Thank you both for a very interesting discussion. The question of what to do about the mess we face with the evil of feminism is critical. I agree more with Janice on this one. Imagine you were an adult at a playground with very young children. One of the kids starts bashing another child with a stick. What do you do? Do you work on compassion or empathy? NO! You take the damn stick out of the kids hand and stop the behavior. Then it is time for compassion and empathy as you seek some sort of resolution. But the compassion and empathy come second, When you see something like that you stop the behavior. At this point there is not a simple way to stop what has grown into a feminist monster. But we can clearly speak our truth and call out the hatred when we see it. If each of us did that we would likely be in a better place.
As a therapist who worked many years with the grief and trauma of both men and women I agree that grief is an important part of human maturity. Without it we are primitives in many ways. Having compassion for our enemies is important but should not become a place to hide and not take needed action.
It seems to me that gynocentrism is the underlying element here that has protected feminists from any sort of accountability and at the same time has also been the fuel for them to do what they have done. Funding crazy feminist ideas is what has happened in our world and it has happened due to the gynocentrism of men. Our idiot legislators have poured fuel on a dumpster fire and thought they were doing good deeds for women.
BTW the research has been done and it is clear that it is fathers who teach empathy. They know now that the father's limit setting is instrumental in its development.
Very interesting and thoughtful. However, I would propose a simpler explanation for the evils of feminism: Marxism. See Red Feminism by Kate Weigand. Extensively documented and factually written.
Thank you both for a valuable dialogue, which I will read and read again. Just one observation I'd make. That has to do with empathy. In my experience of working in female dominated industries, and for most of that being a manager, women do not have much empathy as defined as being able to get into anothers mind/experience. If they had empathy a huge amount of sorting out fall outs and disagreements etc. wouldn't have happened and my job infinitely easier. No I think women are adept at expressing sympathy and indeed appearing to be sympathetic is a high priority. But what is actually happening is "projection" of their feelings into others. The results are a great deal of completely wrong assumptions about other people's actual feelings, what they mean by something said and done, or what actions mean. I really do think that the common assumption that empathy is a particularly female thing is quite wrong, rather it is that this belief means women are particularly prone to project into others and not take the step of asking or checking out their understanding. Sympathy is particularly important, and being seen to be sympathetic very much so. Indeed in my experience women find it nigh on impossible to follow the Christian teaching to give anonymously, even to raffle tickets or pennies in a box. And of course feminism is awash with assumptions about men and with ostentatious expressions of sympathies for women and children.
Shackleton asks: “How does it insulate its followers from reality?”. Broadly speaking, it doesn’t: they shield themselves from reality by stopping to think where their self-interest ends. Double think and stopping thinking where one’s interest ends seem to be evolved behaviours: it is easier to convince others when the tell-tale signs of lying are absent.
For example, when you ask women about today’s feminism, most will say it has gone too far. They will also say women have great power these days, with men often having to watch their step. Sounds like empathy, right? Wrong. First, notice they did not say that this was a bad thing. Notice the quick little smile they fail to suppress when saying women have great power. When you propose that, before subjecting a man to concrete consequences such as imprisonment etc, a woman has the unpleasant duty of at least clearly communicating that she wants him to stop doing whatever it is she dislikes, they will not confirm that, even if pushed, and instead start talking about men’s responsibilities. They will then go on to re-elect parliamentarians who push such laws. All of this demonstrates that their show of empathy was just a facade.
Against such deceit, focussing on empathy with those displaying this barbaric behaviour is primarily a way of confusing the issue and thereby furthering the deceit: it leads to evasive discussions, and away from the facts and a resolution of wrongs.
Shackleton writes: “To understand your enemy you must see her not only objectively but also subjectively, as she sees herself”. However, it should not be about an enemy, but about an adversary, as defined by stances on concrete issues. And it should not be about how she sees herself, or about understanding her, but about the facts, and about fairness.
It can still be useful in discussing these issues to give the devil his due, in as far as this helps to define the issue. However, you should not allow it to be used to draw attention away from the issue at hand toward other, possibly also meritful issues. E.g., in the above example, it may be recognized that a woman may indeed feel very uncomfortable, and that a man indeed has a moral responsibility to look out for signs of that, and both are important aspects in their own right. But that is not the issue. The issue in the example is not moral culpability, but formal culpability and it’s devastating consequences. When someone has so little compassion that she tries to confuse the issue, then that should be pointed out, not empathized with.
