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Monday, October 7, 2024

No Mercy Intended

 At one point during Christ's crucifixion, he says that he is thirsty, and a Roman soldier lifts a sponge soaked in vinegar to his lips, but Christ refuses it.  

A very common "explanation" for this tableau -- and one which I have long believed to be not merely mistaken but utterly false -- is that this was an act of kindness or mercy, the vinegar being offered to dull the horrible pain of the crucified victim, and that Christ refused it so as to fully experience taking upon himself the weight of mankind's sin.  But, this doesn't make sense; for the whole point of crucifixion was to kill the condemned by slow torture, with as much humiliation and horror as possible.

Here is what I believe to be what was really going on: the Roman soldier was offering Christ vinegar delivered on the Roman equivalent of toilet paper. In their public latrines, Romans wiped their asses with sponges on sticks. Christ refused it not because our salvation required him fully experience the horror, but because it was unclean.

Coincidentally, just before I started writing this post, I did a quick search and came across the following web-page, which argues for the same conclusion -- The Crucifixion Sponge: Adding Insult to Injury


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Friday, September 20, 2024

About Those Lawns

 Recently, when asked *specifically* what she intended to do to "bring down prices and mak[e] life more affordable", Kamala "Sutra" Harris went into word-salad mode ... and never got close to answering the question.  As she meandered her way to no-where, she said that she "grew up in a neighborhood of folks who were very proud of their lawn ...".  What, you may wonder, is that all about?

What it's about is that she's trying to tell black "folks" that, "See! I'm just like you!"

Recall that Kamala "Sutra" Harris grew up in Canada, and has little to none of the "lived-experience" of black Americans.  BUT, she has heard of the old stereotype within "the black community" of the "lawn-proud" black man.  So, she's making reference to that stereotype to say to black "folks" that, "See! I'm just like you!" ... probably without realizing that the "lawn-proud" black man was a figure of both amusement and bemusement.

By the way, in the black neighborhood in which I grew up, only the very few white households (my family were the only white household with children for blocks around) had lawns.  The reason for this is that in the black households, the lady of the house *swept* the lawn with a broom on a daily basis.

EDIT (2024/09/02):

Isn't it odd that Kamala Sutra was raised in a middle-class neighborhood, where people were proud of their lawns, and simultaneously grew up living in an apartment above a "child-care center", with the business being owned by a woman who lived "two doors down [the hall]"?


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Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Liberals ... and Speed Limits

Seen on the internet -- "Conservatives are just liberals doing the speed limit."

My response --

True enough in the cases of most people.

Meanwhile, "liberals" are just unprincipled leftists. That is, "liberals" are people who subscribe to leftist presuppositions, they just don't like some of the destinations logically entailed in those presuppositions. BUT, as they have no *principle* by which to reject the logic, and thus the entailed destination, they will always eventually fold when the open leftists demand it.

In the meantime. unless your proffered alternative to leftism is Jesus Christ, then you are also just another variant of leftist.

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The late Andrew Breitbart famously said, "Politics is downstream of culture."

And, while that is true, it is incomplete. A more complete statement is expressed by my internet friend Kristor: "Politics is downstream of culture, and culture is downstream of cult." 'Cult' is not here a pejorative, as the word is commonly erroneously used in present-day English.

Or, as as (Calvinist) pastor and blogger, Douglas Wilson, points out: "There is always a god of the system." There is no such thing as metaphysical/religious neutrality (*); there is always some metaphysical underpinning of the social system, and which will be expressed in its politics. There are always blasphemy laws, but what is counted "sacred", and thus not to be blasphemed, depends upon the underlying metaphysics.

(*) The secularist promise of "religious neutrality" was a deliberate bait-and-switch lie. The goal was not "religious neutrality", which is impossible, but rather to disarm the general Christian(ish) populace long enough to install their anti-Christian metaphysics as the organizing principle of Western societies. It worked because most people were merely "cultural Christians", who wanted to enjoy the fruits of a Christian culture, while bulldozing the orchard.

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Saturday, September 14, 2024

Zeus ... and the 'atheist'

A recent thread on the 'Shadow to Light' blog ("Atheist Tries to Defend Atheist Talking Point") concerns the common attempt by 'atheists' to avoid actually making arguments, and actually defending their position, by (falsely) asserting that atheism is merely a "lack of belief in gods".

The commenter, MP, remarked, "For that matter, it can also be interesting to observe an atheist who has to deal with the fact that some Roman and Japanese emperors were considered to be gods. Given what atheists claim to believe, they would have to say that those emperors did not exist, as “there is no evidence for them”. Yet, somehow, that does not really happen…"

The commenter, TFBW, replied, "That raises the question, “what is a god?” What is the statement “Roman emperors were not gods” denying, exactly?"

After further comments by others, here is my attempt to comment on the sum of comments --

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Even aside from the important, though almost always overlooked, point of nailing down just what an 'atheist' means by the word 'god', atheism offers 'atheists' no rational principle by which deny the reality either of Christ or of Zeus ... nor of any of the miracles recorded in the Bible.

Zeus, like the 'atheist', is an effect of "the universe". Zeus, like the 'atheist', is the off-spring of a previously existing living entity, and ultimately descends from an original living entity which "came alive", all by itself, from non-living matter; and which non-living matter ultimately "came into ordered being" (i.e "Cosmos"), all by itself, from non-ordered Chaos. And again, Zeus' rationality, like that of the 'atheist', is an effect of "the universe", and "arose" from non-rationality.

But, what of Zeus' "supernatural" nature? In that regard, too, the 'atheist' has no rational principle by which to reject the possibility that Zeus could "break the laws of nature", for "scientific atheism" denies that there are any "laws of nature" in the first place.

Please bear with me that I have quoted this before, but it is important -- in 'The Demon-Haunted World', Carl Sagan said:

"Consider this claim: as I walk along, time -as measured by my wristwatch or my ageing process -slows down. Also, I shrink in the direction of motion. Also, I get more massive. Who has ever witnessed such a thing? It's easy to dismiss it out of hand. Here's another: matter and antimatter are all the time, throughout the universe, being created from nothing. Here's a third: once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street. They're all absurd! But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other two are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum fluctuations and barrier tunnelling,* they're called). Like it or not, that's the way the world is. If you insist it's ridiculous, you'll be forever closed to some of the major findings on the rules that govern the Universe.

