Everything changed for Cheatle after her performance before the House Oversight Committee. She thought she could stonewall them, but instead they threatened her with impeachment and jointly demanded her resignation. So she "resigned", just like Biden "resigned" - involuntarily!
I doubt you were wrong. More likely, she was forced to resign by other D.C. elements, lest her incompetence and totalitarian feminism draw more public and media attention to their anti-mission policy of Women First At All Costs. They quickly papered-over their gender tyranny by putting a male face on the agency. . . until the furor dies down. Then they certainly will return to business-as-usual.
The unearned smug on the faces of the Diversity Girls of the Feminist SS is ubiquitous in New Amerika, and was a major factor in my leaving New Amerika almost a decade ago. I could not stomach to see it all around me, infecting everything, like a plague invading a country I once loved. Only a major disaster (and I do not mean a mere Trump shooting) will break the spell of Girlboss Power in New Amerika and allied nations.
I cannot see the sense in compelling an idiot or a saboteur to stay in the position from which he has, either wittingly or unwittingly, reduced a once efficient and respected organisation to ruin. What can be achieved other than further ruin?
With this and really all diversity policies, it seems like there's a sort of blindness as to how we got here as a civilzation. That everything just works through some mysterious power so if we diversify it won't matter. The wheels will keep turning.
For example. I work at an electrical utility engineering company. We have what I call "diversity by coincidence" because we hire smart people who happens to be all sorts. But if we hired, say, people who are bad at engineering but tick the right boxes, then the engineering doesn't get done right or at all and the power goes out.
The DEI people don't understand what makes civilization work. They think it'll just going through, I dunno, momentum?
I think there is a very strong feeling amongst the utopian Left, in particular, that skill sets, intelligence, and work ethic are evenly distributed amongst all people; therefore, improving diversity of peoples is not only just but easily managed and with no negative (only positive!) impact on productivity or institutional competence. It's hard to understand how someone could come to this conclusion by observing the world, but it is, regardless, a devout belief held by millions.
Yes it is a "feeling". I did an economics degree, and as the great Thomas Sowell observed economists look at what people do for evidence of what they really think. And of course there one finds that those self declared utopians in fact act in preference for people like them in what they do and spend their money on.
"I think there is a very strong feeling amongst the utopian Left, in particular, that skill sets, intelligence, and work ethic are evenly distributed amongst all people"
I'm not sure they even have enough awareness of the link between skills/ work ethic/ intelligence and a functioning civilisation to view it like that.
I think they just view 'careers' as another entitlement (a resource up for grabs) ...... and 'diversity' as the means to gain access to those resources and opportunities. This is how feminism has trained us to view the world (preaching to the converted I know...)
Even if that were true, and it clearly isn’t, then what explains the vast differences we see? That would then have to be culture. Which leftists do accept as being true. What else would be left? Yet they then somehow ignore it! If culture is the definitive factor do they think ‘the only differences are culturally based so all we have to do is place someone in a different culture, in this case a work culture and 1000s of years of ethno and societal culture will be instantly erased and everyone will be interchangeable’? People who think like that clearly have no real values of their own.
My husband and I had a long argument with friends of ours on this issue. They kept insisting it was culture that produced all group differences. "But what created the culture?" That they seemed never to have thought of.
Climate does partly create culture. I am not being facetious. It is a factor. Northern Europeans had to plan and store food etc, in a way that someone living in a lush tropical Environment didn’t have to. And if your ancestors lived for thousands of years and never had to work hard to create food…that has an effect.
Sure, that makes sense, and one can see that European peoples in the northern part of the continent, for example, are quite different from those in the southern parts. And that becomes a fact at a very deep level.
The Middle East with its reliance on scant water supplies has an all or nothing attitude in some ways. He who controlled the oasis lived. I haven’t dine enough work on this to do more than merely point out a few obvious things. I think tribal conflicts, which seemingly have been a part of all tribal societies were nature’s way of blending gene pools. So people in general were strengthened. Which if true presupposes some sort of organizing intelligence. But also it speaks of inclination to rape and steal.
Culture is maintained by being inherited. That happens through cultural inheritance proper (e.g. social learning, teaching, being exposed to local language, norms, practices etc) in combination with biological and "geographical" inheritance.
It gets its grip on the humand mind by becoming embodied from early on in development. Later in life it is continually fortified by constant exposure.
My point is that culture is just as much of a deterministic bitch as anything else. People believe that many traits, including intelligence and personality, are determined by genes, thinking that the outcomes are much less malleable than anything culture can do. But that's wrong. Whatever mistress you pick, biologgy or culture, there's not much to choose between them.
(Spoiler: in reality, biology, culture and environment always co-determine the phenotype, so pitting one against the other(s) has always been an error.)
I think the money is used for the destruction of our culture, not the creation of more of it. The risible nonsense our money is spent on is anything but creative.
A pertinent observation on the absurdity of 'civic nationalism', which is a convenient ruse for several disparate groups with conflicting ends but the common purpose of destroying the mutually supportive family unit and ethno-state to achieve them.
Because they do observe the world, Janice. Except they are observing the wrong one. They are in the clouds in Wakanda and with Spider-Man and all that where women and men are equal, and in fact, women can be men handily.
I remember watching mash in the 70s and seeing major Houlihan beating up men
It’s been and all our face to take since we were young.
Propaganda propaganda propaganda. It gets right into your subconscious and people believe it.
It’s such a shame and it really hurt the world a lot
Right now, men are raping women in women’s prisons, women guards are getting pregnant, women prisoners are getting pregnant. It doesn’t make sense at all. None of it does.
Watch the commercials and see that women chastised men like they are little little boys all the time. This gets in peoples heads and no matter what they see in real life. Their subconscious really believes that men and women are the exact same, and in fact, women are stronger.
I am a real estate developer. Prior to doing this, for 14 years I had an alternative health practice based in ayurveda. For which I wouldn’t charge. Prior to that I bought and sold real estate and was a bar owner. So what do I believe?
A very smart and astute conservative entrepreneur with a heart of gold who was willing to share a bounty of financial independence (gained from a successful [yup, capitalist] commitment to observing your local housing market) through an incredibly gracious manner!, of your knowledge and resources for wholesome living.
Owning the bar was a learning curve, where you honed your people skills, learned how to balance business finances, and had some fun all while figuring out your organization skills.
You believe in humanity (or you did), you respect independence, and you value people smarter than you - bc they’ve been your guides, many times.
Yes there is a sort of belief in a magical right to ever increasing prosperity that we are simply entitled to. Without ever considering how, who and why the huge complex thing we rely on keeps pouring its goodies to our easy lives. I remember "Judgy Bitch" a blogger did a thought experiment on if all men went on strike ag the same time. Her list of things that would soon stop, was a lesson in how quickly "civilisation" would simply cease.
This connects with the increased levels of stupidity and incompetence of those who got a woke (un-)education and who keep flooding the workforce in all areas of society through diversity and women-first hiring. We can already see the failures this inevitably leads to, if we care to look (e.g. pandemic mismanagement, European migration policy, etc), but the future will likely bring more catastrophic consequences (well, the pandemic already was a catastrophe, but with a more complicated etiology than the failure discussed by Janice).
It’s Blackrock and other deep state actors who have been pushing this agenda. It will stop when it no longer serves their purposes. The MSM turn on a dime to badmouth Biden. And now we have an Iwo Jima look-alike image of Trump, which Janice referred to in the title of this piece. Trump is suddenly pro immigration, and talks of giving green cards out willy nilly and one of Vances first comments was to juice up war with Iran. Hopefully only the girls in the military will participate when the call is made. My point DEI policies are being rescinded and have served their purpose. The next thing cometh.
Leading with the Sikh woman who sang a prayer out of key in a language no one can understand drove the Christian right to apoplectic fits. No doubt this was intentional.
If they wanted that sort of music they should have got Snatam Kaur, who really can sing and has a beautiful voice -- but she is white, a convert to Sikhism, so I guess she doesn't tick the diversity box they wanted.
I'm afraid Trump himself has finally become a politician. He's getting my vote because of what was done to him, Harvey Weinstein would get my vote because of what was done to him, but I'm not all that happy about right-wing fEMINISTS supplanting left wing fEMINISTS
The Republican Party is strongly feminist, though I don't think Trump is in particular. Neither party gives a damn about men's rights or the particular suffering of young or divorcing men today. Both parties are wary of alienating their female and White Knight voters.
Joseph, I wish more than anything. It was the 1950s. I was meant to be a housewife and then a grandmother. They took everything from me. I will never forgive them.
I agree its Blackrock and other elites behind it all. But Trump is against illegal immigration, criminals, and asylums being dumped into the US by Venezuela, Mexico and other places; including ppl on watchlists getting in. Their crime rates went down 70% in their countries while America’s went sky high. He is for immigrants coming in legally with a process. He is against war. He said Afghanistan is the current biggest arms dealer in the world. This current administration helped them with that everyone saw it as it happened.
DEI is being pushed, still. There are rewards for it. If said company does not enforce it, you get blackballed and stonewalled from marketing, selling, and much more red tape. Its a form of extortion. Sick. Many veteran owned businesses are rejecting DEI and counting on patriotic support only. Its hopefully going to be forced out somehow and this point system removed. Whoever holds the wallet decides how to use it. No evil like Blackrock should dictate it.
If you want to vote for continued genocide in the Middle East and a wider forever war against Iran, you are certainly free to vote for the Trump Vance ticket. Both candidates have already promised as much in the convention already. It’s the promise they’re most likely to keep.
Iran is the # 1 cause of war and unrest in the Middle East, trying to spread Shiite imperialism. In this they are opposed by Saudi Arabia (Suni Muslims), resulting in the Yemeni civil war and other regional conflicts costing the lives of hundreds of thousands. Compared to them, the Gaza conflict is small. The Israel-Palestine conflict has become an extension of that aggression by Iran. This is why the Abraham Accords worked: Iran is funding jihadis to cause unrest in Arab nations and those nations don't want another Arab Spring. Hamas and Hezbollah are funded by Iran - and indirectly by Biden/Obama. Trump was right to take decisive steps in the ME, such as symbolically putting the US Embassy in Jerusalem. He did more for Israel that any other president in recent history. He is not for foreign wars; he is smart and negotiates where possible. The only genocide that could take place in the ME is if the Dems retain power, Iran sees that the USA is weak and divided over Israel, and they stage an invasion or even drop the bomb on Israel and attempt a second Holocaust (this time of about 7 million Jews). Trump, if he gets back into office, would I think thwart that plan.
As for the Palestinians, they are just pawns used by Iran and Hamas to wage jihad against Israel. As Douglas Murry notes, Muslims have no love for other Muslims. They don't care about the Palestinians and would gladly sacrifice them all to destroy Israel. And many of the Palestinians sacrifice themselves for that end. It's religious violence, not a social justice cause. I should add that there is no such thing as "Palestine" - it's just a convenient fiction to reclaim Jerusalem for Islam. Most of the casualties they received in this recent war - which they started on Oct 7th - are the result of Hamas using them as human shields. The best thing to do is move them far away from Israel since they are incapable of living in peace with it, the only problem being that no Arab states want them, so dupes like Trudeau take them in, setting the stage for terrorism and unrest in Canada.
Re-electing Trump seems to me crucial for avoiding not only the endless wars of the military-industrial complex that the corrupt Dems and RINOs get rich off, but also the possibility of WW3. If the Dems get into power again, it's a signal to Iran and China and Russia that the USA is weak and vulnerable. It will break détente and all hell will be unleashed, including the possibility of a war with China - which we really don't need. Trump walks with a big stick, which keeps the peace, while Dems appear weak and we know they complicit, taking $ from China and giving $ to Iran. They have already let in untold numbers of real terrorists across the southern border.
Of course Iran started the whole thing, and it has nothing to do with the terrorist beginnings of Israel starring Menachim Began and funded by the west or the puppet regime of the Shah installed by the CIA & friends, the illegal bulldozing of homes, the random beatings and killings by ultra orthodox "settlers" on Palestinian lands going on 20 - 30 years now and still ongoing. So I agree. Israel is completely innocent and justified in attempting to exterminate the entire population of Gaza, an in inciting a war against Iran using American weapons and no doubt soldiers soon enough. Certainly you and Douglas Murray should be the first to sign yourselves and your kin up in the war for Greater Israel. I would too, but they don't need old farts like me, sadly.
Most of what you write here is a repetition of propaganda from Communist-leaning revisionist historians like Chomsky and Pappe who deliberately skew facts to meet their anti-Zionist anti-American narrative. I can understand Islamists like this stuff, as it affirms their deep seated hatred of Jews, but it's amazing to me that so many people in the West have uncritically bought into this intellectually dishonest history. There are three types of anti-Jewish antisemitism in history: from the Christians, from the Nazis, and now from the anti-Israel crowd, which is just a veiled hatred of Jews. One never hears anti-Zionists talk about the suffering of Muslims at the hands of other Muslims in the ME, or the at the hands of the CCP in Xinjiang (which is a real genocide) or any number of other horrors that occur worldwide. So it's not a concern for human rights that motivates anti-Zionism; it's just an irrational hatred of one specific people. If you want a more accurate history of the conflict, going back to the 19th century, read "The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process" by Robert Spencer. It goes through the repeated attempts by Israel -- from 1947 onward - to achieve peace, which was always rejected by the Arabs. For them it is a religious mandate to destroy the Jews; it's not rational and the anti-Zionist histories are incredibly one-sided as though the Arabs had no active role in it the conflict and didn't start it -- but of course they did and they lost and keep losing. As for going to Israel, I've been there and would gladly go back again and would support it however I can, rather than see it succumb to the likes of Hamas.
If you want to characterise the deaths of Arabs & Muslims as a genocide, you may want to pay attention to the civil wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen etc. If Israel disappeared tomorrow the violence would continue since it is the result of cultural factors. That's the "forever war".
Trump's record is clearly less interventionist than Biden/Obama's. The US govt's role is the welfare of Americans not those in remote (and mostly hostile) nations.
Forever war indeed. The mentality in this cultural war: You give them your hand they always take your whole arm and so on. Never enough. You show kindness they talk behind your back and worse. Never satiated, never enough reparations. They call for genicide and demand a land that another nation developped. Ongoing from one generation to the next, blaming and playing a victimized role perpetually seeking sympathy though they lash out in terroristic ways only with vile violence. Never focus on civility because their Allah rewards martyrs. It’s neanderthal “cultural” behaviour mindset. They are wronged for generations and nothing can fix it not even a billion dollars. You give them land and money, they will want more land and more power. The IDEA never dies. Much like fascism has gone on to the modern Neo Nazi’s in Ukraine, who were killing Russians for years prior to this current war. The part they will never air on mainstream is this is the main reason given for the invasion. To capture all Neo Nazi in Ukraine. Hard to kill an idea.