It is also true that people can be legitimately misled by an environment that preaches only one misleading story. So tell them the specific real story. After that, they may remain misled, but will have less of an excuse.
Is the phrase 'Matrisensus, the dark side of the feminine' a fancy way of saying 'F*@King Psycho'?
Know 'thine enemy' surely means realising that the feminists thought leaders and advocates are actually psychopathic. These people are not there to be reasoned with. They are power-mad and murderous. The increasing hardships of men: loneliness, unemployment, imprisonment, suicide are all, to these women, a job well done.
Sadly I do not think we will ever be able to overcome the moral Polarisation. The indicators are that it is extremely doubtful that what is called Western Civilisation will survive the next 50-100 years.
The only hope is for an extremely large group of people to have an epiphany and be able to stand up to the Spin Sisters.
It seems to me that morality--right v. wrong, good v. evil is intrinsically polarizing: why do we want it to be inoffensive or winsome? If we had a law that said it was illegal to kill children in the womb, or enter the country illegally, and the penalties were harsh to those who broke them, we would get less of the behavior. This holds true for race or sex based quotas, bribing elected officials, mutilating children, etc. We are progressively legalizing crime and criminals, this is the heart of the matter. If we do not have the will to correct our course, we will fall--and we will fall, deservedly. It is a loving thing, a compassionate thing, to prosecute crime; to confront and stop those who are destroying our societies. Have just laws and uphold them. It seems simple enough.
Another spirited exchange. Interesting how David is the dove and Janice the hawk when it comes to dealing with feminists. I hope you will decide to schedule another debate. You give us plenty to think about.
Food for thought, definitely. I, like Janice, tend to be a little more rageful when it comes to the way most of us just stand back and let the sorry human beings that make up the feminist consortium get whatever they want.
I wonder if what you call the matrisensus isn't a somewhat misdirected attempt at explaining a phenomenon better understood as the *true* patriarchy, which is that men do the things we do, as patriarchs, for the benefit of women and children and at our own expense. It's men that make feminism even possible. Feminists' success in activism will only change when men stop empowering it. Indeed, when we stop falling all over ourselves to empower it like goofy school boys trying to score points with girls.
Truly, a beautiful, well-reasoned, inspirational, and vastly informative dialogue. Such discussion seems as rare nowadays as it is wondrous to read. Thank you both - I find myself very much looking forward to reading David's upcoming book! 🙏❤️🌟
There is a huge problem with the Ender's Game comparison. What Ender learned, too late, was that there was a way to coexist with the Buggers. He didn't know that when he destroyed them, and, indeed, they didn't know it themselves for most of the story. In the end their goals were not, at their roots, contradictory.
This is not the case with our current conflict. The goals are, at their roots, even more contradictory than they seem on the surface.
Like both of you, Janice and David, I’m very ambivalent about this topic. The spontaneity of what I’ve read suggests to me that I should respond spontaneously. What follow are impressions, therefore, not a carefully constructed argument.
Although I had thought anxiously since childhood about what would eventually become my special area of research—men, masculinity, maleness and misandry—it was only in 1975, when the Vietnam War ended, that I resolved to explore all this in a focused way. But not yet. I was living in New York, and the war’s implications for me, for men, were still too emotionally fraught. Even though I opposed the war and diligently read Ramparts from cover to cover every month, my reasons had nothing to do with hawks and doves or Geneva conventions. I seldom attended sit-ins, and I was very uncomfortable when I did. I agreed with these people, see, but I couldn’t stand being in the same room with them. I found them, in a word, arrogant. And they expressed not the slightest interest in what troubled me most. It wasn’t the war but the draft, which applied only to men—and to men by virtue of maleness, not masculine attitudes or aptitudes. These guys all opposed the draft, sure, but only for the most respectable political or ideological reasons—not, of course, because they felt personally threatened by regimentation and death or morally astonished by this form of sexual inequality. It wasn’t cool for men to feel personally threatened or astonished. Being cool had something to do with bravado, with knowing what was comme il faut and therefore being in control of your life. But I, being gay (though understanding almost nothing about that except feeling attracted to some people without liking them), had no sense of being in control. In 1969, I left New York and returned to Canada feeling confused and defeated.
By 1985, on the tenth anniversary of that war’s end and after rejecting several alienating professions, I realized that it was time to do what I truly needed to do: figure out what it meant to be a man, whether I liked it or not, and why. Although I’ve moved far from some of my early ideas about manhood, war is one of the few that remain central.