*The average waiting time per stochastic ooze is much longer than the age of the Universe since the Big Bang. But, however improbable, in principle it might happen tomorrow."

What this means, is that, according to 'Science!', anything at all might happen at any time at all without any cause at all. That is, despite passing mention of "rules that govern the Universe", Sagan is really saying that there are no "laws of nature" in the first place for Zeus (or YHWH) to "violate" when causing a "supernatural event", or a miracle, to occur.

According to the 'atheist', Zeus just happens to be a rational living being, like himself, who, like himself, ultimately "arose" from non-rational non-living matter, which self-organized from disorganization. The difference between Zeus and the 'atheist' is that Zeus is able, whether innately or via study, to manipulate to his advantage "some of the major findings on the rules [sic] that govern the Universe."
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Sunday, August 25, 2024

This is the World That Women Demanded

To be more precise, the app in question is meant for lesbian "females".

Once again: "Men invading women's spaces" is the logical consequence of what women, and especially capital-L Lesbian women, have demanded for decades: that women, with government violence backing them up, be free to "invade men's spaces".

(The late) Phyllis Schlafly, and conservatives in general, *warned* you that "men invading women's spaces" would be the logical and inevitable consequence of ratifying the so-called "Equal Rights Amendment". Even though, thanks in large part to Mrs Schlafly, the ERA itself didn't get *officially* added to the text of the Constitution, leftist judges, bureaucrats and politicians have used the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as the vehicle by which to replace, in practice, the actual written Constitution with the spirit of the ERA.

If women want this sort of bullshit to end, *they* are going to have to repudiate feminism, in particular, and leftism, in general, root and branch.


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Saturday, August 24, 2024

A (Twisted) Nursery Rhyme for My Imaginary Children

If I'd had a son, I had planned to name him James Joseph (in Southern: Jimmy Joe!). Since twins run in both sides of my family, if there had been a twin, he'd have been Joseph James (in Southern: Joe Jim!). This would have named them after my father, his father, and his father.  Rather than referring to them non-specifically as "Twin", as my brother and I did to our sisters until they insisted we call them by name, either boy, or both at once, would be "JJ".

If I'd had a daughter, I had planned to name her Rachael Marie, thus naming her after my mother, her grandmother, my grandfather's sister, and a not-quite-grandmother who lived with us until her death. A twin would have been Sarah Marie; there are no Sarahs in the family that I know of.  Any daughter, no matter how many, would have had Marie as a middle name (as all my nieces do).

So, here is the (twisted) nursery rhyme:

Hush, little baby, If you don't cry,
I promise to smack you bye and bye,
Or maybe I'll turn you into a pie,
We'll have such fun if you don't cry.



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Friday, August 23, 2024

Passion ... and Gravitas

Most politicians (of any party), when they try to give "passionate" speeches, just end up sounding hollow and shrill; especially the women. Lord, spare me having to listen to female politicians!

But this year's Democrats, of both alleged sexes, seem to have *practiced* sounding hollow and shrill. And bombastic; to say nothing of dishonest.

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Thursday, August 22, 2024

Saturday's Child

I noticed that my upcoming birthday is on a Saturday. I thought I recalled that I was born on a Saturday, so I looked it up. Sure enough, I'm a "Saturday's child". According to the old rhyme, "Saturday's child works hard for a living." But, truth be told, I never had to work particularly hard for my living.


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Wednesday, August 21, 2024

About "Price-Gauging"

The puppet-masters of That Empty Vessel, Kaaamala (*) Sutra (**), recently instructed her that her policy will be to enact a federal law against "price-gauging", as she mispronounced the phrase.  Presumably, her TelePrompTer did have "price-gouging" written, but she, being as empty and vapid as she is, and perhaps not having been verbally informed as to what she would be fulminating against, could get no closer to the word "gouging" than to say "gauging".

Weird.

Still, my purpose here isn't to hammer on Kaaamala Sutra, but rather to demolish the concept of "price-gouging" itself -- to wit: I wish Gentle Reader to understand that there is no such thing as "price-gouging". The idea (and assertion) of "price-gouging" is founded upon a number of lies and hypocrisies. I'll try to elucidate these (with no guarantee that I've uncovered them all):

1) There is an objectively "right" price for a good or service: But, in fact, the only "right" price for a good or service is what someone else is willing to pay for it.  This "right" price" is both subjective and situational; it is subjective in that the persons who comprise the potential market for it will value it higher or lower in relation to other goods and services which they also desire; it is situational in that markets may change, both with respect to place and to time.

Consider: In the 19th century, before the invention of kerosene, the wealthier people lit their homes with lamps burning whale oil and/or candles made of whale oil.  There was an entire industry, centered in coastal New England, which sent thousands of men out onto the global oceans to "harvest" sperm whales to acquire this oil. The oil had a price -- based as all prices are, on the demand and the supply, and which varied over time as demand rose and supply fell. Yet, today, a century and a half later? Today, whale oil is both worthless and priceless: it is worthless in that there is no demand for it; it is priceless in that were there some eccentric individual who wanted whale oil to light his home, he would have to, in essence, rebuild that industry with his own effort and/or wealth.

2) There is some bureaucrat, somewhere, who, while knowing nothing about anyone else's life-circumstance, is competent to determine what the "right" price is for any good or service: This one is so absurd that I don't believe I need say more about it. I list it here for the sake of bringing it to Gentle Reader's attention.

3) It is "immoral" to offer a good or service for more than its "right" price: The corollary of this is, of course, that it is "immoral" to try to buy a good or service for less than its "right" price. We all know that no one who asserts the first will also assert the second, and certainly not with respect to his own desire to get a good or service as cheaply as he might.

4) "It's OK when I do it": This is related to 3) above; of those persons who whinge and fulminate about "price-gouging", there is not one person in one hundred who will not "price-gouge" in his turn should the opportunity arise.  The most prosaic example might be something like buying a house for $40,000 in 1980 and, having lived in it for 44 years (***), offering it for sale in 2024 for $250,000.

