly the Palestinians are giving their suicide bombers the local version of the "Teen Heartthrob" treatment.
(Like the anti-Bobby Sherman from a very twisted alternate universe:
http://www.bobbyshermanfanclub.net/).
But let's follow that scent trail backwards to find out where this skunk crossed our path.
The teenybopper market,(and it is by no means one exclusively limited to upper middle-class white girls...watch "Moesha" much?), is lucrative for a very simple and concrete reason:
Fathers,in this culture, dote upon,(and spoil the crap out of), their daughters.
"Princess" might be getting her belly-button pierced..."just like Britney",...(excuse me a moment while I perform the ritual cleansing of myself for uttering a blasphemy)...
...but it's Daddy's money that's buying her the "bling".
In some ways, we have created the marketing machine that is being co-opted by the Jihadist for his propaganda.
And like illegal immigration enforcement vs. Homeland Security, we can pretty well predict who's going to score a first-round knockout and who is going to wake up on the canvas when there's a lucrative market to be exploited, right?
(Dubai Ports World sale approval, anyone? Mexican NAFTA truckers?)
I don't think that this was done with that end in mind, because frankly, people, taken as a whole, aren't that smart...just opportunistic as all get out.
The market, and marketing, is a "values neutral" phenomenon. So like a loaded handgun, if YOU don't learn how, and grow the stones, to use it for your own benefit, then you will be at the mercy of someone who does.
Now I don't think we in the West are going to stop loving our daughters or throwing money at them to end their pouting and whining, (Mullah Bilgeman appreciates peace and quiet as much as the next Imam), but perhaps we can keep aiming that loaded mass-marketing tool at the Muslim and Arab world.
Maybe THEY can learn to love and cherish their daughters, too,(and earn their personal domestic tranquility with the latest Ashlee Simpson CD purchase, rather than grabbing a stick and the Koran and then beating the tar out of every dame in the house).
Bringing over a meme I was riffing on over at the Woodrow Wilson thread, we have, truth be told, been doing exactly that. And the Jihad is, at some level, a religious and cutural backlash to our penetration of their societies.
It's not a fine line from an American Religious Right homeschooling anti-abortion protestor to a Jihadist suicide terrorist, but let's be honest...you can certainly see the one from the other.
They both share an anathema to what passes for modern culture. And in many cases, Mullah Bilgeman cannot fault them for it.
The Jihadist has a more or less quasi government subsidy and a religion that, as interpreted by some of it's practicioners, glorifies mass murder.
I think, in this particular case, this is one of those peculiar areas where the cure is MORE of what helped create the phenomenon in the first place.
If Muslim and Arab girls start thinking that Jihadi suicide terrorists are total dweebs, then we might be able, through the diabolical anti-miracle of mass-communicated PC dogma, help morph those angry homicidal horn-dogs into bisexual vegan anarcho-dipsh*its living in THEIR parents' basements instead of flying airplanes into our buildings and blowing themselves up on our mass transit.
(Mullah Bilgeman would consider this, at the very least, a far more cruel and effective payback for the Jihad's crimes than a cluster-bombing. With the B-52, it's all over in a flash and a bang, as opposed to years of hollering: "Get a job and your own place, you lazy bum, and PLEASE take off that Che t-shirt" in Arabic).
But to get there from here requires that Muslim and Arab women be emancipated to gain the option of saying "'Yes!' to boys who say 'No to Jihad'"
We need to export and promote Western feminism into their heartlands.
And sadly, feminists are near totally absent from the vocal ranks of the Counter-Jihad, are they not?
Bilgeman:
"Fathers,in this culture, dote upon,(and spoil the crap out of), their daughters.
"Princess" might be getting her belly-button pierced..."just like Britney",...(excuse me a moment while I perform the ritual cleansing of myself for uttering a blasphemy)...
...but it's Daddy's money that's buying her the "bling"."
Observant visitors to this country, from the beginning, have noticed that this was "mommas boy" society.
In fact, I would say that Country Music is a mommas boy daddy's girl genre. Which is too bad because it is the last refuge of those of us who hate opera.
njartist:
"Observant visitors to this country, from the beginning, have noticed that this was "mommas boy" society."
And then they saw the Middle East... "yes, little Ali, certainly you will slay the infidels and spread the Word of Allah,(please tell your beloved father, my husband,not to beat me again tonight.)"
"I would say that Country Music is a mommas boy daddy's girl genre. Which is too bad because it is the last refuge of those of us who hate opera."
Well, bubba, Nashville just happens to be the product created by and marketed to, people who may be one or more of the following:
Christian
Heterosexual
Gainfully Employed
Tax Paying
Rural, (or would LIKE to be)
Conservative
Married,(or would like to be)
Opera Haters
and
Caucasian
Once you wrap your mind around the fact that Country is ethnic Honkie music, a lot of other things fall into place.