I mention this here, because it explains my strong sense that the war between men and women can be understood best as a primarily collective and cultural phenomenon, not a personal and emotional one (although some people, for personal reasons, really do dislike other people and therefore want to afflict them). Yes, it is a war. I’m not sure when women declared war, probably when the MeToo movement broke out and vigilantism came out of the shadows. The weapons are words, laws and public policies, not guns and bombs, but the effects are deadly. The aim is revolution, after all, not reform. The goal is to destroy society itself (and, as I’ve realized more recently, every vestige of Western civilization), not only specific combatants. Unless you’re a pacifist, the rules change in wartime—including the moral rules that govern us in peacetime. I admire and even envy pacifists, but I’m not one of them. From the perspective of men, whether they have the courage to admit it or not, this is a war of self-defense and therefore what centuries of philosophers have called a “just war.”
From there, my mind wanders to the current war in Gaza. No one would ever call me a knee-jerk defender of every Israeli policy. I’ve never even thought of myself as a Zionist. But I do think that the double standard, which so many people apply to Israel, is both contemptible and destructive. These people are not necessarily anti-Semitic in any religious or racial sense; many of them really are anti-Zionists, as they claim, but only because their secular religion (a term that I’ve defined in detail elsewhere) is anti-Westernism. But my point here is that, for me, this is a just war for Israel. I can see no good for either side that could possibly come from a victory for Hamas. Therefore, I must accept a lamentable fact of life in wartime: some people or many people, including children, will suffer and die. This means that I support Israel in fighting as long as it takes to achieve the just goal of self-defense—but the quicker the better (to mitigate suffering). I wouldn’t introduce this controversy if it were not for the fact that Janice and David have been discussing the motivation of those who oppose feminism (at least the combination of gynocentrism and misandry).
What could it mean to talk about feeling compassion for feminists? Pity, perhaps, but why compassion? That would inevitably dilute the courage that we need to defeat evil. David says that he really means empathy, not compassion. Maybe that’s better than compassion, in this context, but only f it refers to knowledge (how feminists think), not emotion. Once again, that would compromise our ability to defeat a profoundly destructive ideology. (Actually, it’s no longer one ideology but a congeries of allied ideologies. All are closely related; only the names of targets differ from one to another.) Worse, it would confuse men hopelessly. They’re still mired in notions of chivalry, which make them wonder what’s wrong with them for not instinctively rushing to defend women at all costs. (Chivalry is not universal and therefore not instinctual. In the West, it was the product of an aristocratic class and revolved around, among other things, either pity or condescension toward the powerless—including the serfs.) I think that men deserve an explanation for what’s happening to them. And I think that the explanation is not one that will, or should, leave everyone singing Kumbaya.
Peacetime is another matter. If we manage to defeat the very powerful and destructive ideology of feminism (and of wokism or anti-Westernism under its many names), that will be the time for empathy and even compassion. The defeat of ideology, after all, will leave many people on all sides ready to seek and even ask for a better way of life than rage and revenge. I can’t prove that, of course, but it’s a possibility.
I want to publicly apologize to David for some of my over-the-top comments. As David explained things to me, I now realize he has a grasp of what's going on. What I tried to say is that I think his approach is too diplomatic. I've deleted any derogatory comments as far as I can see, and David has my FULL APOLOGY.
1. How can feminism be so powerful in controlling the culture and the narrative when it is entirely unjust and false-to-fact.
I believe the main reason is the men wanted to please the female gender. Gynocentrism is extremely powerful, partly because it is covert and secondly it exploits the male biological drive.
By each of us continuing in developing our own understanding of what is in front of us. We may not all be on the same page perception and direction wise but could agree upon one major thing - understand, meet, counter, manage, and defeat shabby ideology disguised under looming totalitarianism. Other manifestations for liberty are doing likewise.
One thing to consider - the irrationality we see is not simply an organic process. It was imposed upon the nations as a means of capitalizing on and exploiting discontent for other purposes - mass control. An element in society knows human nature very well.
Offer bread and circuses and let them duke it out
What we see in these pages, and others, is a reasoned adaptation to that which was forced upon us by the power grid. Although at the moment there be many approaches to making sense of it all, I'd say we are doing quite well indeed.