5) And, whatever other lies and hypocrisies I may have missed, the ultimate lie upon which the idea (and assertion) of "price-gouging" is based is: "I deserve to live by the sweat of your brow."


(*) Don't you dare pronounce her name according to the normal stress and cadence of the English language, you raycisss!

(**) I wish to pay homage both to her ethnic heritage and to her "political" skills.

(***) BY THE WAY, since at least the Clinton years, the Democrats have dreampt of taxing homeowners for the "unrealized capital-gains" which accrue to them by virtue of not paying rent.  After all, how unfair is it that Person A pays rent for 44 years, and ends up owning nothing, while Person B pays a mortgage for 30 years and ends up owning a house which he might be able to sell for $250,000?!!!

And, they're openly at it again.

This is true in all years, but especially in this year: Vote Democrat at your own peril.


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Monday, August 12, 2024

About "Folks"

It's political season (when isn't it, anymore?), which means that the political class and its wannabes are out there trying to convince the rest of us of how "folksy" they are.  One of their main tools -- and most inauthentic and least "folksy" means -- to try to convince us of their "folksiness" is to use the word "folks" where other people say "people".

When normal people use "folks", they are referring to a person's family, and specifically one's parents. Normal people with Southern roots may use "folk" (singular) to refer to one's wider family and/or to a wider "kith and kin".

But, normal people do not use "folks" as the collective of "persons".

My rule of thumb on "folks" is that people who use "folks" in this unnatural manner are trying to deceive me in some way, even if its only to fool me into thinking that they "relate" to me.


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Thursday, August 8, 2024

About Stephen Fry's Tirade Against God

(This is a response I made to a recent post at) Shadow To Light: "As for the argument from Evil, that collapses into the childish demand insisting we would all be happy, dancing Teletubbies if God existed. Essentially, when it comes to evil, the atheist is like a child who is forever mad because Santa does not exist. Because, according to the atheist, if God existed, he would be just like Santa."

Consider Stephen Fry's notorious hypocritical, and ultimately self-refuting, rant against God.

He starts out @:22 mark: "I'd say [to God], 'Bone cancer in children? What's that about?'" He says @1:28 mark: "Yes, the world is very splendid, but it also has in it insects, whose whole life-cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind. It eats outward from the eyes. Why? Why did you do that? You could easily have made a Creation in which that did not exist." Now, this tender solicitude for the sufferings of children is intellectually dishonest and hypocritical, for he is pro-abortion. And, it's an example of Our Host's observation that 'atheists' insist that God is obligated to create us as Teletubbies.

He says @:27 mark: "How dare you! How dare you create a world in which there is such misery which is not our fault?" So -- for the moment -- distinguishing between "natural evil" and "moral evil". But, @:35, he collapses the distinction: "Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?"

@1:50 mark, he contradicts Ricky Gervais' assertion that atheism is "simply the rejection of the claim that there are any gods" -- "So, you know, atheism is not just about not believing there is a God, but, on the assumption there is one, what kind of God is he?"

This tirade is self-refuting, because the only ground upon which he can stand as he levels his moral condemnations against God is by first affirming the proposition that "God Is". For, IF "God is Not", THEN there is no "way things out to be," and there is nothing evil, much less immoral, about bone cancer in children or insects which blind children.

'Atheists' love to pretend that the emotional "Argument from Pain" is a slam-dunk refutation of God, but their only "solution" to the problem or suffering is to deny that there even is a problem.


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Friday, August 2, 2024

Communism Defined in One Sentence

Paul Kegnor (quoting Marx and Engels): "The entire communist theory or programme may be summed up in the single sentence (four words): 'Abolition of private property.'"

Here is my one-sentence summary of socialism, in general, and communism, in particular: "I deserve to live by the sweat of your brow."

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Now, if one has a basic understanding of human nature, if one has a basic understanding of human history, then one sees at once that there is nothing new about socialism/communism: living by the sweat of someone else's brow is the second oldest game in the book; the oldest being murderous envy, in the manner of Cain.

When the thief burgles your home (and in the process frequently destroying more wealth than he steals), the motivation is: "I deserve to live by the sweat of your brow."

When a tribe/clan raids the neighboring tribe/clan, the motivation is: "I deserve to live by the sweat of your brow."

When the slave-raider enslaves the village (and in the process frequently killing more human beings than he delivers to the slave-market), the motivation is: "I deserve to live by the sweat of your brow."

When the strong-man sets himself up as the petty-king over his neighbors, the motivation is: "I deserve to live by the sweat of your brow."

When a feudal lordling invades the holdings of a neighboring lordling, the motivation is: "I deserve to live by the sweat of your brow."

When the alliance of 'capital' and 'labor' organize to demand government force and violence be used to "motivate" the subjects of that government to buy their more expensive domestic product rather that a less expensive foreign product, the motivation is: "I deserve to live by the sweat of your brow."

When the politician promises to subsidize his supporters' lives by confiscating the fruit of the labor of their fellows, the motivation of both the politician and his supporter is: "I deserve to live by the sweat of your brow."

When the leftist demands the overthrow of capitalism and the abolition of private property, the motivation is: "I deserve to live by the sweat of your brow."

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In striking contrast to most of human history and social organization, under capitalism -- and 'capitalism' is merely the inevitable consequence of morality and freedom-under-law -- the motivation is: "I deserve to earn my living by serving you."  

Under capitalism, honest-and-moral people earn their livings by mutually serving one another -- capitalism performs a moral jujitsu move on innate human greed and selfishness, turning the serving of others into one's own self-interest, and thereby fostering a moral and humane society in which greed and selfishness are shortsighted and counter-productive.  And this is why leftists hate capitalism so fervently: it's not merely that they are lazy, and don't want to productively work in the first place; and it's not merely that they want to live off the labor of other people; it's that they don't want to serve other people


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Tuesday, July 16, 2024

Sometimes, 'Language' is Wholly Appropriate

Warning: In this post, I am going to use some crude, vulgar, and indeed, foul, language.  And the reason I'm going to do so is that it's appropriate to the goal of this post -- to help you to viscerally reject using a certain word which most Americans, even Christians, have been indoctrinated over the past 30-40 years to view as just innocent fun: 'hot', in the sense taught us by that pathetic slut, Paris Hilton.

