tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19059222885175556922024-03-05T12:05:13.251-05:00Wise Man's HeartA wise man’s heart inclines him to the right, but a fool’s heart to the left. --Ecclesiastes 10:2Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-71140500576309790242016-07-24T20:21:00.002-04:002016-07-24T20:21:15.627-04:00The reports of Aunt Haley's death have been greatly exaggeratedApropos of my <a href="http://wisemansheart.blogspot.com/2016/02/im-still-here-but-what-happened-to-aunt.html">last post</a>, I would like to let readers know that I have heard from someone who claims to know Haley, and says she is alive. This person asked me not to give any more detail than that. Haley herself never responded to the email I sent around that time, but there could be numerous reasons for that--if she's neglecting the blog, it stands to reason she would never check that email address. I myself never actively check the email address I use for this blog; I know of emails I receive only because I have notifications set up on my phone.Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-10842599538004531972016-02-15T00:43:00.002-05:002016-02-15T00:43:48.322-05:00I'm still here, but what happened to Aunt Haley of Haley's Halo?A reader sent the following email:<br />
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Hi Hermes, I thank you for your blog and grappling with many important issues. Have you found a better way in connecting with the remnant? Or have you given up that struggle?<br />
Did you graduate medical school yet? </blockquote>
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I noticed that you and <span class="il">Haley</span> both went silent in 2014. Perhaps you convinced her to come to the Midwest and are living happily ever after? ;)<br />
She seemed like an exceptionally thoughtful and sane gal. (She is a she, right?) Do you know what happened to her?</blockquote>
I have not found a better way in connecting with the remnant. My blogging has trailed off because real life is just too darn busy, and frankly, I've lost some of the passion I used to have. I don't know whether that's because of my age (I turn 40 later this year,) or because of the changing scene. I have to confess, I don't want to seem like a vile sycophant, but Lawrence Auster had a huge influence on my thinking, and ever since he died, the blogosphere just hasn't been the same for me.<br />
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I graduated from medical school in 2011, and residency in 2015. I am now working independently as a psychiatrist.
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It's interesting that you mention Aunt Haley of <a href="https://haleyshalo.wordpress.com/">Haley's Halo</a>. I think of her from time to time, and check her blog, only to find every time that her most recent post is still that of June 10th, 2014. (It hadn't struck me until now that we both went dormant in 2014. Though before my one 2014 post, my blog had been dormant for 3 and a half years.) I just checked it again, and noticed that a commenter named dasheththylittleonesagainstthestones just commented on an <a href="https://haleyshalo.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/tough-luck-old-virgins/#comment-15841">old post</a> of hers that she was killed in automobile accident on Fourth of July weekend 2014. Can anyone confirm this? If true, this is terrible. I only exchanged a few brief emails with Haley, and commented periodically on her blog, but this oddly makes me contemplate my own mortality in a way that the death of a family member might. I hope it's not true, but if it is, it just goes to show you never know how much time you have left, and almost makes me want to do something like marry a cute but overweight girl just to have some companionship (not even joking.)Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-35942857253244192062014-01-15T23:14:00.000-05:002014-01-15T23:15:09.589-05:00Being a remnant<div class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I told you I would <a href="http://wisemansheart.blogspot.com/2010/03/i-will-never-stop-blogging.html">never stop blogging</a>.</span></div>
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One of our didactics experiences in residency is to be part of a "process group," which is essentially a therapy group composed of residents where we talk about our interactions and supposedly learn more about ourselves as therapists. It's co-facilitated by two faculty members, a young psychiatrist and a semi-retired psychologist.</span><br />
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Today I had an experience which reminded me of my liberalism seminar in medical school, the one that provided so much fodder for blogging 5-6 years ago. Today the group was small, with several residents and the young psychiatry facilitator absent. One of my co-workers had just returned from a vacation to Hawaii, which she found a very pleasant place, and mentioned that Honolulu has a very low crime rate. The discussion soon turned to the relatively higher crime rate in our city, and from there to the incidence of various crimes such as school shootings and the "knock out game." This being a liberal society, and my co-workers being liberals by default, such discussion soon prompted unfavorable comparisons of the USA to other "developed countries," namely those of Western Europe, and speculation about the reasons for the difference. Again, this being a liberal crowd, suggested reasons included gun ownership, lack of socialism, etc. Of course, I held my tongue, since what I wanted to say was that the reason the USA has so much more violent crime is that we have a large black and Hispanic population, but, despite the fact that we have been assured that anything mentioned in group stays in group, I dare utter no such thing in any work-related environment.</span><br />
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Several people, our facilitator included, seemed to find it important to mention several times (particularly at the mention of the "knock out game" that "this can happen anywhere. To this, I made one of my few comments during the discussion: "it doesn't happen in Smalltown" (a small town about 45 minutes outside of the city, a pleasant exurb with tree-lined cul-de-sacs and a nationally ranked school system, which is of course almost entirely white.) Our facilitator was quick to say "ohhhh, yes, it <i>does </i>happen in Smalltown!" with a pseudo-knowing air, as if to say "don't be so naive."</span><br />
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When I got home, I googled crime stats. Figuring the knock-out game would be counted as assault, I focused on assault numbers. In the city, in 2011, the most recent year available, there were 463.9 assaults per 100,000 population. In Smalltown, there were 47.1, or one-tenth the incidence. The absolute number of assaults in Smalltown was 11.</span><br />
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So of course, it <i>doesn't</i> happen in Smalltown. But why was our facilitator so adamant that it did? Why did everyone seem to find it so important to reassure each other that "it happens everywhere!" Well, for one thing, this fits with the modern liberal view of crime as a "random" act. Since crime happens "randomly," it <i>must</i> be the case that if happens everywhere. Also, if it does not in fact happen everywhere, if in fact we are safer in some places than in others, we may have to draw unpleasant conclusions about why this might be. I think that the liberal mind heads itself off at the pass--even if one has not yet consciously contemplated the notion that there are, shall we say, demographic realities associated with crime, one's unconscious mind can sense that one's thought process is going in that direction, and cuts itself off.</span><br />
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Later in the day, a more sinister thought struck me: they <i>want</i> it to happen in Smalltown. The left desires the destruction of traditional white Western European Christian civilization. They desire the dispossession of the white race. Not only do they want to ruin cities, but they don't want white flight to be possible. They don't want whites (or Asians--several members of the group were Indian) to be able to live safe, pleasant, comfortable lives in places like Smalltown, free from the unpleasantries associated with less high-functioning populations. This contradicts the leftist vast social leveling project.</span><br />
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This is why there was no point in attempting a rejoinder to "oh, yes, it does happen in Smalltown!" Even if I'd had crime stats on hand, which I didn't, the facts weren't really the point. The point is was that there is nothing we can or should do about these problems; we whites should let them wash over us like a vast tidal wave, obliterating our unfair white-privilege-gained existences.</span><br />
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Thinking about this brings back to mind <a href="http://wisemansheart.blogspot.com/2007/09/saying-something-worth-saying.html">this post</a>, one I have reread several times in the last few weeks. I'm particularly struck by the comment by New Sisyphus, who pointed out:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #191919; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.899999618530273px;">To be a traditional conservative in today's America is to reject, as a matter of course, almost everything one sees and hears. This is an enormously draining experience, one that causes a great deal of mental friction, conscious and unconscious.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #191919; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.899999618530273px;">And, given that overwhelming tide, yes, it is very hard for one who feels this keenly to imagine it being overturned. It's just so dominating. One hopes in vain for a sign--and sign--that it is being resisted, but it's not, not in any real way. There are individuals and small groups here and there, but the liberal message is unchallenged in TV, in the academy, in the professional organizations, in the movies, in the newspaper, in the elementary school, in the charity, in the church, in the government. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #191919; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.899999618530273px;">This overwhelming wave assaults the conservative daily in a way a liberal cannot begin to imagine. It is a life under siege, seeing the enemy, yet powerless to do anything about it as it marches to its inevitable victory. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I certainly felt like that this morning. Virtually every hour of every day, one is assaulted with a wave of liberalism and is powerless to resist. And since I wrote that post, things have not gotten better. Barack Hussein Obama has been elected President of the USA, twice. We have a grotesque federal health care law which, while not socialized medicine (leading the left to call it "right-wing" and "a gift to the insurance companies,") seems intended to destroy the insurance system and put us on the path to single-payer. Same-sex "marriage" is spreading, state by state. And all the while, the best "conservatives" can do is to claim that leftists are the true racists and sexists, and "conservatives" are the true champions of women and nonwhites.</span><br />
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I can't really draw this to a momentous conclusion. I suppose I'm just venting. But given the relentless leftward march of our society--and the intent to destroy every last "whitebread" Smalltown on the map--it's not clear how we can live traditional lives, even as a remnant in an enclave of like-minded people, assuming one can find any.</span>Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-56409269823212592142010-09-05T22:30:00.003-04:002010-09-05T23:23:21.496-04:00You're cooler than you thinkI told you I would post again.<br /><br />Negative thoughts about my ability to relate to other people have been a constant thorn in my side for my whole life. Over the past 2 years or so, a confluence of factors, including learning about the particular brand of social self-help pitched by the seduction community, moving to a new city where it happens to be easier to meet people from a conservative Christian background and thus who have at least something culturally in common with me, my increased status resulting from being a medical student (yes, it does exist, even if it's not enough to win a girl over by itself,) and the phenomenon of just being more comfortable in one's own skin that does happen as you enter your thirties, have given me reason to be more optimistic about this. I still become frustrated once in a while, but one thing I have learned is just how much your own self-perception influences others' perception of you.<br /><br />I live directly across the street from a small supermarket, one that happens to be the closest full-scale grocery store to the university, and is therefore frequently patronized by students undergraduate, graduate, and professional. One evening a couple of weeks ago, on one my frequent saunters over there to pick up a few foodstuffs, three sorority chicks, to the best of my recollection a 6, a 7, and a 9, were wandering around the produce section chattering ditzily as they undertook the intellectually challenging task of selecting produce. I witnessed the following exchange:<br /><br />Sorority chick: What kind of lettuce are you supposed to put on tacos?<br /><br />Random passing undergrad dude: The shredded kind.<br /><br />SC: (Oh, aren't you funny, blah blah blah, I don't really remember what she said) Want to come to our taco party?<br /><br />RPUG: Sure.