Tag: trainwreck

The temptation of the sockpuppet

It is perhaps understandable why people in the public eye might be tempted to defend themselves this way, but it’s never a good idea:

How many people think I’m actually Scott Adams writing about myself in third person?
posted by plannedchaos at 9:21 AM on April 15 [1 favorite]

I am Scott Adams.
posted by plannedchaos at 11:09 AM on April 15 [20 favorites]

And just to be clear that this isn’t some weird joke, yes, he is.

Scott, if you wanted to sign up for Metafilter to defend your writing, that would have been fine. If you wanted to sign up for Metafilter and be incognito as just another user, that’d be fine too. Doing both simultaneously isn’t; pretending to be a third party and high-fiving yourself by proxy is a pretty sketchy move and a serious violation of general community expectations about identity management around here.

I appreciate you fessing up at this point, but I’d sure rather it hadn’t happened at all. It’s just incredibly disappointing to watch play out.
posted by cortex at 11:16 AM on April 15 [131 favorites]

I like both Scott and his work, but I would absolutely have advised him against taking this tactic. If he’d defended himself openly, many of the people on the site would likely have been thrilled that he was communicating directly with them. As it stands, well, it’s just doesn’t look good.

And for the record, I do not engage in sockpuppetry here. I realize that some of my critics do occasionally look so spectacularly stupid that suspicions I am setting up strawmen in order to knock them down are entirely understandable. But unfortunately, the fact is that both the critics and the arguments are genuine.

Anyhow, I suspect most of the Dread Ilk recognize that I am too arrogant to be so concerned about whether anyone agrees with me or not that I would resort to a real appeal to public opinion, let alone a fake one.

The benefits of immigration

So much for the idea of shiny, sexy, secular post-Christianity in Britain:

Women who do not wear headscarves are being threatened with violence and even death by Islamic extremists intent on imposing sharia law on parts of Britain, it was claimed today. Other targets of the ‘Talibanesque thugs’, being investigated by police in the Tower Hamlets area of London, include homosexuals.

Stickers have been plastered on public walls stating: ‘Gay free zone. Verily Allah is severe in punishment’.

The enthusiastic embrace of the importation of non-Christian religionists by secular multiculturalists hoping to reduce the cultural influence of Christianity is without question going to be considered one of the most disastrous policies in the history of the West. I wonder how long it will be before the first British government official is assassinated by a Sharia-seeking radical. I, for one, will find it tremendously amusing when feminist professors begin wearing headscarfs for fear of their students.

The secular community in government, media, and academia decided to ally itself with Islam against Christianity some time ago. I wonder how many of them are beginning to rethink the wisdom of that decision.

So… where is the punchline?

In which the nadir of Gamma pseudo-spirituality is explored: the Conscious Men “devote ourselves to the worship of the divine feminine we discover the divinity of the masculine”:

Now, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that one of the leaders is named “Gay”. Not one of this pathetic collection of gammas, omegas, and not-so-latent lambdas would be capable of dominating a woman if you paid them to do it. But it is a very good example of classic Gammathink, endowing the female sex with all sorts of nebulous wonders such as “an intuitive connection to the Earth” on the basis of nothing but pure pedestalization fantasies. The truth is that socio-sexual losers like these Conscious Men honor nothing but the possession of a vagina, the depths of which they are neither worthy nor likely to plumb.

If you ever had a hard time understanding Game, just watch this with the understanding that this is the complete antithesis. If you want to live the rest of your life without ever attracting a woman or having sex with one, I would highly recommend becoming a Conscious Man.

Bitch, meet slap

Le Cygne Gris demonstrates that John Case doesn’t know the first thing about Austrian economics, which somehow didn’t prevent him from attempting to critique the theoretical school:

The role of the state in Austrian and now Libertarian theory is more confused than its transparently false propositions on the business cycle. The first Austrian, von Hayek, was actually a social democrat and strongly supported standard social democratic policy on the key role of the state in providing services that were market failures. He differed only on whether the post office should be public or private.

Actually, the Austrian school was founded by Menger, Bahm-Bawerk, and Wieser, so 0 for 1 there.

