The Rise of the Urban Criminal

2020-- the year when urban crime returned, with a vengeance. Perhaps it was generated by years of seditious rhetoric from our media and our politicians. Surely, it was influenced by a new class of pro-criminal prosecutors.

In America’s major cities citizens elected weak anti-police officials. The result, more crime, less prosecution. By now members of minority communities have expressed their displeasure with the current state of their communities. But, after all, they voted for it, so we do not feel especially sorry for them.

Anyway, what could more clearly typify urban lawlessness than an attack yesterday, in broad daylight, on a BMW, in Manhattan, on Fifth Avenue and 21st. St. That is not a disadvantaged neighborhood.

A physician was driving his elderly mother when their car was assaulted. Powerline blog has the story:

Yesterday in Manhattan, a gang of 25 to 50 “youths” attacked a vehicle stopped at a light:

The Daily Mail reports:

The BMW was adorned with medical license plates, but that did nothing to deter the gang of brazen teens.

… By the time cops arrived at the scene, the teens had sped off. No arrests have been made.

One witness said Torgovnick’s mother was ‘shaking and in tears’.

‘We were trapped, there was so much violence, I thought I was going to die,’ she reportedly said.

Torgovnick says he has lived in New York all his life and could never have previously imagined such a scenario occurring on the streets of his home city.

Law enforcement, under continuous attack from Mayor DeBlasio, who apparently has no problem with this sort of chaos, was nowhere in sight.

The attack was not the exception; it was the new rule.

Powerline continues:

As a result of the left-wing social forces that have been unleashed this year, violence in our cities has skyrocketed. Hans Bader has the numbers, relating specifically to murder:

Murders have skyrocketed this year, as local governments have become softer on crime. In the 57 major cities for which data is available, the murder rate is up an average of 36.7%. Murder went up in 51 cities, and down in only six cities. Murder is up 74.1% in Seattle, 72.3% in Minneapolis, 55.5% in Chicago, 54.1% in Boston, 39.2% in New York, 34.5% in St. Louis, and 30.4% in Los Angeles.

This huge rise in murder occurred as progressive prosecutors became softer on crime, parole became available to more murderers, and the death penalty stopped being used in most states.

So, America is suffering an urban crime wave. And urban Americans voted for said crime wave. Democracy in action....

Michael Snyder has some more of the numbers:

Let’s take a look at some of the hard numbers. 

In New York City, the number of murders has risen 41 percent compared to 2019…

In Chicago:

“We’re over 700 homicides by gun in Chicago this year and close to 800 total homicides for the year,” Chicago FOP President John Catanzara told Fox News Tuesday. “It’s reaching historic levels, and this when the city council and the mayor’s budget just cut over 600 jobs from the police department’s budget when crime is soaring. It’s ridiculous.”

In Portland, Oregon:

Fox News reports based on local crime statistics that murders are surging in Portland, Oregon. “As of Christmas Eve, this year’s shootings had surpassed last year’s by more than 116%, with 393 shootings reported in all of 2019.”

2020 numbers dwarf the prior year’s, having reached over 850 shootings. Among these are more single-year homicides than in any year over the prior nearly three decades.

In Philadelphia:

In Philadelphia, if 15 people get murdered by January 1st they will break the all-time record which was originally established 30 years ago…

A violent night pushes Philadelphia closer to reaching a grim milestone. The city could be on track to surpass the most homicides ever in a calendar year.

The record is 504 homicides which was set in 1990 and with three days left to go in this year the city is has had at least 490.

In Miami-Dade County:

And in south Florida, the number of murders in Miami-Dade County has already broken the old record by a good margin…

Officials recorded 272 homicides through Dec. 24 across Miami-Dade County, up 31 cases from all of 2019, records show. The year isn’t even over and it’s a recent high — up from 232 in all of 2017, and 252 in 2015.

In Minneapolis, where the police are being defunded and replaced with social workers, carjackings have increased exponentially:

Compared to last year, carjackings in Minneapolis were up 537 percent last month.

Just think about that.

When something is rising 537 percent, you are talking about an exponential increase.

Of course it might help if Minneapolis and other major cities were to actually increase police funding instead of decreasing it.