<br /><br />Now RPUG looked like a pretty average guy. He wasn't a rock star. He didn't come across as super-alpha. It struck me that in the course of about 5 seconds, with one smart-ass comment, this guy had gotten himself invited to a sorority taco party.<br /><br />My first reaction in situations like this has long been--and this time was no different--"Why can't I be that kind of guy? Why doesn't anything like that ever happen to me?" Maybe those thoughts come from the devil on one shoulder, because this time, another voice inside my head, call it the angel on my other shoulder, said "you <em>are</em> that kind of guy. Stuff like that <em>does</em> happen to you all the time, or at least it used to when you got out more." It occurred to me that I had always thought of myself as a low-social status nerd who is perceived by hot girls (and cool guys) as a low social-status nerd and is incapable of rolling with them. But something made me stop, do a reality check, and realize: when I was in undergrad, hot girls and cool guys invited me to parties all the time. <em>I just always turned them down.</em> "I can't go to parties where people drink and dance and listen to loud, currently popular music," I thought. "I'm not cool enough." But <em>they</em> didn't think I was a low-social-status nerd who couldn't roll with them. <em>I</em> created that persona in my own mind by acting that way.<br /><br />The same thing happened when I started medical school. When everyone was new to everyone else and eager to make friends, I got invited to parties galore. But since I never went, figuring my social time was better spent at church where I was sure to meet a wife, I assume I soon developed a reputation as someone who just isn't interested in socializing and I stopped getting invited.<br /><br />It's an uphill battle when you're fighting 33 years of negative thought patterns, but one thing I have to keep reminding myself of is that a decent appearance is actually easy to put on. In the past couple of years, I've learned to dress a bit more stylishly for social occasions, gotten contact lenses, and learned to use a bit of product in my hair, but even long before all that I could never have been mistaken for a Magic: The Gathering player. My freshman year of college, directly across the hall from me lived two of the biggest stoners I have ever met in my life. I'll never forget the time, early on in the year, when one of them, having somehow surmised that I didn't go out Friday night, said to me, perplexed and genuinely curious, "dude, did you just, like, hang out here?" Well, of course, I thought, don't you know I'm a nerd? But to him, I obviously looked like a regular guy, the kind who would be found at a frat party on a Friday night doing a keg stand or bumping and grinding with some drunk chick just like the rest of 'em. <em>He </em>didn't think I was a nerd. <em>I</em> did. It's actually easy to look like a socially mainstream person, and from there it's a <em>choice</em> to act the part.<br /><br />As I said, it's not easy to change these thought patterns when they've been so deeply ingrained over so many years. But the evidence has long been right in front of my eyes--I simply chose to ignore it--that if I simply muster the cojones to blurt out the word "shredded" to some strange girls, I could find myself at a taco party.<br /><br />It's all in your head.Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-91280330570870477902010-03-03T12:21:00.003-05:002010-03-03T12:39:40.274-05:00I will never stop bloggingI'm sitting here in mid-day, with three weeks off from medical school, feeling overwhelmed despite having a totally open schedule--I have to write up the findings from my research project in the form of a real scientific paper, to be published in an actual medical journal--so I thought I'd procrastinate by posting a blog entry.<br /><br />One of the reasons I don't post more often is that I have so much to do in medical school. Now, it's not that I'm always working; I wind up procrastinating as much as anyone else, but as long as I have work to do I usually feel I shouldn't spend the time blogging (merely browsing my favorite blogs is more passive, and thus easier to allow myself to do.) But I like blogging when I can, no matter how infrequently I do it, and thus one of the phenomena I don't understand is permanently closing one's blog. I was thinking about this after reading that <a href="http://biblicalmanhood.blogspot.com/"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">Anakin</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">Niceguy</span></a> is closing up shop. <a href="http://novaseeker.wordpress.com/"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">Novaseeker</span></a> did the same thing in January, and I know there have been other <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">bloggers</span> I used to read, or at least check in on occasionally, whose names I can't remember right now, who announced an official end to blogging. (At least those guys are leaving their blogs up, though. One thing I <em>really</em> can't understand is deleting your blog. Unless you fear that the thought police are coming after you in real life, what harm is there in leaving it up, for posterity's sake?)<br /><br />Sure, there are disadvantages to being an infrequent blogger, namely, that you lose regular readership. There was a time when I was posting nearly every day, and got a lot more hits than I do now. When it's been weeks since you've posted, people simply stop dropping by, as I myself have with <a href="http://ganttsquarry.wordpress.com/"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">Ganttsquarry</span></a> and <a href="http://ar2012.blogspot.com/">A.J. Travis</a>. But, they may post again someday. Why foreclose that possibility by announcing that you are officially done with blogging?<br /><br />All of this is not to criticize or argue with people who stop blogging; just to say that, no matter how infrequently I write a substantive post, I'll always be around.Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-39582898938535011022009-12-14T22:29:00.002-05:002009-12-15T00:12:32.521-05:00Adventures in gynecologyFor the past six weeks I've been on an outpatient rotation, which means seeing patients in the office from 8-5. My weeks consist of family practice, pediatrics, and obstetrics/gynecology all intermingled together. This afternoon was a gynecology afternoon. Incidentally, this is at one of the top hospitals in the country according to U.S. News & World Report.<br /><br />My second patient of the afternoon was a pretty, prim and proper, professional white 30 year old woman, the kind you'd expect to meet at happy hour at the yuppie bar near the local office park. I saw that she had a hyphenated surname and heard the nurse mention that the patient didn't want us to use the stickers with her name on them because she was changing her name. I walked into the room and introduced myself.<br /><br />Me: Hi, Miss Hyphenated-Surname?<br /><br />Pt: Yes.<br /><br />Me: I'm Dr. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">Abooboo's</span> medical student for the afternoon. Would you mind if I go over some history with you before Dr. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">Abooboo</span> comes in?<br /><br />Pt: Sure.<br /><br />Me: So, I hear you're changing your name, is that right?<br /><br />Pt: Yeah, actually the name they have on there is wrong, my last name is <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">Similarsounding</span>-<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">HyphenatedSurname</span>, but I'm getting married next week, so it'll be changing anyway.<br /><br />Me: Oh, congratulations. So, what can we help you with today, do you have any concerns, are your periods regular, when was your last Pap smear, etc., etc.<br /><br />Pt: Blah blah blah, <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">yakity</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">scmakity</span>.<br /><br />Me: OK, let me go find Dr. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">Abooboo</span> and we'll be back in together to do the exam.<br /><br /><em>Exit.</em><br />[I should say here that the patient was very nice and pleasant, but I don't have the ear for conveying that in dialogue.]<br /><em>Enter Hermes and Dr. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">Abooboo</span>.</em><br /><em></em><br />Dr: So, I hear you have some big plans! Where are you getting married?<br /><br />Pt: Well, we're having two weddings, actually. The first one's in Turkey. My fiance is Turkish.<br /><br />Internal dialog of Hermes of 5 years ago: (<em>Oh, isn't that nice, I'm happy for her.)</em><br /><em></em><br />Internal dialog of present-day Hermes: (<em>Another one bites the dust.)</em><br /><em></em><br />(Sometime later)<br />Dr: what do you do for a living?<br /><br />Pt: I'm a management consultant. My fiance is too; we both work for the same company.<br /><br />So this nice, pretty, highly educated and accomplished six-figure-earning white girl will marry a six-figure-earning Middle Eastern immigrant, probably have one mixed-race baby and deposit him in day care, then spend the rest of their lives blowing their combined six-figure income on a big house in some white-flight development with a name like "The Hunt at Glen Run," a couple of BMW's in the driveway, and international luxury vacations until they die in a nursing home. If their marriage lasts.<br /><br />Later in the afternoon I saw an 18-year-old white girl who was there with her mother to discuss the results of a Pap smear and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error">colposcopy</span>. (<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error">Colposcopy</span> is the screening test done after a Pap comes back negative, and often involves cervical biopsy.) She was cute, freckle-faced, with slightly eccentric mannerisms, the kind you can tell is a theater chick just by looking at her. She was wearing one of those knit wool caps with the brim that sticks out which theater chicks always wear. I don't know what they're called. Both mother and daughter were quite irate because they had had multiple Paps and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">colpos</span> done at one of the other big hospitals in town and had never been able to get the results. They were both quite nervous about the fact that she had had an abnormal Pap. I looked in her chart, and saw that she had already had <em>five</em> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error">colposcopies</span>. <em>Five.</em> This girl was a freshman in college, and evidently she had already spread her legs for enough bad boys--or maybe one who was really, really bad--that <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-error">HPV</span> had already crawled in, put its feet up, made itself right at home, even built a little bungalow and had a party going on.<br /><br />Call me naive, cultural leftists, but I'm pretty sure my grandmothers wouldn't have had five abnormal Pap smears by age 18.<br /><br />This girl was not happy about the prospect of future Paps and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" class="blsp-spelling-error">colpos</span>. "I'm deathly, irrational afraid of needles," or something equally eccentric, she said with typical theater chick melodrama. The doctor suggested she get the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" class="blsp-spelling-error">HPV</span> vaccine. She immediately blurted out "I don't believe in vaccines." Her mother feebly expressed hope that if she were with one steady partner, maybe her future risk would be minimized. This normal, <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">white bread</span>, <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">suburban</span> mother, who took it in stride that her unmarried 18-year-old daughter was sexually active, was not wearing a wedding ring.<br /><br />The fall of Western Civilization continues unabated. Gynecology clinic is the front line.Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-8461366191045224202009-11-01T20:22:00.006-05:002009-11-01T20:54:16.741-05:00A true WTF momentThanks to the wonder of Facebook, I have just learned that a woman from my high school class is currently <a href="http://www.hollywood.com/news/Mike_Tyson_Married_Reports/5653249">married to Mike Tyson</a>. Apparently, they wed in June, two weeks after Tyson's 4-year-old daughter died in a "tragic treadmill accident." (I never knew there was such a thing.)<br /><br /><div><div><div><div>Here is a photo of the happy couple:</div><br /><br /><div></div><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 330px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399314364437659698" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrPTwriunhXYmL4tGfL5zJA_o0d37iZZY5zKDPvGSKfx-qhole-fvHM5bOXur9o8Fger3sg3GaqDrp_9GbBTuC6h33tyr7Or8YKbKUljpHN3BXRaecHt1Q5UmoSH7jiCUPPc0QKjo_9maR/s400/17th+Annual+ESPY+Awards+Red+Carpet+CKLCIWwj_0al.jpg" /><br /><br /><div>I didn't really know the girl, but I recognized the name, I looked her up in the yearbook, and yes, that's her. Who would have known that when I was 15, I was sitting in class next to the future wife of the notorious boxer a digital representation of whom I had spent countless hours <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch-Out!!_(NES)">trying to defeat</a>?</div><div> </div><div>Words fail me. Come to think of it, I don't recall there being a "common sense" class in high school.</div></div></div></div>Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-89036174437058693762009-09-20T16:27:00.005-04:002009-09-20T17:53:29.127-04:00Had it not been for alpha-eyed Joe, I'd have been married a long time ago<p>In the previous post, Thursday left a <a href="http://wisemansheart.blogspot.com/2009/09/our-real-enemies-alpha-males.html?showComment=1253300085231#c750969882083836065">comment</a> stating that it doesn't make sense to assign all the blame for the current sexual dystopia to alpha males, but we shouldn't place all the blame on women either.