BTW, Welcome to "Nascar Nation".
CS-
The music of black Americans has been part of American culture for a very long time. Stephen Foster codified much of it 150 yrs ago. Jazz and R&B were great inventions of them, and while I hate rap and hip hop culture, it is with us for the foreseeable.
As to my commenting on Jazz, the Baron and probably Dympha know my bona fides.
Country music has become the music of the entire middle class because it evolved out of hillbilly and into a genre featuring great lyrical sense and well-crafted song structure.
The only song ever to reach top-40 status before being released for sale was If You're Reading This from 2007 CMAs.
----------------
I've never been in a dustup in my adult life--partly by the fact that I'm 6'4" but partly because of the way I carry myself.
A couple years ago, as I was nearing the entrance to a mall with the Turnettes and Turnson in tow, three miscreants near the entrance were harassing women with catcalls and truly vile language and suggestive looks.
I stopped dead and gave them my not-so-suggestive steel-blue stare and the fact that I was totally prepared to take action was in that stare.
After about 15 seconds of defiantly staring back they faded away--tails between their legs. They were nowhere to be seen when we left that mall.
I pray that my son was paying attention but he was just six.
---------------
Whenever the subject of bad boys and submissive girls comes up I always think of the old adage:
Women marry men because they think they can change them; men marry women because they think the woman will never change.
----------------
In a free society, there will always be some level of violence. Bill Whittle nails this in his Nov 28, 2007, shortest ever http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000167.html#comments">essay.
One last thought regarding the 'momma's boy' comments here--I think it's perfectly acceptable to affirm that we of broadly Celtic and Anglo-Saxon descent formed the US. Does anyone here recall what mothers did to sons who refused to go into battle?
My own mother told me the tales handed down from generations of Scots.
We practiced our own honor killings then--delivered by moms. It was a civilizational thing.
The next time your country music station on listen to the so-called love songs that speak of the man as totally dependent on his wife or girlfriend.
And I've been listening to country before country was cool. So put some peanuts in your coke and chill.
Mullah Bilgeman: Mike Tyson would consistently knock out whatever hapless palooka happened to be served up to him in the first round.
This reminds me very little of a sports filbert I used to know. This guy was also a Jewish wigger and his two obsessions coalesced in a cross country flight to attend the Tyson vs. Spinks match in Atlantic City.
Just as the contestants were entering the ring, my friend realized he had not gotten a beer. Scurrying off to the consession stand, round one's starting bell clanged as he paid for his brew. He made it back to his seat just in time to see Spinks laying on the canvas being counted out by the referee.
Over one thousand dollars spent on airfare and tickets to watch Spinks get counted out after a 90 second first round KO. It was only though superhuman effort that I managed not to burst out in hysterical laughter as he told me his tale of woe.
Mullah Bilgeman: Maybe THEY can learn to love and cherish their daughters, too,(and earn their personal domestic tranquility with the latest Ashlee Simpson CD purchase, rather than grabbing a stick and the Koran and then beating the tar out of every dame in the house).
Ain't gonna happen. At least not anytime soon and the clock is ticking down way faster than the geological timespan needed for Muslim culture to begin treating their wimmen folk halfway decent. Long before the wifebeating stops, these maggots are going to have latched onto some nukes. Nowhere do we have the luxury of waiting around for that day. Islam has to be lobbed onto history's scrap heap long before they get their slimy fingers anywhere near the Big Red Button™.
Bringing over a meme I was riffing on over at the Woodrow Wilson thread, we have, truth be told, been doing exactly that. And the Jihad is, at some level, a religious and cutural backlash to our penetration of their societies.
When you say "penetration", I certainly hope that you mean it in the carnal sense because Islam needs a whole messa penetratin' in the very near future. As to jihad being a backlash, let's dispense with that hooey right up front. Even if the West was populated entirely by devout Quakers, Muslims would still be calling for jihad at the top of their perpetually aggrieved lungs.
Islam is so brittle and fragile that the mere existence of any other culture represents a threat of monumental proportions. Muslims are prisoners whose only hope of leaving Islam is by going out feet first. Islam guarantees this and it is so effing brutal that only by maintaining a captive audience can it possibly have any hope of surviving.
I've come to the conclusion that it is a moral duty to crush Islam if only to liberate this world's Muslim population from its spiritual chains. Obviously, saving ourselves is a greater obligation but if any extra moral authority is needed, freeing Muslims from their pseudo-religious cage certainly confers that in spades.
