Tag: society

Mailvox: A Boomer defends his generation

Mr. Pea sounds pretty pleased that the cookie jar is empty:

After reading some of the garbage here, it finally dawned on me… you
are mad because you can not and will not have what mommy and daddy had!
Never mind that it all had nothing to do with liberty and freedom! Never
mind it had nothing to do with virtue and righteousness! You’re pissed
off because that same cookie jar that you put your hand in… is empty!

You
would be perfectly happy to transplant what mommy and daddy had into
your generation… just as long as the cookie jar was just as full for
you as it was for them.

But that will never happen. Because all
this time you are lamenting the empty cookie jar… you thump your
chests in self-righteousness and claim virtue above and beyond mommy and
daddy.

Well, yes, to a certain extent.  We would very much like for Mommy and Daddy to not burn down the house with us and everyone else in it.  We’d very much like to have some seed corn to plant, but we don’t, because Greedy Mommy and Drunk Old Daddy ate it.

And we most certainly do claim virtue beyond the Boomers.  Not only are we aware that we’re starting with nothing and can’t count on any help from them, but we’re working hard to make sure that unlike them, we leave something for our children behind.  Of course, saying that a generation is more virtuous than the Boomers is the faintest of faint praise; every single generation in recorded history has been more virtuous.

But it isn’t true to say we’d be perfectly happy to be like mommy and daddy.  In fact, that is Generation X’s one true satisfaction.  Say what you will about we cynical, narrow-eyed Xers, but you can’t say we’re anything like you.  We don’t want to change the world, we’re just hoping to survive and perhaps build some sort of rude shelter from the rubble.

Boomer Suicide

Reading this Washington Post headline just makes this Generation Xer feel like bursting into song:
 Boomer suicide (Just do it)
Boomer suicide, (they blew it)Boomer suicide (we knew it)Boomer suicide (yeah, do it)  Age and arrogance don’t mix
Your generation’s so over
We’ll read your last statement from your credit cardLife was so easy but you made it so hard
Feel the power of revenge Your children parked you all alone
Your future’s dark and your bills are biggerPut the gun in your mouth and we’ll pull the damn trigger
 Boomer suicide (dumb fuckers)Boomer suicide (thumbsuckers)Boomer suicide (old bastards)Boomer suicide (die faster)  “Baby boomers are killing themselves at an alarming rate, raising question: Why?  He is part of an alarming trend among baby boomers, whose suicide rates shot up precipitously between 1999 and 2010.”  Why?  The journalist obviously is not an American of Generation X. The generation that has had to put up with the vagaries of the Baby Boomers for literally its entire existence knows very well why they are killing themselves at an unusually high rate. It is because Baby Boomers are disproportionately inclined to be narcissistic, selfish, short-sighted, superficial bastards who don’t give a damn about anything except themselves, and they are psychologically incapable of grasping the basic concepts of mortality or graceful old age.
““We’ve been a pretty youth-oriented generation,” said Bob Knight,
professor of gerontology and psychology at the University of Southern
California, who is also a baby boomer. “We haven’t idealized growing up
and getting mature in the same way that other cohorts have.”  Even
as they become grandparents and deal with normal signs of getting old,
such as hearing and vision losses, many boomers are reluctant to accept
the realities of aging, Knight said.”
  You don’t say…. The realization that 65 is not, in fact, the new 18, and they really and truly are not cool anymore, is simply proving too much for them to bear.

Now, I wouldn’t want anyone to think Generation X is actually inclined to celebrate these rampant Boomer suicides.  It doesn’t fill us with glee to know they are offing themselves en masse, merely a modicum of appreciation for the first positive and non-selfish consequences their generation’s actions have ever produced.  Say what you will about them, but at least they are saving us an amount of effort.

Generation X Aptitude Test

Khyron creates the GXAT:

1. Do you want to change the world?

A. Yes, and I’m proud to say we did it, man. We changed the world. Just look around you!

B.
Yes, absolutely, and I promise I will get back to doing that just as
soon as interest rates return to where they’re supposed to be.

C.
Omigod, omigod, changing the world and helping people is, like, totally
important to me! I worked in a soup kitchen once and it was so sad but
the poor people there had so much dignity!