Thank you both for a very interesting discussion. The question of what to do about the mess we face with the evil of feminism is critical. I agree more with Janice on this one. Imagine you were an adult at a playground with very young children. One of the kids starts bashing another child with a stick. What do you do? Do you work on compassion or empathy? NO! You take the damn stick out of the kids hand and stop the behavior. Then it is time for compassion and empathy as you seek some sort of resolution. But the compassion and empathy come second, When you see something like that you stop the behavior. At this point there is not a simple way to stop what has grown into a feminist monster. But we can clearly speak our truth and call out the hatred when we see it. If each of us did that we would likely be in a better place.
As a therapist who worked many years with the grief and trauma of both men and women I agree that grief is an important part of human maturity. Without it we are primitives in many ways. Having compassion for our enemies is important but should not become a place to hide and not take needed action.
It seems to me that gynocentrism is the underlying element here that has protected feminists from any sort of accountability and at the same time has also been the fuel for them to do what they have done. Funding crazy feminist ideas is what has happened in our world and it has happened due to the gynocentrism of men. Our idiot legislators have poured fuel on a dumpster fire and thought they were doing good deeds for women.
BTW the research has been done and it is clear that it is fathers who teach empathy. They know now that the father's limit setting is instrumental in its development.
Very interesting and thoughtful. However, I would propose a simpler explanation for the evils of feminism: Marxism. See Red Feminism by Kate Weigand. Extensively documented and factually written.
>>I really like the analysis of Reacher versus Columbo
Keeping in mind there was also Dirty Harry.
Thank you both for a valuable dialogue, which I will read and read again. Just one observation I'd make. That has to do with empathy. In my experience of working in female dominated industries, and for most of that being a manager, women do not have much empathy as defined as being able to get into anothers mind/experience. If they had empathy a huge amount of sorting out fall outs and disagreements etc. wouldn't have happened and my job infinitely easier. No I think women are adept at expressing sympathy and indeed appearing to be sympathetic is a high priority. But what is actually happening is "projection" of their feelings into others. The results are a great deal of completely wrong assumptions about other people's actual feelings, what they mean by something said and done, or what actions mean. I really do think that the common assumption that empathy is a particularly female thing is quite wrong, rather it is that this belief means women are particularly prone to project into others and not take the step of asking or checking out their understanding. Sympathy is particularly important, and being seen to be sympathetic very much so. Indeed in my experience women find it nigh on impossible to follow the Christian teaching to give anonymously, even to raffle tickets or pennies in a box. And of course feminism is awash with assumptions about men and with ostentatious expressions of sympathies for women and children.
Shackleton asks: “How does it insulate its followers from reality?”. Broadly speaking, it doesn’t: they shield themselves from reality by stopping to think where their self-interest ends. Double think and stopping thinking where one’s interest ends seem to be evolved behaviours: it is easier to convince others when the tell-tale signs of lying are absent.
For example, when you ask women about today’s feminism, most will say it has gone too far. They will also say women have great power these days, with men often having to watch their step. Sounds like empathy, right? Wrong. First, notice they did not say that this was a bad thing. Notice the quick little smile they fail to suppress when saying women have great power. When you propose that, before subjecting a man to concrete consequences such as imprisonment etc, a woman has the unpleasant duty of at least clearly communicating that she wants him to stop doing whatever it is she dislikes, they will not confirm that, even if pushed, and instead start talking about men’s responsibilities. They will then go on to re-elect parliamentarians who push such laws. All of this demonstrates that their show of empathy was just a facade.
Against such deceit, focussing on empathy with those displaying this barbaric behaviour is primarily a way of confusing the issue and thereby furthering the deceit: it leads to evasive discussions, and away from the facts and a resolution of wrongs.
Shackleton writes: “To understand your enemy you must see her not only objectively but also subjectively, as she sees herself”. However, it should not be about an enemy, but about an adversary, as defined by stances on concrete issues. And it should not be about how she sees herself, or about understanding her, but about the facts, and about fairness.
It can still be useful in discussing these issues to give the devil his due, in as far as this helps to define the issue. However, you should not allow it to be used to draw attention away from the issue at hand toward other, possibly also meritful issues. E.g., in the above example, it may be recognized that a woman may indeed feel very uncomfortable, and that a man indeed has a moral responsibility to look out for signs of that, and both are important aspects in their own right. But that is not the issue. The issue in the example is not moral culpability, but formal culpability and it’s devastating consequences. When someone has so little compassion that she tries to confuse the issue, then that should be pointed out, not empathized with.