From the perspective of an entomologist, without a doubt extermination would be the solution to kill the infestation one species at a time is posing, so peace can be restored and property or safety returned to normal. If you cannot kill the behaviour putting other nations at risk, what do you do? Exile an entire culture, race for the greater good? They will not stop they claim until “every Jew and Christian is dead”. Here in insane Canada where I live the govt is protecting them, and anyone trying to stop their protests and behaviour will be arrested instead. The opposite of sanity. Communistic left leaning behaviour of letting “them” self destruct. They were given land, money, from EU Union and they take those funds for infrastructure and build missiles. Scream genocide. You help them they continue to scream there is no winning with them unless you ungroup them and spread them out. They are emboldened in mass groups.
So what do you do with a group of ppl who pose a threat to the rest of humans? This is what everyone does not dare ask because it’s “racist”, Its about peace and living in a civilized society without threat, not chaos and war. If the media would say this instead of victimizing terrorists…. but alas the mainstream is paid and bought for. I am not saying exterminate an entire group if ppl. Incase ppl skim the comments.
I don't necessarily align completely with all your views but there is one fundamental truth you point out - the moral asymmetry that is allowed to exist - both in that specific context as well as generally within the left/progressive ideology.
In the Arab/Israeli context we/Israel/West must obey high moral standards, but the other side's brutality is always excused. In the feminist context JF principally focuses on, the same applies - men are held to strict standards whereas feminism is entitled to play dirty. This pattern repeats itself in every field of the culture war. Moral and cultural relativism is one of the predominant intellectual dishonesties of progressivism.
It is also highly ironic given how strongly the feminist movement supports cultures whose values are clearly far worse for women than the supposed patriarchal oppression by Western culture. No culture in history has ever given women the gains modern Western civilization has - why are so many young, intelligent & motivated women sucked into campaigning against their own welfare?
Yea, I am voting Trump because of what they did to him, but truthfully, I'm conflicted about all the right-wing assholes like Kid Rock & Riley Gaines, even that asshole Dana White, from the UFC putting on a fake black accent.
As you mention, the entire feminist charade was exposed not only by the blatant deficiencies of the female officers, but also tragically by the actions of the deceased attendee, Corey Comperatore - not only himself a firefighter but a volunteer at that - instinctively doing what men instinctively do and protecting the lives of those closest to him, who happened to be women, and who happened - to judge by all their past and subsequent social media declarations - to adore and cherish him. The toxic masculinity narrative has no business surviving him.
I’m particularly concerned about female firefighters. I wonder how the feminist ideal of an all-female crew would deal with a 400 lb woman in a third story walk-up.
About the only useful task for women in security is searching female arrestees. Crouching behind men who have put themselves in danger is not a sign of the sort of courage we expect from men who put themselves in danger.
It is worth noting that adding women also discriminates against black and Latino men with serious military experience (the source of many recruits). Men as a whole are being displaced by ineffective agents who cower behind them because of complete inability to meet the requirements of the job.
I remember seeing an oped written back in the late 1970s about the San Francisco Fire Department's hiring of female firefighters. The writer was a male firefighter, He reported that many female firefighters were observed cowering behind the fire truck at the scene of a fire.
I recall a comment on the Justice for Men and Boys forum, a few years ago now, from someone purporting to be a fireman. He described an incident in which a fire crew of six included two women. At an incident one of the women collapsed in hysterics when ordered into a burning building and the other had to be detailed to take her back to the appliance and comfort her, leaving four men to do the work of six, with a consequent increase in their personal risk. Can anyone doubt that when any thanks, praise or commendations were handed out the women did not have the decency to look ashamed? Does anyone doubt that had any man been rash enough to rebuke them for their cowardice his career would have been ended promptly?
When men fail as blatantly as Kimberly Cheatle failed (or was, as is possible, under orders from higher up to fail), they usually resign. Cheatle will not resign.
I read decades ago that thanks to SF's lesbian fire chief roughly 35% of the firefighters were female. IOW, all standards had been abandoned to hit this number.
Exactly. The female firefighters' cowardice especially angered the male firefighters, as the oped mentioned that many of the men were survivors of the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.
Your reference to cowardice raises an interesting point about what is and is not acceptable behaviour in a crisis. I think the concept of 'cowardice' is a masculine one, as in only applied to men, and its purpose is to induce men to disregard our own safety and put women and children first. Women are naturally inclined to run away from danger, which is an evolutionary strategy and not something they can control easily, and once upon a time no one would have rebuked them for doing so. However, in choosing to enter the male realm they make themselves subject to male behavioural norms and now their behaviour can fairly be judged by male standards.
I read once that most women did not want the vote after the first world war because they feared they would have to do the nasty things men have to do once they had it. They were right.
Well, they were partially right. Most women still do not have to do the nasty things, and are not called out as cowards. As you say, 'coward' is an insult only for men. Call me a coward, I'll just grin and try to look cute so you won't hate me. Call me a slut, and you've hit home.
Men evolved to take risks in order to achieve status and therefore the possibility of procreating. As Stefan Molyneux once explained it, giving a white feather to men and boys during WWI was akin to killing them because it meant they were judged unworthy of being mated with. Better to risk death and maiming on the battlefield than experience the sure death of women's sexual shaming.
I wouldn't rule out females; the odd one might match the strength, fitness, mental confidence and even height requirements of qualifying men, though very rare.
The idea that females can be hired for support rather than front-line roles presents problems though. Here in New Zealand a couple of years ago the sex/gender composition of the police force was published. Women were in high-ranked command positions at a higher rate than the proportion of female police overall and a much higher rate than for male police. No information was provided to compare the length of service between high-ranked men and women but it's safe to assume that the women on average were promoted on the basis of less experience than the men. Even if those women performed equally to men in the higher-rank roles (seems unlikely), the problem remains that experienced front-line men who would be at least as good are deprived of promotion opportunities. Even applying sexist DEI for back-office humble jobs deprives long-serving front-line male officers of the chance to maintain more gentle employment when their bodies have become too wrecked from physical encounters or their brains too fried from PTSD. The whole service then suffers from reduced commitment, loyalty and camaraderie.
DEI appears to be based on poor rational analysis of actual consequences. "DEI is desirable" is simply asserted like a religious claim, backed up at most by some hollow claims of improved sales results based on one poor research study and ignoring the 20 other contradictory studies. DEI is feminists and social justice warriors skipping like schoolchildren at playtime. The female Secret Service bodyguards are playing a role more than serving, and enjoying being paid for this. Many modern movies portray women as equally or more capable than men in manual combat but this is ideological fantasy. The woman who proudly reported her daughter's joy whenever she put her shiny badge on epitomizes such pretense. As well as positive associations such as a good salary and feminist achievement on public display, the shiny badge realistically represents a significant risk that the parent won't be coming home tonight. But such bittersweet recognition is absent in a role-play.
In some sense, its actually a blessing this happened, and that Trump was not killed (although sadly at least one innocent man was killed). Its now clear, on the world stage, and in full public view, that DEI did get someone killed, and it will only get worse. This can't be hidden, or even spun. It was clear as day what happened. Like the Trump-Biden debate, normies can now see reality with their own eyes.
This madness needs to end, and merit and ability must return as the primary objective for selecting anyone for a job.
Years ago, a female engineer boasted about female involvement in the design of the Sweetwater Bridge in Florida. A few days later, the bridge collapsed. Immediately, innumerable pundits denied that there had been any involvement of DEI hires in the design and construction of the Sweetwater pedestrian overpass. I doubt we will ever know the truth of that incident.
Yet another interesting, brave and convincing article from Janice Fiamengo, for which thanks.
I recently looked at the Website of a law firm in England where I used to work, and found they had a prominent message on their Home Page: 'Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do'
Although it was not what I did when I worked for them, the largest part of that firm's business is actually taking people's homes away when they get behind with their mortgage payments, both going to court to evict them and then dealing with the legal work to sell their homes, on behalf of banks and other financial institutions. I am still trying to work out how to put 'Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the heart' of that process.
It was though always the case that the firm was very broadminded in evicting anyone from their home who failed to keep up with their mortgage payments, regardless of race, sex, religion, age, disability, marital status or anything else, as long as a bank paid the firm to do so. I am sure the people evicted from their homes must appreciate the fact that at least they are having their house taken away from them in a diverse, equitable and inclusive way.
I would agree with the assessment that DEI should not be used for firefighting, secret service, military, etc. But not only that; it should not be used in any field whatsoever, as it is discriminatory.
We saw it first used in academia (it was called affirmative action then) and I don't think higher education has benefited from it. In fact, quite the opposite: now all areas of academia are infected with intersectional feminist ideology and "decolonizing" nonsense.
As for the "dirty and dangerous" jobs done almost exclusively by men, women don't want those jobs and they are ill-suited for them. I saw a woman on a construction site doing masonry as an assistant. She was stronger than the usual woman but she didn't last more than three days - which is far longer than most women would have lasted (I can imagine 20 minutes as the upper end for most). This is because it requires a lot of physical strength and endurance. And she was slower than the men for that very reason.
Now DEI is common in the workplace, causing huge problems with often false sexual harassment allegations, done for financial gain or to vindictively hurt men as a group. A meritocracy is far better. It is what built Western civilization; we abandon it at our peril. The only systemic racism and sexism in the West today is affirmative action/DEI hiring. Qualified men have sued governments over this and more should do so. There needs to be a massive backlash.
Some will say, but what of the IDF? They have women soldiers. Yes, they do, but women in the IDF are excluded from frontline combat roles." There is a recognition that men do better in that particular role.
I hope to live to see the day that cultural Marxism, DEI, CRT, ESG and all this other nonsense is done away with and our society can start to heal and correct its course. Men and women are different and have evolved to have different strengths. The strengths of women should be honored of course, and valued, as they traditionally have been, at least in Western civilization. Ironically, putting women in positions they're not suited for actually devalues them by trying to make them into men.
Well said. I agree that all preferential / equity hiring should cease immediately. I would merely go further to say that women should be excluded, as women, across the board (yes, even the few who would qualify) from frontline military, firefighting, and Secret Service positions. There are likely a very small number of individual women who could creditably perform in those roles. Too bad, the risk is far too large, the slippery slope too slippery. As for other roles that women can occupy, such as teacher, lawyer, doctor, etc., I am willing that unusually talented women should bring their gifts to the world, but with no special perks and privileges, no set-aside scholarships, no equity hiring, no summer camps for girls, no calls for more women at the highest echelons. Girls should not be encouraged to do these jobs. They should be allowed to do them if they demonstrate extraordinary competence and dedication, which most women do not have. They should certainly not be encouraged to take jobs away from men.
We're all talking about the physical limitations of women in frontline roles, but a far greater and more general problem with women in the workforce, particularly in leadership roles, is our inability as a species to hold females accountable for their performance in the same way we hold males accountable. Cheatle is a perfect example - in response to catastrophic failure causing actual death she can simply bluff it out with inane statements about sloping roofs, while a male leader would have resigned or been forced to resign by now. The effect of such tolerance towards women's failures is compounded when you consider the morale sapping effect on competent men (and women) working under them. It's the same lenience towards women we see in the justice system, with grossly unequal penalties for men and women for similar crimes.
Yes, exactly. That's the more important issue of why women shouldn't be in leadership. Nicola Sturgeon was a great example. As soon as her Covid-related decisions began to be seriously questioned, she cried publicly and made it about *her* stress. Utterly disgusting.
While I don't want to encouraged derailing of this topic into the highly passionate and divisive Israel-Gaza matter, have others noticed that the pro-Hamas protesters seem to be dominated and largely led by females. Their shrill voices over megaphones are the ones leading childish chants (and sometimes encouraging children to join them). To me, it's clear that knee-jerk emotionality and simplistic slogans drive their passion with little rational thinking, foresight about long-term consequences and consideration of combat strategy. Thinking muddled by emotion is one of the reasons women on average are less effective in high-threat situations. That's not to deny that a good proportion of women can think strategically and behave cold-heartedly, but their thinking and decisions still usually appear to be dominated by emotion.
Good observation. I've see the same thing on numerous occasions. I used to be a Leftist activist. Basically I was an idealist and useful idiot for Marxist totalitarian types without knowing it. Over time, common sense started creeping in when I saw how dysfunctional these movements and activists were and I left them. I noticed that many of the protests and movements were led by these aggressive shrill women you describe, e.g. Judy Rebick and Sue Collis are two famous (within activist circles) women in Canada who are professional activists of this kind.
There is not a shred of reason in these movements. It's entirely emotion-based. In the 18th century critics of the same use of emotion by charismatic preachers called it "enthusiasm." Famous demagogues have learned to excite the emotions in their speeches, most notably Hitler and Mussolini. You can get swept up in the group energy and not give any thought to why you're there. And it can be dangerous if the mood of the group-mind turns violent against a scapegoat: it's an opportunity to vent repressed aggression, which according to Freud all human beings have in them.
Leftists at pro-Hamas protests have not researched or thought through the issue honestly. If they did, they would not be there. They conflate the issue with their Marxist teachings against colonialism, not realizing that Jews have been on that land for 3,000 years and all the hatred by the Arabs has its roots in religious hatred, expressed as jihad. It has nothing to do with "oppression" or "colonialism." These tropes were superimposed by the KGB and PLO in the 1960s during the Cold War, then promoted by Communists like Ilan Pappe and Chomsky.
Arabs grow up with this hatred as part of their identity. Combined with the activism of the feminist types in the West, it's a bad combination. The feminists give Hamas a pass on their raping and mutilation of women, demonstrating the moral bankruptcy of their movement.
Jihad is an unstoppable force in the Middle East and now stupid Leftist leaders in Europe -- and now Canada and Australia -- are importing it to the West by bringing over military-age jihadis. It's insane. The jihadis view this weakness of the West -- Leftist ideology -- as a gift from Allah. Leftism weakens us and they take advantage of it. Look at the recent riot in Leeds. Why were such people ever allowed to enter the UK?