</p><p>This got me thinking about what I think is a fatal flaw in the Roissysphere so far. It holds two mutually contradictory propositions--OK, these may never have been stated explicitly in these words anywhere, but one can definitely detect their undercurrent in the posts of Roissy et al.--namely:</p><ol><li>Men are moral agents capable of choosing deliberate actions based on rational thought processes (e.g., choosing to run game and succeed with women or wallow in loneliness), while women are animals who are totally incapable of doing anything but blindly obeying their genetic programming to seek out and mate with the highest-status male they can find. </li><li>Women are to blame for our current situation.</li></ol><p>Obviously, these cannot both be true. When an unruly dog bites the mailman, we don't blame the dog; we blame the owner for failing to keep the dog fenced in or on a leash. The stronger the first proposition, the weaker the second, and vice versa. If it is solely up to men to control and lead women, then women can have no responsibility for the current situation. If women are to blame, on the other hand, they must possess at least as much moral agency as men, if not more.<br /></p><p>Interestingly, this is an idea the Roissysphere shares with some of the social conservatives they so despise. There's a conservative Reformed pastor and author named <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Wilson_(theologian)">Douglas Wilson</a> who wrote a book called <em>Her Hand in Marriage</em> in which he <a href="http://thekingsmissus.blogspot.com/2007/11/men-responsible-for-all-problems.html">apparently says this</a>:</p><blockquote>When a couple comes for marriage counseling, my operating assumption is always that the man is <em>completely</em> responsible for <em>all</em> the problems. [Italics original.] Some may be inclined to react to this, but it is important to note that responsibility is not the same thing as guilt. If a woman has been unfaithful to her husband, of course she bears the guilt of adultery. But at the same time, he is responsible for it. To illustrate, suppose a young sailor disobeys his orders and runs a ship aground in the middle of the night. The captain and the navigator were both asleep and had nothing to do with his irresponsible actions. Who is finally responsible? The captain and navigator are responsible for the incident. They are career officers, and their careers are ruined. The young sailor will be getting out of the Navy in six months anyway. It may strike many as being unfair, but is is indisputably the way God made the world. The sailor is guilty; the captain is responsible.<br /><br />Without this understanding of responsibility, authority becomes meaningless and tyrannical. Husbands are responsible for their wives. They are the head of their wives as Christ is the head of the church. Taking a covenant oath to become a husband involves assuming responsibility for that home. This means that men, whether through tyranny or abdication, are responsible for any problems in the home. If Christian men loved their wives as Christ loved the church, if they had given direction to their wives, if husbands had accepted their wives' necessary help with their God-ordained vocation, there never would have been room for any kind of feminist thinking within the church.</blockquote><p>Yes, those italics are Wilson's. The man is <em>completely</em> responsible for <em>all</em> the problems. If your wife cheats on you, it's because you didn't lead her properly. As a Christian and a social conservative who, as Ferdinand Bardamu would say, "gets it," I completely disavow this kind of thinking. Yet you've got to hand it to Wilson: he at least gets the fact that if you assume the wife is a mere untrained dog, then it is completely the owner-husband's fault when she misbehaves.</p><p>I bring this up because I think there is a gaping hole in the burgeoning school of thought that melds MRA/MGTOW with the PUA/seduction community. I think it's great that more and more men are being clued into the realities of female psychology and that we're proposing solutions to the current mess in which we find ourselves. But right now, it seems like the only solution being proposed is slut-shaming, with no thought to the idea that in a sexually sane society there will have to be restraints on alpha males as well. This is true if only as a simple matter of supply and demand: it is often said that the cads we will always have with us. But if we succeed in slut-shaming all women into total chastity (i.e., no sex before marriage and total faithfulness to their husbands thereafter,) then assuming an equal sex ratio, whom will the cads fool around with? Yet in a traditional society, restraints on alphas go much further: polygamy has never been permitted in the Christian West, and as far as I know bigamy is still a crime in every state in the USA. Think also of the common occurrences in traditional society I mentioned in my last post: shotgun marriages, prison sentences (for men) for adultery, juries routinely nullifying charges against a vengeful wife out of sympathy. Would such a society consider a man like Silvio Berlusconi "<a href="http://roissy.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/alpha-male-cage-match/">an inspiration for men everywhere</a>"?</p><p>I would hope it would be obvious that I don't blame either men or women exclusively. I believe both sexes are capable of being moral agents, and thus both are to blame. And perhaps my personal biases are showing through here; as a natural provider beta, I suppose I could be accused of being a little too eager to find ways to sock it to the alphas. However, one can't deny that alpha males willingly allowed the current sexual dystopia to develop, and benefit enormously from it. And when talking about the kind of society we should have, however true it is that restraints on women are necessary, we can't neglect the moral requirements and limitations that must be placed on men as well.</p>Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-69976664988507836982009-09-07T15:32:00.008-04:002009-09-13T00:40:45.325-04:00Our real enemies: alpha malesA few weeks ago, someone calling himself Anonomega left the same comment on both <a href="http://fbardamu.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/george-sodini-and-the-contract-between-the-sexes/#comment-390">In Mala Fide</a> and <a href="http://www.halfsigma.com/2009/08/finally-a-gunman-with-an-interesting-story.html?cid=6a00d8341bf6ae53ef0120a557cd47970c#comment-6a00d8341bf6ae53ef0120a557cd47970c">Half Sigma</a>, in response to the George Sodini incident. This comment intrigued me, though it was poorly formatted and a little obscene. I'm going to take the liberty of editing it slightly and reposting it here, in hopefully more readable form:<br /><br /><blockquote>After pondering on Omega rage and pain, I realise it would do the Sodinis of the world good to, to paraphrase Sinead O'Connor, Fight The Real Enemy.<br /><br />Gammas, Omegas, lend me your ear: your misogyny is, at worst, understandable; of this I will not argue. But stay your hand at those with the XX chromosome and heed... Yes, women ought stop having such high standards, settle more for lower males, appreciate nice guys, give them chance etc., since this is what men have to do. But consider: we can be pretty damn content with a 5, heck, even a 4.5. But what if there were many 10s not only making themselves available, but AGGRESSIVELY SEDUCING us? Would we bother with those 5s? Is it reasonable to expect us to? So in this alternate reality, if a 5 is deprived the joys of sex, romance, marriage, and motherhood, who should she really blame? The men, or a bunch of bitchy, slutty 10s who already have plenty of men, but still run around rubbing up against every halfway attractive man, simply because they CAN?<br /><br />Do the "math".<br /><br />Fight the Real Enemy: the ALPHAS.<br /><br />All alphas have to do is pick one or two of the hottest ass they can get and f***ing MAKE DO with it, and it will trickle down to some come hither stares in Sodinis direction. But with each just-because-I-can extra lay, they brutally SNATCHED away Sodini's one chance at meager sexual contentment.<br /><br />And many alphas know this! Look at Roissy's blog! They know this and they're laughing their sick f***ing asses off about it!! "Trix are for kids, motherf***er!" May I remind you these are the guys who TORMENTED YOU IN SCHOOL?! REMEMBER THAT, OMEGAS?! And when we learn how the mating game is really played, we realise they destroyed us far more than we thought they were when we were young. By beating us down, crushing our self-esteem, they were wringing out of us something PRECIOUS: our confidence, something ESSENTIAL to securing a mate, though we did not realise it at the time! Wake up and smell the locker insides and toilet water!<br /><br />Alpha's, higher Betas, the Real Enemy, have always been our oppressors, their cruelty fueled by nothing other than their vile despising of the weak. Yet so many Gamma-Omegas wanna lash out at the c*nts. Why? The reasons are obvious. when your beaten down and SCARED--SO TERRIFIED--of your oppressors, it is expected to direct your bitterness and hurt at softer, easier targets. I walked the path of misogyny too, and I'm not suggesting going back to women-are-angels bullsh*t. It's just that upon simple thinking, reflection, analysis, whatever, I realise that misogyny is the easier path, yet it is ultimately the more cowardly.<br /><br />To any future, budding, wanna-be, halfway, or neo-George Sodinis out there: I don't, ahem, support the sort of bloodshed he was about or anything... but I'm JUST SAYING.... IF YOU HAVE TO SHOOT SOMEBODY, IF YOU HAVE TO KIDNAP AND TORTURE SOMEBODY... think on my words and ask yourself: WHO DESERVES IT MORE?! Ahem... of course, in the name of decency and morality and all that good sh*t, I would have to advocate less psychotic means. Vengeance on alphas will be a lot harder and scarier than c*nt-hatred: you may have to discipline yourself, make yourself combat ready, and ultimately become that which you hate. Heck, I can't practice what I preach! But if you put down the "Stupid Sluts Take It Up The Ass Like they Deserve" porn and pick up the barbell, it will be potentially more rewarding, for yourself and (I think) society. And Alphas will learn the one downside rule of the alpha life:<br /><br />Watch Your F***ing Back.</blockquote>I have to admit that, while morbid, what this commenter said really resonated with me. I, too, was a frustrated teenage boy, with no clue about how to even begin interacting with these strange alien creatures called girls, impotently looking on with envy as the more popular boys somehow won their affections effortlessly, seemingly without doing anything, as if by magic. I wasn't exactly tormented by the bad boys in school; for the most part, they just ignored me, though this was doubtless due to the fact that I didn't even try to insert myself into their world. But those about whom I entertained sadistic fantasies of torture, murder, and worse (perhaps a bit too much disclosure, but I'm assuming most of us go through such a phase as a teenager) were not the girls, they were the cooler boys who were getting those girls. It was they I wanted to hurt.<br /><br />And I'm sure Anonomega articulates the thoughts of many a frustrated teenage boy/young man with his observation that all an alpha has to do is pick a woman and make do with her. Just pick one! How many betas, at the nadir of their despair, have thought, "my God, he doesn't know how lucky he is! If I could be with just <em>one</em> of the countless girls he could get, I'd feel like the king of the world!"<br /><br />I believe this tendency to view the man who is getting the woman as the problem, rather than the woman, is deeply embedded in the human psyche. After all, in lower animals, such as wolves, how does a male gain the privilege of mating with a female? Not by doing anything to the female herself, but by physically defeating the higher-status male who would stop him.<br /><br />The problem is made complicated by the fact that today, alphas have been divided into two groups: as Ferdinand Bardamu of In Mala Fide has been calling them, male alphas and female alphas. ("Female alphas" referring not to females who are alpha, but males who are alpha in the eyes of females.) As <a href="http://manwhoisthursday.blogspot.com/">Thursday</a> has pointed out elsewhere, some of the men who are best with women have almost nothing else going for them. In modern society, where women don't need providers, you can have a dead-end job, be up to your eyeballs in debt, and have no future to speak of, yet be a world-class ladies' man. But it wasn't always this way. In traditional society, male alphas--leaders of men--more often got the girl, and it was hard to be a player. You were universally reviled, and the lack of contraception and abortion made multiple sexual conquests extremely impractical. In the past, naturals usually <em>did</em> have to just pick one and make do with her.<br /><br />As Half Sigma <a href="http://www.halfsigma.com/2009/09/hbd-and-game.html">recently wrote</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>When pre-marital and extra-marital sex was very strongly discouraged by society, being able to talk a girl into bed didn’t mean spreading your genes as much as it meant being forced to marry her at the end of a shotgun (or crossbow or sword or whatever weapon was used back then), or even worse, killed by her angry relatives, put in jail for the crime of adultery, etc. </blockquote>Examples of this sentiment--that it's not the ladies, but the ladies' men, who are the problem--abound. It's is captured well in the lyrics of country singer Vince Gill's song, "Pocket Full of Gold," about the life of the cad:<br /><br /><blockquote><p><em>Some night you're gonna wind up</em><br /><em>On the wrong end of a gun</em><br /><em>Some jealous guy's gonna show up</em><br /><em>And you'll pay for what you've done</em><br /><em>What will it say on your tombstone?