Creeping realization about men and women in the NY Times

Oh, the NY Times tells us, Equality in Marriages Grows, and So Does Class Divide. (One recalls here the old joke about the NY Times story about an asteroid threatening to wipe out planet earth: “Asteroid to destroy earth tomorrow. Women and minorities worst affected.”) Still, they are useful as a triangulation point as to what the “protected class” (really: read that link. Alt-right has won.) is thinking.

From the story itself:

Despite being more common, these marriages are a break from tradition, and that can present problems.

Marriages in which the woman earns more are less likely to form in the first place, which accounts for 23 percent of the overall decline in marriage rates since 1970, according to a large study by the economists Marianne Bertrand and Emir Kamenica of the University of Chicago and Jessica Pan of the National University of Singapore.

Hmmm. I guess what Roissy writes about men not being attracted to female accomplishment is correct?

When these couples struggle, it is often over issues like sexual desire or the division of housework and child care, Dr. Doherty said, particularly if the woman loses respect for the man and the man feels insecure about his role in the family.

Hmmm. If you want to still be having sex at 55, ladies, it might be better to invest your young, attractive, fertile years in a man you can literally look up to.

That this message is true, and is penetrating the fog of equalist lies can be demonstrated by a comment from Sharon:

One day when I was in graduate school (around 2001) we were hanging around and chatting during a break and the subject of dating came up. All of the guys said they would not date / marry women from our MBA class; that they would prefer a woman with only a high school diploma or an AA at most. Why? Because after a long, hard day at work, they wanted to come home to a clean and stress-free environment with a meal cooked and a relaxed wife, not one that had her own career stresses, worries and distractions.

15 years later, most of the women from the class are still single. I know of only two women who married; one woman quit working as her husband works internationally and she does not have authorization to work as an expat. The other woman married “down” to someone who works free-lance on movie sets and is able to be the primary caregiver to their kids.

I don’t know any men who are remotely interested in their spouse’s intellect or ability to earn money. In fact, I have found my brain and my bank account to be the biggest impediment to my romantic life.

Sharon has been lied to by society (not, however, by her MBA classmates; I bet most men in grad school wouldn’t even tell her that directly now); I no longer gloat or laugh at these unfortunate women, despite their having made the choices they made. Neither should you. Still, Sharon might learn that her inability to see and accept reality, and adjust, is the biggest impediment to her “romantic” life.

Sharon has an icon that goes with her name. I paste it in here, without comment.

 

Politics and the English Language

Th New York Times is genuinely weird on style. Take this excellent article on the struggle between feminists and Bernie Sanders supporters. It appears that too many young women are supporting Senator Sanders. As one wag commented about Nazi Germany fighting the Soviet union in World War II, it’s a shame they can’t both lose. First, though, an excerpt highlighting feminist hypocrisy:

Ms. Steinem, 81, one of the most famous spokeswomen of the feminist movement, took the sentiment a step further on Friday in an interview with the talk show host Bill Maher. Explaining that women tend to become more active in politics as they become older, she suggested that younger women were backing Mr. Sanders just so they could meet young men.

“When you’re young, you’re thinking: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,’ ” Ms. Steinem said.

Realizing that this was potentially offensive, Mr. Maher recoiled. “Oh. Now if I said that, ‘They’re for Bernie because that’s where the boys are,’ you’d swat me.”

But Ms. Steinem laughed it off, replying, “How well do you know me?”

Of course, the real hypocrisy isn’t feminist double-speak, but in the use of titles of address. Here are some other people quoted in the article.

“Marion Just, a political science professor at Wellesley College… Ms. Just…”

“That feeling was evident at a rally for Mrs. Clinton in Iowa in late January when Jaimee and Matthew Warbasse took their 7-month-old daughter to see the candidate… Ms. Warbasse…”

The second woman might be inflicting abuse on her child, but is clearly Mrs. Warbasse. The first is best properly referred to as Dr. Just, unless the NY Times is now ignoring women’s achievements.

And the subject of the story? “Ms. Just said that she respected women who looked beyond gender when choosing whom to support, but that she was surprised there had not been more excitement about Mrs. Clinton among younger women.”

 

 

Shooting fish in a barrel, Sweden edition

Every 16-year-old in Sweden to receive copy of We Should All Be Feminists

Now, you might think: Every? Can’t they home school? Well, no.