While others are busy with how to be a cool parent, and the kind, I would like to restate what this is really about: Rap culture has taken such a prominent position in Western culture, that it makes Dymphna say that WE celebrate hitting women. Commenters here try to tell my that this is inevitable and it has to be so, because of jazz and yada yada. But it doesn't have to be so, and we do not have to accept it, and I don't accept it!
While I turned the other way, being Swedish was redefined by cultural leftists. In a perverted fit of hyper-kumbaya the nation of Sweden was abolished in the mid'90s -- it was said that the inhabitants in the state of Sweden could no longer be said to have a common history (like in America?). So now Swedish just means having a Swedish passport. My identity has been ripped away from me, and a new Orwellian one has been shoved down my throat, according to which I'm "we" with those Somali gang-rapers; they are just as Swedish as I am.
While I turned the other way, Western culture was redefined by cultural leftists to be a culture that celebrates hitting women. Once again my identity has been ripped away from me, and a new Orwellian one has been shoved down my throat. This time from across the Atlantic. I'm being told that I'm "we" with the rap culture that celebrate abuse of women.
Some American commenters here want a bigger part of the we that should be credited for the rap culture. They think I gave too much credit to black Americans. And I can only say, when this kind of thing get shoved upon me from across the Atlantic, it matters little to me how you want to share the credits for it. With America in the drivers seat of Western civilization, we have now come to the point where it's a culture that can be said to celebrate hitting women. That's what counts.
As long as this kind of things is emitted from America and Americans do nothing to denounce it and say "No this is not American! No this is not Western!", but passively accept it, while focusing their concerns about how to be a cool parent, Europeans had better look in another direction for a common identity. At least we just need to look just under the post-modern surface, and we know perfectly well who we are.
As a musician, composer and songwriter I find rap so alien and offensive to everything that art stands for that my feelings go beyond revulsion. Yes, the definition of "art" is so wide that it can contain rap. Still, the notion of art as refinement, beauty, transcendent skill and tasteful portrayal is largely lost in rap. Glorification of violence, degradation of women, foul language, emphasizing conspicuous consumption, monotonously repetitive passages and droning lyrics all overshadow whatever clever wordplay and rhyming may be contained therein.
Much like Islam, there is so little about rap to redeem its own existence that any admiration for such a patently offensive construct can only be interpreted as a character flaw. I've been to rap concerts. I've seen Digital Underground, Queen Latifah, Yellowman and Eek A Mouse. Only the last of these performers managed to provide some real entertainment. The rest were as forgetable as they were annoying.
Rap's emasculation of musical art is a perfect metaphor for the overall deconstruction of ethics and morals in Western civilization. Yet another triumph of style over substance. Another class of "music" is an accomplice in this as well. Turntable "spinning" or DJ performances where samples of pre-recorded music are interwoven to create a sonic landscape. While I have witnessed exceptionally talented individuals create astonishing blends of seemingly incongruous musical forms, I remain deeply disturbed that so much of modern "music" no longer involves playing an actual instrument. Virtuosity and accomplishment are taking too big of a hit for me to award the respect that I might otherwise have. There is an esthetic barrenness to such wholly synthetic or contrived work. A pinnacle of this is Phillip Glass foisting off three minutes of silence as "music".
Zzzz-
Who else here has the pro credentials of a 30+ year professional music career?
That's how I fed my children.
Glass could never have fed his children (if he has any) without academic subsidies.
Frauds were abundant in the 20th century.
Experimentalists like Webern were ceded credence that they never deserved.
Here is the truth. The truth derived from serious and reasoned thought.
I have never heard or read this elsewhere so I'm going to take credit for this.
And I hope you will take this to heart.
A scientist is a person who seeks to convey observable fact through careful observation and experimentation of the scientific method.
The artist is the person who seeks to explain humanity to ourselves.
Both are frequently misguided.
Even so, both are necessary.
zenster:
"As to jihad being a backlash, let's dispense with that hooey right up front. Even if the West was populated entirely by devout Quakers, Muslims would still be calling for jihad at the top of their perpetually aggrieved lungs."
Mullah Bilgeman observes that devout Quakers would not have produced, aired and marketed for export "Miami Vice","Baywatch" and like shows.
Perhaps they'd still be calling for Jihad, but not necessarily against us.
It is something we have been doing that has been subjectively perceived as threatening their society and culture and religion, and I do not think that thing is showering our dollars and euros upon them for their oil, see?
What else could it be? I don't think that Malaysian, Morroccan and Indonesian Muslims TRULY live in fear of imminent conquest by 5.4 million Israeli Jooos.
Our military machine? Perhaps that's it, but most of them seem to think that Uncle Sam's wizbangs are pretty swell when they get into their desert tribal squabbles.
