Fifty Shades of Stupid

The letter writer in yesterday’s Ask Polly column, in New York Magazine is so stupid it takes your breath away. Naturally, Polly doesn’t have the least clue about what is wrong, because Polly offers the same advice no matter what. So, add one stupid to the 50 shades exposed by a woman who calls herself Eating Lasagna Alone Forever.

Of course, this blog does not exist to regale the world with idiocy. It exists to expose hidden truths. This time, the truth is so flagrant that it smacks you in the face. Of course, Polly misses the point, but what were you expecting?

ELAF is a rabid feminist. She is an uncompromising zealous fanatical aggressively hostile feminist. She wakes up every morning and douses herself with her favorite fragrance, Essence of Man Repellent. Somehow or other, it works. She repels men, except for those who are willing to partake of the only thing she is offering: free love.

She finds men. She has sex with them, with dozens as it happens. And she is still alone. She cannot figure it out. Score one for stupid.

But, score one also for the truth about radical feminism. It is not designed to produce loving caring relationships with men. It is designed to protect women from any and all relationships with men… good, bad and indifferent. But, since women have their needs— did we need feminism to tell us that?— these women do insist on having sex with men. To be blunt about it, if they were not giving it away for free, no man would ever want to deal with them. So, they put out, they have sex, and one suspects that they are rather accomplished at it. And then the men disappear. The men feel used because they are being used. She uses men and allows men to use her. It is not a formula for a relationship... at least not one you can take home to Mom and Dad.

If ELAF were the only woman offering free love, it would be one thing. In truth, she is making imperious demands. She will give some sex, but what she wants in return is her man’s mind. It’s a Faustian bargain. Happily enough, no men have yet taken it.

She demands that a man thinks what she wants him to think, that he toes the feminist party line. No deviations allowed. No dissent allowed. He must do exactly as she says and think exactly as she does. Here again we have a cultural symptom, a young woman who is incapable of dealing with anyone who holds to a different point of view. Otherwise she gets triggered and throws a tantrum. This becomes yet another reason for sentient males to run for the hills.

So, ELAF opens her letter by complaining about Polly. Did I forget to mention that she is a whiner? Please forgive me. Here is the evidence:

I’m sick of you accepting letters from women who are messes but have “a loving husband who always supports my decisions” or women who are in perfect relationships but are haunted by guilt about their exes. We single ladies are messes without the built-in safety net of a partner, and we need your help, too — even more!

In that spirit, I write to you with my sad single-lady problems about how I can’t find the loving husband who will support all of my decisions because I am too weird and difficult (exhibit A: the above, very rude paragraph).

I think lots of people are weird, of course, and still manage to find their people, but I’m worried my particular flavor of weird is so internally contradictory that finding somebody who also embodies those clashing values and interests is nigh impossible.

So, she has no manners and no couth. She wants to find a husband who will support all of her decisions. She suspects that this makes her weird and difficult. To say the least. Polly is too nice to say so but ELAF is a pathetic fool. Weird can be charming. Difficult can be charming. Fanatical zealotry is neither.

She continues to display her feminist bona fides. She is not just a feminist, she is aggressively feminist. How many men do you know who are looking for an aggressive woman who insists on imposing her will on them.

I am aggressively feminist. It is not enough for me to date a man who doesn’t actively catcall women; I need someone who will validate me when I complain about mansplaining at work and understand that asking me to tell him what chores he needs to do his 50 percent share of is itself emotional labor that I’m not here for. I’m kinky and find vanilla sex utterly boring; I’ve tried to be more open to it, but it just doesn’t turn me on. These two things are already somewhat contradictory: someone who won’t devil’s advocate me about the gender wage gap but then finds the idea of slapping me (even consensually!) abhorrent kind of makes sense. Then on top of that, monogamy: People who are “alternative” in these ways — kink, leftist politics — also tend to reject monogamy (doubly so in the Bay Area, where I live). I do not want to be polyamorous, ethically non-monogamous, in an open relationship, monogamish, any of it. So here we have three core, relationship-foundational pieces that are already in conflict with each other.

As for her sexual proclivities and propensities, they are best ignored. It is worth noting that her peers in the Bay Area, that would be San Francisco, reject monogamy. In that case, the words we would use to describe her female friends might seem improper on such a decorous blog.

And yet, she got completely torqued over the man who did not wash his hands after relieving himself in the restroom. Why so torqued? Because, she says, telling him to wash his hands made her feel like his mother. Considering what she is putting out, what kind of man was she expecting to find? Why was she so worried about his hand-washing habits? You guessed it, or maybe you did not— because he was going to stick his fingers inside her. One assumes that she demanded it.

This romantic encounter does not register on the weird scale:

“Um, so sorry if this is weird, but I don’t think I heard the water run and then I noticed the sink was, um, dry, and I was wondering if maybe you, like, forgot to wash your hands?” My voice rising several octaves with the discomfort of having to play mother to a 31-year-old man and remind him to wash his hands after using the bathroom. Taken aback, he got defensive. “I did!” he said. And I didn’t really know what else to say so I changed the subject and asked if I could get him something to drink. We had sex and his pizza fingers were inside me and I didn’t die but I also didn’t see him again after that.

Afterward, I realized that he was the 50th person I’ve had sex with and I cried. I’ve put myself out there so many times, shared my body with so many people, tried to imagine myself loving strangers over and over again, and I’ve only been in one real actual adult relationship, and the person it was with was emotionally abusive and told me to kill myself to spare the world my craziness. Not exactly a confidence booster.

So, her number, as the saying goes, is 50. She has only had one relationship, with a man who lacked a certain je-ne-sais-quoi. Then again, she might have discovered that knowing her and trying to live up to her demands did not bring out his best.

What should she do?

She should close up shop. She should read a book called The Rules. She sounds like an aficionado of Tinder… and this sends a certain message all by itself. It does not make her feel good about herself. Feminism will tell her that these men are toxic pigs… but seriously, what does it take for her to figure out that her ideological commitments are an obstacle to getting married. That she has not yet figured that out that her serial relationship failures are to be expected speaks ill of her and of the other members of her coven. Do you honestly believe that no one, in her family and among her friends, have ever suggested that she needs to abandon her fanatical zeal and try being a real human woman?

If she refuses to listen and if she refuses to change her ways after serial failures, there is very little that anyone can do for her.