Since Swedish education law was revised in 2010 to only allow homeschooling under “extraordinary circumstances,” Swedish authorities have consistently denied any parents approval for homeschool programs. Conveniently for the state, legislators have not indicated exactly what circumstances must be present in order for officials to grant parents and guardians permission to teach their children from home.

Personally, I’d emigrate if I had children. I do not see any other escape from the hive mind.

 

Don’t Blame “The Jews”

Look, people, we’re in a rapid and accelerating cultural collapse here in the West, in the USA in particular. One thing Alt-Right writers do often enough is point to the prominence of one particular group in the vanguard of cultural Marxism, as evidence that this group planned and caused cultural decline. That Jews were disproportionately represented amongst the Bolsheviks does not imply that Bolshevism was a Jewish movement, a National Socialist canard cited by Hannah Arendt. The political and cultural collapse of the Tsarist regime was brought about by that regime (and modernity), not the Jews.

In this light, we examine this recent comment left over at Heartiste.

Knowledgeable students of the enemy will not be surprised to learn that the Troll Hunter is (((Robert Aschberg))), grandson of (((Olaf Aschberg))) who was a key figure in 20th century history. A ‘Swedish’ financier, he became ‘Banker to the Bolsheviks.’ This was a critical step in cementing those Western ties to the Soviet Union … (((Eskimos)))
Every fuckin’ time.

Tanstaafl is right, CH. This suicide of the West has been egged on.

“Eskimos,” like Scots-Irish, are often used as code for Jews. That the Aschbergs are prominent financiers in the political/media structure of the Swedish government is indeniable. That they are Jews is also undeniable. That the actions of some Jews, like George Soros, have poured acid on community relations is further undeniable. Those Jews, having joined the cultural mainstream, are assisting in the suicide of the West.

We at Patriactionary have admired, by contrast, reactionary Jews showing the way to restore a Patriachal society. We once had a Catholic, Patriarchal culture in the USA, and it was destroyed… not by Jews, but by Mainline Protestants, allied to a messianic Progressive state.

A comparison is in order. Since the Germ Theory of Disease (Discovered by a German Lutheran, although there was a prominent Jew involved as well), we have seen germs (bacteria, viruses) as the cause of many a disease. Certainly, persons infected with cholera bacteria are the ones who show symptoms of cholera. However, there is a profound counter to the idea that cholera CAUSES disease.

In The Biology of Belief, pp. 95-96, we read the following:

My favorite example of scientific denial of the reality of mind-body interactions relates to an article that appeared in Science about nineteenth-century German physician, Robert Koch, who along with Pasteur founded the Germ Theory. The Germ Theory holds that bacteria and viruses are the cause of disease. That theory is widely accepted now, but in Koch’s day it was more controversial. One of Koch’s critics was so convinced that the Germ Theory was wrong that he brazenly wolfed down a glass of water laced with vibrio cholerae, the bacterium Koch believed caused cholera. To everyone’s astonishment, the man was completely unaffected by the virulent pathogen. The Science article published in 2000 describing the incident stated: “For unexplained reasons he remained symptom free, but nevertheless incorrect.” (DiRita 2000)

The man survived and Science, reflecting the unanimity of opinion on the Germ Theory, had the audacity to say his criticism was incorrect? If it is claimed that this bacterium is the cause of cholera and the man demonstrates that he is unaffected by the germs … how can he be “incorrect”? Instead of trying to figure out how the man avoided the dreaded disease, scientists blithely dismiss this and other embarrassing “messy” exceptions that spoil their theories.

Now, no one would deny that people who do suffer from cholera are infected with vibrio cholerae. The point of this anecdote, however, is that Vc does not CAUSE disease, it takes advantage of a diseased or malfunctioning system, opportunistically. The scientist with full confidence in his conviction about cholera likely fended off infection with the deadly bacterium, where others with weaker immune systems of mind-body connections would not.

We now visit the memoir of Stefan Zweig, talking of fin-de-siecle Vienna, and the wondrous world it was, in his book The World of Yesterday. Zweig, from an Austrian Jewish family, is describing the cultural milieu that was that place and time, and the Jewish relationship to it. First, he talks specifically about Jewish assimilation:

Adapting themselves to the milieu of the people or country where they live is not only an external protective measure for Jews, but a deep internal desire. Their longing for a homeland, for rest, for security, for friendliness, urges them to attach themselves passionately to the culture of the world around them. And never was such an attachment more effective-except in Spain in the fifteenth century-or happier and more fruitful than in Austria. Having resided for more than two hundred years in the Imperial city, the Jews encountered there an easygoing people, inclined to conciliation, and under whose apparent laxity of form lay buried the identical deep instinct for cultural and aesthetic values which was so important to the Jews themselves.