Recently, I chanced to listen to some podcasts by a YouTuber (whom I won't identify, other than to say that he's an East Coast politician).  He's a Christian, and he displays a genuine heart for the young men growing up adrift in this feminism-controlled and feminized (*) age, without real manly examples on which to model themselves.

BUT: he uses the Paris Hilton sense of 'hot', he refers to his wife as "smokin' hot!"

You, Gentle Reader, know exactly what 'hot' means in this sense, though some of you will deny that it means what it means and that you know exactly what it means.  'Hot' does not mean 'lovely/lovable' nor 'beautiful/handsome' nor anything along such innocent lines.  'Hot' doesn't even mean something as crude/crass as 'sexy'; it's worse than that: it means 'fuckable'.

If you imagine you can deny that 'hot'  means 'fuckable', consider this hypothetical: Suppose that you are a father; and suppose that you have a young daughter, 3-4 years old; and suppose that every day when you come home from work, she excitedly bursts out of the house to greet you as quickly as possible; and suppose, as doting fathers have done for thousands of yours, you pick her up and twirl her around, and say, "How's my hot little girl!"

You would *never* do such a thing, because you know *exactly* what 'hot' means.  If some other man were to remark that your little daughter is lovely or beautiful, you'd beam with pride. If that same man were to remark on how 'hot' she is, you'd consider murder -- because you know *exactly* what 'hot' means.

So, back to the podcaster referring to his wife as "smokin' hot!" -- while he may not want to acknowledge it, he is inviting other men to consider his wife as little more than a walking 'pussy', to be fucked and discarded at whim.  No respectable man, and certainly no Christian, would ever invite other men to think of any woman he loves and respects in such a manner.

To publicly refer to your wife as 'hot' is to treat her as disrespectfully and dishonorably as King Ahasuerus treated Queen Vashti, when he commanded her to display herself to his drunken friends (see the Book of Esther).

(*) Most American men, especially the ones a generation or more younger than I, have the mindsets of junior-high girls: that's why they decorate their bodies with tattoos -- "Look at me! Pay attention to me!  See how I've decorated myself!" In contrast, a man seeks attention or status by his deed, by what he has built, by what he has accomplished.


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Sunday, July 14, 2024

On "A Medical Procedure to Terminate a Pregnancy"

Have you noticed that the Democrats and other leftists have taken to characterizing abortion as "a medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy"?

No. This won't do. Birth might be called "a medical procedure which terminates a pregnancy", but abortion terminates a human life: the whole point of an abortion is the dead baby.


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Friday, July 5, 2024

Sometimes, Impatience Works Out OK

 A few weeks ago, I bought several pounds of peaches at Meijer's for less than $1.00 per pound.  My thought was to can them as sliced peaches.

However ... I got impatient when blanching them (to remove the skin). On the second batch, I didn't let the water get hot enough before I dropped in the peaches. So, of course, the skins didn't come off.  I tried again and again on that batch, and never got it right.  By the time I gave up on blanching that batch, and just pealed them (which wastes a lot of the flesh of the peaches), the seeds themselves were warm. 

And, because peeling peaches really butchers the fruit, I wasn't getting nice, attractive slices.  So, I decided that instead of canning the peaches as slices, I'd make a peach version of applesauce or apple butter.  And again, impatience hit.  It was getting toward evening, and I didn't want to leave the peach puree simmering in the crock-pot over night, so I canned it while it was still too runny.

However ... the result is so good: it's like the "peach nectar" we were sometimes served in grade school, but thicker/pulpier.  I had sprinkled in some cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice (*), which does make a nice addition to the natural peach flavor.  I wish I could share it with you, it's to tasty.

I liked the result so much that I bought more peaches to do it on purpose.  On the second go, I didn't even bother removing the skins; I decided to see whether the immersion-blender would puree the skins after the peaches had cooked down. It was a success.

I also canned a few quarts of mixed apples and peaches.

(*) I've never bought -- or used -- any of those seasonings, myself. I "inherited" these containers from my mother back in 1988, and had never used them.


This picture is of some Asian lilies which used to grow near the front door.  But, after a doe and her yearly fawns made my yard their home-base, they kept eating the plants.  Before the deer killed the plants entirely, I moved the bulbs to the fenced-in garden, and they have finally recovered.  These things are 7-feet tall!


Speaking of deer -- the other morning when I went out to see whether the groundhog who keeps trying to get under the fence into the garden had managed to do so overnight (as it turns out, he tries several times per day during the daylight hours), this year's twin fawns were near the garden. I didn't notice them at first.  As I was pulling weeds, they came over to investigate me.  I heard/saw them and stood up.  I motioned with my hands to the braver one to come closer ... and it did, a couple of times. But, finally, the more timid one spooked and took the courage of the less timid one with it.  The fawn *seemed* to want to come closer to me, it was practically frolicking. 

And, speaking of that groundhog -- the other day, when I went out to check on his latest attempt to get under the fence, he was at that very moment so intent on getting under the fence that he didn't notice me until I was just a few feet away. And, as I hadn't yet cut back the herbs growing at the base of the fence, I didn't notice him until he spooked.

These next two pictures are of opposite ends of a bed beside/above the driveway which had gotten out of control when I worked out-of-town.  This is *after*  I cleaned it out the overgrowth (and poison ivy). I now need to rebuild the retaining wall. That's a good 30 feet from the garage around to the sidewalk, and another 20 feet past the sidewalk.

The first phase of rebuilding that retaining wall is to build some steps from the driveway up to the yard (and giving access to that side porch).  I just finished the steps today. It was like putting together a 3-D jigsaw puzzle ... but the pieces don't have pictures on them, and they are from several different puzzles. But, I'm pretty satisfied with the result:



This last picture shows the retaining wall from the new steps toward the sidewalk.  Those stones on the driveway are not from the retaining wall, but some of them will end up in it.  These are the rejected candidates for the new steps.