You can put as much money into “mental health programs” as you want, but the truth is that very few criminals will ever be talked out of committing crimes.

If the editors of Time Magazine had half a functioning intelligence they would have made the Urban Criminal the Person of the Year.

The Worst Governor in America

Yes, indeed, team. New York governor Andrew Cuomo is the worst governor in America. It wasn’t an exaggeration to call him the Lord High Executioner for the coronavirus.

Now, in his latest insane decision, Gov. Cuomo has chosen to give coronavirus vaccines to drug addicts-- ahead of giving them to senior citizens. Evidently, seniors are at the greatest risk, but the woke governor, who presumably receives more votes from drug addicts, has chosen to push them down the line.

Hot Air has the story, (via Maggie’s Farm) beginning with a tweet from Rep. Elise Stefanik:

The Worst Governor in America streak continues …

This time prioritizing vaccines for drug addicts over tens of thousands of seniors who have been home bound since the start of the pandemic.

An absolute disgrace👇 https://t.co/jwBvpv3Yec

— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) December 28, 2020

The story continues, pointing out that media darling Cuomo can do whatever he pleases because no one calls him out on it. In fact, he is praised and rewarded for having produced more coronavirus deaths than any other state:

When you’re the governor who probably killed more senior citizens than all of the serial killers in American history combined by forcing nursing homes to take in potential COVID carriers without requiring testing, let’s just say this isn’t a good look. Cuomo got off to a good start by putting nursing homes at the top of the list for vaccines, but that was already part of the CDC guidance and pretty much every state in the country was doing it. The New York Governor could have upped his game a bit by extending vaccinations to all seniors over the age of 65 or at least the ones whose doctors indicate that they have ongoing medical issues.

Instead, Cuomo decided to make those seniors wait and polish his woke credentials. And one of the congresswomen from his own state called him out on it in a very public way. But why should Cuomo care? He’s the Teflon Don, after all. Nothing seems to ever lay a glove on his political fortunes in the Empire State.

France, Psychoanalysis and Autism

For some longtime readers of this blog, it will feel like an old story. For those who read my book on The Last Psychoanalyst, it will sound familiar.

The story involves France, psychoanalysis and autism. As filmmaker Sophie Robert documented in her film, The Wall (Le Mur) France stands alone in refusing to treat autistic children with the best that science has to offer. It rejects behavioral and cognitive approaches because its psychoanalysts refuse to accept them.

You see, these new treatments work reasonably well. Psychoanalysis does not work at all. Ergo, France must keep the new treatments out of the country, lest an alien Anglo-Saxon culture, based on empirical science, gain a foothold.

Now, as a coda to the debate, Dorothy Bishop and Joel Swendson have published a paper on the problem, in the BJ Psych Bulletin, published by the Cambridge University Press for the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Link here.

Here is the summary:

In most countries, social or behavioural interventions are recommended for autism. However, in France, psychoanalysis is still used, despite objections by patients, families and mental health experts. Supporters of psychoanalysis maintain that the choice of therapeutic approach is a matter of cultural preference, and that objections to psychoanalysis arise from misunderstandings. We argue that more deep-rooted problems are the lack of an evidence base for psychoanalysis and its focus on sexual relationships between children and adults, which demonises mothers and can put children at risk of abuse. Furthermore, psychoanalysis in France is protected from criticism by powerful educational and political networks.

The Tech Dilemma-- To Stay or to Leave San Francisco

Add the Charles Schwab company to the list of the firms that are leaving San Francisco. Yesterday, Schwab announced that it was moving its headquarters to the Dallas,TX area. 

Those who remain in the region are undergoing a type of mourning process. At first, they were saying, good riddance, we don’t need you anyway. Now, they have moved on to shaming-- those who left town are cowards who have abandoned ship.

Mike Solana has written a thoughtful article about the ongoing discussion on Substack. (via Maggie’s Farm).

He remarks that local political leaders have produced the debacle that the city and the state are now suffering. No argument there. And he questions whether the tech oligarchs owe their success to Silicon Valley, or whether these same people made the Valley into a tech hub. Who owes what to whom? Do the tech companies owe it to San Francisco and California to stay around, even while being abused and harassed by government officials.