Miltary campaigns,(such as we've had in the Arab world),might twist the governments into a tizzy, but the Imam in his mosque? Ali the carpenter on HIS native equivalent of a Barcalounger watching his soccer match?
I don't THINK so.
But if so, why would they take a swipe at those notoriously non-rapacious Australians and Spaniards?
Nor employing and/or edumacating them.
No. We have been exporting, and they have been buying,(and watching), the same insipid and ever-coarsening crap that WE don't like vomiting out of the TeeVee and radio and into the living room,(and you and I grew up in this culture...imagine the impact that our stuff has on someone who is actively trying to live in the 7th Century AD?).
"Abu Knows Best"...meet Al-Bundy.
Posters here have killed hundreds of electronic trees, on this thread, decrying how our Pop culture,(ritual ablution break!), is corrosive to OUR own values...breaking down authority, proselytizing and affirming values that aren't valuable in the slightest.
Now turn that fecal hose onto some schmuck's house in East Riyadh...what is "Miami Vice","Baywatch" and internet porn doing to HIS tidy little world?
His son is now a total mterosexual himbo horn-dog who wants a sports car, a yacht, and a pet alligator like Sonny Crockett.
His daughter doesn't want to stay wrapped in her bag until he gets her married off to his sister's son,(consanguinity is a greater flavor over there than in West-byGawd-Virginia).
She wants a trip to the plastic surgeon for a nose-job, a set of "bolt-ons", and a belly piercing so that that cute Jordanian boy she can glimpse hanging out on the corner from her dining room window (if she stands on the table and cranes her neck juuuuust so), will find her more attractive than he does Gwen Stefani.
And even his wife is nagging him about why she can't drive the car like that old bag Angela Lansbury and the "Golden Girls" do.
Remember that he and his culture have little or no tolerance for the stuff you and I have become numb to.
From that standpoint, the very WORST thing this clown could do is emigrate to the West to do some flunkie work, and thereby immerse him and his in the "deep end". Or send his young 'uns over for an edumacation.
But that's exatly what they've done.
And a lot of our governments have helped and encouraged them to do so.
"I've come to the conclusion that it is a moral duty to crush Islam if only to liberate this world's Muslim population from its spiritual chains."
Well, best of luck in your Crusade, but you might heed, to your profit, a Hadith that Mullah Bilgeman wrote long ago in an entirely different context:
"If you blow up the Federal Building, they'll just tear the ruins down and build another, bigger one.
But if you cement the toilets in the existing building, it renders it just as unusable, but not devalued enough to tear down and start over.".
Explosives are expensive and hard to get, cement is cheap and plentiful.
You want to destroy it, I want to co-opt and short-circuit it so that the parts of it that threaten us are rendered meaningless and impotent.
And that the futility of trying to ressurect those parts become manifestly evident to those who might try it.
We know that that works.
I haven't been accosted by Methodist Night Riders or captured by roving bands of Inquisitorial Papists lately...have you?
The aim should be to have the radical Islamists perceived, by their own fellow Muslims, the same as we Christians view those quaint little Christian sects that handle serpents and drink poison when they're testifyin'.
"When you say "penetration", I certainly hope that you mean it in the carnal sense because Islam needs a whole messa penetratin' in the very near future."
It's gettin' it, if it wasn't, they wouldn't be squealing "Allah! Allah!" so much.
And in the interest of full disclosure, the Mullah Bilgeman was introduced to the joys of carnal manhood by a Muslim woman.
True, under our laws, she would have been guilty of child sexual abuse, but I wasn't complaining then, and I'm not pressing charges now.
There are some absolutely wonderful things to do when they feel safe enough with you to unwrap the burqah.
Discretion is essential...and stupefyingly well-rewarded.
Conservative Swede:
How about this?
“Rap music” is western in the same sense that Nazism, Communism, Fascism, Jacobinism, the European Union, and the Thirty Years War are western. It’s a cultural disaster in rhyme.
Is it un-American? I wish it were, but sadly it isn’t. It isn’t reflective of what I want America to be, but it is reflective of a certain American subculture, especially the businesses that hawk the stuff and the idiots who buy the stuff. For what it’s worth, Bill Cosby has gone out of his way to utterly denounce hip-hop for the negative messages it sends. Think of rap as a musical version of drug dealing (which it lionizes).
But what is to be done? Censorship would only make rap more popular; creating a subversive subculture would be much wiser and much more appealing to the youth. And in Sweden, there isn’t anything more subversive than traditional Swedish music from various eras. Going “retro” is not only fashionable, but it is probably the only realistic means to assimilate immigrants (at least non-Muslims), for it gives them an opportunity to become sentimentally attached to Swedish identity.