And who leads these Leftist movements against Israel, or any number of other questionable causes? The so called liberal (or more precisely illiberal) women, the ones with the shrill voices and cold hearts. Everything is framed in "intersectional" terms with their own specialized Marxist jargon. They form endless planning committees to further the cause. I would go so far as to say it's a kind of religion, but certainly not a good one. It's quite dangerous. They see themselves as heroic figures in a cosmic war, but all they are doing, as they have done with feminism, is destroy that which is good within Western civilization.
The West allows for free speech and can take a lot of dissenting opinions (as it should be), but these protests are not presented in the manner of rational debate or reasoned argument; they are aggressive, sometimes openly violent, lynch mob style attacks meant to demonstrate the power of the collective. The motivating force is not justice; it is the acquisition of power for its own sake, through the mob.
On a lighter note, some of these protests are hilariously stupid and laughable. The chant "hey hey ho ho [designated target] has got to go" for instance. You can find a number of them on youtube. And the people who attend them look like inmates from a lunatic asylum, and in fact they are that: in my time in activism I learned that about half the people in the more radical circles were "psychiatric survivors" as they called themselves and they lived off government disability payments for being crazy. They used this money to support their full-time activist lifestyle. Taxpayers were paying them to sow discord and Marxist nonsense in society, in other words.
Thanks! If you want a good read on this topic, see the book 'United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror" by Jamie Glazov. It was actually Janice Fiamengo who mentioned it and I bought it and it's a good read. I should also credit Janice with helping to red-pill me back around 2017. I started watching her videos on youtube (Fiamengo Files) and it was a wake-up call for me. Janice is herself a former feminist. I then became hungry for more critiques of feminism and Leftism in general. I ended leaving these movements I had unwisely given years of my life to.
I may very well follow up on that title, it sounds familiar.
I didn’t get deep into the brainwashing but I did get so far as to stump for a New Democrat Party leader (read: socialist/Marxist) hopeful back in the 90’s…I did other nonsense too numerous to mention here but suffice it to say, I never ‘took’ as a socialist despite having a decent heart for the hard-living world (been there, had done that).
It’s only in the last 5 years that I feel like I’ve finally come into who I really believe I am as a conservative; good thing bc my mouth needs to tell the truth about shit!
I agree! Another point that's been brewing in my mind today after I wrote the previous note.
Sometimes former advocates for "social and environmental justice" causes, (e.g. feminism, climate change, animal rights, etc.) who turn conservative still believe in those causes. Or at least they believe in the principles that inform those causes (such as the idea of justice or non-harm) but they see the movements that identify with those causes as corrupt -- as I did. I did not want to see it but was forced after years of looking the other way.
So for example, I still believe protecting the environment and reducing animal cruelty and curbing the mass extinction of species are good causes. I still think some corporations should not engage in human rights violations in third world countries, e.g. mining corporations that dump acid mine waste into rivers and shoot the locals if they object. That's obviously wrong, even if we need minerals for society to function. I still think we should care about future generations -- but that concern now includes the unborn whereas before it only included future victims of environmental devastation. I still think workers deserve a fair shake and should not be exploited. Tenants should not be gouged. And so on.
However, after thinking through these issues on a case by case basis in depth, and observing the activist movements that claim these issues, I realized that:
(1) The issues are not as cut and dry as the activists make them out to be. The corporations are not always the villains we want them to be and excessive state regulations and taxes are not always for the best. Climate change claims should be questioned and debated since computer models can be wrong, for example. It's not always as black and white as these activists pamphlets make them out to be.
The activists see the world in binary terms as good and evil. They the activists are good; the corporations are evil. This is too simplistic. And revolution, tearing it all down, won't make the world a better place; it will make it much worse place. It will bring out the worst in humanity if things fall apart. This is why I distrust the World Economic Forum - because they seem to want our society to be replaced with their Utopian model, which to me sounds dystopian and totalitarian.
Most of the activists I knew longed for a better world but failed to see that tearing down the old institutions and practices that keep things stable would just make things ten devils worse.
(2) The activist movements themselves -- at least the upper echelon of them, the leaders -- are not really interested in solving the problems. They are only using them to acquire wealth and power for themselves, e.g., NGO and student union leaders with big salaries or fanatical activists who covet power and use the movements to get it.
We know the latter by the fact that they impose "intersectional" race and gender politics into the cause, which serves the purpose of weeding out the older more sensible activists (alienating or scapegoating them in many cases). They are like the Red Guard in Mao's Cultural Revolution, purging the society of the old people.
One can never be revolutionary enough in their view, and counter-revolutionaries -- or in modern terms, alleged racists and misogynists -- are all around and must be purged. For instance, feminists in such groups will target a man as a sexual harasser or rapist -- with zero evidence -- and go after him. I have seen this a few times. A good cause can thus be hijacked or usurped by these Marxist activists for their own ends. It alienates decent folk who believe in the cause but are repelled by the fanatics and tyrants taking it over.
I have seen this occur in nearly every movement I supported. And now I've seen it happen to the society as a whole over the last five or six years, with important institutions such as the media, government, corporations like Wal-Mart, universities, the courts, the entertainment industry, etc -- all succumbing to the woke DEI agenda. Even the Pope went woke! What happened in higher education and in activist circles in past years is now happening across the Western world as the Leftist activists who picked this stuff up in college get positions of power in our society and spread that worldview. Think of Disney for example. Are they making things woke to fulfill some nefarious agenda of ideological subversion, to divide and conquer us, or do they really believe in this nonsense?
Or take the case of climate change. Let's say for the sake of argument that the science is valid and it should be a serious concern for our society. What does that mean in practical terms? In Canada, Trudeau thinks it means he should impose a carbon tax to reduce fossil fuel consumption. The problem is that while his government gets a lot of money from it, it does nothing for the environment, because: (1) Canada's carbon footprint is negligible in global terms and China is the # 1 emitter. (2) There is no proof that the tax reduces fossil fuel consumption. All it does is impoverish people already suffering from inflation. A person in the country can't drive less and can't take public transport.
Then there is Bjorn Lomberg's point that even if it is real, it's not the most urgent matter facing humanity. He may be right. At one time, I would never have entertained the idea that he may be right, but casting off the mantle of activism has liberated my mind to question things and not just go along with the party line.
Lastly there is argument that climate change is being used for as a pretext for state authoritarians to wield even greater power over us by imposing a social credit system, and essentially doing to us in perpetuity what they got away with during the pandemic (lockdowns, mandates, and government overreach). In other words, state tyranny. The WEF even seems to want mass population reduction. How?
Again, it does nothing for the environment in the end, but it gives them absolute power over us. If we object they say, as they did with medical tyranny, that it's for "the common good." With this understanding of what's happening, protecting individual liberties we normally taken for granted has become paramount in my view. A good cause can be misused for a bad purpose. It's similar to the history of religious authorities in the church taking the faith of people and using it for their own ends.
Some people say they are not conservatives but "classical liberals" -- meaning in favour of freedom of speech, religion, the press, etc. They differentiate themselves from the authoritarian Leftists who want to suppress free speech. Maybe they still have a negative association with the term "conservative." All "conservative" really means is that the person values individual freedom and liberties and wants a prosperous safe society that's good for families. For many, faith is part of it. But what Leftists hear when you say "he's conservative" is "he's greed, selfish, racist, stupid, and deluded." They seem themselves as "progressives" who are so much better than all the horrible sexist racist people of the past. It's simplistic and self-serving to think this way. It betrays an ignorance of the real complexities of history and the lives of the people who came before us.
Leftists like to think they are morally and intellectually superior to conservatives. They create a strawman caricature of the conservative as racist, sexist, the "deplorables" described by Hillary Clinton to refer to the working-class blue-collar Americans who voted for Trump. Trump himself they love to hate, buying into the MSM propaganda against him, uncritically.
Returning to the activists, the NDP makes a great show of standing up for this or that cause. At one time I too was involved in it. But the people who run it are making big salaries, which they got used to as student union leaders. They internalized Marxist dogma and woke ideology. They are often dishonest and conniving in my experience. They played politics and merely used the causes in a rhetorical way; they were not committed to those causes.
The moral bankruptcy of the NDP now is apparent in the fact that they have been propping up the corrupt Trudeau government for years, with zero regard for the pain and suffering of the working classes. The trucker's protest was evidence of that. They protested the inhuman and unnecessary lockdowns and mandates and disdain the elites in Ottawa had for them -- which we saw on full display when Trudeau disparaged them as "racists" and "misogynists" and froze bank accounts. He wanted to be a dictator after the Chinese model of governance, and even said so aloud. And the NDP was all for it and also taking bribes from China to skew the election -- which is treason.
The NDP, like the Labour party in the UK, is not for the working classes. They are elitists who use the ideals of the rank and file to gain power -- much as described in Orwell's Animal Farm, itself based on the rise of Stalinism. The NDP leaders are the pigs and the general members are like the sheep. This is why I can never support these kinds of movements again; they attract corruption too easily. The rank and file are naïve idealists (as I was), not seemingly aware of the authoritarians who use their volunteer labour to aggrandize power and who care nothing for the cause.
Sorry this was so long. I had to get it out of my system :)
I will answer the charge by quoting a summary of the excellent book The Tyranny of Guilt by Pascal Bruckner:
"Fascism, communism, genocide, slavery, racism, imperialism―the West has no shortage of reasons for guilt. And, indeed, since the Holocaust and the end of World War II, Europeans in particular have been consumed by remorse. But Pascal Bruckner argues that guilt has now gone too far. It has become a pathology, and even an obstacle to fighting today's atrocities. Bruckner, one of France's leading writers and public intellectuals, argues that obsessive guilt has obscured important realities. The West has no monopoly on evil, and has destroyed monsters as well as created them―leading in the abolition of slavery, renouncing colonialism, building peaceful and prosperous communities, and establishing rules and institutions that are models for the world. The West should be proud―and ready to defend itself and its values. In this, Europeans should learn from Americans, who still have sufficient self-esteem to act decisively in a world of chaos and violence. Lamenting the vice of anti-Americanism that grips so many European intellectuals, Bruckner urges a renewed transatlantic alliance, and advises Americans not to let recent foreign-policy misadventures sap their own confidence. This is a searing, provocative, and psychologically penetrating account of the crude thought and bad politics that arise from excessive bad conscience."
In other words, the West for all its faults, has led the way towards egalitarianism, emancipation, and prosperity for all. It provides equal opportunity, not equal outcome. It ended slavery while many parts of the world still have not done so. It is still common in many parts of Africa, Asia, etc. There is even human trafficking of slaves into the USA across the southern border, but it is illegal. Slavery was universal, not restricted to the pre-bellum American South, nor only to blacks; white slavery was and still is quite common. Any significant deviations from that path (e.g.,, Communism, Nazism, radical Leftism or any sort of collectivism) run contrary to the foundational principles and values that inform and animate the Western experiment, which to paraphrase Churchill is the worst system except for all the others. All we have to do is compare it to other parts of the world where dictatorships run rampant, e.g., Zimbabwe, North Korea, China. Nepotism and cronyism are inegalitarian and thus run contrary to the spirit of Western progress, which is based on results and favors meritocracy. It's not as though the Western experiment and the American Dream don't suffer setbacks. They do aplenty and must reinvent themselves to stay on track. Now, as Bruckner notes, western Europe is on the wrong track. It is allowing its society to be adversely influenced by Islamism and radical Leftism -- both inegalitarian collectivist ideologies. This is tragic. The Enlightenment principles enshrined in the US Constitution and the idea of the American Dream still, for billions, are symbolic of hope for freedom and prosperity for all, so we should not feel guilty or parade the West's errors as representative of it.
Please. Your use of "white supremacist" and focus on "white populations" only reveals that you suffer from the Marxist woke mind virus. I referred in my response to "the West", not to whites. Last time I checked, Western cities are among the most multi-cultural and pluralist in the world. People come to the West from around the world precisely because they want the freedom and prosperity it offers. There are many non-white defenders of the Western experiment, such as Thomas Sowell and Dinesh D'Souza. "Diverse" groups that assimilate to Western ideals have been welcomed into the West. Unfortunately, so have groups that failed to assimilate and brought terrible values with them, such as honor killings and terrorism (e.g. in London, Paris). Leftists who focus on identity politics and refer to non-existent "white supremacy" support this latter sort of migrant. The real issue is values, not skin colour. This Franz Fanon-like fantasy of a socialist collective of nonwhites taking over and avenging colonialism is puerile and perverse.
People like Monty resort to nonsense like “white supremacy” accusations to direct attention away from the fact that they have no counter arguments and can’t defend their own positions. When you make an argument and get “white supremacist!” or “racist!” as a response, you won — the accuser is rolling over and showing you his belly.
You've got nothing. Whites invented democracy, abolition, and constitutional republics, and we're the only race with a tradition of actually implementing human rights. You can't survive without us, and you cling to our pants leg like a spoiled child. You're welcome!
You're a compulsive liar. I can't imagine the envy you must feel to invent fake history while denigrating the race (Whites) who have given you everything. If Africa's so great, go back! You contribute nothing to America.
I had some lefties tell me black on black slavery was not slavery like white on black. The blacks loved their slaves and treated them like family. Uh, sure.
During the US civil war, the Democrats were the pro-slavery party and Republicans the anti-slavery party. The American South continued to be mostly Democrat into the 20th century - this changed when Reagan ran for president, as I recall. He inspired patriotism, so many yellow-dog Democrats switched.
The Dems also implemented welfare -- especially Johnson, but even before that -- and that destroyed the black American family, according to Thomas Sowell. It incentivized family breakup, resulting in fatherless boys and increased crime and drug addiction. These evils were not the legacy so much of slavery as of the welfare state - which continues to this day. If anyone should pay reparations, it's the Dems.
But black Americans vote for them en masse inexplicably, pulled in by their rhetoric. That's changing however. A lot of blacks voted for Trump in the past and I think more will do so this time around because of the economy. And they know BLM and identity politics is a scam. They see through the Democrat "welfare plantation" and how Lefties infantilize them. See the work of Larry Elder.
The Leftist predilection is to reduce the complexity of real life to a simplistic stereotyped narrative to make themselves feel morally superior. Life is more complicated than to say everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed. That binary can actually become the basis for real oppression, e.g., Stalin crushing the Kulaks because they were small property owners.