An upwardly-mobile Jewish burgher class, in other words, admired and wanted to join the cultured world of the Austrian elite. He continues:

(I)n Vienna… they found there a personal task. In the last century the pursuit of art in Austria had lost its old traditional defenders and protectors, the Imperial house and the aristocracy. Whereas in the eighteenth century …Josef II ably discussed his operas with Mozart, and Leopold III himself composed music, the later emperors, Franz II and Ferdinand, had no interest whatever in artistic things; and our Emperor Franz Josef, who in his eighty years had never read a book other than the Army Register, or even taken one in his hand, evidenced moreover a definite antipathy to music.

It wasn’t just the Hapsburgs who dropped out of cultural leadership. He continues:

The nobility as well had relinquished its erstwhile protector’s role; gone were the glorious days when the Esterhazys harbored a Haydn, the Lobkowitzes and the Kinskys and Waldsteins competed to have a premiere of Beethoven in their palaces, where a Countess Thun threw herself on her knees before the great demigod begging him not to withdraw Fidelio from the Opera. But now Wagner, Brahms, Johann Strauss, and Hugo Wolf had not received the slightest support from them.

Of course, Viennese culture and music did not collapse in the 19th century. Zweig:

To maintain the Philharmonic on its accustomed level, to enable the painters and sculptors to make a living, it was necessary for the people to jump into the breach, and it was the pride and ambition of the Jewish people to co-operate in the front ranks to carry on the former glory of the fame of Viennese culture. …

(W)ithout the ceaseless stimulating interest of the Jewish bourgeoisie, Vienna, thanks to the indolence of the court, the aristocracy, and the Christian millionaires, who preferred to maintain racing stables and hunts to fostering art, would have remained behind Berlin in the realm of art as Austria remained behind the German Reich in political matters. (emphasis added)

When a culture begins to go downhill, panem et circenses becomes the interest of the people, but they are merely following the predatory elite at the top of society, who have shirked the responsibilities that come with the rights and privileges of God’s gifts. This denial of Truth at the top is the cause of the collapse; an elite that will not bend the knee in a Godly direction will now believe and do anything. Nietzsche said it first, but society after society has proved it.

I see too much alt-right writing that parallels (National) Socialist propaganda, and compares Jews to vermin and pestilence. I viscerally disagree with this characterization. Those who believe in the “eternal” perfidy of the Jews, however, must answer the question: how and why did the elite of Christian societies so abandon its leadership role that Jews could take over?

 

Guarda La Serenissima

As we know, the right hates books and knowledge and will do anything to ban them. A recent example comes to us from Venice, the Most Serene republic, sinking into the mire and faced with utter destruction in a country whose birthrate of under 1.4 children per woman makes it a dying country, while the population of Venice itself has declined by over 60% since 1950 and its own birth rate is half the death rate. In light of these civilizational existential crises, the New York Times has a cause: the Mayor of Venice has decided to ban some books targeted at children under age 8. The Times asks if the following are “seditious:” the story of the male dog who aspired to be a ballerina. The one about the little boy who wanted to be a princess, and a princess who wanted to be a soccer player. The tale of the penguin egg hatched and adopted by two male penguins

When a society is literally not replacing itself, with a rate of 2 deaths for every birth, then normalizing the idea that lifestyles that do not propagate that society ought to be pursued could be a form of sedition, sure. The mayor originally banned a slew of books, but has since backed off to banning only two: The two banned books touch on same-sex families living happily ever after. It only inflamed matters further when some national news outlets dismissively referred to the titles as “gay fairy tales.”

Gay fairy tales? Hmmm… Italians and the turn of a phrase, doing it since Dante.

For some, Venice’s book ban was the latest example of an Italy still struggling to transform itself into an increasingly multicultural and multifaceted society.

Gee, why would the land of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello, Monteverdi, Verdi, Rossini, I’m running out of strength before names here… why would that land even WANT to “transform itself” into some deracinated multicultural stew? Better, indeed, to return its focus to regional power bases, with an independent Venice, Milan, Genoa, Naples, engaging in TRUE diversity instead of the bureaucratic blandness of a centralized empire? A Venice ruled from Venice would NEVER have allowed itself to become so decrepit that people need to move out of the first floor of their houses because of flooding; what barbarians hordes could not destroy, the modern State has undone.