As it is simply too embarrassing for politicians to admit the state needs the technology industry after more than a decade of antagonizing the men and women who built it, and as it is political suicide for incumbent politicians in a one-party state to admit that every one of the problems we’re facing has been created by our elected leaders, a moral argument for tech’s responsibility to California, and specifically the Bay Area, has recently been produced. It goes something like this: young ambitious people moved to the state, and struck gold. But rather than “give back” to the land, they’re leaving with resources they “took” from the region. Like the milkshake guy from There Will Be Blood, sucking oil from the earth. Like the evil army people from Avatar, and their unquenchable thirst for unobtanium. It’s the Substack Billionaire Boy’s Club at it again, but this time with shovels and axes and the exploitative fantasy of eating up all the “low-income” 29 million dollar mansions in Miami Beach.

Have these firms given to the community or have they taken from it? As you know, the government officials who have been antagonizing the tech industry are now hard at work figuring out how to tax them, even if they leave the state. In New York anyone who lives outside of the state for six months and a day is exempt from state income taxes. In the new proposals in California, spending sixty days in the state subjects you to income and wealth taxes.

Tax the rich, why not? These brain dead legislators do not know how to do anything else:

But I take extreme issue with the notion that industry leaders have taken something from the “community,” defined here as the “talent,” the “incubators,” and the “mentors.” This is precisely the opposite of reality. The men and women leaving are the talent, they have started the incubators, they have built the companies, they have funded the startup ecosystem, and they have mentored countless young people. This is the “network.” They are the network. Technology workers do not “extract” value from the region, they are what makes the region valuable.

It’s the talent that has built the tech industry. By now, the talent is fed up with being harassed by government officials. It has been finding more welcoming climes in Texas and Florida and perhaps even Nevada.

Solana asks one pertinent question: what have the state and city governments done with the enhanced tax revenues the received from the high tech firms? In truth, they have wasted the money. The city of San Francisco is rife with homelessness, crime and drug abuse. And housing is unaffordable-- largely because the local government has done everything in its power to inhibit the construction of new housing.

With our government’s incredible, historic abundance of wealth, the Board of Supervisors has presided over: a dramatic increase in homelessness, drug abuse, crime — now including home invasion — and a crippling cost of living that can be directly ascribed to the local landed gentry’s obsession with blocking new construction. This latter piece is important, as it appears to be the only thing our Board cares about. This is because significantly increasing the local housing supply would decrease the value of the multi-million dollar homes almost every single one of our Supervisors owns, and we could never have that.

And, the local government is now working to institute socialist government control over technology firms. You might find it ironic, or at least pathetic, that the high tech oligarchs who are contributing to Democratic political campaigns, both with their fortunes and with their in-kind censorship of the opposition, would find it shocking that the city government has gone full socialist-- that means taking control over new tech firms:

They also instituted the “San Francisco Office of Emerging Technology,” which in theory prohibits almost every future company and technology from existing in the city without prior approval from the local government. Laws aren’t enforced in San Francisco, so the OET hasn’t really come up. But a company in this city can now be attacked by the Board at any moment, for almost any reason. This is the nature of ambiguous laws in one-party states. In a country where nothing is technically legal, punishment can be meted out for almost any whim or unjust personal reason that can be imagined by small-minded people with political power.

As seems to be happening in New York City and State, the mania about increasing taxes is directly aimed at the wealthy, at the 1% that pay nearly half of the state taxes. Not paying their fair share-- so say the politicians. Increasingly, the rich are choosing not to pay anything at all.

Since income taxes are structured progressively, the state has backed itself into a position of extreme uncertainty, as the top one percent of earners pay half the state’s taxes — while politicians argue the state’s wealthiest men and women, who already pay more in taxes than the wealthiest men and women of any other state and most free countries in the world, are not paying their “fair share.” As if rudimentary economic threats were not enough, politicians have made cultural platforms of their anti-technology, anti-industry attitudes, and have done everything in their power to drive our top one percent of earners out of the state. In this, our politicians are succeeding.