People forget that throughout all of human history, slavery was the norm, and it was not just in the American South. Nearly every society on Earth had slaves going back to prehistory. We are all the descendants of both slaves and slave owners if you go back far enough. The West abolished it in the 19th century but slavery is still going on worldwide illegally. I never hear Lefties who mentioned American slavery talk about or oppose the millions of real slaves today, who are of all colours, including white women from Eastern Europe forced into sex slavery (see the book The Natashas). They are just referring to America's past in order to disparage it, not because they really care about people who were enslaved.
Stated versus revealed preferences are a hell of a thing.
It’s not hard to imagine (in fact, it’s almost a veritable certainty) that Taylor Swift has a personal security detail wherever she goes.
With her being the staunchly feminist, pro-female, girl-power mouthpiece that she is and purports to be, you’d think that this detail would resemble Charlie’s Angels.
My guess is that it more closely resembles Delta Force.
There’s something about YOUR ass being on the line that causes people to eschew fantastical delusions and embrace practical realities.
As Victor Davis Hanson has noted in related matters, ridiculous beliefs and policies tend to be supported by individuals who never have to suffer the consequences of their own ideology.
I found it interesting that, at present, there haven’t been many (if any) cries of sexism and/or misogyny coming from the media or the Secret Service itself in response to the criticism of their performance.
It says something when the incompetence is so glaring and the fuck-up is so severe that an American government official in 2024 won’t even play the discrimination card.
I was half expecting Kimberly Cheatle to go full-Vijaya Gadde.
Great blog, Janice, as always. Lyudmila Pavlichenko, nicknamed “Lady Death”, the Ukrainian sniper in the Soviet army in the Second World War who claimed 309 kills, shows that some women can be super-successful in weapon-wielding roles that are traditionally male. However, Pavlichenko was not a particularly tall woman, and so would have been poorly suited even in her prime to be part of Trump’s security detail, in spite of her impressive marksmanship.
I watched “Furiosa” at a 3 p.m. showing on a weekday not long ago and there weren’t even 10 people besides me there in that big theatre. It seemed to have all of the makings of a huge box office success, like its predecessor, “Fury Road” but hasn’t been doing well in theatres in general. The actress who played Furiosa, Anya Taylor-Joy, had previous been a huge success in “The Queen’s Gambit”, where she played a master chess player, another category that has been heavily male dominated. Just the same, there are female grand masters. The idea that this woman, shorter and smaller-framed than Charlize Theron, could be a bad-ass street fighter, eliminating any number of bigger, burlier men, demanded just too much suspension of disbelief on the part of audiences. The film industry needs to withdraw from DEI along with the US Secret Service.
Hi Andrew. There cannot be a greater example of non-physical male superiority than chess. I've written so much about it. Feminists go batshit insane trying to explain it, even resorting to claims of sexual harrassment of female players haha! Long story short, women are all but non-existent in the top echelons of EVERYTHING!!! Janice Fiamengo, along with the late Margaret Thatcher, is of course an exception.
Men are in general more extreme. Top top extremely good is therefore more likely to be a man. Also young men can be insanely focussed on one thing, ignoring all creature comforts for years. I seldom meet women who are comfortable even missing too many meals. When women hit their mid 40s some get that same driven quality 18 year old men have. But they then are competing against a male of the same age who has already put in his 12 years of nutty work levels. Very tough competition.
Thank you for your reply, Mystic William. Unfortunately, I have never been an extremely driven man myself and didn't hang around much with such people, so I have no basis for comparison. It would be interesting to have Janice's thoughts about this.
Young men are definitely FAR more driven. Where I used to work at the U of Ottawa, there was a series of steps leading down into a mini-amphitheater where young men, aged 14-19, used to practice their skateboarding wizardry every weekend. The dedication and time they put into doing those stunts over and over and over and over!! I marveled every Saturday/Sunday. Never a single young woman. It is true of many other male-dominated endeavors. A certain subset of men (not all men, of course--and no blame on the men who don't have the drive) are willing to put their entire lives on hold to pursue their obsession. There are a few women like that, but a miniscule number. I was fairly driven as a bookish only child who wanted to be a writer.
'A certain subset of men (not all men, of course--and no blame on the men who don't have the drive) are willing to put their entire lives on hold to pursue their obsession.'
That reminds me of the description I read, some years ago, of autism as 'extreme masculinity', and the observation that there is a fine line between insanity and genius - men existing at the extremes while women cluster around the mean. I don't know how true the statement is of autism, however I am happy to accept that as the way life, or nature or 'god', or whatever you will, wants things arranged and all human attempts to alter that are bound to fail.
I have been and weirdly still am very driven. I know a lot of very driven men. I have NEVER known any woman as driven as maybe 100 guys I have known. Not even close. I can’t even say us driven guys like it. We just are. Parts of it I really like. It is like a character trait that women don’t have.
Exactly. I wrote my response above before I read this. Agree 100%. I find it admirable in men. My husband works at his writing far more assiduously than I do.
I always noted the young female tennis stars. So many burnt out young. But also so many had a Svengali that drove them. It struck me the Svengali provided the drive. The woman had the raw talent but without the master driver she likely wouldn’t have made it. Whereas the Mark Messier Tom Brady types just drove themselves harder and harder. No one needed to push them.
BTW…I am not lauding ambition as being wonderful and women as inferior as they seemingly have less of it. It just is a trait that gets used by life. It doesn’t make you happier or less happy.
I watched the "Queen's Gambit" thinking it was about chess. I should have known better. It was pandering to the common fantasy of a female kicking male butts. It is to be found everywhere in the Media, films and fiction books. It is consumed in industrial amounts by women and some men.
Janice yes but Thatcher no. Wouldn't have objected to her being on the frontline during the Falklands war from which she benefited politically - massively.
I enjoyed that show even though I knew it was just an improbable feminist fantasy. At least it was a bit more plausible than the "girl boss" movies of Hollyweird where a 110 lb woman kicks the ass of hundreds of trained soldiers twice her size. That strains all credulity but they keep pumping them out, spending billions of these fantasies. In reality, if you match up a fit man and woman in the ring, the woman is easily beaten. Men simply have more physical strength. There is no denying biology -- but still the Lefties try.
Don’t worry, there are plenty of feminists who will find excuses for female inadequacy.
In the case of chess that’s frequently “few women find chess interesting,” and “95 percent of tournament players are men.” There are, in fact, women-only tournaments where women can show each other how to play the game more adeptly. There are no male-only FIDE tournaments. Physical strength, and speed, are not involved. Strategic thinking is. What this says about the mental abilities of women I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Thanks George. Maybe few women find chess interesting because as they improve more of their opponents will be - or at least shoule be - men, and women don't like losing, whereas men see it as the only way to improve. Women-only chess competitions - why don't they restrict them to people unable to compete with men, for any reason?
Physical harassment of female players? If the top ranks are so full of male players, when one of them came across a female player wouldn't he be like a sailor who just got off ship? Why does that strike you as outrageous? Anya Taylor-Joy said in an interview that she identified more closely with Beth Harmon, the heroine of "The Queen's Gambit", then any other character she has ever played on screen. It is a wonderful TV series, even if a tad implausible. A Norwegian world champion said he liked a lot of things about the TV series but it was implausible that Beth would make such a rapid advance from playing in high school tournaments in the Mid-West to playing in international tournaments. I don't agree that women are all but non-existent in the top echelons of everything but absolutely share your admiration for Margaret Thatcher and our Janice Fiamengo.
Yes, well said, thank you. Paul, Tom, and I did an analysis of 'The Queen's Gambit' during which I talked interminably; so if you are ever sleepless and want to be lulled into a slumber, you might listen to this. I thought the series was well done but propagandistic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMbk0ZPeIsE
Thank you very much, Janice. I watched your analysis of the series as part of the Men are Good panel. I left a comment there on it, and liked it much better than you or your friends, although the novel, as is usually the case, was better. I loved the Russian scenes in the TV series. I took a bus tour out of Moscow in 2000 to see the towns in the Golden Ring. In Alexandrov, which Ivan the Terrible made the Russian capital for part of his reign, we were taken to an outdoor stadium where they were celebrating the anniversary of their town's founding. I became so entranced in watching the rows and rows of tables of chess players on the edge of the stadium field that I lost contact with my tour group. A young policeman reunited me with my group. People playing chess on outdoor tables is a real thing in Russia. It's not just in "The Queen's Gambit".
I believe it's common in many Eastern European cities e.g. budapest, in the outdoor spas. I'm flying to Dublin today, where they have big metal chess boards in some parks.
Perhaps, but more things happen due to incompetence than conspiracy. No, the World Economic Forum, the Freemasons or 'the Jews' are not pulling secret strings that control all the World's governments as part of some malevolent master plan. Apart from the points Janice Fiamengo makes so convincingly in her above article, I wonder if liberal political bias at the top of the organisation meant that protecting Donald Trump was assigned a lower priority than if he had been a Democrat. Hence, although they assigned people to the task, they did not send their best and ablest.
That is what I’m inclined to think. They clearly sent their B-team (maybe the C-team!).
I bet someone also thought it would be funny to send a bunch of short women to guard Trump; who is a rather large man. I imagine they thought it might look a bit emasculating in photos. Little did they know that the iconic “Fight!” photo was in part due to the short female agent - if he’d been surrounded by burly men it wouldn’t be quite as effective.
The incompetence is the result of the conspiracy, as anyone with any knowledge of the activities of Common Purpose is aware. Whoever is 'pulling the strings' has ensured that incompetents are appointed to positions of responsibility and idiots like you will think themselves wiser than the rest for refusing to believe in conspiracies.
Competence as a Secret Service officer is directly measurable from physical strength and size, exposing the deadly flaw, literally, of "diversity" hires. But incompetence in most jobs is not obvious, but equally deadly to the health of civilization.
If Cheatle is so impressed with the abilities of the female agents and so proud of her campaign to fill the ranks of the Secret Service with women, perhaps she should honor the women protected by the Secret Service—Jill Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, etc—with all female security details and reserve the male agents with their more rigorous standards for the men.
Yes, it seems like the obvious solution: all-female teams for female protectees; all-male teams for male protectees. That would fulfil the DEI requirements and leave any incompetence issues for women to sort out amongst themselves, thereby avoiding any sexist/misogynist accusations. Of course, if any female protectees demanded all-male teams, they should be provided.
Another terrific piece Janice. And I would add that Cheatle's bio on the Secret Service's website states that she leads "a diverse workforce composed of 7,800 Special Agents." Not a talented or skillful or hard working or dedicated workforce - but a diverse one. Oh yeah, and at her previous job she was in charge of security at PepsiCo.
I'm wondering what kind of security she would have dealt with? I'm serious. Would she have been worried about disgruntled weirdos trying to steal the Pepsi recipe? attempting to sabotage a batch of pop? Has a Pepsi warehouse every been blown up or damaged in any manner?
The way I figure it, she likely spent most of her time managing security guards who were tasked with keeping hostile members of the media away from executives, and homeless people from camping out on their property. You know, the kind of training that prepares you for protecting POTUS.
Sadly over the decades, I have seen the death of feminism being predicted numerous times, yet like a vampire, it seems to be able to rise from the dead.
Its failures in the military will certainly come to light if and when we face WWIII against Communist China or Iran for example. The CCP and Islamists delight in our humiliating weakness at this time. The latter see it as a gift from Allah.
I doubt it. If you have a garden, or a window box, try this experiment. Cut down or burn or poison everything in it and see how long elapses before something grows there; not long. The first shoots will be 'weeds', however, with cultivation a new garden will be created. Our civilisation is moribund and nature is taking steps to clear it away, with unrestricted inflow of savages, unquestioning acceptance of vaccines and so on. Those doing the clearing are not equipped to replace us so while we as individuals may be destroyed some of us are going to survive and those of us who are left will reproduce and pass on the savage lessons learned to their offspring, who will go on to reproduce and pass on what they have learned until a new civilisation arises from the ruins of ours. Hopefully those who live in it are not going to be susceptible to the mind virus that is destroying us.
In theory, female agents could be lighter weight, and so could have been deployed onto the thin roof. Mitigating against this however, is the fat acceptance movement, and the lowering of standards for recruits. I think the secret service needs a micro squad of tiny thin lightweight gals to deploy to thin roofs and tight spaces...
I was wrong about Kimberly Cheatle refusing to resign!
Maybe she had to resign to try and save the Democratic Party.. it looks better for them...
Non American here.
She's gone? Expect the allegations soon.
Everything changed for Cheatle after her performance before the House Oversight Committee. She thought she could stonewall them, but instead they threatened her with impeachment and jointly demanded her resignation. So she "resigned", just like Biden "resigned" - involuntarily!
I doubt you were wrong. More likely, she was forced to resign by other D.C. elements, lest her incompetence and totalitarian feminism draw more public and media attention to their anti-mission policy of Women First At All Costs. They quickly papered-over their gender tyranny by putting a male face on the agency. . . until the furor dies down. Then they certainly will return to business-as-usual.
The unearned smug on the faces of the Diversity Girls of the Feminist SS is ubiquitous in New Amerika, and was a major factor in my leaving New Amerika almost a decade ago. I could not stomach to see it all around me, infecting everything, like a plague invading a country I once loved. Only a major disaster (and I do not mean a mere Trump shooting) will break the spell of Girlboss Power in New Amerika and allied nations.
I think you were wrong about her period. No pun intended. If everyone resigned when demanded there would be chaos.
There is chaos now, a few resignations are going to make no difference.
I cannot see the sense in compelling an idiot or a saboteur to stay in the position from which he has, either wittingly or unwittingly, reduced a once efficient and respected organisation to ruin. What can be achieved other than further ruin?
With this and really all diversity policies, it seems like there's a sort of blindness as to how we got here as a civilzation. That everything just works through some mysterious power so if we diversify it won't matter. The wheels will keep turning.
For example. I work at an electrical utility engineering company. We have what I call "diversity by coincidence" because we hire smart people who happens to be all sorts. But if we hired, say, people who are bad at engineering but tick the right boxes, then the engineering doesn't get done right or at all and the power goes out.
The DEI people don't understand what makes civilization work. They think it'll just going through, I dunno, momentum?
I think there is a very strong feeling amongst the utopian Left, in particular, that skill sets, intelligence, and work ethic are evenly distributed amongst all people; therefore, improving diversity of peoples is not only just but easily managed and with no negative (only positive!) impact on productivity or institutional competence. It's hard to understand how someone could come to this conclusion by observing the world, but it is, regardless, a devout belief held by millions.
Yes it is a "feeling". I did an economics degree, and as the great Thomas Sowell observed economists look at what people do for evidence of what they really think. And of course there one finds that those self declared utopians in fact act in preference for people like them in what they do and spend their money on.