In the late 1970’s, there were major rallies in America held in sports stadiums expressing hatred against disco. It was the “Disco S***s” movement. Just imagine a “Rap Stinks” movement. It can be done, and it doesn’t necessarily need to start in America either.
The Swedish Left has one massive disadvantage for the long term – it has become the establishment and it has become boring. So long as the alternative to the Swedish Left has a cultural backbone, there is hope.
SARC
My name is Charles Johnson. And I do not advocate violence. Unless that violence is directed toward fascists. If directed toward fascists, I agree with shooting these accused in the head. And by fascists I mean anyone who dares to disagree with me.
Please visit my little blog.
/SARC OFF
Pull together lads...
One of our own is under fire. Lionheart could use whatever donations you can spare.
There will be time to sort out whether rap is or not music once we have defeated the Islamist menace.
Let's not turn into LGF with the spite, please.
- Sodra
Mullah Bilgeman: You want to destroy it, I want to co-opt and short-circuit it so that the parts of it that threaten us are rendered meaningless and impotent.
If this was 50 years ago, I'd certainly agree with you. Quite simply, we just don't have the time. Islam is hell bent on destroying the West and is already groping after the nuclear dagger. We need to break Islam's ability to harm us and that essentially means crippling it.
And that the futility of trying to ressurect those parts become manifestly evident to those who might try it.
Knowing that you're going to die in large numbers if you so much as whisper "Allahu Ackbar" is one way of doing just that. Islam has had over 1,000 YEARS to make nice and learn how to play well with others. I fail to see what's going to make Muslims suddenly decide to become a good neighbors when they've never made the attempt before.
I also think you let Muslims off far too lightly with repsect to how offensive they find our entertainment and culture in general. You too readily excuse their inability to make any progress while most of the remaining world has managed to drag itself out of the stone age. It is not our fault that the Muslim mind is incapable of dealing with sexually liberated women or an open and free society.
The only alternative is trying to cram the 21st century genie back into Islam's 7th century bottle and we all know how that's going to turn out. Islam is an infant culture seeking to impose all of its own limitations upon everyone else so it can escape the obligation to finally grow up and start acting like an adult society. As Mark Twain observed about censorship:
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.
We should not censor ourselves solely because of Islam's ridiculous propensity for taking offense at just about everything. It would be far easier to catalog what does not offend Islam than what does, as that list is virtually endless. Muslims are skinless people living in a sandpaper world and they seek to reshape this entire planet to suit their absurd hypersensitivity rather than learning to suck it up like grown adults. Now, please tell me one more time exactly who's fault is that?
ConSwede:
"While others are busy with how to be a cool parent, and the kind, I would like to restate what this is really about: Rap culture has taken such a prominent position in Western culture, that it makes Dymphna say that WE celebrate hitting women."
Y'know, I don't think you "get it", and you're smarter than that.
Or you lot are being notably thick-headed about how to handle "yoot".
Any outlaw sub-culture that gains, or seems to gain, the approval of authority,be it parents, teachers or the government, has received the death knell.
I told you before that rap died in August of 1988 when MTV began showcasing it in the American mainstream.
That was twemty years ago, guy.
Catch up.
What specifically is negative about "hip-hop", ("rap" is old-school 80's btw), is what is termed "Gangsta Rap". And these criticisms have been around since the days of Public Enemy and NWA, also twenty years ago.
Ice Cube,(of Niggaz With Attitude), came "Straight Outta Compton" and went straight into Hollywood.
Even Ice-T, who attained notoriety for his "Cop Killer" release 15 years ago, has been starring as a police detective in a night-time television drama since the year 2000.
Talk about your "sell-outs"! He'd be "down tha 'hood keepin' it REAL!"...but he's got to be in make-up and wardrobe at 6:00 am for the day's shoot. GMAFB!
And then there was Vanilla Ice...the "Pat Boone" of Rap.
'nuff said.
It's DONE, Swede, it's dead and buried. What you're hearing now is nothing more than "product" as distributed by the same old number-crunchers.
I happen to be acquainted with some fellows in the Hip-hop business down in Hampton Roads. The biz has now acquired some features that are very much like the drug trade.
Guys who write and perform the raps, to get recorded and distributed, are signing over pretty large percentages of royalties to the older and more established rappers who act as "gatekeepers".
These new performers,once established on the game in their turn then collect the "royalties vigorish" from the aspiring rappers that THEY know.
It ain't about anything but "give me your money".
...and about keeping poor and working-class people divided along racial lines so that they don't develop class consciousness.