UPDATE (2024/07/20): Today, I got that groundhog which had been getting into my garden: stabbed him with a potato fork.

A couple of days after I first wrote this post, he finally found a place where he could dig under the fence.  So, I spent a day digging out the soil on the outside of the fence along that side, and buried lengths of cement-board siding just below the fence (**). Of course, there were still other sides of the fence where I can't dig up on either side of the fence without killing plants.

This fellow was stubborn ... and really pissed off that he couldn't get into the garden as he had before. For several days, he tried digging all along that side of the fence: he'd toss out most of the soil, I'd put it back, and he'd do it again. Then he tried the areas where in the spring I had buried cement-board on the inside of the fence.  Finally, he moved to the side with no cement-board below ground (I had planted this area before I thought of the cement-board solution).

For the past several days, he had been getting into the garden and eating my plants.  It's possible that he even climbed the fence to get in.

He was in the garden when I left for the hardware store earlier today. He was still in the garden when I got back, though I didn't realize that until after I had filled in the hole he'd dug at the corner of the fence.  So, I got the potato fork and gingerly went after him ... and, much to my surprise (and delight), he cooperated with me and let me spear him.


(**) ,,, on the outside of the wood "skirting" at ground level. Due to the fence-posts being on the outside of the "skirting", it's not a snug fit.  In the fall, I plan to move these cement-boards to the inside of the fencing






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Friday, April 19, 2024

The Incoherence of Anti-anti-abortionism

I'm not "pro-life" -- that designation is the sort of "non-judgmental" pap cooked up on Madison Ave to appeal to a certain sort of woman -- I'm anti-murder, and thus I'm anti-abortion.

Earlier today, Jeremy at "The Quartering" uploaded a YouTube video in which he expresses his dismay, and even revulsion, about a recent trend on TikTok of "celebrating" the baby-murders one has commissioned.

Now, Jeremy's problem (as with Megyn Kelly) is wanting to have it both ways: wanting abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare" as the utterly immoral Clintons formulated it. But, this is incoherent, it is self-contradictory.

If an abortion is the murder of a helpless and innocent human being (and it is), then only a demon wants it to be "safe, legal"; and a moral person wants abortion to be not merely "rare" but illegal and prosecuted and punished, just as with any other method of murder.

But, if an abortion is of no more moral consequence than an appendectomy, then "safe, legal, and rare" is still incoherent and self-contradictory. Now, of a truth, all moral persons want appendectomies to be "safe, legal", but ""rare"!? No, a moral person wants appendectomies to be as numerous as they need to be.

I have had an inguinal hernia repaired, as had my father and also a great-nephew; I have had an appendectomy, as has one sister. The other sister has had her gall bladder removed, as had our mother.  Certainly, it would be odd and strange were any of us to be talking about these surgeries for no specific and relevant reason, much less to be boasting about them. But, would it really be "creepy"? Would these surgeries really be something to be ashamed of?  Of course not! They have no moral content of themselves. In contrast, and except for the super-rare case of "saving the life of the mother", abortion *is* immoral, utterly and always; for the *point* of all abortions except that super-rare case is to kill a baby.

The flood of lawlessness and degeneracy which is destroying America has many streams feeding it; two of the most important are: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Abortion Regime.  Either of those alone would have been enough to destroy the nation within just a generation or two -- and remember, both of those were set up within the lifetimes of millions of Americans now living. Do you *really* think that things can go on as they are for another 50 or 60 years?

It is not that "God is Gonna Get Us Because of Drag-Queen Story Hour", rather, Drag Queen Story Hour -- the deliberate grooming of children (*) into sexual perversion -- and much horror beside, IS the judgement of God upon this nation for its rejection of true morality and true law.

(*) You may have noticed that Drag Queen Story Hour is never held at Ye Olde Folkes Home.

The Quartering: "TikTok Abortion Vlogs Are Now A Popular Thing"

Matt Christiansen: "Whistleblower on Teen Gender Transitions, AZ Abortion Ban"


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Thursday, April 11, 2024

When is a "Deadbeat Parent" Not a "Deadbeat Parent"?

... when she is the "non-custodial parent" who isn't making the ordered child-support payments to the "custodial parent".

Do listen to the linked video.

Personal Anecdote: Back in 2000-2001, I worked as a contractor for the Ohio "Dept of Job and Family Services" -- it was an "open secret" that the "child support" collection/enforcement division was charging the "non-custodial parents" (i.e. fathers, almost always) a "service charge" (called "poundage") even though it was against federal law at the time to do so. When the State of Ohio was finally prosecuted for breaking the law on the matter, the recently installed top bureaucrat of the "Dept of Job and Family Services" took the fall ... even though Gov. Taft knew about this illegality the whole time.

Also, and as stated at some point in this video, it was common knowledge that among those few instances in which "child support" was ordered to be paid by the mother to the father, the incidence of "dead-beat mothers" was significantly higher than that of "dead-beat fathers".

You never hear about "deadbeat mothers" in the media, do you?

If you want to learn more about how it is government policy to destroy the lives of fathers, look up "Duluth Protocol".


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Wednesday, April 10, 2024

When is a Person Not a Person?

 ... when the Powers That Be do not wish that person to be treated in law as a person.

Quote from linked YT video: =="Abortion (like a Clinton witness' cause of death) is homicide. And *like* homicide, it's a matter for the States to prosecute (ahem, unlike the Clintons)."==

Indeed, abortion *is* homicide, and like other acts of homicide, it is for the States to prosecute.

Yet, there is the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution, which states that: =="No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."==

Now, imagine that some State were to enact a law to deny some class of persons "the equal protection of the laws". Say, for instance, that New York State, whether by explicit statute or by prosecutorial action in some instances and inaction in other instances, were to deny "straight white males" having "the equal protection of the laws": Say, if a "straight white male" were to kill a black person while in the act of protecting other persons in public from the violent threats of that black person, the killing were to be prosecuted as murder, yet at the same time, some "persons of color" who assisted that "straight white male" in subduing the now-deceased violent black person were not prosecuted at all.