</em><br /><em>"Here lies a rich man</em><br /><em>With his pocket full of gold."</em></p></blockquote>And remember the ending of Mozart's Don Giovanni: the seducer is depicted, quite literally, burning in hell. <p>And just today, Lawrence Auster at View from the Right <a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/014222.html">referred</a> to a sordid tale from his ancestry, in which his grandmother shot and killed his grandfather during an argument about an affair he was having with an another woman, and the jury let her off out of sympathy with her. In other words, they believed the philanderer deserves what he gets.</p><p>This tendency to blame and hate women that arises in some segments of the MRA/MGTOW community appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon. I'm not sure why this is. It could be that traditional society carried an implicit recognition that women were fallen creatures too, but was also resigned to the fact that women were going to do what they were going to do, and given the necessity of men leading and women following, thought it more important to discipline men. (Incidentally, this would contradict the Roissysphere's description of men as keys who will adapt themselves to whatever shape women choose their locks to take, but that is a topic for another entry.) And it could be that in modern society, even MRAs/MGTOWers have unconsciously absorbed the belief in female equality, so they expect women to make decisions on the same basis as men do, and become angry at them when they don't.</p><p>Whatever the case, like Anonomega, I don't advocate going out and shooting anyone, but I'm sure we can all agree that George Sodini didn't accomplish any good with his choice of targets.</p>Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-47464761481453128772009-08-31T21:59:00.004-04:002009-08-31T22:42:27.568-04:00Overheard at the gym: MRA/MGTOW talk from med studentsAbout two weeks ago, I was at the campus gym lifting weights, when I heard the phrase "get married" drifting over from a conversation some distance away. I looked over, and saw a group of three guys at a piece of equipment about twenty feet away from the one I was using. They were taking turns on it and chatting as they did so. I recognized one of them as a member of the class one year behind mine in medical school, though I really don't know him at all, so I assumed the others were med students as well. The part of the conversation I overheard went something like this:<br /><br />"Me, getting married?"<br /><br />"I'd never get married."<br /><br />"I saw a thing on the news about some celebrity who just got divorced, and his wife wound up with <em>more</em> than half of all his money." [I thought they might have been referring to John Cleese.]<br /><br />"I just don't get why you'd do that to yourself!"<br /><br />"Well, I don't know, I guess some people do it if they want to have a family, you know..."<br /><br />"Yeah, but you don't have to get married to have a family."<br /><br />"True, but some people still feel like they should, I guess..."<br /><br />I thought this was interesting just because of how my views have changed over the past year. If I had overheard this conversation one year ago, I would have felt in response a mixture of envy, jealousy, intimidation, resentment, and despair. Envy, because I would have assumed the reason the guys were talking this way is that they were selfish hedonists who happened to be blessed with the traits that make men attractive to women, and therefore they were going to take as much as they could get (of sex) while they could get it; and I wished <em>I</em> had the power to attract women that way. Jealousy, because I would have thought that by doing this they were monopolizing all the girls, corrupting many who would otherwise have remained innocent and naive and been attracted to a guy like me, turning them into sluts and party girls who were out of my league. Intimidation, because I would have assumed that anyone who lived their life that way was more socially dominant than I and would see me as a pathetic sniveling little wimp for clinging to traditional morality, and that they were on the side of the culture wars which was fighting to transform our society away from what I wanted it to be and toward something that was very unpleasant to me. Resentment that they would have the nerve to do this, and despair that their side in the culture wars was winning and their victory seemed inevitable.<br /><br />All of this, because a few males indirectly implied that they thought it made more sense to have sex outside of marriage than within it.<br /><br />Now that I have become familiar with the seduction community and the writings of F. Roger Devlin, and been clued into the real dynamics behind sexual relationships, I see things in a different light. I don't see these guys as heroes, nor innocent victims, but they are merely reacting to their environment. They see men in the news every day having their lives ruined and everything they have taken away in divorce court, all because their wives got "bored," and they understandably want to avoid that. They weren't objecting to marriage in theory, but to what it has become in practice in our society. Notably--something that would have escaped me a year ago, when I would have focused on their supposed caddishness and superiority to me in the dating market--they weren't complaining about the idea of settling down with one woman for the rest of your life. None of them explicitly said that they wanted to sleep around, and in fact they seemed to think having a family was still an acceptable goal. Fifty years ago, in a society that still held traditional sexual morality up as a public ideal, these guys would probably have gotten married without giving it much thought.<br /><br />The point is that my own journey is illustrative of just how in the dark most of our society is. I can't say for certain what all the factors were which converged over the past year to change my point of view, but for most people, it is something that still hasn't happened. It must happen, particularly among social and religious conservatives, if we are to turn this ship around. Whether this will happen in time, or on a sufficient scale, remains to be seen, but the truth, at least in raw form, is out there.Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-5353310426694654952009-08-27T00:03:00.003-04:002009-08-27T17:46:37.392-04:00Lustful men force innocent, unsuspecting girls to have abortionsIn the recent debate about game (aka the practice of seduction) that has engulfed a certain number of blogs I follow, the central bone of contention seems to be the question of what, exactly, has been understood about female sexuality in the past and whether or not new information about the same has been discovered recently. In a <a href="http://manwhoisthursday.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-social-conservatives-and.html">post</a> on this topic, Thursday, who graciously quoted me, wrote the following:<br /><blockquote>The usual social conservative/traditionalist explanation was that bad males had gotten these young girls to sleep with them because these poor females wanted love and affection (but not sex) and those bad males refused to give them love and affection unless they slept with them. Those innocent females didn't really want the sex, you see, they just wanted to be loved and cherished, but they had to give these men sex outside of marriage or else these bad men would move on to some girl who <i>would</i> have sex with them. It was sexual extortion, aided by the fact that the young man could now say, "But you won't get pregnant. We have birth control now."</blockquote>Whatever your background, I'm sure you will at least recognize this view as being a commonly held one. A prominent expositor of it is Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and in his spare time a prolific anti-male, woman-on-pedestal-placing blogger who seems to believe that all the problems in the world stem from the fact that men won't do what women want. When I read the above paragraph by Thursday, I immediately thought of Mohler, and surfed over to his blog to see <strike>whether</strike> in what way he had been attacking men lately. Sure enough, he wrote a post just last week entitled <a href="http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=4230">"The Hidden Reality of Abortion -- Empowering Men."</a><br /><br />The reader is invited to peruse Mohler's blog at leisure, but I'm less interested in what Mohler himself had to say on the subject than on the piece which apparently sparked his thoughts. It's an opinion piece from the August/September issue of <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">First Things</span> entitled <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/07/her-choice-her-problem">"Her Choice, Her Problem: How Abortion Empowers Men."</a> In this essay, Richard Stith of Valparaiso University School of Law argues that abortion "has had the perverse result of freeing men and trapping women." Supposedly it has done so by allowing men to demand casual sex of women, under the threat that the men will not be responsible if the women become pregnant. I don't know what universe Stith is living in, where a man can force a woman to have an abortion. It's certainly not the one I'm living in, where an unmarried father can be sued for, and forced to pay, child support for 18 years, if the girl decides that she wants to keep the baby.<br /><br />In a perfect illustration of the kind of thinking described by Thursday above, Stith writes:<br /><blockquote>I’ve also met a clever female undergraduate student living with her boyfriend, who thought she had solved this problem. When I asked whether she was for or against abortion, she answered: “I’m pro-choice, but you can bet I tell him I’m pro-life!” She reasoned that, in light of her warning, he would be careful not to fool around in ways that could lead to pregnancy.<br /><br />Such a lie may not provide protection for every young woman in her situation, however. If she says she is pro-life so that he thinks abortion is not an option for her, he might decide to keep her from getting pregnant by leaving her for someone more open to abortion, a woman who doesn’t insist on his using a condom. That is, the presence in the sexual marketplace of women willing to have an abortion reduces an individual woman’s bargaining power. As a result, in order not to lose her guy, she may be pressured into doing precisely what she doesn’t want to do: have unprotected sex, then an unwanted pregnancy, then the abortion she had all along been trying to avoid.</blockquote>Got that? A girl who is pro-choice, but for some reason trying to avoid an abortion, may, by lying and claiming to be pro-life, be "pressured" into the very abortion she'd been trying to avoid. Oh, the poor, clever, pro-choice, lying, angelic ingenue! Conspicuously absent from this scenario is any mention of the fact that the girl wilfully and deliberately chose to have sex with the guy. Does Stith even believe that is possible?<br /><br />Jeez, if men had the power to mind-control women the way the Mohlers and Stiths of the world think we do, I'd have been married for 10 years by now.<br /><br />Fortunately, a couple of the commenters display some common sense, including one Jerome, who writes:<br /><blockquote>A related myth embedded in this article is that women, somehow, don't naturally enjoy and want sex, but view it purely in procreative and responsible terms, while men are somehow wired to pursue irresponsible sex with no attention to the possibility of procreation.</blockquote>It's true; this is a subtext that is present in the writings of most social conservatives on these subjects, though rarely stated explicitly. It's like the elephant in the living room, totally unnoticed when one has never questioned these myths about female sexuality, but, once one has had the veil lifted, makes reading such pieces a quite frustrating and somewhat unnerving experience. Unfortunately, in my experience, social conservative writers who espouse these views never respond to comments or any other form of feedback. No matter how many Jeromes write in to correct them, they never even bother to address the rebuttals; they simply ignore them and go on writing as though women don't like sex and are incapable of immorality.<br /><br />A final thought: both Mohler and Stith's headlines place a negative connotation on the phrase "empowering men." Isn't it bizarre, that these male writers, believers in a traditional religion, one so often castigated by feminists as patriarchal, men who would undoubtedly affirm the biblical precepts that men be the head of both the church and their families, and that women submit to their husbands, apparently consider the empowerment of men to be a <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">bad</span> thing? They remind me of conservatives who are always arguing against affirmative action on the basis that it hurts black people; leaving the door wide open for everyone to assume that if it <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">helped</span> black people, it would then be OK. Hey Albert Mohler and Richard Stith: if it were proved tomorrow that abortion really empowered women and disempowered men, would it be OK after all?Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-54851881805310114812009-08-03T22:21:00.003-04:002009-08-03T22:42:35.850-04:00Where have I been?I apologize to whomever out there had decided to follow this blog on a semi-regular basis. I received many compliments on my posts, but I knew this day would come--or rather, the day that came a few months ago, when I began 3rd year of medical school and had to place the blog lower on my list of priorities. The problem is compounded by the fact that I did not study as hard as I could have during the first two years of medical school (as evidenced by the fact, documented on this very blog, that I was spending at least some of my time thinking about politics, when most of my classmates were spending a much greater portion of their time thinking about nothing but anatomy, physiology, pathology, and biochemistry.) So now, I feel compelled to spend some of my spare time studying to ensure that I'm prepared for my experiences on the wards.<br /><br />However--and I questioned for a long time whether this blog should take a more personal turn, as many do, but I think it's inevitable--there was something else non-medical I was spending a good deal of my time over the last two years thinking about, something that, in fact, consumed me and kept me preoccupied most of the time, and that is, woman. I seldom admit this in person, but a large proportion of my motivation for pursuing medicine was my belief that, by doing something conventionally considered "prestigious", and positioning myself as a good future provider, I would become attractive to women. The slow and painful discrediting of that belief has occupied most of the time I spend thinking about non-med school-related matters over the past 8 months or so, and it commenced last fall, when I discovered the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_community">seduction community</a>.<br /><br />I had had two brief intimations of this community in years prior, which I may describe later, and it repulsed me at first. But this time, something compelled me to investigate it further, and I have now read, or viewed in one case, several seduction-related materials. I must say that my eyes have been opened to the nature of women and of male-female relations, both in traditional times and in modern society. So many of my past experiences, as well as my frustrations in finding that being a medical student got me nowhere even with conservative Christian women, suddenly make sense, now that I see them through the light of female hypergamy. It really is, as a commenter said somewhere, like finally seeing the Matrix.<br /><br />Now, this is not about to become a PUA blog. Lord knows there are enough of them out there already, and I am not about to give up on Christian sexual morality in an attempt to reinvent myself as a player. However, I've decided that in our society, however unfortunate it may be, a guy has to learn some "game" just to attract a decent wife. I'm sure that now and then, when I do find time to post, the topics of dating, sexual relations, marriage, etc. will come up more often than they have.<br /><br />I've also added two blogs, which discuss these matters in ways I find helpful, to my blogroll: <a href="http://novaseeker.blogspot.com/">Novaseeker</a> and <a href="http://elusivewapiti.blogspot.com/">The Elusive Wapiti</a>. There are others which I browse from time to time, which I may add when they come to mind.Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-23678448490883695042009-04-07T18:18:00.004-04:002009-04-07T18:32:06.023-04:00Blacks stop assaulting students, now it's done by "males"Whenever a crime occurs on or near campus, the university security service sends out a mass-email "security alert" describing the incident, and wherever possible, the suspect. In the past, these emails always mentioned the race of the suspect, a commonsensical practice, as presumably making the suspect's race known aids in his apprehension. (The suspects have uniformly been black.) I've noticed that the last two security alerts we've gotten have left this detail out. Thus, we have these descriptions of the respective perps:<br /><blockquote><p><strong>Suspect Description</strong>: The suspect is still at large and is described as a male 30-35 years old, 5'10" tall, 180 lbs, wearing a tan jacket, dark shoes and pants and carrying a grocery bag.<br /><br /><strong>Suspect Description</strong>: The suspect is still at large and is described as a male 18-19 years old, 5'7" tall, 140lbs, wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and black pants.</p></blockquote>Now, are we to believe that in both cases the victims caught a good enough glimpse of their assailants to describe their age, height, weight, and dress, but somehow couldn't ascertain their race?<br /><br />It's good to know they're males, though. I'll be sure to keep a lookout for any males.Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-6236750054117597202009-01-31T18:30:00.002-05:002009-01-31T18:50:32.875-05:00Reason women don't belong in politics #2370293847I give you <a href="http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/the-inauguration-at-last/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Maira</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Kalman</span></a>.<br /><div></div><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 500px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 669px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/kalman/2009/01/01.jpg" border="0" />Is this illustration intended to commemorate, perhaps, Easter Sunday? Why, no, of course not, this is the <em>New York Times</em>. It's about the inauguration of our new Messiah, President Barack Hussein Obama. The creator is one <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Maira</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Kalman</span>, whose <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Wikipedia</span> entry claims she is both "an American" and "born in Tel <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Aviv</span>." To me, those two statements contradict each other, unless she 1) was born to American parents who happened to be living in Tel <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Aviv</span>, or 2) is naturalized. A Google search for biographical information her found no sources which might explain whether either of those two things is true.<br /><br />Anyway, you can look at the entire entry by clicking on the link above. Apparently, her "blog" at the <em>Times</em> consists of pages of these illustrations. This one contains a list of all sorts of different reasons we should exclaim "Hallelujah!" upon the inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama. If you have traditionalist sympathies, the list provides as good a reason as any why women should not have political power. For example, my favorite is the third-to-last panel: "For being smart again. And sexy again. And optimistic again." Because God knows, America just wasn't sexy enough under George W. Bush. This reminds me of how, the day after the inauguration, several of my female classmates were discussing how much they loved Michelle <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Obama's</span> dress and how excited they were to have a First Lady whose fashion they can follow closely.<br /><br />I was alerted to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Maira</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Kalman's</span> blog by a classmate who posted the above entry as, uh, his or her <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Facebook</span> status. I'll give you three guesses as to the sex of this individual.Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-9558365095777944572009-01-06T19:14:00.002-05:002009-01-06T19:33:35.662-05:00Re-enfranchised and it feels so goodA week or two ago--I don't remember, medical school has become such a blur--I received a new voter registration card in the mail. I never did receive a return phone call from the clerk at the board of elections, but someone must have discovered that I did sign whatever I needed to sign after all. Was my vote counted? The world may never know.<br /><br />I had always dismissed left-wing concerns about voting problems in America; the process has always seemed so well-controlled to me. However, after this experience, I'm a little more willing to believe that there <em>are</em> large numbers of people whose votes aren't being counted properly. Not, of course, because old white men in top hats twirling their mustaches and smoking cigars are pulling the strings to keep brown people down, as the left thinks, but simply because so many people can't be counted upon to do their job right. As the quotation often apocryphally attributed to Napoleon goes, "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."<br /><br />(The title of this post is a play on the 1978 hit "Reunited" by Peaches & Herb.)Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-71016283861444517962008-12-11T23:57:00.005-05:002008-12-12T00:52:33.890-05:00In which a white man gets disenfranchisedIn the summer of 2007, I moved from the only state where I had ever been a legal resident to a different state to attend medical school. I registered to vote in my new state well before the primary elections earlier this year. I'm looking right now at my voter registration card from the county Board of Elections, marked with a date of 12/03/07. It doesn't mention a party affiliation, and now that I think about it, I can't remember whether the registration process required declaring one. In the state where I grew up, I registered as a Republican so I could vote in the primaries, but the state where I now reside is one of these God-awful open primary states, so such consideration is irrelevant. If I was asked for a party affiliation, I'm sure I chose Republican, but I just can't remember. So I don't know whether the county thinks that I consider myself a Republican or not.<br /><br />At the time of the primary, I carried the same voting card to my polling place, requested a Republican ballot (the only person present, according to my eavesdropping, to do so), and cast my vote for Mitt Romney. Of course, they never ask for the card, since it's not a valid ID and the voter's name is supposed to be in the book. I took it anyway, just in case. Voting went off without a hitch. They looked up my name in the book, checked my driver's license, handed me the ballot, and I filled it out and dropped it in the box. No problems.<br /><br />So I didn't think there would be any problems the day of the general election in November, either. I confidently strode up to the volunteer sitting behind the table and gave her my name. She flipped through the book... no dice. The other volunteer manning the other book (there was an A-L book and an M-Z book or something like that) checked his book too; I wasn't there either. I suggested some possible misspellings of my last name and they checked for those too. Nothing. I showed them the card, but it's not much: there's no voter ID number, just my name, polling place, and a list of the relevant districts in which I reside. They said that if my name wasn't in the book, they couldn't give me a ballot.<br /><br />They got on the phone with someone downtown, and the answer that came back was that I should cast a provisional ballot. I'd fill out the ballot, but it wouldn't be counted until my registration was verified at the county office. I figured this wouldn't be a problem; since I was registered and had voted in the primary, the absence of my name in the book that day could only have been a minor clerical error, and I was sure they'd find that I was registered and promptly count the ballot.<br /><br />Then, last week, I received a letter from the county Board of Elections. It stated that they had been unable to verify my registration, and suggested calling them if I believed I was registered. Otherwise, a new voter registration form was handily enclosed for my convenience.<br /><br />Since I <em>know</em> I'm registered, I called on Wednesday. The person I spoke to checked the records and told me that the problem was that I had never signed my voter registration. Ah, I see, a simple mistake on my part... except that I'm holding a voter registration card in my hand, and I voted in the primary election, where I was on the books. Well, she said, the earliest activity our records show for you is this registration which is is June of this year.<br /><br />In June of this year I was having my first ever experience in lab research by day, hanging out with friends by night. I was having no communication, direct or indirect, with the county Board of Elections. I voted, in person, in the primary election in the spring. My name was in the book then. In November, I returned to the same polling place, without having moved, changed my name, been convicted of a felony, been declared legally insane, or done anything else which one might suspect would result in a change in my voting registration. I was not on the book.<br /><br />The woman on the phone said she could check the book from the primary. I said yes, I'd like her to do that. She said she'd call me back, hopefully later the same day. I haven't been called back.<br /><br />I've never thought of myself as a potential conspiracy theorist, nor someone who complains about being victimized. As I said, I don't even know whether the county knows I consider myself a Republican. But I do live in the bluest county [sigh... I keep wanting to settle among like-minded people, but universities keep pulling me back in] in a swing state, and this was a very important election to the presumably mostly Democratic election officials. Is it too much to think that they purged Republicans from the voter rolls? Oh, right, only Republicans do that; the left only cares about fairness and justice for everyone. Except when said fairness doesn't produce the required results.