When you quit buggin' over it, the kids will stop buying it. When the kids stop buying it, the money dries up. When the money dries up, Hip-Hop/Rap will go the way of "Doo-wop".
Word!
You have no idea what you're talking about, Bilge. Enmity towards infidels has been a part of islam since the very beginning and has been the norm in islam for its *entire* history. Only during Europe's imperial age were the islamic atrocities and expansion somewhat halted by the might of the Christian world.
To suggest that muslims are provoked by western media to persecute infidels is idiocy of the first order. Not only is it retarded to use Baywatch as an excuse for 911, it is about time we start holding the muslims repsonsible for their actions.
But seriously, do you believe the jihad in Thailand is due to the influence of Thai movies in the islamic shitholes? Do you think the atrocities against greeks in 1955 were due to Doris Day movies? Do you think the atrocities of the 1800s were due to the writings of Jane Austen? The koran commands muslims to oppress infidels and that is what we have seen them do for the entirety of their history. Atrocities are part of parcel of islam. It really is no more complicated than that. For as long as the muslims look to the koran and their pedophile massmurderer for moral guidance there will continue to be violence against infidels and women.
The notion that western decadence inspires muslim violence is not only utterly stupid, It also proves a tragic lack of historical knowledge. Before the hippie age Europeans viewed the depraved muslims with contempt for their excessive focus on sensualism and their harems. It is only in the last couple of decades that the world has been turned on its head and people don't even realize it.
Exporting feminism cannot work by the way. Even in the west we see that ideology failing horribly among the muslims. While a few muslim girls become like Norwegian feminists *they* are the one who are ostracised among their peers. Even Norwegian girls in schools with many muslims become outcasts for their loose morals. And as the islamic influence grows with greater numbers there will be ever fewer muslim feminists. Dumping feminism is on the contrary one of the things we have to do if our world is going to survive.
Last_Norwegian: But seriously, do you believe the jihad in Thailand is due to the influence of Thai movies in the islamic shitholes? Do you think the atrocities against greeks in 1955 were due to Doris Day movies? Do you think the atrocities of the 1800s were due to the writings of Jane Austen? The koran commands muslims to oppress infidels and that is what we have seen them do for the entirety of their history. Atrocities are part of parcel of islam. It really is no more complicated than that. For as long as the muslims look to the koran and their pedophile massmurderer for moral guidance there will continue to be violence against infidels and women.
Ya know, Bilgeman? The guy's gotta point. I tried to tell you this as well. Pissing and moaning about every little thing and then beating you to death because they haven't got anything better to do has been the Muslim way of life for over a thousand years. There is absolutely no indication that this is about to change. To the contrary, with the end of ijtihad, Islamic doctrine has set up harder than concrete.
You seem to think we can just dump some cement in their toilets and that will make them abandon their house of worship. Well, they just might do that but it'll only be to come over to ours and crap on the carpet. It's what they do best. Wherever Muslims go, they leave behind the most incredibly tyrannous despots, mountains of skulls and carpet stains that make Bissell salesmen squirt. The only time that Muslims are happy is when they're unhappy and chopping off someone's head because of it.
There's no way to please someone who's only aim is to kill you except by dieing.
Islam is a culture of Perpetual Aggrievement™ and they wouldn't have it any other way. If it wasn't all the jiggling T&A on Baywatch, they'd still find something to seethe over about Jeopardy! You seem to think that we can isolate or excise Islam's nasty parts and suddenly the Muslims will all make nice and kissyface. So, please tell me, what part of Islam is worth saving? Praying more times per day than a frickin' mantis? Treating women worse than animals? Making war more often than most people want to make love? Chopping off heads, hands and bumpy bits as they see fit? Lashing rape victims? Ushering uncovered schoolgirls back into blazing buildings so they can burn alive? Lieing, cheating, stealing or doing whatever it takes just so long as they get to kill all of the Jews? What redeeming features does Islam have? Please feel free to name even a single one.
lastnorwegian:
"You have no idea what you're talking about, Bilge."
Okay...two years residence in a Muslim country,(and not in an Oil-patch expat "Gilded Ghetto", either), Going to war in yet another Muslim country, and starting on my third decade going to sea in and around the Sandbox, but I'm just an ign'int billhilly, huh?
"To suggest that muslims are provoked by western media to persecute infidels is idiocy of the first order."
It is? Really? Then answer me this:
Why US? Why the West? Why are WE in their Jihad gunsights?
If it was just infidels they wanted to oppress and territory they wanted to conquer, they'd have a much easier go of it in Africa...and that's a lot closer to their home.
I'm a retarded idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about...you must be a bell curve-bustin' soopur genius.
So surely the correct answer shouldn't be too hard for you.