"I think there is a very strong feeling amongst the utopian Left, in particular, that skill sets, intelligence, and work ethic are evenly distributed amongst all people"
I'm not sure they even have enough awareness of the link between skills/ work ethic/ intelligence and a functioning civilisation to view it like that.
I think they just view 'careers' as another entitlement (a resource up for grabs) ...... and 'diversity' as the means to gain access to those resources and opportunities. This is how feminism has trained us to view the world (preaching to the converted I know...)
Even if that were true, and it clearly isn’t, then what explains the vast differences we see? That would then have to be culture. Which leftists do accept as being true. What else would be left? Yet they then somehow ignore it! If culture is the definitive factor do they think ‘the only differences are culturally based so all we have to do is place someone in a different culture, in this case a work culture and 1000s of years of ethno and societal culture will be instantly erased and everyone will be interchangeable’? People who think like that clearly have no real values of their own.
My husband and I had a long argument with friends of ours on this issue. They kept insisting it was culture that produced all group differences. "But what created the culture?" That they seemed never to have thought of.
Or even, okay ‘culture did it. How do we overcome the culture, or enhance it?’ And the big one…’which culture then is better?’
Climate does partly create culture. I am not being facetious. It is a factor. Northern Europeans had to plan and store food etc, in a way that someone living in a lush tropical Environment didn’t have to. And if your ancestors lived for thousands of years and never had to work hard to create food…that has an effect.
Sure, that makes sense, and one can see that European peoples in the northern part of the continent, for example, are quite different from those in the southern parts. And that becomes a fact at a very deep level.
The Middle East with its reliance on scant water supplies has an all or nothing attitude in some ways. He who controlled the oasis lived. I haven’t dine enough work on this to do more than merely point out a few obvious things. I think tribal conflicts, which seemingly have been a part of all tribal societies were nature’s way of blending gene pools. So people in general were strengthened. Which if true presupposes some sort of organizing intelligence. But also it speaks of inclination to rape and steal.
Culture is maintained by being inherited. That happens through cultural inheritance proper (e.g. social learning, teaching, being exposed to local language, norms, practices etc) in combination with biological and "geographical" inheritance.
It gets its grip on the humand mind by becoming embodied from early on in development. Later in life it is continually fortified by constant exposure.
My point is that culture is just as much of a deterministic bitch as anything else. People believe that many traits, including intelligence and personality, are determined by genes, thinking that the outcomes are much less malleable than anything culture can do. But that's wrong. Whatever mistress you pick, biologgy or culture, there's not much to choose between them.
(Spoiler: in reality, biology, culture and environment always co-determine the phenotype, so pitting one against the other(s) has always been an error.)
I think the money is used for the destruction of our culture, not the creation of more of it. The risible nonsense our money is spent on is anything but creative.
A pertinent observation on the absurdity of 'civic nationalism', which is a convenient ruse for several disparate groups with conflicting ends but the common purpose of destroying the mutually supportive family unit and ethno-state to achieve them.
Because they do observe the world, Janice. Except they are observing the wrong one. They are in the clouds in Wakanda and with Spider-Man and all that where women and men are equal, and in fact, women can be men handily.
I remember watching mash in the 70s and seeing major Houlihan beating up men
It’s been and all our face to take since we were young.
Propaganda propaganda propaganda. It gets right into your subconscious and people believe it.
It’s such a shame and it really hurt the world a lot
Right now, men are raping women in women’s prisons, women guards are getting pregnant, women prisoners are getting pregnant. It doesn’t make sense at all. None of it does.
Watch the commercials and see that women chastised men like they are little little boys all the time. This gets in peoples heads and no matter what they see in real life. Their subconscious really believes that men and women are the exact same, and in fact, women are stronger.
Show me what you do, then I can tell you what you believe in.
I am a real estate developer. Prior to doing this, for 14 years I had an alternative health practice based in ayurveda. For which I wouldn’t charge. Prior to that I bought and sold real estate and was a bar owner. So what do I believe?
Oh, I’ll try…I like these!
A very smart and astute conservative entrepreneur with a heart of gold who was willing to share a bounty of financial independence (gained from a successful [yup, capitalist] commitment to observing your local housing market) through an incredibly gracious manner!, of your knowledge and resources for wholesome living.
Owning the bar was a learning curve, where you honed your people skills, learned how to balance business finances, and had some fun all while figuring out your organization skills.
You believe in humanity (or you did), you respect independence, and you value people smarter than you - bc they’ve been your guides, many times.
Well thanks. It makes me out to be a better person than I am though.
Yes there is a sort of belief in a magical right to ever increasing prosperity that we are simply entitled to. Without ever considering how, who and why the huge complex thing we rely on keeps pouring its goodies to our easy lives. I remember "Judgy Bitch" a blogger did a thought experiment on if all men went on strike ag the same time. Her list of things that would soon stop, was a lesson in how quickly "civilisation" would simply cease.
Yes, a brilliant timeless piece by our old friend Judgy Bitch. I miss her:
https://avoiceformen.com/men/judgybitch-pray-men-never-take-a-day-off/
People don’t understand that 97% of construction, architecture, sewer, and water, electricity and gas are all men
We wouldn’t have a drink of water without men and would die within days if they ever went on strike
So much for women who need men like fish need a bicycle
'That everything just works through some mysterious power so if we diversify it won't matter. The wheels will keep turning.'
That mysterious power is masculinity, and its fount and lifeblood, testosterone.
Masculinity is NOT TOXIC
Indeed.
This connects with the increased levels of stupidity and incompetence of those who got a woke (un-)education and who keep flooding the workforce in all areas of society through diversity and women-first hiring. We can already see the failures this inevitably leads to, if we care to look (e.g. pandemic mismanagement, European migration policy, etc), but the future will likely bring more catastrophic consequences (well, the pandemic already was a catastrophe, but with a more complicated etiology than the failure discussed by Janice).
It’s Blackrock and other deep state actors who have been pushing this agenda. It will stop when it no longer serves their purposes. The MSM turn on a dime to badmouth Biden. And now we have an Iwo Jima look-alike image of Trump, which Janice referred to in the title of this piece. Trump is suddenly pro immigration, and talks of giving green cards out willy nilly and one of Vances first comments was to juice up war with Iran. Hopefully only the girls in the military will participate when the call is made. My point DEI policies are being rescinded and have served their purpose. The next thing cometh.
Interesting. A number of friends have commented on the many pro-diversity statements coming out of the RNC.
Leading with the Sikh woman who sang a prayer out of key in a language no one can understand drove the Christian right to apoplectic fits. No doubt this was intentional.
If they wanted that sort of music they should have got Snatam Kaur, who really can sing and has a beautiful voice -- but she is white, a convert to Sikhism, so I guess she doesn't tick the diversity box they wanted.
I'm afraid Trump himself has finally become a politician. He's getting my vote because of what was done to him, Harvey Weinstein would get my vote because of what was done to him, but I'm not all that happy about right-wing fEMINISTS supplanting left wing fEMINISTS
The Republican Party is strongly feminist, though I don't think Trump is in particular. Neither party gives a damn about men's rights or the particular suffering of young or divorcing men today. Both parties are wary of alienating their female and White Knight voters.
THANK YOU so much Janice. Exactly. Wish there were more like you in the world, but I guess that would be asking for too much.
Joseph, I wish more than anything. It was the 1950s. I was meant to be a housewife and then a grandmother. They took everything from me. I will never forgive them.
I agree its Blackrock and other elites behind it all. But Trump is against illegal immigration, criminals, and asylums being dumped into the US by Venezuela, Mexico and other places; including ppl on watchlists getting in. Their crime rates went down 70% in their countries while America’s went sky high. He is for immigrants coming in legally with a process. He is against war. He said Afghanistan is the current biggest arms dealer in the world. This current administration helped them with that everyone saw it as it happened.
DEI is being pushed, still. There are rewards for it. If said company does not enforce it, you get blackballed and stonewalled from marketing, selling, and much more red tape. Its a form of extortion. Sick. Many veteran owned businesses are rejecting DEI and counting on patriotic support only. Its hopefully going to be forced out somehow and this point system removed. Whoever holds the wallet decides how to use it. No evil like Blackrock should dictate it.
If you want to vote for continued genocide in the Middle East and a wider forever war against Iran, you are certainly free to vote for the Trump Vance ticket. Both candidates have already promised as much in the convention already. It’s the promise they’re most likely to keep.
Iran is the # 1 cause of war and unrest in the Middle East, trying to spread Shiite imperialism. In this they are opposed by Saudi Arabia (Suni Muslims), resulting in the Yemeni civil war and other regional conflicts costing the lives of hundreds of thousands. Compared to them, the Gaza conflict is small. The Israel-Palestine conflict has become an extension of that aggression by Iran. This is why the Abraham Accords worked: Iran is funding jihadis to cause unrest in Arab nations and those nations don't want another Arab Spring. Hamas and Hezbollah are funded by Iran - and indirectly by Biden/Obama. Trump was right to take decisive steps in the ME, such as symbolically putting the US Embassy in Jerusalem. He did more for Israel that any other president in recent history. He is not for foreign wars; he is smart and negotiates where possible. The only genocide that could take place in the ME is if the Dems retain power, Iran sees that the USA is weak and divided over Israel, and they stage an invasion or even drop the bomb on Israel and attempt a second Holocaust (this time of about 7 million Jews). Trump, if he gets back into office, would I think thwart that plan.
As for the Palestinians, they are just pawns used by Iran and Hamas to wage jihad against Israel. As Douglas Murry notes, Muslims have no love for other Muslims. They don't care about the Palestinians and would gladly sacrifice them all to destroy Israel. And many of the Palestinians sacrifice themselves for that end. It's religious violence, not a social justice cause. I should add that there is no such thing as "Palestine" - it's just a convenient fiction to reclaim Jerusalem for Islam. Most of the casualties they received in this recent war - which they started on Oct 7th - are the result of Hamas using them as human shields. The best thing to do is move them far away from Israel since they are incapable of living in peace with it, the only problem being that no Arab states want them, so dupes like Trudeau take them in, setting the stage for terrorism and unrest in Canada.
Re-electing Trump seems to me crucial for avoiding not only the endless wars of the military-industrial complex that the corrupt Dems and RINOs get rich off, but also the possibility of WW3. If the Dems get into power again, it's a signal to Iran and China and Russia that the USA is weak and vulnerable. It will break détente and all hell will be unleashed, including the possibility of a war with China - which we really don't need. Trump walks with a big stick, which keeps the peace, while Dems appear weak and we know they complicit, taking $ from China and giving $ to Iran. They have already let in untold numbers of real terrorists across the southern border.
Of course Iran started the whole thing, and it has nothing to do with the terrorist beginnings of Israel starring Menachim Began and funded by the west or the puppet regime of the Shah installed by the CIA & friends, the illegal bulldozing of homes, the random beatings and killings by ultra orthodox "settlers" on Palestinian lands going on 20 - 30 years now and still ongoing. So I agree. Israel is completely innocent and justified in attempting to exterminate the entire population of Gaza, an in inciting a war against Iran using American weapons and no doubt soldiers soon enough. Certainly you and Douglas Murray should be the first to sign yourselves and your kin up in the war for Greater Israel. I would too, but they don't need old farts like me, sadly.
Most of what you write here is a repetition of propaganda from Communist-leaning revisionist historians like Chomsky and Pappe who deliberately skew facts to meet their anti-Zionist anti-American narrative. I can understand Islamists like this stuff, as it affirms their deep seated hatred of Jews, but it's amazing to me that so many people in the West have uncritically bought into this intellectually dishonest history. There are three types of anti-Jewish antisemitism in history: from the Christians, from the Nazis, and now from the anti-Israel crowd, which is just a veiled hatred of Jews. One never hears anti-Zionists talk about the suffering of Muslims at the hands of other Muslims in the ME, or the at the hands of the CCP in Xinjiang (which is a real genocide) or any number of other horrors that occur worldwide. So it's not a concern for human rights that motivates anti-Zionism; it's just an irrational hatred of one specific people. If you want a more accurate history of the conflict, going back to the 19th century, read "The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process" by Robert Spencer. It goes through the repeated attempts by Israel -- from 1947 onward - to achieve peace, which was always rejected by the Arabs. For them it is a religious mandate to destroy the Jews; it's not rational and the anti-Zionist histories are incredibly one-sided as though the Arabs had no active role in it the conflict and didn't start it -- but of course they did and they lost and keep losing. As for going to Israel, I've been there and would gladly go back again and would support it however I can, rather than see it succumb to the likes of Hamas.
The PLO did despicable things in Lebanon, and that was not driven by Iran.
If you want to characterise the deaths of Arabs & Muslims as a genocide, you may want to pay attention to the civil wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen etc. If Israel disappeared tomorrow the violence would continue since it is the result of cultural factors. That's the "forever war".
Trump's record is clearly less interventionist than Biden/Obama's. The US govt's role is the welfare of Americans not those in remote (and mostly hostile) nations.
Forever war indeed. The mentality in this cultural war: You give them your hand they always take your whole arm and so on. Never enough. You show kindness they talk behind your back and worse. Never satiated, never enough reparations. They call for genicide and demand a land that another nation developped. Ongoing from one generation to the next, blaming and playing a victimized role perpetually seeking sympathy though they lash out in terroristic ways only with vile violence. Never focus on civility because their Allah rewards martyrs. It’s neanderthal “cultural” behaviour mindset. They are wronged for generations and nothing can fix it not even a billion dollars. You give them land and money, they will want more land and more power. The IDEA never dies. Much like fascism has gone on to the modern Neo Nazi’s in Ukraine, who were killing Russians for years prior to this current war. The part they will never air on mainstream is this is the main reason given for the invasion. To capture all Neo Nazi in Ukraine. Hard to kill an idea.
From the perspective of an entomologist, without a doubt extermination would be the solution to kill the infestation one species at a time is posing, so peace can be restored and property or safety returned to normal. If you cannot kill the behaviour putting other nations at risk, what do you do? Exile an entire culture, race for the greater good? They will not stop they claim until “every Jew and Christian is dead”. Here in insane Canada where I live the govt is protecting them, and anyone trying to stop their protests and behaviour will be arrested instead. The opposite of sanity. Communistic left leaning behaviour of letting “them” self destruct. They were given land, money, from EU Union and they take those funds for infrastructure and build missiles. Scream genocide. You help them they continue to scream there is no winning with them unless you ungroup them and spread them out. They are emboldened in mass groups.