Obama Lied

I’m sure you remember that Bush lied. The phrase was repeated so often by so many people that, after a time, people took it as truth. In reality, the intelligence agencies of a dozen or so countries had gotten the Iraqi weapons program wrong, but that did not prevent those who demonized Bush to keep proclaiming that Bush lied.

As for Trump, all we ever hear is that he is lying. About everything. All the time. That Hillary Clinton and Co. lied all the time… is not an issue, because the Clinton’s are allowed to get away with anything. The media will never hold them accountable, ever.

As for Barack Obama, we all know that he lied about Obamacare. You cannot keep your plan and you cannot keep your doctor. It doesn’t matter to the media, because Obama, being who he is, cannot be held accountable. He must be worshipped.

Some lies are more consequential than others. Thus, we take notice when we read in the Jerusalem Post (via Maggie’s Farm) that Barack Obama lied through his teeth to the king of Saudi Arabia. That would be the former King Abdullah. And not just once.

The source is Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Apparently, King Abdullah told President Obama that he was the first president to lie to a king of Saudi Arabia. He did not mince words:

Former US president Barack Obama lied to Saudi Arabia when violating the redlines he famously declared regarding Syria’s use of chemical weapons and then not acting when they were used, a former senior Saudi official said in an interview with Independent Arabia. 

Bandar bin Sultan served for years as head of Saudi intelligence as well as the Saudi ambassador to the United States. In the interview, he recalled a last phone call between the late Saudi King Abdullah and Obama, during which the Saudi leader told the US president: “I did not expect that [after] this long life, I would see [the day] when an American president lies to me.”

Lied about what, you ask. Why the Syrian red line and the Iran nuclear deal. Apparently, Obama had promised to curb Iranian power and then went ahead with the nuclear deal:

Obama, bin Sultan said, “would promise something and do the opposite.” He said that the president took the Middle East back 20 years and also spoke critically of the Iran nuclear deal and how the former president spoke publicly about curbing Iran’s activities, but then went behind Saudi Arabia’s back and negotiated the nuclear deal. 

These policies by Obama, he said, emboldened Russia and Iran and paved the way for them to enter Syria and interfere in the civil war that has raged there since 2011. 

A curious side thought concerns the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Prince Bandar suggested that the Palestinians had made a major mistake when they turned down Bill Clinton’s offer of a peace plan. Again, we see Saudi Arabia moving away from the Palestinian cause, just in time for today’s Democratic Party, led by Alexandria Occasional Cortex, embrace it:

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, bin Sultan said that the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat committed a “crime” against his people by rejecting the peace plan proposed by former president Bill Clinton. 

On the People's Republic of the Upper West Side

How’s your Schadenfreude today? Does it need a boost? If so, here’s some news from the People’s Republic of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Few Americans are so resolutely leftist that the residents of this neighborhood.

That being the case one understands why Comrade Bill de Blasio, currently the mayor, should have chosen the neighborhood, around West 94^th St, off Riverside Drive, to install a new homeless shelter. Of course, many of the residents of the sometime hotel, the Alexander, were displaced or seriously disturbed…  but they are certainly not the kind of people that Comrade de Blasio cares about. Apparently, the court does not much care about them either.

The story gets better. Now residents of the neighborhood, especially those who live on toney Riverside Drive have been obliged, by the influx of fine homeless people, to hire private security guards. Trust me, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer group of people.

The New York Post has the story:

The city’s homelessness crisis is so out of control that Upper West Side residents are shelling out $120 a month each for private security guards to patrol their neighborhood seven days a week, The Post has learned.

A dozen apartment buildings are part of the desperation effort that’s costing a total $140,000 a year, and they all surround the former Hotel Alexander that the de Blasio administration recently turned into a homeless shelter.

“It’s a classic case of adding insult to injury,” said a resident of 251 W. 95th St.

“The city dumped the problem in our lap, then refused to provide the tools to keep the problem at bay. So now we’re footing the bill ourselves, so at least we don’t have to worry about getting mugged. It’s a total outrage.”

The money pays for a single guard at a time from Cambridge Security Services to keep tabs on the four-square-block area bounded by West 95th Street, Broadway, West 93rd Street and Riverside Drive between 5 p.m. and 1 a.m., except for Fridays and Saturdays, when the hours are 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.

“My initial reaction was ‘I don’t want to do that,’ but people in this neighborhood are upset,” said veteran Broadway and TV actor Bill Tatum, who’s president of the co-op board at The Fremont, two doors from the new shelter at 306 W. 94th St.

Anyway, be thankful for the little things: New York is not San Francisco…yet.

Should She Adopt?

In Kwame Anthony Appiah’s most recent New York Times Ethicist column, the issue is not the issue. Or the issue.

A woman who has having trouble conceiving wonders whether she and her husband should adopt.  She has not finished trying to conceive and she still wants to conceive, but asks whether she and her husband have a duty to adopt a child. Would she not thereby be doing a good deed and making the world a better place?

As I said, such is not the issue, but I will share the letter anyway:

My husband and I are struggling to conceive. We’ve been seeing a fertility specialist and going through cycles of treatment. We started with oral medications, to which unfortunately I stopped responding. We have since moved on to injectable medications. If this doesn’t work, we’ll at some point have to start thinking about IVF.

Though I desperately want to have a baby of our own, I’m struggling with whether it is ethical to go through the rather incredible lengths to get pregnant that IVF requires when there are children who urgently need homes. I know that the cost of adoption, and the difficulty of actually successfully adopting a baby, make it likely as emotionally grueling (and more expensive than) as an IVF cycle. Still, the effort would go to providing a home for a baby who needs one.

More pressing is the number of children in the foster-care system. We’ve talked about fostering children in the future, but in our minds that would occur after we’d had some experience parenting. I do not feel that right now we could take on the enormous responsibility of foster care. I do feel we are ready for a baby of our own; children in foster care generally need a great deal more than a new baby does.

The bottom line is this: Though I want to have a biological child, and my husband definitely does want to go to IVF if it comes to that, I am struggling to wrap my head around going through so much intervention when we could instead take in a child who needs a home.

Am I off base here, or do we have a duty to give homes to children who need them when we can’t easily have children of our own? 