"Not only is it retarded to use Baywatch as an excuse for 911,"
Can you think of something else that we do that is going right into their living rooms?
" it is about time we start holding the muslims repsonsible for their actions."
Ah, well, I'm with you there.
Why don't you try starting in Norway?
From what you describe,:
" Even Norwegian girls in schools with many muslims become outcasts for their loose morals."
.. it would appear that you've been absent the store while busy castigating Yankee rubes.
"But seriously, do you believe the jihad in Thailand is due to the influence of Thai movies in the islamic shitholes?"
I've been to Thailand, ace. There's a lot there NOT to like. Mostly fat sweaty Eurolosers on sex tours to come practice their favorite perversions...homosexual pederasty, chief among them.
So if some Malay Imam chops your block off because you were drunk in public and felt up his nine-year-old, well...I have no problem with that.
"Do you think the atrocities against greeks in 1955 were due to Doris Day movies?"
Say sport, who was it you accused of having a tragic lack of historical knowledge?
Turks having been killing Greeks and Greeks have been killing Turks since long before Mohammed OR Jesus Christ ever saw the the light of day.
You'd like to lay the latest round in that pas-de-deux at Islam's feet, you go right on ahead.
Oh, and by happy coincidence, there's a movie out about that very subject:
"300".
I suggest you go and see it.
"Before the hippie age Europeans viewed the depraved muslims with contempt for their excessive focus on sensualism and their harems."
What a self-serving crock. Europeans view EVERYBODY with contempt...even each other.
The reasons you were contemptuous of the Muslim world before the Hippie Age, was that Europeans were OCCUPYING the joint, lock, stock, and both smoking barrels.
It's easier on your conscience if you can claim that your victim had it coming.
I'm American, as I'm sure you've figured out, we did the same thing with our Indians.
"Exporting feminism cannot work by the way. Even in the west we see that ideology failing horribly among the muslims. While a few muslim girls become like Norwegian feminists *they* are the one who are ostracised among their peers."
Ah, I see.
Radical Islam and the notions of Jihad CAN be exported to Europe, and win converts there, but Western Feminism,(to name but one of our goofy notions),CANNOT be exported into Muslim and Arab lands and win adherents there.
You must be very highly educated to be so distressingly stoopid.
You, chum, have outlined the best argument I've yet seen for remaining impotent and meekly, if grumbling some, to the Dhimmitude.
You've convinced yourself that you cannot possibly take the offensive because you cannot possibly win.
You can't even protect and maintain your societal and cultural base, (breeding-age women), from incursions by the Mesopotamian Pedestrians.
Although when I think about it, that explains why Norwegians have never conquered anybody in any way, but have been themselves conquered.
While Americans have conquered, in one way or another, almost everyone we've ever dusted it up with...even ourselves.
It's been a signal honor,esteemed sir.
I will tell my Christian grandchildren that I had the privilege of having an electronic argument with The Last Norwegian.
zenster:
"We should not censor ourselves solely because of Islam's ridiculous propensity for taking offense at just about everything."
If you reread what I've been saying, I have called for exactly the opposite of censoring ourselves.
Double our cultural imerialism...feed 'em "American Idol" and internet porn until they become as resentfully impotent and passive as that lastnorwegian fellow.
Using every means available, including "jiggles and wiggles" on the teevee, drag those fools into the 21st century.
"Ya know, Bilgeman? The guy's gotta point."
Ah-yup, he sure does.
He'd rather "pooh-pooh" the armed-to-the-teeth and ready-to-roll on a drive-by American than take on Narvik City Hall about why these foreigners are threatening his daughter in and after school.
Maybe because if he did so, he might have to take up janitorial or convenience-store-clerk work.
"Knowing that you're going to die in large numbers if you so much as whisper "Allahu Ackbar" is one way of doing just that."
Yes. Certainly. That is one, but only one, arrow in the quiver. There are others, and we shouldn't ignore them.
To accomplish our aims, either yours of destroying Islam entirely,(and to do so would require a genocide, if you're honest about it), or mine, to neuter and tame the faith, will require conquest.
If we don't conquer them, they will conquer us.
But there's more 'n' one way to skin a cat, pilgrim.
Perhaps you want to fight. I know I want to WIN.
You don't need to fight in order to win.
You can win by creating a whole bunch of "last_islamists".
(although we'll need to create one more than we thought to make good the deficit caused by the disgruntled norwegian dhimmi-boy up there).
"You seem to think we can just dump some cement in their toilets and that will make them abandon their house of worship."
I don't "think" it, zen, the Mullah Bilgeman KNOWS it.
It's what Socialism and secular humanism did to the Euros, and is doing to US.