D. That question is so stupid and absurd that there is obviously no reason to continue this pointless exercise.

If you answered D, you are Generation X.   Thus endeth the GXAT.

Preach, preacher, saith the choir

Why the Grasshopper Generation is the most hated generation:

Pity the baby boomers, blamed in their youth for every ill and excess of American society and now, in their dotage, for threatening to sink the economy and perhaps Western civilization itself.

The revival of The Great Gatsby serves as a reminder that continuing to blame boomers even in their old age was not a foregone conclusion. The young people of the 1920s were as controversial to their older contemporaries as their counterparts in the 1960s and 1970s. They were called flappers (less commonly “sheiks,” in the case of men), or Bright Young Things in England. The cartoons of John Held, Jr. have memorialized their hair styles, bobbed for women, slicked back for men — the Beatles cuts and Afros of their own time. But the gilded youth of that earlier age, having enjoyed bootleg liquor and cigarettes rather than stronger substances, were allowed to make a discreet transition to middle age and then little old lady and gentleman status without the medical clucking or cultural sneers of journalists. They vanished back into the multitude while the so-called Boomers seem destined to be hounded to death. Why?

I can think of a few reasons:

  1. They ruined American society.  Even the acts for which they can’t be held responsible, such as the 1965 Immigration Act, they resolutely supported.
  2. They are, to the extent that one can categorize an entire generation, short-sighted and selfish.  It is astonishing to compare the lack of interest my parents’ generation has in its grandchildren to the dedication that my grandparents’ generation showed to us. 
  3. They are obnoxious.  As PJ O’Rourke once pointed out, the Baby Boomers still clinging to their teenage music and styles would have been like his parents wearing zoot suits in their old age.
  4. They bankrupted the country and their families.  No generation was given larger inheritances by its parents’ generation.  And it is quite likely that most Boomers will leave nothing behind. 
  5. They were given wealth, peace, and power, and instead of being grateful for it, they scorned the traditions of their forefathers and squandered what they were given.

The ills of an entire generation cannot be placed at the feet of every single one of its members.  But neither can any individual member reasonably pretend the rightful anger that following generations will be directing at the Baby Boomers as a whole is unjustified.

The cognitive dissonance of Saint Gay

Bret Easton Ellis isn’t overly impressed with the lavender media’s insistence on whitewashing the sexually abnormal In the Reign of the Gay Magical Elves:

Was I the only gay man of a certain demo who experienced a flicker of annoyance in the way the media treated Jason Collins as some kind of baby panda who needed to be honored and praised and consoled and—yes—infantilized by his coming out on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Within the tyrannical homophobia of the sports world, that any man would come out as gay (let alone a black man) is not only an LGBT triumph but also a triumph for pranksters everywhere who thrilled to the idea that what should be considered just another neutral fact that is nobody’s business was instead a shock heard around the world, one that added another jolt of transparency to an increasingly transparent planet. It was an undeniable moment and also extremely cool. Jason Collins is the future. But the subsequent fawning over Collins simply stating he is gay still seemed to me, as another gay man, like a new kind of victimization. (George Stephanopoulos interviewed him so tenderly, it was as if he was talking to a six-year-old boy.) In another five years hopefully this won’t matter, but for now we’re trapped in the times we live in. The reign of The Gay Man as Magical Elf, who whenever he comes out appears before us as some kind of saintly E.T. whose sole purpose is to be put in the position of reminding us only about Tolerance and Our Own Prejudices and To Feel Good About Ourselves and to be a symbol instead of just being a gay dude, is—lamentably—still in media play.

The Gay Man as Magical Elf has been such a tricky part of gay self-patronization in the media that you would by now expect the chill members of the LGBT community to respond with cool indifference. The Sweet and Sexually Unthreatening and Super-Successful Gay is supposed to be destined to transform The Hets into noble gay-loving protectors—as long as the gay in question isn’t messy or sexual or difficult. The straight and gay sanctimoniousness that says everyone gay needs to be canonized when coming out still makes some of us who are already out feel like we’re on the sidelines. I’m all for coming out on one’s own terms, but heralding it as the most important news story of the week feels to me, as a gay man, well, kind of alienating. We are apart because of what we supposedly represent because of… our… boring… sexuality—oh man, do we have to go through this again? And it’s all about the upbeat press release, the kind of smiling mask assuring us everything is awesome. God help the gay man who comes out and doesn’t want to represent, who doesn’t want to teach, who doesn’t feel like part of the homogenized gay culture and rejects it. Where’s the gay dude who makes crude jokes about other gays in the media (as straight dudes do of each other constantly) or express their hopelessness in seeing Modern Family being rewarded for its depiction of gays, a show where a heterosexual plays the most simpering ka-ween on TV and Wins. Emmys. For. It?