The real issue is the moral principle at work here. Appiah states it clearly and it deserves emphasis:

Taking on a child who already exists and needs a home is an enormously worthy thing to do, if you’re confident that you can bond with him or her and create a loving environment. But you don’t have a duty to adopt one. There are many things we each could do — such as being a parent to one of the hundred thousand or so foster children in this country who need a new family — that would improve the world. But morality doesn’t demand that we do all the good we can. 

Think about it: morality does not require us to do every good deed that we possibly can do. We are not obliged to save the world, to save the planet or to adopt as many foster children as we can. Appiah is offering an important moral principle… one that ought not to be glanced over.

As for the letter writer’s reasoning, it is askew. Unless she believes that adopting a child would allow her to conceive. By that reasoning she is saying that she cannot conceive easily because she is not a sufficiently good person. Thus, adopting or fostering would show her to be unselfish and that God might reward her with her own child.

Trump Strengthens NATO; Democrats Cry Foul

As you know, the dominant media narrative about Trump and NATO claims that Trump is about to withdraw from the alliance, thus committing the worst foreign policy error since… well, since the beginning of recorded history. Wouldn’t you think that our foreign policy sages would be able to tamp down the hyperbole... just for once?

And, for Congressional Democrats, there is always the Putin angle. These mini-minds are so completely obsessed with Putin that they have convinced themselves that Putin is forcing Trump to pull out of NATO, so that he can take over Europe. Call it symptom of derangement, or of the fact that no matter what Democrats say journalists and opinion writers will happily pick it up and run with it… until they tire of the heavy lifting.

Apparently, they are sorely discomfited by Trump’s harsh statements toward our so-called allies. You know which allies, the ones who are trying to save Iran from American sanctions… and then whine about not being treated as allies. NATO makes most European nations into American protectorates, but we are supposed to be so honored by the chance to spend money protecting them that we must not say anything about their failure to fulfill their financial obligations to NATO.

Now, apparently, it turns out that Trump’s tough talk has produced positive results. NATO countries have greatly increased their financial contributions to the alliance. We have it on the authority of the secretary general of the alliance.

USA Today reports:

President Donald Trump "is committed to NATO" and deserves credit in obtaining $100 billion more in defense spending for the alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said Sunday. 

"President Trump has been very clear: He is committed to NATO. He stated that clearly just a few days ago and also at the NATO summit in July," Stoltenberg said on "Fox News Sunday."

Stoltenberg's comment stands in contrast to Democrats who fear Trump wants to pull out of NATO, and some who have expressed concern he could be undermining the military alliance because it benefits Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

A New York Times report earlier this month said Trump repeatedly told aides he wanted to pull out of the alliance. In response to the report, Democrats pushed for legislation requiring congressional approval of any move to leave NATO.

Give credit to USA today for daring to contradict the narrative spun by the New York Times and Democratic politicians.

Naturally, our ever-more pusillanimous radical left is horrified by Trump’s aggressive approach. It shows a lack of empathy, and we can’t have that. The problem is, it seems to be working:

Trump has also been criticized for his aggressive his approach in insisting America's "delinquent" allies pay a greater share toward the collective defense agreement. At the summit in July, he demanded the other members "immediately" increase their contributions. 

Stoltenberg said the tough approach paid off. 

"We agreed to do more to step up – and now we see the results. By the end of next year, NATO allies will add $100 billion extra toward defense," he said. "So we see some real money and some real results. And we see that the clear message from President Donald Trump is having an impact."

As for the Putin angle, Stoltenberg added this:

When asked if he was concerned that Trump was "helping Putin splinter NATO," Stoltenberg said, "What I see is that actually NATO is united because we are able to adapt to deliver. North America and Europe are doing more together now than before." 

Stoltenberg said Trump is helping "us adapt the alliance, which we need, because we live in a more unpredictable world." 

"And you have to remember that the increase we now see in defense spending by European and NATO allies comes after years of decline. So before they were cutting billions. Now they're actually adding billions," he said. 

Shocking, don’t you think?

Rubbing One Off

We have seen this problem before, but perhaps it’s worth another go. The problem is simple. It is not even complex. A woman has a new boyfriend. Her friends have subtly pointed out that they do not like him. They find him "tough to like. They seem to find him grating. Apparently, what the letter writer calls “direct candor” strikes many other people as rude. She writes to Carolyn Hax and asks for enlightenment.

The letter writer, who calls herself Guest Rubbing on Hosts likes her boyfriend for his insensitive and crude remarks. Her friends do not. She does not know what to do. She suggests that she might try to buffer the problem with her friends, but she does not want to tell her boyfriend not to be himself.

Pause for a moment over that remark. If being himself means being rude, crude and lewd, doesn’t this suggest that she sees his bad manners and lack of decorum as a winning quality, and also as who he really is? If said boyfriend is not capable of controlling his distemper among other people, then he is acting on a stage, reciting his lines, with no real sensitivity to audience reaction. This does not speak well of him. It does not make look like a good prospective mate. If he rubs his girlfriend’s friends the wrong way, how does he treat managers, colleagues and co-workers on the job? 

My boyfriend and I are going to visit some friends who have invited us to join them at their lake house. A few months ago, my friends told me that my boyfriend is "tough to like." I realize his sense of humor isn't for everyone, but his direct candor — while harsh — is one of the traits I find attractive about him.

I'd like to buffer any difficulties with my friends, but I don't want to tell my boyfriend not to be himself, nor do I look forward to telling him he isn't completely liked. Any suggestions on how to approach this?

— Guests Rubbing on Hosts

Hax correctly points out that GRH should not buffer anything at all. If the boyfriend’s entertaining personality is socially disruptive, she would do better to find a new boyfriend. And she ought to revise her own standards about what is and is not a good quality in a boyfriend. If his character is bad, he is a bad bet.

Hax explains:

When you are with someone, the combination you create has to stand or fall on its merits, and that includes with your friends, your family, your home life, your professional life, your personal habits, your hobbies, your values, your goals, all of it. It’s not always going to be perfect, obviously, but if you have to exert a special effort to curate scenes and manage personalities and schedules just to keep the whole thing from blowing up, and if you’re already explaining/excusing/justifying yourself and your interest in him, then you’re going to exhaust yourself — especially over time — and sow resentment on both sides. Special orchestration is a sign that something is Not Going to Work.

Quite right, I say. 