But then, Solana explains that the tech tycoons have not even bothered to fight. Aside from those who have moved out of the state, the rest have been supine and submissive. Perhaps they have gotten in touch with their feminine sides.

Then again, most of the tech oligarchs have some serious ideological commitments, and their beliefs trend toward the left. This makes them obtuse at levels that one rarely sees about the very wealthy-- they are voting against their own self-interest.

As I have suggested, they must think that by skewing elections leftward they are buying protection from the mob. Alas, such seems not to have placated the ravenous appetites of the mob:

There’s the sense the technology industry “lost” some kind of fight. But with such tremendous wealth and creativity, how was this possible?

It’s pretty simple, really. We never actually fought.

There is a tremendous irony in the notion that tech workers have ruined the region, for which we are now constantly being blamed while at the same time being told that leaving is tantamount to violence. The truth is, had tech workers actually assumed a significant measure of political influence, and led in local politics, San Francisco would today be one of the greatest cities in the world. But not only was such political influence not achieved, it was never attempted. Throughout the most recent technology boom of the last fifteen years, there has been almost no meaningful engagement in local politics from the industry.

Then again, the grandees of the tech world have larger problems to deal with. They are saving the world by enlisting to fight the war on the weather.

So, what’s a techie to do? Solana recommends more civic engagement. And yet, local San Francisco politics, of the socialist variety, is exactly what the tech tycoons have been promoting on a national level.

Fight or flight? There is no right answer here. I’m still figuring it out myself. The only thing I know for sure is “extraction” didn’t do this, and if what the technology industry has given the Bay Area constitutes “exploitation,” then for the love of God, Mark Zuckerberg, exploit me next.

In any case, regardless of the city we land in, we have to get involved. There’s no ignoring the rest of the world anymore. Grab your shovels, folks, we’ve got work to do.

Extract or die.

Destroying Mimi Groves

Were it not for the New York Times the story would probably not have been much noticed. It’s a small incident, from a high school in Virginia, about how one malicious teenager set out to destroy a classmate.

In the hands of the New York Times it became an anti-racism morality play. For reasons that will remain unmentioned, the Times is all over any story that allows it to teach about racism. It does not care whether the information is inaccurate or false. It will run stories like its 1619 Project because they make a point about anti-racism.

The simple fact that every historian who examined the 1619 Project saw it for the lie that it was, made not a whit of difference.

In Shakespeare’s words, the 1619 Project is: “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Dare we mention that the Times, being the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party did not raise any hue and cry about Virginia governor Ralph Northam’s using his medical school yearbook page to put up a photo of a Klansman and a man in blackface. Not a problem, the media declared, because Northam was a Democrat.

If the Times had any sense of shame it would understand that it has disgraced itself, over and over again.

Now, in another appalling episode, it has taken out after a child, a girl named Mimi Groves for having posted something offensive when she was 15. And it has lionized a despicable wretch named Jimmy Galligan for having done everything in his power to destroy Mimi Groves.

As it happens, Groves lives in Virginia, in a place called Leesburg, named after Robert E. Lee, so naturally, her childhood indiscretion has been blown up by the New York Times into an expression of racist oppression, of a piece with slavery and Jim Crow.

The story has been widely covered, so I will not go into all the details, but when Mimi Groves got her learner’s permit at age 15 she posted a remark wherein she used a racist epithet.

Young Galligan, a biracial student whose father is white, but apparently not especially woke, conspired to punish Groves. So he held on to the three-second post for years, waiting for the time when he could spring it on the world in a way that would cause maximum pain for Mimi Groves. Sadism, anyone?

One has not read all the commentaries, but one would suspect that feminists would rush to defend a woman who is being purposefully abused by a male being. Unfortunately, this feels like yet another instance of the silence of the feminists.

When star cheerleader Groves was accepted into the University of Tennessee and was chosen for the nationally recognized cheerleading squad, Galligan sprung his attack. He posted the video. When the three second video went viral the University of Tennessee, in a disgraceful manifestation of cowardice, forced Groves to withdraw her acceptance into the school.