<br /><br />The specific result in this case is immaterial; Obama solidly carried the state and I voted for Chuck Baldwin anyway. But, if we're now entering an age where the left is going to use widespread corruption and underhanded trickery to prevent conservatives from voting, that in my mind proves how irreconcilably divided those in our society who want to destroy traditional America are from those of us who want to preserve it, so that only something as radical as revolution or civil war can settle our disputes.Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-63723057725500080292008-11-06T21:12:00.011-05:002008-12-15T01:14:33.148-05:00The "corporations" left and the baby boomersI hesitate to post anything related to my personal life on the blog, if only because I feel references to one's personal life cheapen serious discussions and sidetrack them into being about feelings rather than objective ideas. But sometimes one's personal life provides such a perfect example of what one wants to talk about that I feel it's acceptable.<br /><br />Vanishing American recently had an entry on the Baby Boomers and how they're blamed for allowing our nation to start down the wrong path. My parents are Baby Boomers, and in many ways they represent the worst of that generation. They rebelled against "the system," they tuned in, turned on, and dropped out, they shacked up together before marriage at a time when it was still scandalous to do so, and the cumulative effect of millions of people doing so, starting with their generation, has led to the practice being totally accepted today. Still, like many if not most people, they have always been somewhat apolitical pragmatists. As someone with strong philosophical views, I've never understood how people can vacillate between the two major parties, sometimes voting Republican, sometimes Democrat, yet that is what my parents did in their younger years. My father, however, has since gone off the deep end, something I'm reminded of every time I talk to him.<br /><br />He was a Reagan supporter in the 1980s, on the basis of limited government, wanting to keep more of his own income, and the idea that welfare was bad because we shouldn't have unproductive members of society leeching off productive people's money. I think he voted for George H.W. Bush in 1988, though in the subsequent elections he was a Clinton supporter. Now, however, he's become a raging leftist, and seems to be reading through all of Kevin Phillips' books. Again, this is something I have trouble grasping. How can one's views change that drastically? When that happens to someone, is it a sign that they never really held their old views deeply to begin with?<br /><br />He is not, however, the kind of leftist often discussed at traditionalist websites: the kind whose main motivation is culturally left-wing philosophical views, for whom everything revolves around the notion that America, whites, and the West are racist and guilty and are oppressing "diverse" peoples. In fact, he has the makings of a race realist: he recently remarked, only semi-facetiously, in reference to the state of South Africa, "you can't put black people in charge of anything!" Rather, he's one of these "corporations" people--you know, the soak-the-rich kind, the kind for whom everything comes down to money. Our society is run by the rich, they're the movers and shakers, the people who pull the strings behind the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">scenes</span>, and they've got everything rigged to benefit themselves and screw the rest of us, and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">politicians</span> are all in bed with them, their congressional votes bought with lobbyist money, buying themselves tax breaks and corporate welfare, etc. Everything comes down to money. Everything the rich and corporations do, they do it to enrich themselves; everything politicians do they do for bribes from the rich; meanwhile, it is foolish and wrong for the non-rich to consider anything other than their own short-term material gain (i.e., there is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_the_Matter_with_Kansas">something the matter with Kansas</a>.)<br /><br />And it's impossible to argue against this; anytime I say anything that conflicts with this view, he insists it all comes down to money. I mentioned the mental health regulations that had been snuck into the bailout bill, and his immediate reaction was, "who paid for that?" I replied that I thought it was cultural; the left just thinks mental health is so important, and a great injustice is being done to so many people who are being denied the essential mental health coverage they so desperately need, and so on. He insisted that no, someone must be paying for it, there must be some lobby, someone must stand to get rich off of it and that's why it was in the bill. He reiterated his support for universal single-payer health care, saying that every time the people are polled, the people want it, but we don't listen to the people in this country, we listen to corporations. He said that McCain accused Obama of supporting single-payer, which he does not, meaning <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Obama's</span> not leftist enough. He said that the powers that be are so entrenched that Obama doesn't represent enough change; he was disappointed with the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Rahm</span> Emmanuel pick because Emmanuel is an insider; what we need is another FDR who will get in there and make sweeping changes and say, "I don't care that this is illegal, it's what needs to be done." So he wants the executive to push the country so far to the left that he <em>breaks the law</em> in doing so. And Bush is the "imperial president"?!<br /><br />Again, how does someone go from being a Reagan supporter to this, in 20 years?<br /><br />A potential answer is in Aesop's fable of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper">Ant and the Grasshopper</a>. My father has spent his life self-employed, and has never been good at managing money; not much of a businessman. (A trait I seem to have inherited, and one that perhaps shows there are different aspects of intelligence--despite having scored in the 99<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">th</span> percentile on the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">MCAT</span>, I can't begin to fathom how people do things like play the stock market or manage a successful business.) In the 1980s, he was doing OK financially, supporting a family, and wanted to keep more of the money he earned. Now that he's near retirement age, however, he wants the government to wait on him hand and foot. Since he lived paycheck-to-paycheck and has no nest egg, now it's suddenly not fair that there are rich people who have more than he does. If true, this explanation shows how the everything-comes-down-to-money view feeds back on itself.<br /><br />But I still can't quite grasp how someone can be so unprincipled. And while I do blame the baby boomers, I also blame the generation that raised them: the so-called "Greatest Generation," the one that elected and supported FDR. After all, they didn't actively turn against Western culture the way the baby boomers did; they were shocked and horrified at their children's rebellion. But they did pave the way for FDR and his New Deal, the introduction of socialism into the policy of the federal government, thus making it possible for FDR to be considered a hero today for <em>ignoring the law</em> to force economic redistribution and social welfare on the nation. And I wonder, if so many people are so unprincipled, if so many, however little they care for the culture of the West, care even less for the founding American principles of private property and self-reliance, can we really ever take this country back?Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-59222099072504417422008-11-01T16:32:00.003-04:002008-11-01T16:49:52.122-04:00Safety in the wake of the electionI'm reasonably certain that Senator Barack Hussein Obama will be elected the next President of the United States of America on Tuesday. As for whom I will personally vote for, I am still undecided, unlike the vast majority of my fellow medical students, who took advantage of the disgraceful early voting apparatus they so passionately support and have already cast their votes for Our Savior Barack Hussein Obama. I had been planning to vote for either a write-in candidate or Chuck Baldwin, but I've started to find some of the "existential threat" argument from commenters at View from the Right convincing. A Barack Hussein Obama administration, coupled with the cooperation of a Democratically-controlled Congress, may cement leftist rule in America for all eternity. I live in a swing state, so I can't distance myself from the mainstream candidates and cast a third-party vote on pure principle. One thing's for sure: if I do decide to vote for McCain, I will be holding my nose harder than it's ever been held before.<br /><br />What I already do know I will do, is stock up on at least a week's supply of food before Tuesday, since there's no telling how some of the residents of my, uh, diverse neighborhood will comport themselves in the event of a McCain victory, not to mention what kind of service I'll be able to expect at the grocery store across the street, which is staffed primarily by those same individuals. Of course, conditions may not be much better in the event of a Barack Hussein Obama victory, since it will be, to paraphrase Thurgood Marshall, their turn now.<br /><br />As for self-defense, I've heard that some people are arming themselves to protect themselves from black rioters, but I won't be purchasing a gun between now and Tuesday. Though it's a weakness in my conservative credentials, I've never fired a gun in my life, and this being exam week, I'm certainly not going to learn enough to make an informed decision about a handgun purchase in the next two days. So, I will have to hunker down with my week's supply of food and hope for the best.Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-47951734092938280352008-09-30T22:16:00.005-04:002008-09-30T22:49:00.608-04:00Health care professionals accost patients about politicsAs an example of how divided our society has become, take my experience yesterday. I went to the eye clinic at the big university medical center to see about getting contact lenses. The optometrist I saw asked me if I had seen the news that day, and when I replied that I hadn't, he told me there had been panicked selling on the stock market. He then proceeded to denounce the House Republicans for killing the bailout bill. I said I don't know, maybe we should just let the chips fall where they may, force the banks to face the consequences of their mistakes. He said that wasn't an option, we can't have the system crash, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">institutions</span> like the medical center itself depend on being able to take out short-term overnight loans and we'd go out of business if these banks did.<br /><br />Is it just me, or does this come too close to starting a political argument in a setting where it shouldn't be considered appropriate? I'm sure political disagreements are as old as civilization itself, but I don't have the impression that people did things like this 50 years ago. But as our society has become more and more liberal, the left has felt more and more empowered to drive non-liberal beliefs out of the realm of respectability. I'm reminded of my former co-worker who thought everyone who owned guns or went to church lived in Kentucky, and my classmates who often make much more explicitly liberal statements in public in a way that indicates they assume everyone present agrees with them. We are witnessing the "I don't know how Nixon won; no one I know voted for him" effect writ large.Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-40118116586184950342008-09-30T21:16:00.004-04:002008-09-30T22:52:22.248-04:00Low activityAs a cynic may have predicted would happen, my posting has dropped off as medical school has once again become more intense. I won't deny that I've been busy with schoolwork, but I must admit I also haven't been motivated to post much lately because of low morale. As the fervor of our nation's political debate has increased with the impending presidential election, I've been feeling more and more like the left has irrevocably won. If Barack Obama wins, he gets a Democratic Congress to do his bidding, plus the black "community" will be empowered like never before, and any failures and setbacks the nation experiences during his term will be blamed on racism. If McCain wins, the left will go absolutely apoplectic, foaming at the mouth with rabid denunciations of America as a thoroughly racist country, and mounting who-knows-what all-new full-scale assault on American society to purge it of its bigotry and discrimination. We truly are screwed in '08.Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-25097320123878696892008-08-30T20:10:00.000-04:002008-08-30T20:10:09.600-04:00Why Obama's candidacy may be disastrous for AmericaI recently posted on the <a href="http://wisemansheart.blogspot.com/2008/08/why-obama-presidency-must-mean-end-of.html">negative consequences</a> of an Obama presidency, with the disclaimer that of course I don't think a McCain presidnecy would be good for America either. But quite apart from whatever negative consequences result from John McCain's policies, I also think an Obama <em>defeat</em> could have disastrous consequences for our society as well. For this reason, I think we're already in a very bad place merely for having Obama be a contender for the presidency.