One commenter suggested that perhaps the friends would grow to like him, but that seems farfetched. If GRH has to make that much of an effort to cover for her boyfriend, her friends will cease inviting her. Their suggesting that he is difficult to like is a euphemism for: he’s insufferable. 

She should take a hint, and understand, as Hax says, that she will soon have to choose between boyfriend and friends. It’s an unpleasant choice, but in most cases, she should choose her friends. If the boyfriend’s main value is as entertainment, making a life with him seems like a bad idea. If he rubs your friends the wrong way, think of the way he rubs strangers.

The Queen of Senatorial Impropriety

Speaking of decorum, the great state of Arizona's new senator, duly elected, has managed to embarrass herself, to disgrace her office and to make the people who elected her look like complete fools. No one should have been surprised at Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's lack of decorum.

As it happens, Sinema's sense of fashion counts as an insult to the august body called the United States Senate. Naturally, the mainstream media is not reporting it, because what good is it if not to cover up the Democrat derelictions?

So, we turn to Gateway Pundit for the story (via Maggie's Farm). And we note that the commentary runs the gamut from, she looks like a stripper or a hooker, to her dress clashes with her boots. One understands that the latter is far more disgraceful than the former. The latter was taken on the floor of the Senate.





The new queen of impropriety. Remember, Sinema is there for six years. Will the people of Arizona take notice, or are they simply too far gone. 

Europe Is Falling Apart

The last time we Americans heard about French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levi— known in France by his acronym, BHL—he was beating the drums for war in Libya. BHL had gotten the ear of French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Sarkozy managed to persuade President Obama—BHO—and his hapless Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton—HRC—to support the Libyan rebels who wanted to overthrow the regime of  Muammar Qaddhafi.

At the time  the world was reveling in the Arab Spring and imagined that democracy would soon be busting out all over the Middle East. So, following the lead of BHL the American military supported Libyan rebels, overthrew Qaddhafi and made HRC look tough. 

Democracy did not break out in Libya, but chaos did. Most savvy commentators had predicted the same. And then there was Benghazi and the murder of an American ambassador, crime that HRC brushed aside as though… tough luck. Rather pathetic for the individual who was responsible for ambassadorial security.

Anyway, BHL believes that Europe is falling apart. That it is losing its great democratic traditions-- the ones that Middle Eastern nations did not adopt. He also believes that London Bridge is falling down. So, he has written an impassioned cri de coeur, as they would call it in Paris, to beg the British to have another referendum and not to exit Europe.  A passel of European intellectuals signed his letter. They sent it to major European publications, among them, the Guardian. (via Maggie’s Farm) Here is a link to the text. 

They believe that Europe is falling apart, because Europe is falling apart. One point for them. I have often noted the facts on this blog. More than one point for me. Thus, it is not news. And yet, the philosophers do not mention that immigration policies have caused this falling apart. One demerit for them.

They had the chutzpah to call it a manifesto, as though their manifestly overblown emotions would sway public opinion.

Anyway, they frame their manifesto as an attempt to salvage liberal values. And to salvage what they call the idea of Europe. Really. Are these great minds saying that they do not understand that Europe is a continent, not an idea? It is not a nation, either. The confederated states that form the European Union are certainly not aligned on immigration policy.

If anything, one is reminded of Voltaire's quip about the Holy Roman Empire-- that it was neither holy, nor Roman not an Empire.

The philosophers are fighting for the great European ideal and they are fighting against Great Britain and America… especially against the American leader. 

The Guardian opens its article:

Liberal values in Europe face a challenge “not seen since the 1930s”, leading intellectuals from 21 countries have said, as the UK lurches towards Brexit and nationalists look set to make sweeping gains in EU parliamentary elections.

The group of 30 writers, historians and Nobel laureates declared in a manifesto published in several newspapers, including the Guardian, that Europe as an idea was “coming apart before our eyes”.

“We must now will Europe or perish beneath the waves of populism,” the document reads. “We must rediscover political voluntarism or accept that resentment, hatred and their cortege of sad passions will surround and submerge us.”

They might be great thinkers but they sound like children who fear that they have been abandoned by their parents, and thus that they might have to defend themselves on the world stage. They are fighting for their own relevance in a world that is passing them by. In France, the only thing that matters is the influence of France on the world stage. 

They write of their regret that Europe has been “abandoned from across the Channel” – an oblique reference to the drawn-out Brexit process that has arguably brought Anglo-European relations to their lowest point since the second world war.

And they say that unless efforts are made to combat a rising tide of populism, the EU elections will be “the most calamitous that we have ever known: victory for the wreckers; disgrace for those who still believe in the legacy of Erasmus, Dante, Goethe, and Comenius; disdain for intelligence and culture; explosions of xenophobia and antisemitism; disaster”.

“Abandoned from across the Channel and from across the Atlantic by the two great allies who in the previous century saved it twice from suicide; vulnerable to the increasingly overt manipulations of the master of the Kremlin, Europe as an idea, as will and representation, is coming apart before our eyes,” the text reads.

Yes indeed. The Anglosphere saved Europe from itself in World War II. Now the philosophers call upon it to save it from its stupidity. You might have noticed, BHL, in a spasm of pseudo-sophistication, echoes the title of an important philosophical work, Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation. I hope you are suitably impressed.

How about a nod toward reality? How about a nod toward the question of national borders? How about a nod to the masses of migrants who have especially flooded Western Europe, and from whose onslaught Britain and American want to spare themselves.

Apparently, being a great continental thinker means not knowing how to think. After all, the values espoused by BHL and Co. are under attack on a daily basis by migrant hordes that have no interest in adopting Western values and that are plying weak Western leaders to their will.

Pamuk said the idea of Europe was also important to non-western countries. “Without the idea of Europe, freedom, women’s rights, democracy, egalitarianism is hard to defend in my part of the world.

“The historical success of Europe made it easier to defend these ideas and values which are crucial to humanity all over the world,” he said. “There is no Europe besides these values except the Europe of tourism and business. Europe is not a geography first but these ideas. This idea of Europe is under attack.”

To blame this on Great Britain and on Donald Trump is to miss the point entirely. But, that is what makes philosophers into philosophers. Anyway, BHL declares war on those who are trying to preserve European culture and customs. In a singular act of moral blindness he blames them for Europe’s problems:

Despite its “mistakes, lapses, and occasional acts of cowardice”, Europe remains “the second home of every free man and woman on the planet”, they say, noting with regret the widely held but mistaken belief of their generation that “the continent would come together on its own, without our labour”.