She is currently attending a local community college. Galligan is attending a Christian college in California. No one seems to believe that he did anything wrong, though his foresight and planning suggests clearly that he acted with pure malice. When did it happen that a good Christian should feel proud of being malicious?

Galligan wanted to destroy another human being, to render her life miserable, to make her a pariah in her community. He feels absolutely no regret and would happily do it again. After all the New York Times is cheering him on.

Nothing quite like destroying a child's life to make a biracial student feel like a hero in the struggle for civil rights.

Of course, Galligan has done great damage to the cause of civil rights. This is so, not merely because of what he did, despicable as it is, but because he has been widely lauded for his action. The society at large, led by the moral eunuchs at the New York Times, finds his to be acceptable behavior. 

If your cause is sufficiently just you have the right to destroy children. We are no longer in the world of the marketplace of ideas. We have entered an amoral universe where power manifests itself in its ability to destroy people on the grounds of their race.

And we have diminished the reputations of black people across the country. If blacks are allowed to destroy white people for statements made during childhood, why would a white person want to associate with them. Galligan and the New York Times have set back the cause of civil rights.

One notes, as has been noted, that young Groves has apologized profusely for her childhood indiscretion, which represented little more than an echo of the kind of language that fills up the hip-hop songs that teenagers love to listen to. Cardi B uses the n-- word all the time and no one cares, even though she is Hispanic.

By the moral calculus of the New York Times, Groves committed an unforgivable sin. In truth, every religion contains the concept of forgiveness, of the forgiveness of sin. Those who atone or do penance for their sins are forgiven.

Except for the teenaged Mimi Groves-- her sin was so egregious that she will never be forgiven. Now, the disgraceful behavior of Jimmy Galligan has become a moral paragon.

For those who are not familiar with the ins and outs of theology, I will note, in passing, that Christianity does identify one unforgivable sin-- namely, blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ says so in Matthew 12: 32.

As for the meaning of the statement, the Bishop of Hippo, Augustine himself declared that the one unforgivable sin was-- impenitence. And yet, clearly Groves was penitent.

See also, Ezekiel 18:22;

None of the transgressions that they have committed shall be remembered against them; for the righteousness that they have done they shall live.

I would posit, as a point worthy of your consideration, that psycho analytic theory does posit, as an article of faith, that the past always haunts the present, that we never escape it. We might be able to diminish its hold, but we do not escape it.

Whereas the book of Ezekiel declares that once the past is atoned for, it should be forgotten, the new psycho morality suggests that it can never be atoned for enough.

In some theories, we are haunted by the traumas experienced in childhood. In others, we are crippled by our sinful wishes. This suggests that if we want to find a pseudo religion where sins can never be forgiven, we should look to the psycho world. 

The other side of the issue lies in what are called resilience studies. While psycho theorists claim that you will never get over the traumas visited on you during childhood, resilience studies suggest that nearly two thirds of people do.

So, Mimi Groves was penitent about her use of a bad word when she was 15. Jimmy Galligan is proud of the fact that he destroyed another human being, out of pure malice. In a society that had a moral compass, Galligan would be paying a price. 

Rod Dreher raises the salient issue. 

This Times story will follow Jimmy Galligan everywhere too. If that kid applied for a job at my firm, I would never hire him. If he were my co-worker, I would stay away from him, lest I offend him and get the Little- Anthony-from-The-Twilight-Zone treatment. He has shown the kind of person he is: a hateful progressive who takes pleasure in causing others unnecessary pain and suffering for the sake of virtue. He wants to terrorize others. Everybody who goes to college with him now, and who crosses his path, should consider themselves forewarned.

Book Burning, American Style

The Great American Cultural Revolution proceeds apace. The war to gain complete control over the American mind is moving forward. 

You will recall-- or maybe not-- that Chairman Mao used the pretext of his Cultural Revolution to monopolize the marketplace of ideas-- that is the market for books. With only one exception all books were banned. The one exception was the little red book of the thoughts of Chairman Mao. Everyone was forced to read it, to study it, to mouth its platitudes and to declare complete and total subservience to its ideas.

But, it was all for an ignoble cause, so Westerners, especially those who inhabited France, were enthralled by the idea. Think of what it did for book sales and royalties.