<br /><br />First, let me remind readers of my view, contrary to some of the more optimistic (or maybe less pessimistic) traditionalists, that most white liberals will <em>never</em> wake up and abandon their liberalism. <em>Nothing</em> can dissuade them from the view that all people must be totally equal and that any problems associated with nonwhite, non-Western peoples are caused by white racism. They would literally rather die than come to believe otherwise. With that said, allow me to spell out a possible chain of events which could happen should Obama win in November.<br /><ol><li>Barack Obama takes office in January of 2009.</li><li>Despite having achieved what was thought of as the highest possible victory, putting a "black" man in the White House, blacks continue to lag behind whites in school achievement, in average income, in crime rates, and virtually every other commonly examined marker.</li><li>Since everyone knows that blacks' problems are caused by systemic racism, this proves that America is <em>even worse</em>, even more racist, than we thought. We thought we had overcome racism by electing a black president, but far from overcoming it, we've discovered that it's even worse, because even having a black man in the White House has not made blacks equal.</li><li>With their anger at whites inflamed by this supposed racism, and emboldened by the sense gained from having one of their own in the White House that they are winning, that they've got whitey's number, blacks begin to attack whites with even greater fury. Black-on-white robberies, rapes, and murders increase, and educated, "respectable" blacks like Jeremiah Wright turn up the heat on their constant denunciations of whites and their calls for white America to give up ever more for blacks.</li><li>Again, all of this is seen as a consequence of our racism, so even more must be done to combat racism. Congress passes a slavery reparations bill which calculates the value with interest of 40 acres and a mule in 1865, and pays that amount to every black person in America. Anti-racial profiling laws are passed which are so restrictive that it becomes virtually impossible to arrest black criminals. Bold new affirmative action programs are instituted nationwide and enshrined at the highest level of federal law. It becomes virtually impossible for any employer ever to fire a black person for any reason. New zoning laws are created, aimed at forcing racial integration, making it extremely difficult for whites to move to all- or mostly-white neighborhoods. Who knows what other manner of yet unconceived tyrannical laws are passed and institutions created to combat our supposed racism.</li><li>None of this works, which only proves that America is yet <em>even more</em> racist that we had thought in #3! So, even more must be done, and blacks' anger at whites increases again. Return to step 4.</li><li>Society plunges into chaos. Crime rates skyrocket, and whites everywhere live in fear for their lives. Even white liberals acknowledge they live in fear for their lives, but they blame this problem on racism and conservatives. White liberals continue not to have children, so nonwhites' power over whites continues to increase. There are pockets of traditionalist whites here and there, who recognize the problem and who continue to have children, but they are prevented from gathering into an organized resistance by the fact that they are so scattered, by the aforementioned zoning laws, and by internet companies' shutting down our blogs and online fora for their racist hate speech.</li><li>As the lights go out in America, the last white liberal lies in the street bleeding to death of a black gang member-inflicted gunshot wound. (I always picture this person as the hippie social worker who is in charge of our weekly liberalism seminar in med school.) Her dying words are: "if only our society hadn't been so conservative and racist."</li></ol><p>Now, this is a pretty depressing picture, and I'm not saying it's what I think is going to happen, only that I think it could happen. But what struck me yesterday is how little of this is dependent on Barack Obama being elected, or any other single event. Indeed, the reaction from the left will be similar if Obama is defeated: his defeat will be proof of how racist America is, even more racist than we thought, which proves we must do even more to combat racism, which feeds into step 4 above. In fact, the initial reaction from the left if Obama is defeated will be even worse! I can only imagine the vitriol, the rabid denunciations of America, the wishes that the older generation of white voters would just die off already, that I'll be treated to in November from my medical school classmates if Obama is defeated.</p><p>So, if Obama is elected, his failure to fix the problems caused by racism will inspire us to destroy ourselves, while if he is defeated, our racism will be proven and we will be inspired to destroy ourselves. <a href="http://www.werescrewed08.com/">We're Screwed '08</a> indeed. What's more, this situation could not have been permanently avoided by Obama's defeat in the primaries; eventually, a black candidate would have received a presidential nomination, and the results would be the same. Only a return to realistic views on race can save us. And since I believe most white liberals will never abandon their liberalism, only efforts by traditionalists to maintain pockets of resistance and to prevent liberals from seizing our entire society from us by prohibiting us from living together and communicating with each other can save us.</p>Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-23811885121392249932008-08-28T23:01:00.001-04:002008-08-28T23:18:43.922-04:00California stores required to provide facilities for "day laborers"The Los Angeles City Council has unanimously <a href="http://www.knbc.com/news/17183208/detail.html">passed a law</a> requiring big-box home improvement stores to erect shelters with water, bathrooms, and tables for "day laborers." No mention of the day laborers' immigration status.<br /><br /><blockquote>People who live near Home Depot stores have complained of day laborers drinking beer, urinating in yards or other unseemly behavior.<br /><br />The National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a nonprofit group started in <a href="http://www.knbc.com/topic/Northridge">Northridge</a> in 2001, supports the new requirements.<br /><br />"It provides for safe and dignified hiring locations where contingent workers can defend their basic rights. It carefully balances the interests of business, residents, day laborers and their employers," said the group's executive director, Pablo Alvarado.</blockquote>Over the past few days I've been having some interesting interactions with posters on the Student Doctor Network. I've seen that this is exactly the kind of thing that many liberals get outraged over, claiming that it takes things "too far," but when you try to get them to see that this is a necessary result of their philosophy, they dismiss you. What we need people to understand is that as long as we believe discrimination and inequality are evil, this kind of thing is inevitable.<br /><br />The article also mentions that Home Depot has no problem with the ordinance, once again proving that large corporations are liberal.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-1694911124695949942008-08-26T00:07:00.000-04:002008-08-26T00:07:52.419-04:00Why an Obama presidency must mean the end of white AmericaHere's something that struck me a few days ago about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Barack</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Obama's</span> presidential campaign. Conservatives have realized for years now that in our society, there's a general assumption that once a prominent position has been occupied by a minority or a woman, it "belongs" to minorities and it would be morally unjust for it to revert to being occupied by a white man. For example, we haven't had a white male Secretary of State for over ten years now.<br /><br />While this view causes problems, it has not so far proven devastating to our society. But the presidency is <em><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">sui</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">generis</span></em>, and the problem of electing a minority president goes far beyond creating the view that we must always have a minority president from then on. In the minds of the public, the president represents or symbolizes all of America. So with a black president, America will be seen as a truly and legitimately non-white country. In the minds of a great many people, if only subconsciously, there will have ceased to be anything distinctly white about America, anything defining of America having to do with a historic white majority. Obviously, this will not comport with the reality that for the time being, America will still have a white majority, and even though that majority is at only 66% and falling, it is one that, being "top-loaded" in the older end of the population, still holds most of the positions of power and influence, thus making America still seem like a basically white country.<br /><br />Now, this is so inconsistent with the reality of a non-white America as symbolized by President <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Obama</span>, that it will be seen as <em>morally illegitimate</em> for America to have a white majority. It will be seen as a grave and dire problem, one that must be rectified as soon as possible. The attacks on whites and on white society--both physical, and in terms of social policies like school curricula which <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">de</span>emphasize and demonize our historical figures, and immigration laws which are already reducing whites to a minority in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">America</span>--by both nonwhites, and by the white liberal elite who love <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Barack</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Obama</span> and hate ordinary white Americans--will increase and intensify. Life for white people in America will become difficult, much sooner than the predicted end of the white majority in 2042.<br /><br />This is why, as much as I loathe the idea of a McCain presidency, I cannot hope for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Barack</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Obama</span> to be elected this November.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-29677900434127240752008-08-25T01:42:00.001-04:002008-08-25T01:44:16.842-04:00Race: The Reality of Human Differences--Chapter 1: Race and the LawIn Chapter 1 of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813340861?ie=UTF8&tag=wimashe-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0813340861">Race: The Reality Of Human Differences</a><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; MARGIN: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none" height="1" alt="" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wimashe-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0813340861" width="1" border="0" />, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Sarich</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Miele</span> begin their treatment of race in earnest. Entitled "Race and the Law," this chapter seeks to justify the biological reality of race by showing that it is a commonsense concept that everyone intuitively understands. Although this chapter provides useful illustrations of the concept of race, as I said in my <a href="http://wisemansheart.blogspot.com/2008/08/race-reality-of-human-differences_11.html">discussion</a> of the book's opening statement, it is one I think will not be convincing to race-deniers.<br /><br />The authors note that there is no legal definition of "race," yet the legal system accepts it and relies on average people's ability to identify race. Their point seems to be that if our legal system, the most contentious system within our society, has no problem accepting the reality of race, then it must be real. But of course, this will not sway the race deniers, whose belief that race has no biological basis in reality but is merely a "social construct" does not imply, in their minds, that race does not exist. They think it exists as a concept, but that that concept can be quite powerful and have a great deal of meaning and determinative effect on a person's life. They would say "yes, we can usually recognize when a person would be considered white, black, or Asian, but these are not clear-cut categories for which we can test for membership and make any predictions about the individuals based on them."<br /><br />The authors describe two court cases in which race came into play and was accepted by all parties involved. The first, <em>Rice v. Office of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Hawaiian</span> Affairs,</em> involved Hawaiian laws defining "Native Hawaiian" as a person descended from the indigenous people of Hawaii. These laws originally used the word "races" repeatedly, but were later amended to substitute the word "peoples." An Office of Hawaiian Affairs was created, designated for the benefit of "Hawaiians," and one H.F. Rice brought suit against it for not allowing him to vote in an election for its trustees since he was not a "Native Hawaiian."<br /><br />The 9<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">th</span> Circuit Court of Appeals (often called the "9<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">th</span> Circus" for its liberal rulings) found in favor of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">OHA</span>, since Rice, while a resident of Hawaii, did not meet the legal definition of a "Native Hawaiian." The US Supreme Court reversed the decision, citing the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution">15<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">th</span> amendment</a> to the US Constitution; in other words, finding that Rice was being denied a vote on account of his race. Now, anyone could have told you that this was inevitable, as soon as the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">OHA</span> attempted to decide voter eligibility based on race. But the word "race" in the original statues was changed to "people" in order to get around a possible 15<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">th</span> amendment objection. In the end, however, this was unsuccessful, because the Supreme Court recognized the common sense definition of race.