There are other fronts in this campaign, the governmental and the religious and the economic fronts as well, but my concern on this thread has been the sociological.
The idea is to poison the Jihadists' recruitment pool.
I mean think about it for a minute, how big could the subset of a society be that WANTS to become a human bomb, low-budget cruise missile or helicopter gunship-bait?
"The only time that Muslims are happy is when they're unhappy and chopping off someone's head because of it."
That's odd, because it was I who was doing something to HER head, and yet she seemed pretty darned happy about it.
Bilgeman: Why US? Why the West? Why are WE in their Jihad gunsights?
First off, every-frickin'-body is in “their jihad gunsights”, right down to and including other Muslims. Just ask the Sufis or Ahmahdiyyas about that. As this world’s policeman and the last bastion of true liberty, “The Great Satan” represents a prime mover against Islam. Even if we had never invented television or jiggle shows, our constitution and elected representation would still constitute utter blasphemy in Islamic eyes. They turn the bulk of their wrath upon America because it has the ability to arm and fortify the entire rest of the Western world against Islam. Put another way, they aren’t going to go after Liechtenstein first. Capiche?
If it was just infidels they wanted to oppress and territory they wanted to conquer, they'd have a much easier go of it in Africa...and that's a lot closer to their home.
Yo! Sudan, does that name ring a bell? Islam is doing just that. Long, long ago they carved out their toehold and infected Africa. Between decimating Africa’s population and spreading the viral meme of Islam they’ve already covered the categories of oppression and territory.
Can you think of something else that we do that is going right into their living rooms?
Yes, simply portraying women as equals, as leaders and as executives. That alone is enough to make an imam’s turban unravel.
What a self-serving crock. Europeans view EVERYBODY with contempt...even each other.
Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-!!! Point made!
If you reread what I've been saying, I have called for exactly the opposite of censoring ourselves.
Double our cultural imperialism...feed 'em "American Idol" and internet porn until they become as resentfully impotent and passive as that lastnorwegian fellow.
Hokay, glad that’s cleared up. I’ve finally gotten over my objections to flooding the MME (Muslim Middle East) with pr0n. It’s probably the kindest thing we could ever do for them. Buncha oversexed under-boinked idjits that they are.
Yes. Certainly. That is one, but only one, arrow in the quiver. There are others, and we shouldn't ignore them.
What is this, some sorta flamin’ harmonic convergence?!?
To accomplish our aims, either yours of destroying Islam entirely,(and to do so would require a genocide, if you're honest about it), or mine, to neuter and tame the faith, will require conquest.
Nope, I’ve already had that “genocide” dung flung at me quite enough, thankyouverymuch. Tell ya what, hotshot, why don’tcha take a little detour over to the 910 group (you may need to register) and scroll down the forums to #6 (Defense & Offense) take a peek into their "Counterrorism" topics. You'll find my monograph on "A Functional Deterrent to Terrorism". I'd sincerely like to know what you think. We don’t have to “kill ‘em all”, but there’s definitely more than a few that need a whole messa hurtin’.
I mean think about it for a minute, how big could the subset of a society be that WANTS to become a human bomb, low-budget cruise missile or helicopter gunship-bait?
Quite possibly, a whole lot bigger than you, or I, think. It’s something I’m willing to err on the side of caution about.
That's odd, because it was I who was doing something to HER head, and yet she seemed pretty darned happy about it.
She ought to have been. Unlike her husband, it’s more than likely you didn’t have to work her over for half an hour just to get yourself ready. Let’s get something clear, from what I can tell we’re in about 90% violent agreement. Our biggest divergence is in how you think we have a decade or two to finish the job of thoroughly polluting their puritanical little pesthole of a sandbox. I’m not willing to give them that much time so they can keep groping around for the nuclear dagger. So, do me a flavor and visit CVF's 910 forums. I’d truly enjoy your own reactions to what I’ve submitted for review.
More than anything, it’s been a real pleasure sparring with someone who actually brought a sidearm to the fight. Emkay?
zen:
"More than anything, it’s been a real pleasure sparring with someone who actually brought a sidearm to the fight. Emkay?"
Likewise. I have to go off and do my seafaring bit tomorrow, so I might not have internet access.
I'll catch up when I hit the beach again, in about 28 days.
Post a Comment
All comments are subject to pre-approval by blog admins.
Gates of Vienna's rules about comments require that they be civil, temperate, on-topic, and show decorum. For more information, click here.
Users are asked to limit each comment to about 500 words. If you need to say more, leave a link to your own blog.
Also: long or off-topic comments may be posted on news feed threads.
To add a link in a comment, use this format:
<a href="http://mywebsite.com">My Title</a>
Please do not paste long URLs!
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.