I find the Saint Gay thing offensive myself, less because it is a societally damaging attempt to normalize the sexually abnormal, disease-ridden, and not-so-secretly self-loathing, and more because it is an insult to the intelligence of even the intellectually subnormal.

I always find the charge of homophobia from the likes of McRapey to be amusing because I’m far more comfortable around gays than most men are, and not in that fake, perma-smiling, I’m-liberal-so-I-MUST-be-tolerant, politically correct way. I worked at Dayton’s when I was fifteen. I was signed to a gay record label making electronic dance music. I’ve been accustomed to gay men making puppy dog eyes at me as long as I can remember and it doesn’t bother me in the least. Sexual attraction is a compliment and a form of flattery, after all; that’s why women constantly seek it from men towards whom they do not reciprocate it in any way.

Rabbits like McRapey are simply incapable of understanding the difference between the personal and the political, between the micro and the macro. 

It is because I have known many gay men and I know the darker aspects of their psychological profiles and lifestyle that I have such contempt for the Saint Gay propaganda. Being homosexual is hard, not due to “Minority Stress” and other people making it hard, but because reality makes it hard.  Some find it ironic that a number of those who have made It Gets Better videos subsequently killed themselves, but that’s exactly what one would expect.  Gay Pride propaganda has killed far more young homosexuals than the largely mythical gay-bashing ever has; Pierre Tremblay presented a 2000 paper at San Diego State in which he noted: “Empirical data indicates that, to
the age of 16 or 17 years, the lifetime “suicide attempt” incidence for
HOM youth has risen about six-fold, from about 5 to 30 percent from the
1950s to the 1990s.”

Repeatedly beating the young over the head with the idea that something problematic is not only okay, but good, creates a fundamental cognitive dissonance between what they believe they are supposed to believe and what they actually believe.  The Saint Gay approach is nothing more than magical thinking; I’ve exchanged a number of emails with the man I call The Gayfather, the self-proclaimed architect of the Gay is Good theme, and he readily admits that there is nothing empirical, scientific, or even philosophical about his theme.  It’s simply a postulate.  Gay is Good, ergo Gay is Healthy, ergo Gay is Moral, ergo Gay is Normal.

But calling RGB 255,255,255 black doesn’t actually change the color on your screen, no matter how many people you convince to follow your example.  Such propaganda is not impotent, but neither is it capable of reshaping reality.

Coming out as homosexual should not be condemned nor should it be celebrated.  It should be considered more like a diagnosis of diabetes; something that isn’t fatal in its own right, something that may or may not be curable, and something that won’t necessarily prevent the individual from living a reasonably happy, normal life if managed properly.  Even if one doesn’t believe in the existence of sin or its wages, one should be able to grasp that the celebration of Saint Gay has been accompanied by a body count that considerably exceeds that of the dark days of the notorious closet and question its legitimacy on that basis.

Mailvox: the mind of the science fetishist

The following assertion by Towler is a beautiful example of the way science fetishists think.  They genuinely believe that unless something is stated in a published, peer-reviewed paper written by a real Scientist with a Degree, it not only didn’t happen, it cannot possibly have happened.

There is no reason to believe that a marriage arranged by a father of the bride will lead to more children.

Except, of course, the entire written record of human history, to say nothing of the readily observable fact of the currently extant societies, which exist by virtue of their ability to sustain themselves at replacement level birth rates that are higher than those now seen in the West.  No reason, no reason at all, except for that.

The mode of discourse demonstrated by Towler and others clearly did not escape Catan’s notice:

Note how the naysayers here are arguing their side. They require peer-reviewed scientific papers posted in Nature Magazine for anything opposing their points, but they require absolutely no proof for an assumption of equality between the daughters’ judgment and the father’s judgment. They simply assume that both have equal judgment without any proof whatsoever until proven otherwise.