It is also true that people can be legitimately misled by an environment that preaches only one misleading story. So tell them the specific real story. After that, they may remain misled, but will have less of an excuse.
Is the phrase 'Matrisensus, the dark side of the feminine' a fancy way of saying 'F*@King Psycho'?
Know 'thine enemy' surely means realising that the feminists thought leaders and advocates are actually psychopathic. These people are not there to be reasoned with. They are power-mad and murderous. The increasing hardships of men: loneliness, unemployment, imprisonment, suicide are all, to these women, a job well done.
Sadly I do not think we will ever be able to overcome the moral Polarisation. The indicators are that it is extremely doubtful that what is called Western Civilisation will survive the next 50-100 years.
The only hope is for an extremely large group of people to have an epiphany and be able to stand up to the Spin Sisters.
It seems to me that morality--right v. wrong, good v. evil is intrinsically polarizing: why do we want it to be inoffensive or winsome? If we had a law that said it was illegal to kill children in the womb, or enter the country illegally, and the penalties were harsh to those who broke them, we would get less of the behavior. This holds true for race or sex based quotas, bribing elected officials, mutilating children, etc. We are progressively legalizing crime and criminals, this is the heart of the matter. If we do not have the will to correct our course, we will fall--and we will fall, deservedly. It is a loving thing, a compassionate thing, to prosecute crime; to confront and stop those who are destroying our societies. Have just laws and uphold them. It seems simple enough.
Another spirited exchange. Interesting how David is the dove and Janice the hawk when it comes to dealing with feminists. I hope you will decide to schedule another debate. You give us plenty to think about.
Food for thought, definitely. I, like Janice, tend to be a little more rageful when it comes to the way most of us just stand back and let the sorry human beings that make up the feminist consortium get whatever they want.
I wonder if what you call the matrisensus isn't a somewhat misdirected attempt at explaining a phenomenon better understood as the *true* patriarchy, which is that men do the things we do, as patriarchs, for the benefit of women and children and at our own expense. It's men that make feminism even possible. Feminists' success in activism will only change when men stop empowering it. Indeed, when we stop falling all over ourselves to empower it like goofy school boys trying to score points with girls.
Truly, a beautiful, well-reasoned, inspirational, and vastly informative dialogue. Such discussion seems as rare nowadays as it is wondrous to read. Thank you both - I find myself very much looking forward to reading David's upcoming book! 🙏❤️🌟
There is a huge problem with the Ender's Game comparison. What Ender learned, too late, was that there was a way to coexist with the Buggers. He didn't know that when he destroyed them, and, indeed, they didn't know it themselves for most of the story. In the end their goals were not, at their roots, contradictory.
This is not the case with our current conflict. The goals are, at their roots, even more contradictory than they seem on the surface.
Like both of you, Janice and David, I’m very ambivalent about this topic. The spontaneity of what I’ve read suggests to me that I should respond spontaneously. What follow are impressions, therefore, not a carefully constructed argument.
Although I had thought anxiously since childhood about what would eventually become my special area of research—men, masculinity, maleness and misandry—it was only in 1975, when the Vietnam War ended, that I resolved to explore all this in a focused way. But not yet. I was living in New York, and the war’s implications for me, for men, were still too emotionally fraught. Even though I opposed the war and diligently read Ramparts from cover to cover every month, my reasons had nothing to do with hawks and doves or Geneva conventions. I seldom attended sit-ins, and I was very uncomfortable when I did. I agreed with these people, see, but I couldn’t stand being in the same room with them. I found them, in a word, arrogant. And they expressed not the slightest interest in what troubled me most. It wasn’t the war but the draft, which applied only to men—and to men by virtue of maleness, not masculine attitudes or aptitudes. These guys all opposed the draft, sure, but only for the most respectable political or ideological reasons—not, of course, because they felt personally threatened by regimentation and death or morally astonished by this form of sexual inequality. It wasn’t cool for men to feel personally threatened or astonished. Being cool had something to do with bravado, with knowing what was comme il faut and therefore being in control of your life. But I, being gay (though understanding almost nothing about that except feeling attracted to some people without liking them), had no sense of being in control. In 1969, I left New York and returned to Canada feeling confused and defeated.
By 1985, on the tenth anniversary of that war’s end and after rejecting several alienating professions, I realized that it was time to do what I truly needed to do: figure out what it meant to be a man, whether I liked it or not, and why. Although I’ve moved far from some of my early ideas about manhood, war is one of the few that remain central.