Pro-Europeans “no longer have a choice”, they say. “We must sound the alarm against the arsonists of soul and spirit that, from Paris to Rome, with stops in Barcelona, Budapest, Dresden, Vienna, or Warsaw, are playing with the fire of our freedoms.”

If all these heavyweight thinkers cannot see the problem... what hope is there for Europe. Eastern Europeans have made a different choice, even a different wager. When they see the way so-called liberal democracy is destroying Western Europe, who can blame them for wanting to opt out. The manifesto demonstrates one salient point: Western Europe has run out of philosophers who can think straight.

#MeToo Bites Women

It’s an old story, occasionally reported in this blog. And elsewhere. Now that the elites gathered at Davos have raised the issue, it has found its way into the New York Times. Thus, the woke generation has a new reason to torment itself.

The story is simple. Thanks to the #MeToo movement senior executive men are avoiding almost all forms of direct personal contact with young female subordinates. They call it the law of unintended consequences, but it seems equally apt to be the consequence of acting without even considering the consequences. I suspect that not one of the great leaders who filled the airways with gales of outrage imagined that their cries for justice, mixed with hostility toward men, might produce an unwanted outcome. Or that it might all be bad for women.

The Times reports from Davos:

“I now think twice about spending one-on-one time with a young female colleague,” said one American finance executive, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the issue is “just too sensitive.”

“Me, too,” said another man in the conversation.

The #MeToo movement, which burst into the spotlight in the fall of 2017, bringing down powerful figures in Hollywood, the media, politics, sports and more, continues to reverberate 15 months later. It has empowered women to speak up about harassment in the workplace and forced companies to take the issue more seriously. More than 200 prominent men have lost their jobs, and nearly half of them were succeeded by women.

Companies sensitive to their public image are promoting more women to the jobs that men had vacated. Do you believe that these new women executives will command enough respect to do the jobs or will they be treated as place holders, put there to mute the public outrage?

The result of #MeToo… companies are minimizing contact between young females and older males:

But in one unintended consequence, executives and analysts say, companies seeking to minimize the risk of sexual harassment or misconduct appear to be simply minimizing contact between female employees and senior male executives, effectively depriving the women of valuable mentorship and exposure.

“Basically, #MeToo has become a risk-management issue for men,” said Laura Liswood, secretary general of the Council of Women World Leaders, an organization for former and current female political leaders.

It’s a problem many have acknowledged. Last February, two online surveys by Lean In and SurveyMonkey on the effects of #MeToo in the workplace found that almost half of male managers were uncomfortable engaging in one or more common work activities with women, such as working one on one or socializing. One in six male managers was uncomfortable mentoring a female colleague, according to the studies, which together surveyed nearly 9,000 adults employed in the United States.

Why should a senior male executive take the risk of mentoring a comely young lady? How many wives of said male executives would ever allow their husbands to take such a risk? I mention the latter point because it is so often ignored. Wives have something to say about this, and we should ask how many of them have told their senior executive husbands that young women were radioactive, and thus best avoided.

Naturally, the #MeToo movement is undermining the push for gender equality, though, curiously not one of the interviewees in this story says a word about corporate profitability. They seem to believe that equality is a goal, all by itself. They express no sense whatever of women’s conflicting responsibilities. They do not seem to recognize that women who are bringing up small children might put in fewer hours at work or take on less responsibility. Or be less willing to pick up and move to other countries. Again, the ideologues who are pushing for more women executives have no concern whatever for the bottom line. They are too obsessed with bottoms.

Beyond the mentorship issue, some indicators of gender equality are slipping, though it is hard to establish any link with #MeToo.

In its December report examining educational opportunities, life expectancy, pay equity and other factors, the World Economic Forum predicted that it would take 202 years for gender parity to be reached in the workplace. That is significantly more than the estimate of 170 years in 2016.

So, the world has been backsliding on gender parity. Is it all about bigotry or are there simply too few competent female executives around? In a world where Great Britain is being led by a female bumbler and where Germany is being led by a women who has sacrificed her country to out-of-control migration… we might consider the point.

The True Face of Resistance

Until now I have sagely chosen not to offer up opinions about the confrontation between the Black Hebrew Israelites, Indian activist Nathan Phillips and a group of boys from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky.

The story, and especially the commentary, is so ugly that one’s first instinct is to turn away from it. Besides, one’s day does not contain an infinite number of hours and one has chosen not to look through the entirety of the video footage of the event.

In effect, ugly is not quite the right word. Andrew Sullivan, not a Trump supporter and not a card-carrying member of the vast right wing conspiracy, was despondent to see elite media intellectuals lose their minds in a paroxysm of rage against a sixteen-year old boy. One recalls that when Fox News host Laura Ingraham uttered a disparaging word about one David Hogg, she was accused of child abuse and promptly lost the better part of her advertisers. Because there is nothing worse than beating up on a child, even if you did not beat up on him.

Strangely, the venom was not limited to the left. Conservative journalists happily jumped all over the sixteen year old, as a living symbol for white supremacy and unforgiveable bigotry. Jay Nordlinger wrote this at National Review:

The images of those red-hat kids surrounding and mocking that old Indian are unbearable. Absolutely unbearable. An American disgrace.

Apparently, the right has caught on. It has discovered that the war on bigotry has come to define the nation and that being on the wrong side will destroy you. Mark Steyn  opined about the double standard:

Democrats never do this; Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam declare that the Jews are pushing defective marijuana on black men in order to turn them gay—which would appear to be a prima facie slur on at least four Democrat constituencies: blacks, gays, Jews and potheads. Yet Clinton, Obama et al speak not a word against Calypso Louie.

We are back with the case of Nicholas Sandmann, because of what it shows about the American left’s descent into madness. They are not just mad; they are so mad that they have dispensed with all constraints and restraints. They let it fly. They do not care about who or what they hit. They are consumed with a will to destroy, and do not care whether their verbal lances and spears land aright. They only care for the thrill they get by pretending to be strong and empowered, thus their ability to destroy other people. If the Brett Kavanaugh hearings made you pessimistic about America’s future, the Nick Sandmann brouhaha will add fuel to that fire.