This is why leftism is intellectually bankrupt. There is absolutely no a priori evidence that life and reality has any basis in equality or fairness, yet they require no proof whatsoever to assume it.

The ironic thing is that there is no shortage of scientific evidence which indicates the probability that the judgment of a reproductively fit, middle-aged male will be superior concerning nearly everything, let alone something as emotionally laden as mate selection, to that of a young female whose fitness is unknown.

Mailvox: that which cannot survive won’t

Who Nose asks a pertinent question:

“If you want to understand why women are not permitted serve in Church
leadership, and why human societies do not survive more than a few
generations of young women being permitted to choose their own spouses”

It begs the question: Who ought to choose their spouses?

The Church?
The Father?
The Mother?
The State?

The question is further begged: What kind of law would need to be passed to enforce the choosing of a spouse.

Finally,
another question is begged: What would you do with the 99% of women who
responded to the suggestion or the law with, “F*ck Off”?

  1. The Father, with the advice of the Mother.
  2. No law is necessary. Simply informing their daughter that a woman who is capable of choosing her own spouse is clearly also capable of paying for her own college education and supporting her own lifestyle decisions will suffice for most parents. If a woman is independent enough to insist on paying her own way in order to pursue a career, she’s probably not wife-and-mother material anyhow and would likely end up a reproductive dead end regardless the options she is afforded.  We can always hope that instead of children, such a woman will contribute some revolutionary Powerpoint slideshows to society, produce a cure for cancer, or introduce some truly ground-breaking HR policies that will change the world for the better.
  3. I would simply wish them the best of fortune in their future endeavors.  But the number won’t be anywhere nearly that high because women are, first and foremost, the practical sex.

Demographic patterns make it perfectly clear that societies where women are not only permitted, but encouraged, to make their own mating choices are not sustainable.  I find it deeply ironic that so many people who claim to firmly believe in evolution by natural selection demonstrate that they do not understand the basic concept of fitness as soon as the issue of societal demographics is raised.

One of two things will happen. The society will collapse or be overrun, or the government will pass laws to prevent the demographic collapse from taking place. There are no other alternatives; if Who Nose or anyone else should like to suggest one, I’m quite willing to add it to the list.  It should be kept in mind that a government which has the power to conscript men to die for the security of the nation quite clearly has the power to force women to marry and bear children for the same purpose.

Many would-be critics here don’t seem to understand the implications of my being a libertarian. I don’t believe that laws are the answer to undesirable human behavior, not because they are wrong or evil, but because they are ineffective. Customs and traditions are much more powerful; laws only tend to function if they are reasonably in line with them. Laws don’t shape society, they tend to follow it instead.

Abortion is slaughter

In case the advances in technology haven’t made it perfectly clear yet to the morally challenged, the case of Kermit Goswell should suffice to demonstrate to even the most avowed feminist that abortion is pure and simple murder.  Note that this link is safe, but you may wish to be careful about reading through the court documents or looking at any of the pictures, as they are downright stomach-turning.

Abortion provider Kermit Gosnell, 72, is charged with killing a woman patient and seven babies allegedly born alive, and with performing illegal, late-term abortions at his thriving inner-city clinic. Co-defendant Eileen O’Neill, 56, of Phoenixville, is charged with billing as a doctor and participating in a corrupt organization.

Eight former employees have pleaded guilty, some to third-degree murder, and have testified this month about bizarre, often-chaotic practices at the clinic.

Ashley Baldwin spoke Thursday of starting there at age 15 through a high school training program, and soon assisting with abortions and administering intravenous drugs. Baldwin, now 22, said she worked nearly 50-hour weeks, often well past midnight, when abortions were routinely performed.

No doubt this case will spark protests that Not All Abortion Clinics Are Like That as it gradually leaks into the public consciousness despite the best efforts of the media to keep it contained.  But that is akin to claiming that there was nothing wrong with Bergen-Belsen because, after all, things were worse at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Let’s make it perfectly clear.  If you are a doctor or a nurse who performs abortions, you are every bit as bad, every bit as purely evil, as the SS-Totenkopfverbänder who slaughtered people in the National Socialists’ extermination camps.  And if you are a woman who aborts her child, you are every bit as bad, every bit as disgusting, as the SS guards at those camps, who may not have bloodied their hands themselves, but were complicitcollaborated by making the killing possible.