So what do you do with a group of ppl who pose a threat to the rest of humans? This is what everyone does not dare ask because it’s “racist”, Its about peace and living in a civilized society without threat, not chaos and war. If the media would say this instead of victimizing terrorists…. but alas the mainstream is paid and bought for. I am not saying exterminate an entire group if ppl. Incase ppl skim the comments.
I don't necessarily align completely with all your views but there is one fundamental truth you point out - the moral asymmetry that is allowed to exist - both in that specific context as well as generally within the left/progressive ideology.
In the Arab/Israeli context we/Israel/West must obey high moral standards, but the other side's brutality is always excused. In the feminist context JF principally focuses on, the same applies - men are held to strict standards whereas feminism is entitled to play dirty. This pattern repeats itself in every field of the culture war. Moral and cultural relativism is one of the predominant intellectual dishonesties of progressivism.
It is also highly ironic given how strongly the feminist movement supports cultures whose values are clearly far worse for women than the supposed patriarchal oppression by Western culture. No culture in history has ever given women the gains modern Western civilization has - why are so many young, intelligent & motivated women sucked into campaigning against their own welfare?
Stunning comment.
Yea, I am voting Trump because of what they did to him, but truthfully, I'm conflicted about all the right-wing assholes like Kid Rock & Riley Gaines, even that asshole Dana White, from the UFC putting on a fake black accent.
I wouldn’t call it coincidence though. There are people of quality in every group, and the able almost always rise to their proper level.
Exactly. We strive to hire the best we find, and those traits transcend any mere identity
As you mention, the entire feminist charade was exposed not only by the blatant deficiencies of the female officers, but also tragically by the actions of the deceased attendee, Corey Comperatore - not only himself a firefighter but a volunteer at that - instinctively doing what men instinctively do and protecting the lives of those closest to him, who happened to be women, and who happened - to judge by all their past and subsequent social media declarations - to adore and cherish him. The toxic masculinity narrative has no business surviving him.
As you say it shouldn't survive him. But it will.
They'll squeeze the pips of it as long as Big Femma is still profitable, for sure.
Great comment
This is true.
I’m particularly concerned about female firefighters. I wonder how the feminist ideal of an all-female crew would deal with a 400 lb woman in a third story walk-up.
About the only useful task for women in security is searching female arrestees. Crouching behind men who have put themselves in danger is not a sign of the sort of courage we expect from men who put themselves in danger.
It is worth noting that adding women also discriminates against black and Latino men with serious military experience (the source of many recruits). Men as a whole are being displaced by ineffective agents who cower behind them because of complete inability to meet the requirements of the job.
I remember seeing an oped written back in the late 1970s about the San Francisco Fire Department's hiring of female firefighters. The writer was a male firefighter, He reported that many female firefighters were observed cowering behind the fire truck at the scene of a fire.
I recall a comment on the Justice for Men and Boys forum, a few years ago now, from someone purporting to be a fireman. He described an incident in which a fire crew of six included two women. At an incident one of the women collapsed in hysterics when ordered into a burning building and the other had to be detailed to take her back to the appliance and comfort her, leaving four men to do the work of six, with a consequent increase in their personal risk. Can anyone doubt that when any thanks, praise or commendations were handed out the women did not have the decency to look ashamed? Does anyone doubt that had any man been rash enough to rebuke them for their cowardice his career would have been ended promptly?
Or if a man did that he would ride back to the station, pack his things and go home.
He would have to WALK back to the station, before packing his things and going home.
When men fail as blatantly as Kimberly Cheatle failed (or was, as is possible, under orders from higher up to fail), they usually resign. Cheatle will not resign.
And if she's forced out she'll claim she was sexually discriminated against and there's a culture of bullying and harassment in the organisation.
I read decades ago that thanks to SF's lesbian fire chief roughly 35% of the firefighters were female. IOW, all standards had been abandoned to hit this number.
Why am I not surprised.
Exactly. The female firefighters' cowardice especially angered the male firefighters, as the oped mentioned that many of the men were survivors of the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.
Your reference to cowardice raises an interesting point about what is and is not acceptable behaviour in a crisis. I think the concept of 'cowardice' is a masculine one, as in only applied to men, and its purpose is to induce men to disregard our own safety and put women and children first. Women are naturally inclined to run away from danger, which is an evolutionary strategy and not something they can control easily, and once upon a time no one would have rebuked them for doing so. However, in choosing to enter the male realm they make themselves subject to male behavioural norms and now their behaviour can fairly be judged by male standards.
I read once that most women did not want the vote after the first world war because they feared they would have to do the nasty things men have to do once they had it. They were right.
Well, they were partially right. Most women still do not have to do the nasty things, and are not called out as cowards. As you say, 'coward' is an insult only for men. Call me a coward, I'll just grin and try to look cute so you won't hate me. Call me a slut, and you've hit home.
Men evolved to take risks in order to achieve status and therefore the possibility of procreating. As Stefan Molyneux once explained it, giving a white feather to men and boys during WWI was akin to killing them because it meant they were judged unworthy of being mated with. Better to risk death and maiming on the battlefield than experience the sure death of women's sexual shaming.
Wow, I just looked up white feather!
Obviously, a government trick to force young men into dying or getting maimed for profit.
What a horrendous world
Do you know how much more sensible to vote would be if they revoked the 19th amendment?
Oh, indeed I do.
In Australia there are also all female ambulance officers, and at times that have to wait for the men to rock up to lift the patient.
I wouldn't rule out females; the odd one might match the strength, fitness, mental confidence and even height requirements of qualifying men, though very rare.
The idea that females can be hired for support rather than front-line roles presents problems though. Here in New Zealand a couple of years ago the sex/gender composition of the police force was published. Women were in high-ranked command positions at a higher rate than the proportion of female police overall and a much higher rate than for male police. No information was provided to compare the length of service between high-ranked men and women but it's safe to assume that the women on average were promoted on the basis of less experience than the men. Even if those women performed equally to men in the higher-rank roles (seems unlikely), the problem remains that experienced front-line men who would be at least as good are deprived of promotion opportunities. Even applying sexist DEI for back-office humble jobs deprives long-serving front-line male officers of the chance to maintain more gentle employment when their bodies have become too wrecked from physical encounters or their brains too fried from PTSD. The whole service then suffers from reduced commitment, loyalty and camaraderie.
DEI appears to be based on poor rational analysis of actual consequences. "DEI is desirable" is simply asserted like a religious claim, backed up at most by some hollow claims of improved sales results based on one poor research study and ignoring the 20 other contradictory studies. DEI is feminists and social justice warriors skipping like schoolchildren at playtime. The female Secret Service bodyguards are playing a role more than serving, and enjoying being paid for this. Many modern movies portray women as equally or more capable than men in manual combat but this is ideological fantasy. The woman who proudly reported her daughter's joy whenever she put her shiny badge on epitomizes such pretense. As well as positive associations such as a good salary and feminist achievement on public display, the shiny badge realistically represents a significant risk that the parent won't be coming home tonight. But such bittersweet recognition is absent in a role-play.
Well said indeed.
Excellent analysis.
Good. Its entirely clear, and has been for years now, that DEI is going to get people killed: https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/06/01/complex-systems-wont-survive-the-competence-crisis/
In some sense, its actually a blessing this happened, and that Trump was not killed (although sadly at least one innocent man was killed). Its now clear, on the world stage, and in full public view, that DEI did get someone killed, and it will only get worse. This can't be hidden, or even spun. It was clear as day what happened. Like the Trump-Biden debate, normies can now see reality with their own eyes.
This madness needs to end, and merit and ability must return as the primary objective for selecting anyone for a job.
Years ago, a female engineer boasted about female involvement in the design of the Sweetwater Bridge in Florida. A few days later, the bridge collapsed. Immediately, innumerable pundits denied that there had been any involvement of DEI hires in the design and construction of the Sweetwater pedestrian overpass. I doubt we will ever know the truth of that incident.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Yet another interesting, brave and convincing article from Janice Fiamengo, for which thanks.
I recently looked at the Website of a law firm in England where I used to work, and found they had a prominent message on their Home Page: 'Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do'
Although it was not what I did when I worked for them, the largest part of that firm's business is actually taking people's homes away when they get behind with their mortgage payments, both going to court to evict them and then dealing with the legal work to sell their homes, on behalf of banks and other financial institutions. I am still trying to work out how to put 'Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the heart' of that process.
It was though always the case that the firm was very broadminded in evicting anyone from their home who failed to keep up with their mortgage payments, regardless of race, sex, religion, age, disability, marital status or anything else, as long as a bank paid the firm to do so. I am sure the people evicted from their homes must appreciate the fact that at least they are having their house taken away from them in a diverse, equitable and inclusive way.
Ouch. Well said.
A DIE manner. Where all are impacted. Like this perhaps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk3AVceraTI
Maybe fewer white people default?
That’s hilarious.
I would agree with the assessment that DEI should not be used for firefighting, secret service, military, etc. But not only that; it should not be used in any field whatsoever, as it is discriminatory.
We saw it first used in academia (it was called affirmative action then) and I don't think higher education has benefited from it. In fact, quite the opposite: now all areas of academia are infected with intersectional feminist ideology and "decolonizing" nonsense.
As for the "dirty and dangerous" jobs done almost exclusively by men, women don't want those jobs and they are ill-suited for them. I saw a woman on a construction site doing masonry as an assistant. She was stronger than the usual woman but she didn't last more than three days - which is far longer than most women would have lasted (I can imagine 20 minutes as the upper end for most). This is because it requires a lot of physical strength and endurance. And she was slower than the men for that very reason.
Now DEI is common in the workplace, causing huge problems with often false sexual harassment allegations, done for financial gain or to vindictively hurt men as a group. A meritocracy is far better. It is what built Western civilization; we abandon it at our peril. The only systemic racism and sexism in the West today is affirmative action/DEI hiring. Qualified men have sued governments over this and more should do so. There needs to be a massive backlash.
Some will say, but what of the IDF? They have women soldiers. Yes, they do, but women in the IDF are excluded from frontline combat roles." There is a recognition that men do better in that particular role.
I hope to live to see the day that cultural Marxism, DEI, CRT, ESG and all this other nonsense is done away with and our society can start to heal and correct its course. Men and women are different and have evolved to have different strengths. The strengths of women should be honored of course, and valued, as they traditionally have been, at least in Western civilization. Ironically, putting women in positions they're not suited for actually devalues them by trying to make them into men.
Well said. I agree that all preferential / equity hiring should cease immediately. I would merely go further to say that women should be excluded, as women, across the board (yes, even the few who would qualify) from frontline military, firefighting, and Secret Service positions. There are likely a very small number of individual women who could creditably perform in those roles. Too bad, the risk is far too large, the slippery slope too slippery. As for other roles that women can occupy, such as teacher, lawyer, doctor, etc., I am willing that unusually talented women should bring their gifts to the world, but with no special perks and privileges, no set-aside scholarships, no equity hiring, no summer camps for girls, no calls for more women at the highest echelons. Girls should not be encouraged to do these jobs. They should be allowed to do them if they demonstrate extraordinary competence and dedication, which most women do not have. They should certainly not be encouraged to take jobs away from men.
We're all talking about the physical limitations of women in frontline roles, but a far greater and more general problem with women in the workforce, particularly in leadership roles, is our inability as a species to hold females accountable for their performance in the same way we hold males accountable. Cheatle is a perfect example - in response to catastrophic failure causing actual death she can simply bluff it out with inane statements about sloping roofs, while a male leader would have resigned or been forced to resign by now. The effect of such tolerance towards women's failures is compounded when you consider the morale sapping effect on competent men (and women) working under them. It's the same lenience towards women we see in the justice system, with grossly unequal penalties for men and women for similar crimes.
Yes, exactly. That's the more important issue of why women shouldn't be in leadership. Nicola Sturgeon was a great example. As soon as her Covid-related decisions began to be seriously questioned, she cried publicly and made it about *her* stress. Utterly disgusting.
While I don't want to encouraged derailing of this topic into the highly passionate and divisive Israel-Gaza matter, have others noticed that the pro-Hamas protesters seem to be dominated and largely led by females. Their shrill voices over megaphones are the ones leading childish chants (and sometimes encouraging children to join them). To me, it's clear that knee-jerk emotionality and simplistic slogans drive their passion with little rational thinking, foresight about long-term consequences and consideration of combat strategy. Thinking muddled by emotion is one of the reasons women on average are less effective in high-threat situations. That's not to deny that a good proportion of women can think strategically and behave cold-heartedly, but their thinking and decisions still usually appear to be dominated by emotion.
Good observation. I've see the same thing on numerous occasions. I used to be a Leftist activist. Basically I was an idealist and useful idiot for Marxist totalitarian types without knowing it. Over time, common sense started creeping in when I saw how dysfunctional these movements and activists were and I left them. I noticed that many of the protests and movements were led by these aggressive shrill women you describe, e.g. Judy Rebick and Sue Collis are two famous (within activist circles) women in Canada who are professional activists of this kind.
There is not a shred of reason in these movements. It's entirely emotion-based. In the 18th century critics of the same use of emotion by charismatic preachers called it "enthusiasm." Famous demagogues have learned to excite the emotions in their speeches, most notably Hitler and Mussolini. You can get swept up in the group energy and not give any thought to why you're there. And it can be dangerous if the mood of the group-mind turns violent against a scapegoat: it's an opportunity to vent repressed aggression, which according to Freud all human beings have in them.
Leftists at pro-Hamas protests have not researched or thought through the issue honestly. If they did, they would not be there. They conflate the issue with their Marxist teachings against colonialism, not realizing that Jews have been on that land for 3,000 years and all the hatred by the Arabs has its roots in religious hatred, expressed as jihad. It has nothing to do with "oppression" or "colonialism." These tropes were superimposed by the KGB and PLO in the 1960s during the Cold War, then promoted by Communists like Ilan Pappe and Chomsky.
Arabs grow up with this hatred as part of their identity. Combined with the activism of the feminist types in the West, it's a bad combination. The feminists give Hamas a pass on their raping and mutilation of women, demonstrating the moral bankruptcy of their movement.
Jihad is an unstoppable force in the Middle East and now stupid Leftist leaders in Europe -- and now Canada and Australia -- are importing it to the West by bringing over military-age jihadis. It's insane. The jihadis view this weakness of the West -- Leftist ideology -- as a gift from Allah. Leftism weakens us and they take advantage of it. Look at the recent riot in Leeds. Why were such people ever allowed to enter the UK?