I mention this here, because it explains my strong sense that the war between men and women can be understood best as a primarily collective and cultural phenomenon, not a personal and emotional one (although some people, for personal reasons, really do dislike other people and therefore want to afflict them). Yes, it is a war. I’m not sure when women declared war, probably when the MeToo movement broke out and vigilantism came out of the shadows. The weapons are words, laws and public policies, not guns and bombs, but the effects are deadly. The aim is revolution, after all, not reform. The goal is to destroy society itself (and, as I’ve realized more recently, every vestige of Western civilization), not only specific combatants. Unless you’re a pacifist, the rules change in wartime—including the moral rules that govern us in peacetime. I admire and even envy pacifists, but I’m not one of them. From the perspective of men, whether they have the courage to admit it or not, this is a war of self-defense and therefore what centuries of philosophers have called a “just war.”
From there, my mind wanders to the current war in Gaza. No one would ever call me a knee-jerk defender of every Israeli policy. I’ve never even thought of myself as a Zionist. But I do think that the double standard, which so many people apply to Israel, is both contemptible and destructive. These people are not necessarily anti-Semitic in any religious or racial sense; many of them really are anti-Zionists, as they claim, but only because their secular religion (a term that I’ve defined in detail elsewhere) is anti-Westernism. But my point here is that, for me, this is a just war for Israel. I can see no good for either side that could possibly come from a victory for Hamas. Therefore, I must accept a lamentable fact of life in wartime: some people or many people, including children, will suffer and die. This means that I support Israel in fighting as long as it takes to achieve the just goal of self-defense—but the quicker the better (to mitigate suffering). I wouldn’t introduce this controversy if it were not for the fact that Janice and David have been discussing the motivation of those who oppose feminism (at least the combination of gynocentrism and misandry).
What could it mean to talk about feeling compassion for feminists? Pity, perhaps, but why compassion? That would inevitably dilute the courage that we need to defeat evil. David says that he really means empathy, not compassion. Maybe that’s better than compassion, in this context, but only f it refers to knowledge (how feminists think), not emotion. Once again, that would compromise our ability to defeat a profoundly destructive ideology. (Actually, it’s no longer one ideology but a congeries of allied ideologies. All are closely related; only the names of targets differ from one to another.) Worse, it would confuse men hopelessly. They’re still mired in notions of chivalry, which make them wonder what’s wrong with them for not instinctively rushing to defend women at all costs. (Chivalry is not universal and therefore not instinctual. In the West, it was the product of an aristocratic class and revolved around, among other things, either pity or condescension toward the powerless—including the serfs.) I think that men deserve an explanation for what’s happening to them. And I think that the explanation is not one that will, or should, leave everyone singing Kumbaya.
Peacetime is another matter. If we manage to defeat the very powerful and destructive ideology of feminism (and of wokism or anti-Westernism under its many names), that will be the time for empathy and even compassion. The defeat of ideology, after all, will leave many people on all sides ready to seek and even ask for a better way of life than rage and revenge. I can’t prove that, of course, but it’s a possibility.
I want to publicly apologize to David for some of my over-the-top comments. As David explained things to me, I now realize he has a grasp of what's going on. What I tried to say is that I think his approach is too diplomatic. I've deleted any derogatory comments as far as I can see, and David has my FULL APOLOGY.
1. How can feminism be so powerful in controlling the culture and the narrative when it is entirely unjust and false-to-fact.
I believe the main reason is the men wanted to please the female gender. Gynocentrism is extremely powerful, partly because it is covert and secondly it exploits the male biological drive.
Can we overcome moral polarization?
Most certainly yes.
By each of us continuing in developing our own understanding of what is in front of us. We may not all be on the same page perception and direction wise but could agree upon one major thing - understand, meet, counter, manage, and defeat shabby ideology disguised under looming totalitarianism. Other manifestations for liberty are doing likewise.
One thing to consider - the irrationality we see is not simply an organic process. It was imposed upon the nations as a means of capitalizing on and exploiting discontent for other purposes - mass control. An element in society knows human nature very well.
Offer bread and circuses and let them duke it out
What we see in these pages, and others, is a reasoned adaptation to that which was forced upon us by the power grid. Although at the moment there be many approaches to making sense of it all, I'd say we are doing quite well indeed.