Anyway, Megan Cox Gordon reports in the Wall Street Journal today that school districts across America are canceling the classics, whether Homer or Shakespeare or Hawthorne. The reason-- these books do not advance the current pedagogical effort to brainwash children, to make them too dysfunctional to function in the real world.

What strikes the moderately sensible intelligence here is that the teachers who are throwing out the classics-- is book burning next?-- are basically too stupid to teach the works anyway. I suspect that they have not read them, and if they read them have no idea what is in them.

Seriously, removing The Odyssey from the curriculum-- what justification can there be for that, beyond the obvious fact that the teacher does not want to read the book and, if he has read it, does not understand it anyway. It’s too long and it was written in Greek-- obviously a sign of bigotry.

Gordon explains:

Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular—especially those “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” as young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman writes in School Library Journal. No author is valuable enough to spare, Ms. Venkatraman instructs: “Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.”

The last sentence is barely literate. But, the author, who manifestly does not know how to write, takes after Shakespeare because his plays showed hateful sentiments.

Of course, you cannot challenge hate if you do not show it in action, but the barely literate author does not understand this. She tells us that her goal, as a member of the thought police, is to ban any speech she disagrees with as hate speech.

Evidently, the war on hate speech and of course on bigotry, offers these petty despots a way to undermine the first amendment to the Constitution.

And I would add that the author hates Shakespeare and hates writers who know how to write-- something that is well beyond her limited talents. As for her notion of “academic excellence” Shakespeare's works do not manifest academic excellence, but literary excellence. Academic excellence might refer to critical studies about Shakespeare. 

I will note in passing that the author’s other expression-- “hate-ridden sentiments” is also barely literate. You see, the author is sorely lacking in education herself. She could use a few courses in the proper usage of the English language. Instead she wants to burn the books of everyone who does not toe the party line on anti-racism.

One suspects that she is suffering severe anguish every time she encounters someone who is literate, because it makes her feel like an illiterate buffoon.

She is not alone on the illiteracy track:

Thus Seattle English teacher Evin Shinn tweeted in 2018 that he’d “rather die” than teach “The Scarlet Letter,” unless Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel is used to “fight against misogyny and slut-shaming.”

Again, not a whit of intelligence about the book itself. For Shinn it’s about sexism, all the way down. If he knew anything about Puritanism-- which he does not-- he would have known that the culture rejected adultery because it was practicing a new social custom-- love marriage.

When women married for love-- as opposed to being obliged to engage in arranged marriage-- European cultures could no longer blithely countenance institutionalized adultery. So, if you are against shaming adultery you are also striking a blow for arranged marriages-- marriages where a woman has no real choice in the matter.

Another illiterate teacher offered this thought, reported by Gordon:

Outsiders got a glimpse of the intensity of the #DisruptTexts campaign recently when self-described “antiracist teacher” Lorena Germán complained that many classics were written more than 70 years ago: “Think of US society before then & the values that shaped this nation afterwards. THAT is what is in those books.”

Evidently, she does not know how to write or to think. But, she does find a reason to burn books. You see, any book that was written more than seventy years ago is a product of its times, and thus manifests racism. This applies especially to classics, to works of enduring literary and artistic merit.

Of course, German, being an obvious idiot, does not recognize literary or artistic value. If the books were written at a time when racism prevailed, they must promote racism. Might it be that they opposed racism? Many works did. What does she have to say about the Anglo-Saxon efforts to abolish slavery and racism.

It is so stupid that one hesitates to mention it, but there it is. Obviously, people have used such principles to justify burning books, shutting down free and open discussion-- and dumbing down the population.

Gordon concludes:

If there is harm in classic literature, it comes from not teaching it. Students excused from reading foundational texts may imagine themselves lucky to get away with YA novels instead—that’s what the #DisruptTexts people want—but compared with their better-educated peers they will suffer a poverty of language and cultural reference. Worse, they won’t even know it.

Clearly, children who are deprived of exposure to the classics will not learn how to write or to think. It might catch up to them on their college entrance exams. It might catch up to them when they cannot understand what is being taught in a college classroom. Or it might catch up with them when they find that their bad education has consigned them to the lower rungs of the social ladder. 