Of course, the Italian approach to homosexuality is facing opprobrium from the EU: Last month, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, ruled that Italy’s lack of legal recognition of same-sex couples was a human rights violation.

Assume the position, Italy. Or, dump the EU, dump the commissars, and return to the land about which Orson Welles quipped in The Third Man: “in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

And if you REALLY want to ban books, do it like the Left does.

 

Indifference to Injustice…

The NY Supreme court building is a confection in white marble, built back in the days when the city was run by “corrupt” Tammany-Hall politicians (who somehow managed nevertheless to build water tunnels, subways, and transport infrastructure that made the modern metropolis at a cost FAR LOWER than the modern day) who were desirous of leaving behind a visually stunning city. On the northwest corner is a recent, rather tasteful addition. It appears at first to be a pilaster,

but in fact is anything but.

This addition to the visual delight to the building is a bas relief of the Nazi Camp at Auschwitz. It is put there as a specific reminder to the lawyers in the building (perhaps a few Wilhelm Stuckarts among them) that unjust law is no law, and a reminder to the architects that some architect designed the camp buildings and crematoria. The inscription reads: Indifference to injustice is the gate to hell.

In Germany, they are running out of people to try for Nazi War crimes. Anyone practically old enough to have done anything in the regime is dead by this time. There are a few still around. This spring, Germany saw the trial of Oskar Gröning, known as the “book-keeper of Auschwitz.” As the Daily Mail notes:

Groening was responsible for sorting the pathetic possessions of the doomed – their clothes, shoes, money, valuables and other very personal possessions.
His Second World War duties earned him a nickname: The Book-keeper of Auschwitz. …
Groening says: …
“I was an official in the prisoners’ possessions administration which basically involved removing the money, jewels and other valuables from the inmates, registering it and sending it back to Berlin.

“They had diamonds and gold worth millions and it was my duty to make sure all of it got to Berlin.”

The Nazis kept records of the amounts they took from each Jew. Ones who could work were kept alive; as the Daily Mail notes, ones who were not useable as slave labor were dispatched. It’s grim to read today, but this is what governments derived from the French Revolution wind up doing: valuing people on a raw-materials basis. Deny a man has any soul and all that is left is the economic value of him.

I mention this having read and watched a video that really captures the essence of the banality of evil. Take a visit over to this article to watch, if you can, the explanation of the baby parts business. Some choice excerpts:

Pausing only to swig more luxury libations from her jumbo wine glass, the loquacious death doc explained to investigators posing as fetal tissue company executives how her “providers” use “ultrasound guidance” to target the coveted body parts–“so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps.”

In a singsong recitation, this lettuce-chomping Mengele in a silk tank top detailed how the “providers” use ultrasound to become “cognizant of where you put your graspers.”

This method is not employed to reduce the pain and suffering of unborn baby and mother, mind you. It’s to get “good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that–so I’m not gonna crush that part. I’m going to basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

Just stunning.

 

Modern Marketing and the Church

Been reading through the Marketing Bullets of Gary Bencivenga. He’s an advertising genius, but let’s not assign him to the camp of Satan just for that reason. As a Thomist, I believe the the Truth is indivisible, and that we can find it in many places. The Bible, certainly, but not every truth is in there. So it’s always a pleasure to come across something that speaks to elemental human nature. It’s something that advertisers use to sell more stuff, but Christians also need to recognize this underlying human truth.

In Bullet #7, Bencivenga asks:

What Is Effective Advertising Anyway?

He comes up with the following:

So there really are few new ideas under the sun.

And that brings me back to something else John Caples said. He defined effective advertising as, “A believable promise to the right audience.” Far too many copywriters and marketers focus on just the promise (the flashy, fun part), and ignore the more demanding challenge of building belief. But without belief, nobody buys.

Please mull that over again, slowly enough to let it seep into your marketing memory.

Without belief, nobody buys.

OK, you have my attention, Gary. Hit me with the money quote!

Remember this always—

Almost everyone in the world, in every field of human endeavor, is desperately searching for someone to believe in. Be that person and you can write your own ticket.

This is the same pathway the Devil uses. It is not inherently good or evil, but when filled with the Spirit, with the Lord, it serves its intended purpose. Bencivenga, of course, sees another role:

Because the hunger for belief is so vast in every market, so deep-seated in human nature itself, you can tap into it again and again—infinitely—to make yourself and your clients rich.

Better he should pile up his treasure in Heaven, but it’s nice to see the underpinning of faith recognized.