I am not sure what is more remarkable. The fact that more people are attempting to critique Austrian economics than ever before, or the fact that they think they can do so without so much as cracking open a single work of Austrian economic theory. Of course, based on how little they know about the Neo-Keynesian theories to which they nominally subscribe, I suppose they are accustomed to opining in near-complete ignorance.

The sure tell is a critic mentioning Hayek or Schumpeter. If he doesn’t even mention Mises or Menger, there is virtually no chance he knows any more about Austrian theory than Paul Krugman does.

The interests of the children

Keep this in mind the next time you hear that some insanely unjust decision to take children away from their homes or require ridiculous child support payments was made “in the interest of the children“.

A Christian couple morally opposed to homosexuality today lost a High Court battle over the right to become foster carers. Eunice and Owen Johns, aged 62 and 65, from Oakwood, Derby, went to court after a social worker expressed concerns when they said they could not tell a child a ‘homosexual lifestyle’ was acceptable.

I suppose it makes sense that it is more important for an orphan to be told that homosexuality is okay than to be provided with a loving foster home with Christian parents who uphold Christian moral standards, since they’re probably getting raped by the social workers on a regular basis anyhow. These days, if a divorced man wants to obtain primary custody of his children, his best bet is probably to tell the family court judge that he intends to teach the kiddies positive attitudes about money and homosexuality by forcing them to work as cam whores.

Chrissy outdoes herself

Lest you wonder why female “conservatives” and the so-called Mama Bears inspire so little confidence:

Domonique Ramirez, this year’s Miss San Antonio (preliminary to Miss Texas, Miss America) went to a photo shoot. She was supposed to wear her outfit from the San Antonio pageant. Well, it didn’t quite fit anymore, and the pageant let her know it was unacceptable…. Miss Ramirez slapped a temporary restraining order on the organization so they couldn’t take her crown away. A judge will decide whether she is fit for the crown or not. Isn’t that awesome? Seeing this kind of strength in a young woman is so refreshing. She’s fighting back and standing her ground, which I find incredibly brave. She’s becoming a role model, which is exactly what the Miss America Organization brags about.

If this pageant wants to permanently damage the youth of our country, mission accomplished. If they really want to help these girls then they need a better strategy. You don’t tell a teenage girl she’s too fat, unless you want her to have an eating disorder. If they thought she was becoming obese, sure, step in for the sake of her health. Offer her the benefits of working out if you want her to get in shape the healthy way. Tell her it helps reduce stress. They should want her mental health to be calm and collected for the nerve-racking interview. Tell her it will give her stamina to get through the long days. But never make it about her looks. That’s just crazy.

The organization threw her further under the bus by stating she has been late to appearances and has been defiant. I call that BS! It’s ludicrous to think adults would lie about a teenager just because they never could make it as Miss America themselves. They’re delusional….

Some know-nothings have argued that Domonique signed a contract. She promised to abide by these rules. Get over yourself. She’s a teenage girl, and to make any woman sign a contract like this is outrageous and unrealistic. This rule is ridiculous and shouldn’t even exist.

So apparently this is the position of the so-called conservative media these days: don’t tell fat girls they’re fat, run to a judge anytime you fail, and don’t expect women to abide by a signed contract. Now, if women can’t be held any more accountable than children by virtue of their sex, how can anyone possibly justify their right to vote?

I do wish Fox News would hurry up and hire Chatterfield already.

Celebrating Egyptian democracy

Apparently we’re all supposed to be horrified to discover that dangling a chicken over a swamp full of alligators may end in the devouring of the chicken. In Mala Fide is visibly unmoved over the reported “sexual assault” of Lara Logan:

You send a chick into a situation like the one in Egypt, you might as well hang a sign around her neck that says “FREE FUCKTOY”. I don’t care how many disaster areas she’s reported from, how many awards she’s won, it was going to happen eventually. Christ, even Anderson Cooper, that twinkle-toed pansy, couldn’t handle the heat on the streets of Cairo. What the fuck did Logan think was going to happen? Did she really think that the teeming, America-hating, angry, sex-starved crowds of men she was surrounded by wouldn’t view her as a tasty treat? Is she THAT clueless about the non-Western world? Or did she truly think that her crew of yes-men could protect her every time she touched down in Surprise Sex Country?

Obviously what Miss Logan needed was a phalanx of armed American amazons to protect her. On second thought….