How, one might ask, could such a thing happen, even hypothetically? Why, in practice, it does happen in the very same way that abortion -- murder of pre-born (and sometimes in Current Year post-birth) babies -- is winked at: by denying the personhood of the persons whom powerful political interests wish to exclude from "the equal protection of the laws."

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Isn't it odd that when the Democratic Party were explicitly (*) the party of slavery, even they didn't go so far as their intellectual descendants do with respect to the murder of babies? The Democrats of 1860 didn't deny that slaves were persons, they merely denied that slaves were citizens. -- even in the deepest of the Old South, killing a slave could get one prosecuted for murder.

(*) In Current Year, the Democrats are implicitly the party of slavery -- the Democrats *never* gave up on wanting to enslave some persons: all that changes is the who and the whom.


The Rageaholic: Arizona BOOFS Baby Murder - Razör Rants

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EDIT (2024/04/14): I much doubt that Tim Pool reads this dusty little blog. Nonetheless, he recently had a segment in which he brings up the conflict I pointed out above between the 14th Amendment and abortion.

IF a pre-born human being is a person (and they are), THEN abortion is murder (and it is), AND thus the US Constitution *requires* the States to prosecute for murder: the abortionist, the abortionist's aides and office workers and financiers and any other persons connected to the abortion-mill, the woman who contracted the murder, and any persons who aided in the procuring of the murder.

BUT, IF a pre-born human being is NOT a person, THEN it is irrational and indeed unconstitutional to prosecute a person who murders a pregnant woman for *two* murders. In fact, IF a pre-born human being is NOT a person, THEN it is irrational and indeed unconstitutional to even prosecute a person who causes a pregnant woman to miscarriage.

TimcastIRL: SCOTUS Must Rule On 14th Amendment For Abortion, Otherwise CIVIL WAR


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Tuesday, April 9, 2024

On Cat-Calling

There is a certain class of woman who is always bitching that men are always cat-calling her ... her specifically -- this sort always claim that *they* get cat-called constantly.

I don't recall how, but somehow this subject came up last week when one of my sisters was visiting. Now, I've never cat-called anyone, nor have I ever seen anyone cat-called. Well, other than myself (*); I've been cat-called more than once in my life. My sister has also witnessed men being cat-called by women.

Sure, it's true that I have lived most on my 66 years in smallish towns in Indiana and Ohio. Years ago, for work, I had spent at least a week at a time in NYC/Newark, Boston, Atlantic City, Chicago, and KC. Perhaps had I spent more time in these major cities, I might have finally seen a woman being cat-called.

(*) EDIT: I spoke too soon. When I was in college, I was home for a spell while the roof was being replaced. The (trashy) women in the house next door were cat-calling, and worse, at some of the men up on our roof, especially one who was a good-looking blond. One of these women came outside in her bra and underwear and called up to the blond, "Does it bother you to see me like this?" Thank God they moved or were evicted soon after that.

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Tuesday, March 26, 2024

On "Christ Is King" is Anti-Semitic

My take on the Daily Wire / Candace Owens "Saying 'Christ Is King is anti-Semitic" brouhaha --

Shorter version: "A pox on both their houses!"

Longer version:

I think that Candace Owens is a grifter. EDIT (as I wasn't clear on this): I do believe that Candace Owens was attempting a more genteel version of what Fani Willis did in standing in the pulpit of that (black-church) and trying to wrap herself in the Bible and in the cloak of martyrdom.

I think that Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing are grifters.

I think that Matt Walsh has auctioned off his balls to DW. EDIT: Of course, he had that stupid tattoo (seeking recognition by decorating your body with "art" reflects an immature, and decidedly non-manly, mindset) even before he joined DW, so there is that.

I think that Michael Knowles too much plays the "Isn't it cute how I intentionally give off this ghey-vibe, even though I'm not. Tee-hee!" card.

I think that Andrew Klavan doesn't understand the Christianity he professes to embrace: it's one thing to love your son who has made the perverse things he does with his dick into his identity, it's quite another thing to joke about it as though it is no big deal, as though there were no eternal consequence to treating any sin as one's identity.

I think that the purpose of Daily Wire is:
1) to hoover up money from "conservative-ish" people into the pockets of Shapiro and Boreing;
2) (and, as with Dave Rubin) to act as a fifth-columnist to insinuate the Ghey Agenda into conservatism.

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On the "Jew thing" --

As I have mentioned more than once, I am a Christian, and I have Jewish ancestry. Specifically, my paternal grandmother's grandmother was a Jew. My Jewish great-great-grandmother's first husband was also a Jew, and they had Jewish children. After she was widowed, she married my non-Jewish great-great-grandfather, and they had children, their son being my grandmother's father.. Also, one of the Jewish descendants of my Jewish great-great-grandmother married my paternal grandfather's non-Jewish half-sister. Mind you, this was in the rural South -- everyone amongst my father's "people" (i.e. kith and kin) knew these things about our family.

I tell you those things because:
1) I am in no wise ashamed to have Jewish ancestry;
2) to give the anti-Christian Jew-haters the excuse they need to play the "Motivation Game" about my philo-Semitism;
3) to inform the Christianity-hating leftist-atheists-with-Jewish-grandmothers that I don't give a damn about the accusations they will inevitably toss at me.

SO --

Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be God-Among-Us. This claim is true, or it is false.

Jesus of Nazareth claimed that "No man comes to the Father, but by me." This claim is true, or it is false.

Now, if these claims are false, then:
1) according to the New Testament, my faith in Jesus is worthless, and I am still trapped in my sin;
2) according to the Old Testament, I am an idolater, or worse.

But, if these claims are true, then:
1) persons who *actively* reject Jesus *as* Christ are almost certainly still trapped in their sin (*);
2) persons who *actively* work to prevent others from accepting Jesus *as* Christ are assuredly still trapped in their sin. This applies to almost every Rabbi (**), for the main concern of most Rabbis is to keep their flocks ignorant about and fearing Christ (***).