As it happened, sixteen-year old Nick Sandmann did nothing more than stand up to a bigoted abusive Native American man named Nathan Phillips, the long knives came out… to denounce him, to crucify him, to cast him into the depths of Hell.

When Andrew Sullivan took the time to examine the record of what happened, he was thrown into despair… about the media elite’s willful distortion of the facts, about its unwillingness to question its beliefs, about its lust for any facts that seem to prove the validity of its fanatical beliefs.

What did Sullivan see. For one he saw that the Black Hebrew Israelites instigated it all:

What I saw was extraordinary bigotry, threats of violence, hideous misogyny, disgusting racism, foul homophobia, and anti-Catholicism — not by the demonized schoolboys, but by grown men with a bullhorn, a small group of self-styled Black Hebrew Israelites. They’re a fringe sect — but an extremely aggressive one — known for inflammatory bigotry in public. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated them a hate group: “strongly anti-white and anti-Semitic.” They scream abuse at gays, women, white people, Jews, interracial couples, in the crudest of language. In their public display of bigotry, they’re at the same level as the Westboro Baptist sect: shockingly obscene. They were the instigators of the entire affair.

The Black Hebrew Israelites are an anti-Semitic hate group. But, since our intelligentsia has happy embraced anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party, it had little choice but to distort reality, the better to absolve the Black Hebrew Israelites of all responsibility. And of course anti-Semitism is merely the tip of an anti-Christian bias. We saw it in the attacks on Kavanaugh. Now we see it again in the attacks on Nick Sandmann. In the case of Sandmann no one even pretended to be objective.

Among those who distorted reality to serve their ideology were the nation’s two leading newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Sullivan summarizes:

And yet the elite media seemed eager to downplay their role, referring to them only in passing, noting briefly that they were known to be anti-Semitic and anti-gay. After several days, the New York Times ran a news analysis on the group by John Eligon that reads like a press release from the sect: “They shout, use blunt and sometimes offensive language, and gamely engage in arguments aimed at drawing listeners near.” He notes that “they group people based on what they call nations, believing that there are 12 tribes among God’s chosen people. White people are not among those tribes, they believe, and will therefore be servants when Christ returns to Earth.” Nothing to see here, folks. Just a bunch of people preaching the enslavement of another race in public on speakers in the most inflammatory language imaginable.

And,

The Washington Post ran a Style section headline about “the calculated art of making people uncomfortable.” In a news story entirely about the Black Israelites, the Washington Post did not quote a single thing they had said on the tape, gave a respectful account of their theology, and only mentioned their status as a “hate group” in the 24th paragraph, and put the term in scare quotes. Vox managed to write an explainer that also did not include a single example of any of the actual insults hurled at the Covington kids. Countless near-treatises were written parsing the layers of bigotry inside a silent schoolboy’s smirk.

So, Sullivan continues to explain what he saw:

Here’s what I saw on the full tape: a small group of aggressive, hateful men using a bullhorn to broadcast the crudest of racial slurs, backed up by recitations of Bible verses. I saw a young Native American woman make the mistake of engaging them. When she stood her ground, she was suddenly interrupted: “You’re out of order. Where’s your husband? Where’s your husband? Let me speak to him.” On the tape, you can hear the commentary from another member of the Black Israelites: “You see this? This is the problem, Israel. It’s always our women coming up with their loud mouth, thinking they can run and bogart things, thinking they can come and distract things with their loud-ass mouth, because they’re not used to dealing with real men. You think we’re supposed to bow down to your damn emotions when you come around here and run your mouth and distract what we’re doing instead of coming here with order … She’s coming around here being wicked.”

As it happened, the Black Israelites assaulted the high school students:

Here is how the Black Israelites verbally assaulted the schoolboys: “Bring your cracker ass up here. Dirty ass crackers, your day coming. We can give a hell about your police. No one’s playing with these dusty-ass crackers.” Another: “Don’t get too close or your ass gonna get punished … You crackers are some slithery ass bastards. You better keep your distance.” And this, surveying the scene: “I see you, a bunch of incest babies … Babies made out of incest. If you’re the great damn nation, get rid of the lice on your back. … You’re a bunch of hyenas. You outnumber us but you keep your distance. You couldn’t touch us if you wanted to. You worship blasphemy.”

Once the Israelites figured out the kids were Catholic, they offered this about what appeared to be a picture of the Pope: “This is a faggot child-molester.” And this about Donald Trump: “He’s a product of sodomy and he’s proud. Your president is a homosexual. … It says on the back of the dollar bill that ‘In God We Trust,’ and you give faggots rights.” At that homophobic outburst, the kids from the Catholic school spontaneously booed.

And then, for having endured this assault, the children were attacked for being racist bigots. It shows Sullivan that leftist media elites have descended into the depths of moral depravity:

To put it bluntly: They were 16-year-olds subjected to verbal racist assault by grown men; and then the kids were accused of being bigots. It just beggars belief that the same liberals who fret about “micro-aggressions” for 20-somethings were able to see 16-year-olds absorbing the worst racist garbage from religious bigots … and then express the desire to punch the kids in the face.

Nicely stated. The gang that has declared war on micro-aggressions, that is up in arms over triggering, now acts like the most bigoted of bigots. After all, what is bigotry but an irrational prejudice against a group… regardless of the facts? Since the word prejudice comes to us from the expression—to pre-judge—nothing could better manifest raw bigotry than prejudging what happened in Washington… regardless of the facts.

As it happened, mainstream media figures happily jumped on Sandmann and let fly with their most vitriolic denunciations. They embarrassed themselves. They embarrassed the publications they work for. More importantly, these people are supposed to be thought leaders. They are not supposed to be red-necked bigots:

How did this grotesque inversion of the truth become the central narrative for what seemed to be the entire class of elite journalists on Twitter? That’s the somewhat terrifying question. Ruth Graham on Slate saw a 16-year-old she’d seen on a tape for a couple of minutes and immediately knew that he was indistinguishable from the “white young men crowding around a single black man at a lunch counter sit-in in Virginia in the 1960s” or other white “high school boys flashing Nazi salutes.” Even after the full context was clear, Graham refused to apologize to the kid, or retract her condemnation: The context didn’t “change the larger story” which, she explained, was bigotry toward Native Americans. She cited Trump’s use of the name “Pocahontas” for Elizabeth Warren as evidence. But using a bullhorn to call Native Americans “savages” and “drunkards at the casino” to their faces a few minutes earlier on the same tape was not worth a mention?