<br /><br />In the second case, <em><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Haak</span> v. Rochester School District</em>, the parents of a white fourth-grade student named Jessica <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Haak</span> had attempted to transfer their daughter from their home district to a mostly white district, through a transfer program that existed for the purpose of <em>lessening</em> racial separation among the districts involved. Their case was based on the notion that forbidding her to transfer because of her race violated the much-abused "equal protection" clause of the 14<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">th</span> amendment. The district court ruled for the plaintiff, but the 2<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">nd</span> Circuit overturned their decision.<br /><br />The purpose for which the authors mention this case is to show how the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Haaks</span>, the school district, and the courts all took the existence of race, and the possibility of racial classification, for granted. The program involved a definition of a "minority pupil" as "a pupil who is of Black or Hispanic origin or is a member of another minority group that historically has been the subject of discrimination." It also specified that a program administrator could question the student's race on the basis of "name, manner of speaking and phrasing, and personal appearance during an interview or orientation." The point is that no one disputed that the school or anyone else was able to correctly identify <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Haak's</span> race.<br /><br />Again, as consistent as these two examples may be with the reality of race, they do not satisfy the race-denier. Race-deniers do not deny that there are some <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">phenotypic</span> features that correlate with self-identified race; they just claim that because there is no definitive genetic test to determine which race a person belongs to, and there is more genetic variation within races than between races, race is not biologically valid and racial differences are only skin deep.<br /><br />The authors seem to recognize this when they proceed to question whether the courts "recognize the existence of race as a mere social construct or as an underlying biological reality." We can allow that the courts might recognize that race is real, but only because the social construct is so powerful, not because it has a biological basis. To bolster their case for the biological reality of race, they give an example in which genetic testing was used to determine the race of a killer on the loose, the case of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_Todd_Lee">Derrick Todd Lee</a>.<br /><br />You can read about the case from any number of online sources, so I won't bother rehashing the details. I recommend, though, that if you search for "Derrick Todd Lee" you include the name "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Frudakis</span>" in your search, because most online sources don't even mention the most salient aspect of this case, which is to be expected, because it proves the genetic reality of race. In a nutshell, police were looking for a white suspect until Tony <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Frudakis</span> of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">DNAPrint</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Genomics</span> told them he could determine the race of the killer via genetic testing. I recommend Wired Magazine's story, which has this to say:<br /><blockquote>In early March, 2003, investigators turned to Tony <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Frudakis</span>, a molecular biologist who said he could determine the killer's race by analyzing his DNA. They were unsure about the science, so, before giving him the go-ahead, the task force sent <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Frudakis</span> DNA swabs taken from 20 people whose race they knew and asked him to determine their races through blind testing. He nailed every single one.<br /><br />Still, when they gathered in the Baton Rouge police department for a conference call with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Frudakis</span> in mid-March, they were not prepared to hear or accept his conclusions about the killer.<br /><br />"Your guy has substantial African ancestry," said <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Frudakis</span>. "He could be Afro-Caribbean or African American but there is no chance that this is a Caucasian. No chance at all."<br /><br />There was a prolonged, stunned silence, followed by a flurry of questions looking for doubt but <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Frudakis</span> had none. Would he bet his life on this, they wanted to know? Absolutely. In fact, he was certain that the Baton Rouge serial killer was 85 percent Sub-Saharan African and 15 percent native American.<br /><br />"This means we're going to turn our investigation in an entirely different direction," <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Frudakis</span> recalls someone saying. "Are you comfortable with that?"<br /><br />"Yes. I recommend you do that," he said. And now, rather than later since, in the time it took <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Frudakis</span> to analyze the sample, the killer had claimed his fifth victim. The task force followed <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Frudakis</span>' advice and, two months later, the killer was in custody.</blockquote>Think about that: there was a "they were not prepared to hear or accept his conclusions" and "there was a prolonged, stunned silence" in response to them. All because he told them the killer was black. That is the degree to which the important institutions in our society--law enforcement among them--deny the reality of race.<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Sarich</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Miele</span> mention the type of DNA profiling commonly used in forensics examines <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_tandem_repeat">short tandem repeats</a> (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">STRs</span>), which are sequences of DNA where a short pattern is repeated several times. Using thirteen of these markers is considered valid for identifying an individual, because with thirteen the odds of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">misidentification</span> are about one in a billion. Thirteen <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">STR</span> markers are not sufficient to identify race, however. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">DNAPrint</span> methodology used by <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">Frudakis</span> uses a different kind of marker, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_nucleotide_polymorphism">single nucleotide polymorphism</a> or <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">SNP</span>, in which there is a difference of exactly 1 nucleotide between individuals. They point out that academic research has confirmed that using 100 of these <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">markers</span>, a person's ancestry (Africa, Europe, Asia, or the Americas) can be determined with almost 100 percent accuracy, and that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">DNAPrint</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">Genomics</span> has reduced the number required to 73. They also point out that this methodology is correct at a rate equal to that of the DNA profiling that is considered legally valid for identifying individuals.<br /><br />The authors conclude their discussion of the case thus:<br /><br /><blockquote>Unless race is a biological reality that gives important information about an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">individual's</span> degree of genetic resemblance to the various human populations and the sequence in which those populations evolved by separating from other populations, it would be inconceivable to achieve the level of accuracy obtainable through the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">DNAPrint</span> methodology. Indeed, given a sufficient number of markers, such analysis is capable of not only identifying race but predicting skin tone as well.</blockquote>The success of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">DNAPrint</span> methodology contrasts sharply with a faulty genetic testing experiment used in the PBS documentary "Race: The Power of an Illusion" to prove that race has no genetic basis. In that program, six students of different racial backgrounds made predictions about which of the other students would have DNA most similar to their own, based upon typical racial criteria. They then examined six markers of mitochondrial DNA (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">mtDNA</span>) to see if the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">reuslts</span> would match up with their predictions, and lo and behold, they did not. The program concluded that people in one race were <em>not</em> more genetically similar to each other than to those in another race. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">Sarich</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">Miele</span> explain why this experiment was flawed: first, only six markers were used, less than one-half of the thirteen required for individual identification by DNA fingerprinting. Second, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">mtDNA</span> is inherited only along the maternal line and thus is not fully indicative of a person's ancestry. Therefore, the PBS program dishonestly stacked the deck to make it appear that genetic testing could not be used to determine race, when it easily can.<br /><br />The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of an experiment showing that children as young as three can classify people into races without having been taught to do so. In the experiments, anthropologist Lawrence <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47">Hirschfeld</span> found that when presented with a series of drawings of people who differ by race, body type, and occupational uniform, young children identify race as being inherited over the other two categories. After many years of research along these lines, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48">Hirschfeld</span> has concluded that children believe that "race is an intrinsic, immutable, and essential aspect of a person's identity," and "they come to this conclusion on their own." According to the authors, this must be because the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees must have been able to tell those who belonged to his own group from those who did not. Whatever the explanation behind it, the phenomenon is apparently observable and should give the lie to the liberal idea that race is something children need to be taught.<br /><br />As I've said, unfortunately, I don't believe that is true for most of the examples given earlier in the chapter. The fact that the legal system doesn't question race, and that most ordinary people can correctly identify race, will not sway race deniers--in fact, since leftists typically don't trust common sense and believe that truth can be elucidated only by highly trained "experts," they may be all the more likely on this basis to believe that race must be illusory. Nevertheless, in closing the chapter, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_49">Sarich</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_50">Miele</span> mention the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moralistic_fallacy">moralistic fallacy</a>, which says that what ought to be is what is, or that if something is morally wrong, it cannot be a part of our nature. This fallacy is sometimes used to argue that since racism is wrong, and belief in biological race leads to racism, there must not be any such thing as biological race. This echoes the belief of Alan Goodman, which the authors mentioned in the opening statement and say they will rebut later in the book, that even if race does not exist, it should not be studied; essentially, we should pull the wool over our eyes, because if we don't, we might become racists.<br /><br />In the next chapter, Race and History, we will learn of how ancient cultures, including non-Western ones, believed in race, a specific rebuttal to the PBS <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_51">documentary's</span> assertion that race is a recent European idea invented to justify colonialism and slavery.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905922288517555692.post-66888911386988161412008-08-23T23:42:00.002-04:002008-08-23T23:44:17.102-04:00New email addressI've created a new email address for readers to email me, visible at the top left of the page. The Contactify link was a bit cumbersome and not very friendly; now you can use the email program of your choice.Hermeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15048343595688010664noreply@blogger.com0