(*) To say that "No man comes to the Father, but by me" is not the same as to say "No man comes to the Father, but by joining a human bureaucracy". What I mean is that Christ's own words inform us that some people who claimed to be Christians will be among the Damned, and that some people who did not claim to be Christians will be among the Redeemed.

(**) A person of Jewish ancestry can be a Buddhist -- no problem, the Rabbis still accept him as a Jew.

A person of Jewish ancestry can be wholly indifferent to the reality of God -- no problem, the Rabbis still accept him as a Jew.

A person of Jewish ancestry can be a demon-dabbling occultist -- no problem, the Rabbis still accept him as a Jew.

A person of Jewish ancestry can be a pornographer -- no problem, the Rabbis still accept him as a Jew.

A person of Jewish ancestry can be a rabid, fire-breathing, Judaism-hating atheist -- no problem, the Rabbis still accept him as a Jew.

But, let a person of Jewish ancestry be a Christian -- Whoa! That is a bridge too far!.

(***) A certain sort of "Jew" -- typically, they are leftist atheists, and they claim Jewishness only for the "victim points" -- like to gas on about the Jews being forced into ghettos in European cities. BUT, the truth is that it was the Jewish leaders themselves who demanded the setting aside of ghettos when they negotiated with non-Jewish rulers and magnates to establish a new Jewish settlement in one of the cities they ruled. And the day-to-day reason -- which is to say, the most important reason -- that the Jewish leaders wanted to segregate their fellow "common" Jews from the "common" Christians is that Christianity has always been appealing to Jews who want their worship of God to be deeper than ritual.

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Wednesday, March 20, 2024

You May Not Be Interested in the Culture War, But the Culture War is Interested in You

Some thoughts on the Planet Fitness genderism madness --

0) Better late than never, I suppose. What I mean is, PF has been allowing perverted men into the women's rooms for years and has been cancelling the memberships of women who object;
1) This is the world that *women* demanded;
2) Until women as a whole culturally reject the constant demands of 'feminists' to invade "men's spaces" -- including not only men's social organizations, but also the police and fire-fighting forces and the military -- this sort of thing cannot really be ended: perverted men invading women's spaces is just the flip side of perverted women invading men's spaces;
3) Thus, until *women* reject feminism -- really reject it, rather than merely saying, "I'm not a feminist", while simultaneously using the fruits of feminism against men when it suits them -- I don't really see this as a fight in which I have a dog;
4) That said, if I did have a PF membership, I'd cancel it, out of intellectual and moral honesty. I think it would be great if PF goes bankrupt.

5) The fellow whose video I've linked is still too "conciliatory" about genderism madness. Toward the end of the video, his "solution" is for gyms to create "family changing rooms" (similar to his "solution" for sporting events: creating a third, or even fourth, category of competition). No, the only solution to genderism is to *refuse* to go along with *any* of it.
6) I once had a membership at a local gym, over 35 years ago. I let it lapse partly because I was busy working on my house, partly because the building wasn't well maintained and cleaned, and partly because I was tired of perverted men trying to hit on me. So, I think I have an inkling of how these innocent women feel at having this sort of perverted men invading their spaces.


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Friday, March 15, 2024

Matt Walsh and "GamerGate 2.0"

You, Gentle Reader, may not have heard of the current outrage among "Gamers" directed at Matt Walsh over his recent video remarks (at Daily Wire) concerning "GamerGate 2.0" For that matter, you almost certainly never heard of "GamerGate 1.0", which was about 10 years ago.

Here is my take on the outrage of the "Gamers" --
1) They are reacting like spoiled children throwing a tantrum, even though many of them (possibly even a majority) are in their 30s and 40s;
2) They are acting like "toxic" women, in that they didn't *listen* to what he said, and, to the limited extent that they are saying anything of more substance than "How dare you criticize how I waste my time!", they are not addressing what he said;
3) Most of their "offense" at what Walsh did (or did not) say is aimed at Walsh's Catholicism and/or his "religious conservatism". Which is to say, at root this "outrage" is anti-Christian and thus anti-Western Civilization;
3a) It isn't really the Wokies (*) who are turning our western societies into shit; rather, it is "normal people" who want to have it both ways -- among which are the majority of these ranting "Gamers" -- they want to have "just a little bit of sin, just the fun parts", while denying that any of the individual and social consequences of that sin matter; the most important consequence being that it is impossible to limit winking at sin to "just a little bit".

(*) "GamerGate 2.0", as with "GamerGate 1.0" ten years ago, is about the gratuitous "wokeness" being injected into "games"

Here is the Matt Walsh video which has the panties of the "Gamers" in a wad -- "The Dark Side To The Video Game Industry"

EDIT: On the bright side, there are claims that a lot of "Gamers" are cancelling their subscriptions to Daily Wire. Wouldn't it be great for DW to go bankrupt and for Matt Walsh to get his balls back?

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Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Comes the Word, Comes the Day

Comment by nihilist2christian:"Some day we are going to look back on this time and these practices the same way we view lobotomy, and those practising it in the same way we see people like Josef Mengele."


The arrival of that day requires, at a minimum, that sane people *refuse* to cooperate with their false language. Non-exhaustively, and in no particular order:

  1. NEVER use ‘gender’ to refer to ‘sex’; people do not come in ‘genders’, we come in sexes, and there are precisely two sexes;
  2. Refuse to use their made-up pseudo-pronouns;
  3. Refuse to use “she/her” to refer to a male, or “he/him” to refer to a female;
  4. Refuse to use the made-up words “transman” and “transwoman” and “transkids” and the demeaning and dehumanizing prefix “cis-“. The "cis-" prefix is especially grotesque, as its purpose is to trick you into mentally (and metaphysically) re-defining the true and normal in terms of the false and abnormal;
  5. Train yourself to stop saying “they/them” when you are referring to one person;
  6. Train yourself to stop saying “biological male” and “biological female” — there are no other kinds. So, using that qualifier is already to bow to the leftists' false language.  In a situation in which you want to make it undeniable that you are distinguishing *real* men and women from the fake, use words like "real", "actual" and "fake", "pretend".