And Jessica Valenti attacked the boy for being Catholic, and thus for wanting to oppress women by taking control over their bodies. Since Valenti herself seems to want to take control over women’s bodies, the ironies seem never to be stopping:

Across most of the national media, led by the New York Times and the Washington Post, the narrative had been set. “I’m willing to bet that fifty years from now, a defining image of this political era will be that smug white MAGA teen disrespecting a Native elder and veteran. It just captures so much,” Jessica Valenti tweeted. “And let’s please not forget that this group of teens … were there for the March for Life: There is an inextricable link between control over women’s bodies, white supremacy & young white male entitlement.” This is the orthodoxy of elite media, and it is increasingly the job of journalists to fit the facts to the narrative and to avoid any facts that undermine it.

As for what Sandmann did wrong, he was wearing a MAGA hat. Apparently, wanting to make American great again is equivalent to being a Nazi. Can you fathom the depth of stupidity that allows people to traffic in such nonsense:

“The red MAGA hat is the new white hood,” tweeted Alyssa Milano. In his debut Times column, Jamelle Bouie describes a border wall thus: “You can almost think of the wall as a modern-day Confederate monument, akin to those erected during a similar but far more virulent period of racist aggression in the first decades of the 20th century.” Charles Blow insists that “We have to stop thinking of the symbology of Trump’s presidency — the MAGA hats, the wall, etc — as merely physical objects. They have long since lost their original meaning and purpose. They are now emblems. They are now the new iconography of white supremacy … In much the same way that the confederate flag became a white supremacy signalling device, the MAGA hat now serves the same purpose. It is tangentially connected to Trump, but is transcends him also. It’s a way of cloaking racial hostility in the presentable form of politics.” A campaign slogan for a candidate who won the votes of 46 percent of the country in 2016 is to be seen as indistinguishable from the Confederate flag. This is not the language of politics. It is a language of civil war.

Bouie and Blow write for the New York Times… for a paper that happily hires anti-Semites. And thus, makes their views respectable. But, the Times has also hired tech columnist Kara Swisher, apparently a friend of Sullivan… because he is, I believe, far too quick to brush aside her own madness:

Here is Kara Swisher, a sane and kind person, reacting to the first video: “To all you aggrieved folks who thought this Gillette ad was too much bad-men-shaming, after we just saw it come to life with those awful kids and their fetid smirking harassing that elderly man on the Mall: Go fuck yourselves.” Judging — indeed demonizing — an individual on the basis of the racial or gender group he belongs to is the core element of racism, and yet it is now routine on the left as well as the right. To her great credit, Kara apologized profusely for the outburst. The point here is that tribal hatred can consume even the best of us.

Sane and kind people do not talk like that. They do not talk like in their dreams or even in the shower. Sullivan concludes:

It’s reasonable to note the social context of bigotry and see shades of gray, in which the powerful should indeed be more aware of how their racial or gender prejudice can hurt others, and the powerless given some slack. But if that leads you to ignore or downplay the nastiest adult bigotry imaginable and to focus on a teen boy’s silent face as the real manifestation of evil, you are well on your way to creating a new racism that mirrors aspects of the old.

To those who saw Hitler in the face of Nick Sandmann, one suspects that they felt no shame for their defamatory statements. One suspects that they are already hard at work salvaging what remains of their reputations. True enough, some of them have apologized, but a verbal apology is never sufficient, in and of itself. A sincere apology must be accompanied by withdrawing from public life for a time. How many of these bigoted ranters will do anything of the sort?

When a Therapist Utters a Curse

For today we have a good example of the problems that therapy causes. I have long since postulated that therapy is more often the problem than the solution, and today’s Carolyn Hax column shows how it’s done.

Without too much introduction, here’s the letter:

My adult son, now 29, lost his father in a freak accident the day before my son turned 13. For more than two years after the accident, his dad lingered in a near vegetative state. A grief counselor I consulted back then told me that as a result of this experience, my son could have difficulty later in his life forging intimate relationships.

My son and I have talked several times about this possibility and about how counseling could help.

Now he is having trouble in his intimate relationships, but he's closed to the idea of therapy. He is otherwise a really good man, thriving in his career and regarded by many as a really charming guy. How can I help?

A good man, doing very well in his career, charming and personable… and yet, overhanging his life is what I will call a curse pronounced by a grief counselor. Said psycho professional has no real idea of the lasting effects of the father’s death will be. But, he feels compelled to make a prediction, to look into his crystal ball and pronounce what will happen in the future. He is not a scientist, but a prophet. And yet, he is pretending to be able to foretell the future. 

Naturally, the young man’s ever-so gullible mother has bought the prophecy. Now she is doing her best to ensure that it will come to pass… by nagging her son about going into therapy. It might be that her nagging about this issue has become an impediment to the son's relationships. 

We must notice that said mother probably does not know all there is to know about her son’s romantic relations. If he has good character and is thriving in his career, he probably attracts young women, like catnip. And if he has trouble with these relationships, it seems never to have crossed his mother’s mind that the fault might lie in the young women. Depending on what he does, who he hangs out with, how he meets these women… none of which is reported… the fault might well lie elsewhere.

This being the case, Hax sagely advises this woman to mind her own business and to stop trying to drum up business for therapists. Though Hax unfortunately seems willing to accept that the young man needs therapy.

The moral of the story is that one therapist’s ignorant pretense to be able to predict the future has caused damage to this family. 

Socialism Fails in Venezuela

Sometimes we want to know what someone has been smoking. Sometimes we want to know what he has been drinking. In the case of Bret Stephens we want to know what he has been reading.

Apparently, when Stephens ambles through the mainstream media coverage of the ongoing calamity called Venezuela, he never finds anyone who believes that Venezuela’s failure is a failure of socialism. Apparently, socialism is trendy. It is sexy. Young people flock to it. They vote for Democrats because they love socialism.

Of course, young people have not only been brainwashed. They have been dumbed down to the point where that think that a notable imbecile like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is intelligent. Or where they can denounce President Trump for taking sides against President Maduro, and thus against Russia, China, and Iran… and then, in the same mindless breath, declare that Trump is in collusion with the Russians. Someone needs a brain transplant… presto.