And who leads these Leftist movements against Israel, or any number of other questionable causes? The so called liberal (or more precisely illiberal) women, the ones with the shrill voices and cold hearts. Everything is framed in "intersectional" terms with their own specialized Marxist jargon. They form endless planning committees to further the cause. I would go so far as to say it's a kind of religion, but certainly not a good one. It's quite dangerous. They see themselves as heroic figures in a cosmic war, but all they are doing, as they have done with feminism, is destroy that which is good within Western civilization.
The West allows for free speech and can take a lot of dissenting opinions (as it should be), but these protests are not presented in the manner of rational debate or reasoned argument; they are aggressive, sometimes openly violent, lynch mob style attacks meant to demonstrate the power of the collective. The motivating force is not justice; it is the acquisition of power for its own sake, through the mob.
On a lighter note, some of these protests are hilariously stupid and laughable. The chant "hey hey ho ho [designated target] has got to go" for instance. You can find a number of them on youtube. And the people who attend them look like inmates from a lunatic asylum, and in fact they are that: in my time in activism I learned that about half the people in the more radical circles were "psychiatric survivors" as they called themselves and they lived off government disability payments for being crazy. They used this money to support their full-time activist lifestyle. Taxpayers were paying them to sow discord and Marxist nonsense in society, in other words.
Jam-packed!!
And well-written.
Thoughtful, informed, concise.
Thoroughly appreciated reading this, thanks!
Thanks! If you want a good read on this topic, see the book 'United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror" by Jamie Glazov. It was actually Janice Fiamengo who mentioned it and I bought it and it's a good read. I should also credit Janice with helping to red-pill me back around 2017. I started watching her videos on youtube (Fiamengo Files) and it was a wake-up call for me. Janice is herself a former feminist. I then became hungry for more critiques of feminism and Leftism in general. I ended leaving these movements I had unwisely given years of my life to.
Chuffed. Thank you for the shoutout, my friend! Always appreciate your analysis and suggestions.
Thanks for the tips!
I may very well follow up on that title, it sounds familiar.
I didn’t get deep into the brainwashing but I did get so far as to stump for a New Democrat Party leader (read: socialist/Marxist) hopeful back in the 90’s…I did other nonsense too numerous to mention here but suffice it to say, I never ‘took’ as a socialist despite having a decent heart for the hard-living world (been there, had done that).
It’s only in the last 5 years that I feel like I’ve finally come into who I really believe I am as a conservative; good thing bc my mouth needs to tell the truth about shit!
What a relief! 😹😹
I agree! Another point that's been brewing in my mind today after I wrote the previous note.
Sometimes former advocates for "social and environmental justice" causes, (e.g. feminism, climate change, animal rights, etc.) who turn conservative still believe in those causes. Or at least they believe in the principles that inform those causes (such as the idea of justice or non-harm) but they see the movements that identify with those causes as corrupt -- as I did. I did not want to see it but was forced after years of looking the other way.
So for example, I still believe protecting the environment and reducing animal cruelty and curbing the mass extinction of species are good causes. I still think some corporations should not engage in human rights violations in third world countries, e.g. mining corporations that dump acid mine waste into rivers and shoot the locals if they object. That's obviously wrong, even if we need minerals for society to function. I still think we should care about future generations -- but that concern now includes the unborn whereas before it only included future victims of environmental devastation. I still think workers deserve a fair shake and should not be exploited. Tenants should not be gouged. And so on.
However, after thinking through these issues on a case by case basis in depth, and observing the activist movements that claim these issues, I realized that:
(1) The issues are not as cut and dry as the activists make them out to be. The corporations are not always the villains we want them to be and excessive state regulations and taxes are not always for the best. Climate change claims should be questioned and debated since computer models can be wrong, for example. It's not always as black and white as these activists pamphlets make them out to be.
The activists see the world in binary terms as good and evil. They the activists are good; the corporations are evil. This is too simplistic. And revolution, tearing it all down, won't make the world a better place; it will make it much worse place. It will bring out the worst in humanity if things fall apart. This is why I distrust the World Economic Forum - because they seem to want our society to be replaced with their Utopian model, which to me sounds dystopian and totalitarian.
Most of the activists I knew longed for a better world but failed to see that tearing down the old institutions and practices that keep things stable would just make things ten devils worse.
(2) The activist movements themselves -- at least the upper echelon of them, the leaders -- are not really interested in solving the problems. They are only using them to acquire wealth and power for themselves, e.g., NGO and student union leaders with big salaries or fanatical activists who covet power and use the movements to get it.
We know the latter by the fact that they impose "intersectional" race and gender politics into the cause, which serves the purpose of weeding out the older more sensible activists (alienating or scapegoating them in many cases). They are like the Red Guard in Mao's Cultural Revolution, purging the society of the old people.
One can never be revolutionary enough in their view, and counter-revolutionaries -- or in modern terms, alleged racists and misogynists -- are all around and must be purged. For instance, feminists in such groups will target a man as a sexual harasser or rapist -- with zero evidence -- and go after him. I have seen this a few times. A good cause can thus be hijacked or usurped by these Marxist activists for their own ends. It alienates decent folk who believe in the cause but are repelled by the fanatics and tyrants taking it over.
I have seen this occur in nearly every movement I supported. And now I've seen it happen to the society as a whole over the last five or six years, with important institutions such as the media, government, corporations like Wal-Mart, universities, the courts, the entertainment industry, etc -- all succumbing to the woke DEI agenda. Even the Pope went woke! What happened in higher education and in activist circles in past years is now happening across the Western world as the Leftist activists who picked this stuff up in college get positions of power in our society and spread that worldview. Think of Disney for example. Are they making things woke to fulfill some nefarious agenda of ideological subversion, to divide and conquer us, or do they really believe in this nonsense?
Or take the case of climate change. Let's say for the sake of argument that the science is valid and it should be a serious concern for our society. What does that mean in practical terms? In Canada, Trudeau thinks it means he should impose a carbon tax to reduce fossil fuel consumption. The problem is that while his government gets a lot of money from it, it does nothing for the environment, because: (1) Canada's carbon footprint is negligible in global terms and China is the # 1 emitter. (2) There is no proof that the tax reduces fossil fuel consumption. All it does is impoverish people already suffering from inflation. A person in the country can't drive less and can't take public transport.
Then there is Bjorn Lomberg's point that even if it is real, it's not the most urgent matter facing humanity. He may be right. At one time, I would never have entertained the idea that he may be right, but casting off the mantle of activism has liberated my mind to question things and not just go along with the party line.
Lastly there is argument that climate change is being used for as a pretext for state authoritarians to wield even greater power over us by imposing a social credit system, and essentially doing to us in perpetuity what they got away with during the pandemic (lockdowns, mandates, and government overreach). In other words, state tyranny. The WEF even seems to want mass population reduction. How?
Again, it does nothing for the environment in the end, but it gives them absolute power over us. If we object they say, as they did with medical tyranny, that it's for "the common good." With this understanding of what's happening, protecting individual liberties we normally taken for granted has become paramount in my view. A good cause can be misused for a bad purpose. It's similar to the history of religious authorities in the church taking the faith of people and using it for their own ends.
Some people say they are not conservatives but "classical liberals" -- meaning in favour of freedom of speech, religion, the press, etc. They differentiate themselves from the authoritarian Leftists who want to suppress free speech. Maybe they still have a negative association with the term "conservative." All "conservative" really means is that the person values individual freedom and liberties and wants a prosperous safe society that's good for families. For many, faith is part of it. But what Leftists hear when you say "he's conservative" is "he's greed, selfish, racist, stupid, and deluded." They seem themselves as "progressives" who are so much better than all the horrible sexist racist people of the past. It's simplistic and self-serving to think this way. It betrays an ignorance of the real complexities of history and the lives of the people who came before us.
Leftists like to think they are morally and intellectually superior to conservatives. They create a strawman caricature of the conservative as racist, sexist, the "deplorables" described by Hillary Clinton to refer to the working-class blue-collar Americans who voted for Trump. Trump himself they love to hate, buying into the MSM propaganda against him, uncritically.
Returning to the activists, the NDP makes a great show of standing up for this or that cause. At one time I too was involved in it. But the people who run it are making big salaries, which they got used to as student union leaders. They internalized Marxist dogma and woke ideology. They are often dishonest and conniving in my experience. They played politics and merely used the causes in a rhetorical way; they were not committed to those causes.
The moral bankruptcy of the NDP now is apparent in the fact that they have been propping up the corrupt Trudeau government for years, with zero regard for the pain and suffering of the working classes. The trucker's protest was evidence of that. They protested the inhuman and unnecessary lockdowns and mandates and disdain the elites in Ottawa had for them -- which we saw on full display when Trudeau disparaged them as "racists" and "misogynists" and froze bank accounts. He wanted to be a dictator after the Chinese model of governance, and even said so aloud. And the NDP was all for it and also taking bribes from China to skew the election -- which is treason.
The NDP, like the Labour party in the UK, is not for the working classes. They are elitists who use the ideals of the rank and file to gain power -- much as described in Orwell's Animal Farm, itself based on the rise of Stalinism. The NDP leaders are the pigs and the general members are like the sheep. This is why I can never support these kinds of movements again; they attract corruption too easily. The rank and file are naïve idealists (as I was), not seemingly aware of the authoritarians who use their volunteer labour to aggrandize power and who care nothing for the cause.
Sorry this was so long. I had to get it out of my system :)
Absolutely agree.
I will answer the charge by quoting a summary of the excellent book The Tyranny of Guilt by Pascal Bruckner:
"Fascism, communism, genocide, slavery, racism, imperialism―the West has no shortage of reasons for guilt. And, indeed, since the Holocaust and the end of World War II, Europeans in particular have been consumed by remorse. But Pascal Bruckner argues that guilt has now gone too far. It has become a pathology, and even an obstacle to fighting today's atrocities. Bruckner, one of France's leading writers and public intellectuals, argues that obsessive guilt has obscured important realities. The West has no monopoly on evil, and has destroyed monsters as well as created them―leading in the abolition of slavery, renouncing colonialism, building peaceful and prosperous communities, and establishing rules and institutions that are models for the world. The West should be proud―and ready to defend itself and its values. In this, Europeans should learn from Americans, who still have sufficient self-esteem to act decisively in a world of chaos and violence. Lamenting the vice of anti-Americanism that grips so many European intellectuals, Bruckner urges a renewed transatlantic alliance, and advises Americans not to let recent foreign-policy misadventures sap their own confidence. This is a searing, provocative, and psychologically penetrating account of the crude thought and bad politics that arise from excessive bad conscience."
In other words, the West for all its faults, has led the way towards egalitarianism, emancipation, and prosperity for all. It provides equal opportunity, not equal outcome. It ended slavery while many parts of the world still have not done so. It is still common in many parts of Africa, Asia, etc. There is even human trafficking of slaves into the USA across the southern border, but it is illegal. Slavery was universal, not restricted to the pre-bellum American South, nor only to blacks; white slavery was and still is quite common. Any significant deviations from that path (e.g.,, Communism, Nazism, radical Leftism or any sort of collectivism) run contrary to the foundational principles and values that inform and animate the Western experiment, which to paraphrase Churchill is the worst system except for all the others. All we have to do is compare it to other parts of the world where dictatorships run rampant, e.g., Zimbabwe, North Korea, China. Nepotism and cronyism are inegalitarian and thus run contrary to the spirit of Western progress, which is based on results and favors meritocracy. It's not as though the Western experiment and the American Dream don't suffer setbacks. They do aplenty and must reinvent themselves to stay on track. Now, as Bruckner notes, western Europe is on the wrong track. It is allowing its society to be adversely influenced by Islamism and radical Leftism -- both inegalitarian collectivist ideologies. This is tragic. The Enlightenment principles enshrined in the US Constitution and the idea of the American Dream still, for billions, are symbolic of hope for freedom and prosperity for all, so we should not feel guilty or parade the West's errors as representative of it.
The last invention by black Africans-the bone harpoon......
Please. Your use of "white supremacist" and focus on "white populations" only reveals that you suffer from the Marxist woke mind virus. I referred in my response to "the West", not to whites. Last time I checked, Western cities are among the most multi-cultural and pluralist in the world. People come to the West from around the world precisely because they want the freedom and prosperity it offers. There are many non-white defenders of the Western experiment, such as Thomas Sowell and Dinesh D'Souza. "Diverse" groups that assimilate to Western ideals have been welcomed into the West. Unfortunately, so have groups that failed to assimilate and brought terrible values with them, such as honor killings and terrorism (e.g. in London, Paris). Leftists who focus on identity politics and refer to non-existent "white supremacy" support this latter sort of migrant. The real issue is values, not skin colour. This Franz Fanon-like fantasy of a socialist collective of nonwhites taking over and avenging colonialism is puerile and perverse.
People like Monty resort to nonsense like “white supremacy” accusations to direct attention away from the fact that they have no counter arguments and can’t defend their own positions. When you make an argument and get “white supremacist!” or “racist!” as a response, you won — the accuser is rolling over and showing you his belly.
I find that terms like "white supremacist" is the go to slur for weak minds, racists, white knights and\or feminists.
You've got nothing. Whites invented democracy, abolition, and constitutional republics, and we're the only race with a tradition of actually implementing human rights. You can't survive without us, and you cling to our pants leg like a spoiled child. You're welcome!
You're a compulsive liar. I can't imagine the envy you must feel to invent fake history while denigrating the race (Whites) who have given you everything. If Africa's so great, go back! You contribute nothing to America.
Great, everyone's a White supremacist. And you don't even know yo daddy.
No. Which is why we got rid of it.
Meanwhile, Africa, the home of black chattel slavery, still has over 10 million black-owned black slaves today.
Monty, say their names.
I had some lefties tell me black on black slavery was not slavery like white on black. The blacks loved their slaves and treated them like family. Uh, sure.
During the US civil war, the Democrats were the pro-slavery party and Republicans the anti-slavery party. The American South continued to be mostly Democrat into the 20th century - this changed when Reagan ran for president, as I recall. He inspired patriotism, so many yellow-dog Democrats switched.
The Dems also implemented welfare -- especially Johnson, but even before that -- and that destroyed the black American family, according to Thomas Sowell. It incentivized family breakup, resulting in fatherless boys and increased crime and drug addiction. These evils were not the legacy so much of slavery as of the welfare state - which continues to this day. If anyone should pay reparations, it's the Dems.