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Saturday, March 2, 2024

False Dichotomy: Pelagianism or Calvinism

 Below is my response (with a minor edit or two) to an internet friend's recent blog post: You Are Saved By Your Works


"You Are Saved By Your Works  ... because you're the only variable in the equation."

 The heresy expressed here is call 'Pelagianism'.  While The One True Bureaucracy has *officially* condemned this belief as heresy since the 5th century, it *also* inculcates the heresy in its adherents, even to this day.  If it helps to ease your mind, there are also some so-called Protestants who are actually Pelagians, such as the 'Holiness Movement'.


 "I've never understood the position some Christians take that you can do nothing on your own and you cannot be saved by your own actions. Maybe I'm misunderstanding it, but as far as I can tell, when it comes to salvation, there are only two actors: you and God. Since He is constant and His Universe is a given for all people everywhere, the only variable is you, your decisions and your actions.

If we aren't saved by our own actions, then what was the point of free will?"

 Does this help? -- You are reasoning from a dichotomy, false as it turns out, between Pelagianism, on the one hand, and “ultra Calvinism”, on the other.

 The Pelagian position is that one can become righteous-unto-salvation by one’s own works.  Or, put another way, that Christ’s death and resurrection is superfluous to one’s salvation; that if one has made oneself “good enough”, then God *owes* one a spot in Heaven, as it were.

The “ultra Calvinist” position is that human nature is so enslaved to sin that not a one of us can even so much as *regret* that we sin, much less repent of it; and thus that only those few in whom God works some mysterious change-of-nature which over-rides Original Sin can ever repent and be saved.

And, by the way, IF you were to look into the *reasoning* presented to justify the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, you will find that that reasoning is just “ultra Calvinism”, but applied to a single individual only … despite that The One True Bureaucracy *officially* condemns Calvinism as heresy.


The *Biblical* position is that *all* our righteousness is as filthy (menstrual) rags compared to the perfect (i.e. total/complete) righteousness of God.  That is, no matter *how* “good” we are, we can never be “good enough” to escape Sin/Death (Understand, that sin *is* capital-D Death).


The *Biblical* position is that *no one* is good, but only God.  Jesus himself asserts this.


The *Biblical* position is that the only contribution we make to our own salvation is to stop fighting/rebelling against God.  Or, to put it another way, it’s not so much that repentance of our sin causes or leads to our salvation, but rather that repentance of our sin allows the sin to be tossed into Hell without dragging us with it.  Sin is Death, and those who do not repent of their sin clutch their own Death to their breast as being more precious to them than Life Himself.  To truly repent of one’s sin is to stop refusing to be saved from Death.

Accepting a freely-given gift is not even on the same plane as earning a reward, much less on the same axis. 

 

The *Biblical* position is that “good works” are the result of salvation, not its cause.

 

If we aren't saved by our own actions, then what was the point of free will?" 

The point of free-will is that you are free to open your hands, thereby letting go the Death which you have been heretofore tightly grasping to your breast, so that you are free to receive the Life which has always been there for you to receive.

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ADDENDUM: We are not saved by our own works any more than we are damned by our works.  You see, from our origin, we are already damned, we are already carriers of the infection of sin and dearth, we are already dying and headed for Death -- this is merely what the doctrine of Original Sin means.  Much as people misunderstand what 'Immaculate Conception' (which is false) refers to, most people also misunderstand what 'Original Sin' (which is true) refers to.

Think of it this way: We are not sinners because we commit sins; rather, we commit sins because we are sinners.

 



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Not everything that matters can be counted. And not everything that can be counted matters.

 My short response to scientism (i.e. the "I f-ing love science!" variant of atheism) --


How many microangelos are in The Pieta or a just-blossomed rose?

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Friday, March 1, 2024

The Charitable-Industrial Complex

 According to the linked page, concerning the MS Society for 2022, the top three officers "earned" --

1) $473,993 compensation + $33,351 other
2) $331,191 compensation + $34,536 other
3) $325,645 compensation + $50,221 other

These, and other similarly "compensated" persons, are those who set the leftist/commie policies by which the organization tossed overboard a 90-year-old woman who had been a volunteer for 60 years ... because she didn't understand Current Year's Pronoun Madness.

One will find similar results for most "charities" -- the Charitable-Industrial Complex is a scam.

ProPublica: National Multiple Sclerosis Society

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Friday, February 23, 2024

Anyone Can Weaponize Feminism to Use Against Women

 In the YouTube video linked below, Tim Pool discusses an article by a (female) journalist in which she describes how she was scammed -- blatantly, obviously scammed -- out of $50,000.  

Here are my thoughts --

1) Feminism is -- and always has been -- primarily a tool to convince women to voluntarily offer themselves up as prey to sexually perverted men.  You will have noticed by now that feminists almost always act as political body-guards for the sort of powerful men who do prey upon women; to the point that in Current Year, the vast majority of feminists pretend to be unable to state what the word 'woman' even means ... even as they shriek that killing babies is the most important of "women's rights";

1a) And, as a necessary step toward that end, to convince women to see the men who do have their own best interest at heart -- their fathers, brothers and husbands -- as "the enemy";

1b) And this mindset -- that the men who actually know and love one are not to be trusted -- opens the door to just the sort of scam to which this woman fell prey.

2) This particular woman was successfully scammed in this particular way due to her commitment to feminism: 

2a) Her feminism demanded that she "girl boss" the situation, that she deal the understandable panic induced by this perceived threat all by herself, without turning to or informing to her husband of the call and of the perceived threat;

2b) Thus, she said nothing to her husband about the threatening phone call, and even actively hid from him what she was doing in response to it.

3) Had this been a *man* who had fallen for such an obvious scam and had thereby thrown away $50,000 of the family's savings, you *know* that everyone would be telling the wife to dump him, and more than likely she would have done so even before such "advice" had started rolling in.  This mindset of endless excuses for any woman's failings coupled with no forgiveness whatsoever for any man's failings *also* follows from feminism.

Tim Pool: "Journalist MOCKED For LOSING $50k To A SCAM, HILARIOUS Article Show Journalists ARE NOT SMART People"


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