In his column today Stephens calls out what he calls the mainstream media for criticism. Apparently, no right-leaning media outlets— think of the Wall Street Journal, where Stephens used to pontificate—  have noted that Venezuela is a case study in the failure of socialism.

Thus, the news outlets that are covering up socialism’s failure in Venezuela are not really mainstream. They lean radically to the left and have long since abandoned the pretense of reporting objectively. Their only standard is whether or not their story will hurt Donald Trump. They are leftist propaganda machines, and they ought to stop pretending to care about objective facts.

Stephens explains:

Conspicuous by its relative absence in much of the mainstream news coverage of Venezuela’s political crisis is the word “socialism.” Yes, every sensible observer agrees that Latin America’s once-richest country, sitting atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, is an economic basket case, a humanitarian disaster, and a dictatorship whose demise cannot come soon enough.

But … socialist? Perish the thought.

Or so goes a line of argument that insists socialism’s good name shouldn’t be tarred by the results of experience. On Venezuela, what you’re likelier to read is that the crisis is the product of corruption, cronyism, populism, authoritarianism, resource-dependency, U.S. sanctions and trickery, even the residues of capitalism itself. Just don’t mention the S-word because, you know, it’s working really well in Denmark.

True enough, and sadly so. The mainstream media has long since forgotten to be liberal or progressive. It has thrown its lot in with the radical left and will not utter a work that will tarnish the good name of socialism. Think about it, we have seen decades worth of socialist governance, even the totalitarian and despotic versions. They have produced more destruction and calamity than any other governing philosophy in world history. And yet, some people still believe that socialism has a good name. Really? How stupid do you have to be, how gullible do you need to be, to hold out hope for socialism. Is that what it means: the audacity of hope? Or to call a monumental catastrophe a monumental human catastrophe?

Apparently, the mainstream media cannot bring itself to show socialism for what it is, to expose the misery it has produced in once-wealthy Venezuela. This tells us that the mainstream media is fighting the good fight against capitalist and patriarchal hegemony… and it has sympathized with socialism… just as it sympathizes with Palestinian terrorists who have been trying to destroy what capitalist Israel has produced.

As it happens Jeremy Corbyn, the notably anti-Semitic leader of the British Labour Party  is a mainstream political figure, but not a mainstream media figure. And Noam Chomsky, also cited by Stephens, is a far left crank, albeit a very smart one. Stephens opens with their assessments of Venezuelan socialist strong man, Hugo Chavez:

The late Venezuelan president [Hugo Chavez], said Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn, “showed us there is a different and a better way of doing things. It’s called socialism, it’s called social justice, and it’s something that Venezuela has made a big step toward.” Noam Chomsky was similarly enthusiastic when he praised Chávez in 2009. “What’s so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela,” the linguist said, is that “I can see how a better world is being created and can speak to the person who’s inspired it.”

And Stephens quotes a professor’s obituary from The Nation, also not a mainstream media outlet:

In a lengthy obituary in The Nation, New York University professor Greg Grandin opined, “the biggest problem Venezuela faced during his rule was not that Chávez was authoritarian but that he wasn’t authoritarian enough.”

Without wading through too many current issues of  The Nation, I promise you that nary a week goes by without attacking Donald Trump for being an authoritarian monster. But, you were not expecting intellectual coherence, were you?

Of course, Stephens is a serious thinker, so he must also a nod to policy. So, he explains how Venezuela followed the socialist policy script… to the letter:

… Chávez’s erstwhile defenders … would prefer to forget just how closely Venezuela followed the orthodox socialist script. Government spending on social programs? Check: From 2000 to 2013, spending rose to 40 percent of G.D.P., from 28 percent. Raising the minimum wage? Check. Nicolás Maduro, the current president, raised it no fewer than six times last year (though it makes no difference in the face of hyperinflation). An economy based on co-ops, not corporations? Check again. As Naomi Klein wrote in her fawning 2007 book, “The Shock Doctrine,” “Chávez has made the co-ops a top political priority … By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 cooperatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers.”

Ah yes, what would a list of leftist buffoons be without Naomi Klein? 

What did socialist policies produce? Or better, how did they produce the unmitigated catastrophe that is today’s Venezuela:

Government overspending created catastrophic deficits when oil prices plummeted. Worker co-ops wound up in the hands of incompetent and corrupt political cronies. The government responded to its budgetary problems by printing money, leading to inflation. Inflation led to price controls, leading to shortages. Shortages led to protests, leading to repression and the destruction of democracy. Thence to widespread starvation, critical medical shortages, an explosion in crime, and a refugee crisis to rival Syria’s.

As Stephens points out, at a time when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the new face of the Democratic Party, one needs to keep pointing this out. As it happens, it will probably do not good, the Democratic Party has completely lost its way, but there’s no harm in trying.

As for Trump administration policy toward Venezuela, Stephens approves. I am sure that that will make your day. He offers some further suggestions:

The Trump administration took exactly the right step in recognizing National Assembly leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s constitutionally legitimate president. It can bolster his personal security by warning Venezuela’s generals that harm will come to them if harm comes to him. It can enhance his political standing by providing access to funds that can help him establish an alternative government and entice wavering figures in the Maduro camp to switch sides. It can put Venezuela on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, and warn Cuba that it will be returned to the list if it continues to aid Caracas’s intelligence apparatus.

And it can help arrange legal immunity and a plane for Maduro, his family, and other leading members of the regime if they will agree to resign now. Surely there’s a compound in Havana where that gang can live out their days without tyrannizing a nation.

As for the larger lesson, Stephens closes on this note:

Twenty years of socialism, cheered by Corbyn, Klein, Chomsky and Co., led to the ruin of a nation. They may not be much embarrassed, much less personally harmed, by what they helped do. It’s for the rest of us to take care that it never be done to us.

But, isn’t that the point: they are not embarrassed. They have no sense of shame. At a time when certain psycho professionals are filling the mainstream media with calls to overcome our sense of shame, they should try understand that overcoming your sense of shame means that you can never admit to being wrong… and thus that you are condemned to repeating the same mistake… over and over again. In truth, they do not mind that... as long as they don't have to pay for it.