And if you simply support the so-called “right” to legal abortion, you are no better than a card-carrying member of the National Socialist German Workers Party.  In fact, you are even worse.  For all their many flaws, the National Socialists at least had a substantive cause: the preservation of a defeated and economically devastated German nation.  Your cause is mere female convenience, rendering you even more repellant and abominable in the eyes of anyone who values human life.  Their symbol was the reversed Swastika, but yours should be a pyramid of infant skulls.

I understand you have your rationalizations and your justifications.  I am aware that you firmly believe that an unborn, or partially born, or newly born, child is either not human or is for some reason or another unworthy of the same right to life possessed by adult human beings who hate racism, support sexual equality, and voted for Barack Obama. I appreciate that you are absolutely convinced that acting to terminate the life of a genetically unique individual who is dependent upon his mother for his continued survival is no different than cutting one’s hair or trimming one’s nails.  I know you assert that because it is a woman’s body, she can do whatever she wants with it, all the various trespassing and drug and flasher laws notwithstanding. Or perhaps you have a different reason, in which case feel free to make your case for it here.

But remember this: the Nazis had their justifications too. And those justifications were considerably more soundly rooted in science, history, and logic than yours are.

I assure you, I guarantee you, that future history is going to remember feminists and everyone else who supported the 20th-21st century Holocaust of the Unborn with every bit as much disgust and horror as today’s progressives regard 18th-19th century slavers and 20th century Nazis.  The tide is already beginning to turn, as many feminists have finally realized a few of the unforeseen, but retrospectively obvious consequences of their so-called right and begun lobbying for laws against sex-screening and the free exercise of their unholy “right” for officially unapproved reasons.

So, I call on you to rethink your stance, truly rethink it, and repent. Redeem yourself by turning against this evil practice you have supported and speaking out against it. Ask for forgiveness from God and from the millions of innocents whose deaths you rationalized and even encouraged.  What is done cannot be undone, but it is never too late to turn away from evil and refuse to continue walking along its dark path.

Stop all the endless rationalizations and justifications. Just stop. They are pointless. You know, in your heart of hearts, they aren’t convincing anyone.  They aren’t even convincing you.

Educated White Woman: the VIP credit card

I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to educated white women how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded phrase “female imperative” to which they react like vampires being slipped into a Hervé Léger bandage dress woven from silver thread. It’s not that the concept of “female imperative” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not their word. When confronted with “female imperative” they point their fingers and shriek “misogynist”, start crying about how they were once near-raped in college, then threaten not to have sex with anyone in the near vicinity.

So, the challenge: how to get across the ideas bound up in the word “privilege,” in a way that your average educated white woman will get, without freaking out about it?

Ladies. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive department store, like Macy’s or Saks. Let’s call it The Real World. You have entered The Real World and are about to start shopping, but first you go have to decide what credit card you are going to use while you are shopping. Got it?

Okay: In the department store known as The Real World, Educated White Woman is the VIP credit card. It is an American Express Centurion card with an unlimited credit limit.

This means that almost all the employees in the store are more deferential to you than they would be to anyone else. They carry your bags for you. The prices are lower and you’re given discounts without even asking for them. You don’t have to stand in line at the register. You are simply given entry to some departments that others have to wait to get into, or are simply denied access. The store is easier to walk through, automatically, you don’t have to wait for a changing room, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.

Now, once you’ve chosen the “Educated White Woman” card, you still have to decide how much you’re going to spend, and on what you’re going to spend it, and that will make a difference. If you only spend $250, and you spend it all on a big-screen TV as soon as you walk in the store, well, then you may be kind of screwed. If you spend $2,500 on earrings in the jewelry department, well, then you’re probably fine.

As your shopping trip progresses, your object is to buy stuff, figure out a way to carry it, and move on to the next department. If you spend all your time trying on swimsuits, or choose poorly and buy bulky things you can’t easily carry, then you probably won’t end up with much. But because you’re shopping with the “Educated White Woman” card, buying things and bypassing the lines at the register will still by default be easier for you, all other things being equal, than for another shopper using a less elite card.

Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone shopping with a lesser card is buying more, and more valuable, stuff than you are, because they know where everything is, or they are the perfect size 4, or they have an employee discount, or simply because they don’t spend half an hour dithering over every decision. It doesn’t change the fact you are still shopping with the VIP card.

You can end up buying nothing with the VIP card, but the VIP card still lets you buy more, and better, stuff than anyone else can possibly buy. The shopper who chose the “Straight White Male” card? That’s not even a proper credit card, that’s a Sam’s Club membership! If Straight White Male gets caught in the lingerie department trying on a pretty little thong, they’re not going to sell it to him, they’re going to call security.

And maybe at this point you say, hey, I’m not greedy, I don’t want a massive credit card bill at the end of the month and I don’t need any special treatment, I can make do with a regular VISA or Mastercard with a sensible limit.  Well, here’s the thing: In The Real World, you don’t ever have to pay off your balance! And you only get to shop there once. So why not make the most of it while you’re there? Your goal is to get as much of the best stuff as you can, not economize.

Oh, and one other thing. Remember when I said that you could choose what credit card you use in The Real World? Well, I lied. In fact, the store chooses what card you’re going to get when you walk in. You don’t get a choice; you just get the card given to you at the start of the game, and then you have to deal with it.

So that’s “Educated White Woman” for you in The Real World (and also, in the real world): The ultimate VIP treatment. All things being equal, and even when they are not, if the department store — or life — assigns you the “Educated White Woman” card, then sister, you’ve caught a break.

Of course, there is just one little problem with the “Educated White Woman” card.  It expires and you never know exactly when.  Just be sure that you’re done with your shopping before the employees start ignoring you, you have to stand in line at the registers, and no one is willing to carry your bags for you anymore.

Is reality misogynistic?

This was an interesting exchange over at Susan’s place.  Mike C asked her if  something I wrote merited being described in a certain manner:

Does this language from Vox Day also count as misogynistic? I am trying to figure out if this also falls into your categorization of misogynistic? 

“Because women are collectively more short-sighted and more
self-centered than men, giving them an equal voice in society is
tantamount to a slow-motion execution for any society. This is not
theoretical, it is observable, as the equalitarian societies of Europe
are already demographically in demise and in the process of losing their
democracies and their property rights.

I understand that many people believe women’s rights are important.
But are they more important than property rights? Are they more
important than democracy? What those who support women’s rights are
understandably reluctant to accept is that equalitarianism necessarily
requires the elimination of democracy, property rights, freedom of
movement, and even, in the end, capitalism and most of the tenets of
Western civilization. But like it or not, that is the choice that has
been made, and is being made, even today.

The Founding Fathers of the USA were no more mindless sexists than the Conscript Fathers of the Roman Senate. They
knew full well what would happen if sexual equality was ever granted.
It is not a coincidence, still less ironic, that those who built the
greatest and freest human societies have always vehemently opposed
women’s rights, while the totalitarians who most avidly sought to curtail human freedom it have tended to support them.”

To which Susan replied:  “Totally.”

I don’t think this is correct.  I don’t think it’s even possibly correct, in fact, I will assert that the notion is a simple category error. To claim that the observable, demonstrable, and provable
contradiction between women’s rights and the rights upon which Western
civilization were historically founded could even theoretically be described as misogynistic is tantamount to setting oneself
against logic, against history, and against reality itself.

As the Castrate said, it is so or it is not so.  If women’s rights contradict the rights of natural law, or the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, then they contradict them.  If I am correct, and they do, then it is a simple matter of fact and neither my feelings about women or Susan’s feelings about Martians have anything whatsoever to do with the matter. The idea is not misogynistic for the same reason it is not romantic or anti-semitic or happy or purple. The term simply cannot apply, not even hypothetically.

But no one need take my
word for this.  I plan to methodically prove it, conclusively, in a
series of forthcoming posts.  As I mentioned on her blog, I’d even welcome Susan’s contribution, if she would care to provide
me with what she would consider to be the definitive “women’s rights”.

I would also welcome a comprehensive list of “women’s rights” as they are distinguished from simple non-sexually based rights from anyone, male or female, who considers himself to be a feminist or even just a defender of “women’s rights”.  I can, of course, simply resort to Wikipedia, but I would prefer to utilize the list provided by a self-professed champion of them.