“In 2003, a survey of female veterans found that 30 percent said they were raped in the military. A 2004 study of veterans who were seeking help for post-traumatic stress disorder found that 71 percent of the women said they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving. And a 1995 study of female veterans of the Gulf and earlier wars, found that 90 percent had been sexually harassed. The Defense Department shows much lower numbers, but that is because it only counts reported rapes—and, as the DoD admits itself in this year’s annual Pentagon report on military sexual assault, some 90 percent of rapes in the military are ever reported at all. Nonetheless, that same report showed that in 2008, reports of assault increased by 8 percent military-wide, and by 26 percent in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.”

Rather than pursue the obvious solution and keep women out of the military, the social engineers who have succeeded in getting so many women raped by men who are specifically trained to overcome their societal and moral taboos about not killing other people is to attempt to remove those who refuse to abide by societal taboos from the military. So, it should be interesting to see what their proposed solution for Egyptians rape-mobs is.

But the most interesting thing about the Logan incident is the way it is a metaphorical lesson on the choice facing Western women between three different futures: a) a return to traditional Christian culture, b) rape and the brothel, or c) submission and the burqah.

The useless Tea Party

Most of you will recall that unlike those bloggers that leaped on the bandwagon with alacrity, I have been extremely skeptical of the Tea Party from the very beginning. And, as Karl Denninger points out, the skeptics were correct:

That’s thirty-one out of forty voting for the bill (77.5%), eight voting against, and one no-vote. Despite the eight nay votes, Tea Party-backed candidates overwhelmingly supported an extension of the PATRIOT Act.

As I expected, the Tea Party is an ineffectual and ideologically incoherent joke. They don’t see the intrinsic dichotomy of claiming to support small government while simultaneously playing totalitarian world police. Yes, the movement managed to get a few people elected to office, but that’s totally irrelevant because, as we have seen every time that Republicans get elected to office, they support extending and expanding central government power. This behavior is as predictable as the phases of the Moon; it is the nature of the sort of beast who runs for office.

And despite the brave “well, we’ll just throw them out again” rhetoric that we’ll likely hear from the more principled Tea Partiers, I am confident that most of the 31 Tea Party-backed sellouts will easily win re-election with the enthusiastic support of the very people they betrayed. Notice, by the way, that it is Republicans who are pushing the Patriot Act extensions.

“Republican leaders will bring the bill back to the floor under a rule, where it will almost certainly secure the 218-vote threshold.”

As for Michelle Bachmann, I was unsurprised to see that she was one of the frauds. I remember when she was first getting started in Minnesota politics. If I recall correctly, my father was one of her contributors, but I didn’t think much of her at the time and I have seen no reason to revise my opinion since.

A tale of two bad ideas

It occurs to me that American police would be wise to consider abandoning their police state mentality sooner rather than later. Despite their ongoing militarization, the badge gang isn’t actually capable of enforcing the law or anything else upon the population. They only look as if they are in control so long as the populace is largely law-abiding of its own free will. Consider the following anecdote from just across the border:

11/23/2010 CIUDAD JUAREZ — In the bloodstained chaos that is Mexico’s drug war raging on the doorstep of the United States, Erika Gandara, 28, is standing tall, and alone. As her town’s only police officer “I am the law,” she says…. “Yes, I am a police officer,” the fresh-faced Gandara, who might be mistaken for a high (secondary) school student in her purple hoodie if she were not packing an [A]R-15 rifle, told AFP in an interview in her sparsely furnished office.

“I am this town’s only cop. I am the law,” she said.

And she meant it.

I remember reading that a few months ago and thinking that it was a classic example of female bravado, which rests entirely upon the false notion that a woman’s sex renders her untouchable. Needless to say, I wasn’t terribly surprised to read this today.

“Érika Gándara, 28, seemed to relish the role, posing with a semiautomatic rifle and talking openly about the importance of her new job. “I am the only police in this town, the authority,” she told reporters. Then, two days before Christmas, a group of armed men took her from her home, residents say, and she has not been seen since.”

I’m not sure which was more ill-conceived, Gandara’s brief career as a police chief or Pippa Bacca’s attempt to hitchhike across Turkey in a wedding dress. Regardless, they appear to have come to the same end. And speaking of ill-conceived notions, both the government and the police should keep in mind that it is not wise to aim into the abyss.