But black Americans vote for them en masse inexplicably, pulled in by their rhetoric. That's changing however. A lot of blacks voted for Trump in the past and I think more will do so this time around because of the economy. And they know BLM and identity politics is a scam. They see through the Democrat "welfare plantation" and how Lefties infantilize them. See the work of Larry Elder.
The Leftist predilection is to reduce the complexity of real life to a simplistic stereotyped narrative to make themselves feel morally superior. Life is more complicated than to say everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed. That binary can actually become the basis for real oppression, e.g., Stalin crushing the Kulaks because they were small property owners.
People forget that throughout all of human history, slavery was the norm, and it was not just in the American South. Nearly every society on Earth had slaves going back to prehistory. We are all the descendants of both slaves and slave owners if you go back far enough. The West abolished it in the 19th century but slavery is still going on worldwide illegally. I never hear Lefties who mentioned American slavery talk about or oppose the millions of real slaves today, who are of all colours, including white women from Eastern Europe forced into sex slavery (see the book The Natashas). They are just referring to America's past in order to disparage it, not because they really care about people who were enslaved.
Stated versus revealed preferences are a hell of a thing.
It’s not hard to imagine (in fact, it’s almost a veritable certainty) that Taylor Swift has a personal security detail wherever she goes.
With her being the staunchly feminist, pro-female, girl-power mouthpiece that she is and purports to be, you’d think that this detail would resemble Charlie’s Angels.
My guess is that it more closely resembles Delta Force.
There’s something about YOUR ass being on the line that causes people to eschew fantastical delusions and embrace practical realities.
As Victor Davis Hanson has noted in related matters, ridiculous beliefs and policies tend to be supported by individuals who never have to suffer the consequences of their own ideology.
I found it interesting that, at present, there haven’t been many (if any) cries of sexism and/or misogyny coming from the media or the Secret Service itself in response to the criticism of their performance.
It says something when the incompetence is so glaring and the fuck-up is so severe that an American government official in 2024 won’t even play the discrimination card.
I was half expecting Kimberly Cheatle to go full-Vijaya Gadde.
I guess we’ll see if/how long that holds true.
Just checked. All male.
I wouldn't count out the possibility!
Great blog, Janice, as always. Lyudmila Pavlichenko, nicknamed “Lady Death”, the Ukrainian sniper in the Soviet army in the Second World War who claimed 309 kills, shows that some women can be super-successful in weapon-wielding roles that are traditionally male. However, Pavlichenko was not a particularly tall woman, and so would have been poorly suited even in her prime to be part of Trump’s security detail, in spite of her impressive marksmanship.
I watched “Furiosa” at a 3 p.m. showing on a weekday not long ago and there weren’t even 10 people besides me there in that big theatre. It seemed to have all of the makings of a huge box office success, like its predecessor, “Fury Road” but hasn’t been doing well in theatres in general. The actress who played Furiosa, Anya Taylor-Joy, had previous been a huge success in “The Queen’s Gambit”, where she played a master chess player, another category that has been heavily male dominated. Just the same, there are female grand masters. The idea that this woman, shorter and smaller-framed than Charlize Theron, could be a bad-ass street fighter, eliminating any number of bigger, burlier men, demanded just too much suspension of disbelief on the part of audiences. The film industry needs to withdraw from DEI along with the US Secret Service.
Hi Andrew. There cannot be a greater example of non-physical male superiority than chess. I've written so much about it. Feminists go batshit insane trying to explain it, even resorting to claims of sexual harrassment of female players haha! Long story short, women are all but non-existent in the top echelons of EVERYTHING!!! Janice Fiamengo, along with the late Margaret Thatcher, is of course an exception.
Men are in general more extreme. Top top extremely good is therefore more likely to be a man. Also young men can be insanely focussed on one thing, ignoring all creature comforts for years. I seldom meet women who are comfortable even missing too many meals. When women hit their mid 40s some get that same driven quality 18 year old men have. But they then are competing against a male of the same age who has already put in his 12 years of nutty work levels. Very tough competition.
Thank you for your reply, Mystic William. Unfortunately, I have never been an extremely driven man myself and didn't hang around much with such people, so I have no basis for comparison. It would be interesting to have Janice's thoughts about this.
Young men are definitely FAR more driven. Where I used to work at the U of Ottawa, there was a series of steps leading down into a mini-amphitheater where young men, aged 14-19, used to practice their skateboarding wizardry every weekend. The dedication and time they put into doing those stunts over and over and over and over!! I marveled every Saturday/Sunday. Never a single young woman. It is true of many other male-dominated endeavors. A certain subset of men (not all men, of course--and no blame on the men who don't have the drive) are willing to put their entire lives on hold to pursue their obsession. There are a few women like that, but a miniscule number. I was fairly driven as a bookish only child who wanted to be a writer.
'A certain subset of men (not all men, of course--and no blame on the men who don't have the drive) are willing to put their entire lives on hold to pursue their obsession.'
That reminds me of the description I read, some years ago, of autism as 'extreme masculinity', and the observation that there is a fine line between insanity and genius - men existing at the extremes while women cluster around the mean. I don't know how true the statement is of autism, however I am happy to accept that as the way life, or nature or 'god', or whatever you will, wants things arranged and all human attempts to alter that are bound to fail.
I have been and weirdly still am very driven. I know a lot of very driven men. I have NEVER known any woman as driven as maybe 100 guys I have known. Not even close. I can’t even say us driven guys like it. We just are. Parts of it I really like. It is like a character trait that women don’t have.
Exactly. I wrote my response above before I read this. Agree 100%. I find it admirable in men. My husband works at his writing far more assiduously than I do.
I always noted the young female tennis stars. So many burnt out young. But also so many had a Svengali that drove them. It struck me the Svengali provided the drive. The woman had the raw talent but without the master driver she likely wouldn’t have made it. Whereas the Mark Messier Tom Brady types just drove themselves harder and harder. No one needed to push them.
BTW…I am not lauding ambition as being wonderful and women as inferior as they seemingly have less of it. It just is a trait that gets used by life. It doesn’t make you happier or less happy.
An only child with no children......not even mitochondrial DNA being passed on.
Yes, true.
Very clearly, somebody needs to clone you!
I watched the "Queen's Gambit" thinking it was about chess. I should have known better. It was pandering to the common fantasy of a female kicking male butts. It is to be found everywhere in the Media, films and fiction books. It is consumed in industrial amounts by women and some men.
Janice yes but Thatcher no. Wouldn't have objected to her being on the frontline during the Falklands war from which she benefited politically - massively.
I enjoyed that show even though I knew it was just an improbable feminist fantasy. At least it was a bit more plausible than the "girl boss" movies of Hollyweird where a 110 lb woman kicks the ass of hundreds of trained soldiers twice her size. That strains all credulity but they keep pumping them out, spending billions of these fantasies. In reality, if you match up a fit man and woman in the ring, the woman is easily beaten. Men simply have more physical strength. There is no denying biology -- but still the Lefties try.
LOL, poor Thatcher. You might not like me very much if you knew me better.
Absolutely agree with your assessment of *Queen's Gambit.*
You're worse than Thatcher?Wow!
I second that, Mike.
Everyone knows the King is paramount in chess and the Queen is expendable. The whole game is rigged by The Patriarchy to favour men!
Plus, there may be more than one queen. A chess problem I recently worked out required promotion (which would have immediately become checkmate)
Haha! True, but of course the Queen is the most powerful player, by far.
Don’t worry, there are plenty of feminists who will find excuses for female inadequacy.
In the case of chess that’s frequently “few women find chess interesting,” and “95 percent of tournament players are men.” There are, in fact, women-only tournaments where women can show each other how to play the game more adeptly. There are no male-only FIDE tournaments. Physical strength, and speed, are not involved. Strategic thinking is. What this says about the mental abilities of women I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Thanks George. Maybe few women find chess interesting because as they improve more of their opponents will be - or at least shoule be - men, and women don't like losing, whereas men see it as the only way to improve. Women-only chess competitions - why don't they restrict them to people unable to compete with men, for any reason?
Physical harassment of female players? If the top ranks are so full of male players, when one of them came across a female player wouldn't he be like a sailor who just got off ship? Why does that strike you as outrageous? Anya Taylor-Joy said in an interview that she identified more closely with Beth Harmon, the heroine of "The Queen's Gambit", then any other character she has ever played on screen. It is a wonderful TV series, even if a tad implausible. A Norwegian world champion said he liked a lot of things about the TV series but it was implausible that Beth would make such a rapid advance from playing in high school tournaments in the Mid-West to playing in international tournaments. I don't agree that women are all but non-existent in the top echelons of everything but absolutely share your admiration for Margaret Thatcher and our Janice Fiamengo.
Too kind.
Yes, well said, thank you. Paul, Tom, and I did an analysis of 'The Queen's Gambit' during which I talked interminably; so if you are ever sleepless and want to be lulled into a slumber, you might listen to this. I thought the series was well done but propagandistic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMbk0ZPeIsE
Thank you very much, Janice. I watched your analysis of the series as part of the Men are Good panel. I left a comment there on it, and liked it much better than you or your friends, although the novel, as is usually the case, was better. I loved the Russian scenes in the TV series. I took a bus tour out of Moscow in 2000 to see the towns in the Golden Ring. In Alexandrov, which Ivan the Terrible made the Russian capital for part of his reign, we were taken to an outdoor stadium where they were celebrating the anniversary of their town's founding. I became so entranced in watching the rows and rows of tables of chess players on the edge of the stadium field that I lost contact with my tour group. A young policeman reunited me with my group. People playing chess on outdoor tables is a real thing in Russia. It's not just in "The Queen's Gambit".
Thank you for this!
I believe it's common in many Eastern European cities e.g. budapest, in the outdoor spas. I'm flying to Dublin today, where they have big metal chess boards in some parks.
Thank you, Janice. Kimberly Cheatle's gross negligence and incompetence may have been deliberate.
Perhaps, but more things happen due to incompetence than conspiracy. No, the World Economic Forum, the Freemasons or 'the Jews' are not pulling secret strings that control all the World's governments as part of some malevolent master plan. Apart from the points Janice Fiamengo makes so convincingly in her above article, I wonder if liberal political bias at the top of the organisation meant that protecting Donald Trump was assigned a lower priority than if he had been a Democrat. Hence, although they assigned people to the task, they did not send their best and ablest.
Exactly, it may not have been an actual order/plan. I am not sure.
That is what I’m inclined to think. They clearly sent their B-team (maybe the C-team!).
I bet someone also thought it would be funny to send a bunch of short women to guard Trump; who is a rather large man. I imagine they thought it might look a bit emasculating in photos. Little did they know that the iconic “Fight!” photo was in part due to the short female agent - if he’d been surrounded by burly men it wouldn’t be quite as effective.
The incompetence is the result of the conspiracy, as anyone with any knowledge of the activities of Common Purpose is aware. Whoever is 'pulling the strings' has ensured that incompetents are appointed to positions of responsibility and idiots like you will think themselves wiser than the rest for refusing to believe in conspiracies.
When they have a website telling you that is exactly what they are doing, why not believe them? Are you a bot?
Yes, indeed.
Competence as a Secret Service officer is directly measurable from physical strength and size, exposing the deadly flaw, literally, of "diversity" hires. But incompetence in most jobs is not obvious, but equally deadly to the health of civilization.
Yes, I worry a lot about all those invisible qualities that are so essential, but easily denied or glossed over.
If Cheatle is so impressed with the abilities of the female agents and so proud of her campaign to fill the ranks of the Secret Service with women, perhaps she should honor the women protected by the Secret Service—Jill Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, etc—with all female security details and reserve the male agents with their more rigorous standards for the men.
Yes, it seems like the obvious solution: all-female teams for female protectees; all-male teams for male protectees. That would fulfil the DEI requirements and leave any incompetence issues for women to sort out amongst themselves, thereby avoiding any sexist/misogynist accusations. Of course, if any female protectees demanded all-male teams, they should be provided.
100%!
Another terrific piece Janice. And I would add that Cheatle's bio on the Secret Service's website states that she leads "a diverse workforce composed of 7,800 Special Agents." Not a talented or skillful or hard working or dedicated workforce - but a diverse one. Oh yeah, and at her previous job she was in charge of security at PepsiCo.
I'm wondering what kind of security she would have dealt with? I'm serious. Would she have been worried about disgruntled weirdos trying to steal the Pepsi recipe? attempting to sabotage a batch of pop? Has a Pepsi warehouse every been blown up or damaged in any manner?
The way I figure it, she likely spent most of her time managing security guards who were tasked with keeping hostile members of the media away from executives, and homeless people from camping out on their property. You know, the kind of training that prepares you for protecting POTUS.
From academia to the Secret Service and beyond, diversity hiring maybe the nail in the coffin of our future.
Or, more hopefully, it might be writing its own obituary, and we may yet be saved.
Sadly over the decades, I have seen the death of feminism being predicted numerous times, yet like a vampire, it seems to be able to rise from the dead.
Yup, as long as there are simps there will be fEMINISM
Its failures in the military will certainly come to light if and when we face WWIII against Communist China or Iran for example. The CCP and Islamists delight in our humiliating weakness at this time. The latter see it as a gift from Allah.
I doubt it. If you have a garden, or a window box, try this experiment. Cut down or burn or poison everything in it and see how long elapses before something grows there; not long. The first shoots will be 'weeds', however, with cultivation a new garden will be created. Our civilisation is moribund and nature is taking steps to clear it away, with unrestricted inflow of savages, unquestioning acceptance of vaccines and so on. Those doing the clearing are not equipped to replace us so while we as individuals may be destroyed some of us are going to survive and those of us who are left will reproduce and pass on the savage lessons learned to their offspring, who will go on to reproduce and pass on what they have learned until a new civilisation arises from the ruins of ours. Hopefully those who live in it are not going to be susceptible to the mind virus that is destroying us.
Amen.
In theory, female agents could be lighter weight, and so could have been deployed onto the thin roof. Mitigating against this however, is the fat acceptance movement, and the lowering of standards for recruits. I think the secret service needs a micro squad of tiny thin lightweight gals to deploy to thin roofs and tight spaces...
What you really need for that is ten-year-old boys. Where does their diversity percentage in the Secret Service stand?
LOL
They don't have to be female for that purpose. During the US-Vietnam war, small thin men were selected to be tunnel rats.