If you cannot think cogently and express yourself clearly you will miss out on a myriad of job opportunities. And you will find yourself excluded from certain social groups. Then, you will have no other recourse than to take to the streets and to burn the house down.  

Were anyone to suggest that the truncated educational experience offered by woke pedagogues is damaging your future chance to move up the social and economic ladder, he would immediately be canceled.

Girl Powerlessness

So, women are now an oppressed minority. And they vote like an oppressed minority-- for the political party that pretends it will take care of them. 

They have bought the ideology and are flocking to the party of Bill Clinton, sexual harasser and rapist, of Joe Biden, hair sniffer extraordinaire, and of Hillary Clinton, the nation’s chief enabler of sexual harassment.

They happily put on pussy hats and march on Washington behind a bunch of anti-Semites. And they insist on being respected for their minds.

And yet, when a woman who is one of the nation’s greatest legal minds is nominated to the Supreme Court they are horrified. A real woman's accomplishments mean nothing when balanced against ideological conformity.

On this blog I have remarked that the Republican Party has become the Boy Party while the Democratic Party has become the Girl Party. Eric Levitz points out in a New York Magazine article that the gender gap between male and female voters has now become a chasm.

He offers some cogent explanations, though they seem to boil down to the notion that, what with the overthrow of the patriarchy, women are becoming non-traditional. This also means that women are sacrificing their lives in order to advance a leftist, and even Marxist ideology. The building blocks of contemporary feminism come from Friedrich Engels, through his book, The Origin of the Family. I am not using the term Marxist loosely.

Perhaps more intriguing is the fact that more and more women are swearing off men. Some 30% are now identifying as non-binary, whether lesbian or bisexual or transgendered. The number is astronomical, and certainly represents a cultural symptom. 

On the one hand, as Rod Dreher points out, this will have a direct influence on reproduction, and the future of America. Of course, to be fair, America will happily import new people in order to make up the shortfall. And some groups will produce more children than others. What might happen is that the politically woke segment of the female population will have fewer offspring and will bring them up in differently structured family organizations. 

That the traditional family, whether nuclear or generational, has been proven over time to be functional seems not to have crossed anyone’s mind. The ideological zealots who are moving the culture have adopted the Engels’ formula, namely that the structure of the family merely affirms the power of patriarchy over women. As Engels said, it made women into men’s private property.

So, women have ceased to be men’s private property, but have martyred themselves, even to the point of mutilating themselves, to advance a discredited and defeated political cause.

Please don’t expect that people will now respect them for their minds.

Levitz made an effort to explain the current gender chasm last October:

As CNN’s Harry Enten observed earlier this month, Biden’s average lead among women in recent interview polls is about 25 points; no nominee of either party has ever led by that much among women in a final preelection survey, not even in the landslide years of 1964 and 1984. And yet, in those same surveys, Trump leads among men by three points. In 2016, the gender gap in voting preference was 20 points; if current polls hold steady, it will be 28.

Happily for Levitz, he does not blame it on Trump. If he had, we would immediately dismiss him as a deranged partisan. As it happens the gender chasm pertains in all advanced democracies.

And yet, it would be a mistake to attribute this year’s gender gap entirely to Trump’s personal attributes. After all, women have been trending left, as men trend right, for decades now. And this development is not unique to the United States — rather, it is present across nearly all advanced democracies. Viewed in this context, Trump looks as much like a product of the gender gap as he does like a cause: It’s quite plausible that Trump would not have won the 2016 GOP nomination if the Republican coalition hadn’t already grown heavily male (in multiple state primaries, Trump performed significantly better among men than women).’

According to my formulas, the Girl Party is the party of care, compassion and empathy. The Boy party is the party of competition and enterprise. You might say that we are becoming more decadent-- we surely are-- but we must also say that Western democracies are giving up on competing against Asian economies.

The emergence of a gender gap in voting preferences throughout the postindustrial world suggests that the forces pulling men and women into opposite political camps long predated Trump’s political career — and will be shaping our politics long after he’s gone.

In the U.S., women have been voting to the left of men for four decades now. As a result, many contemporary political observers consider the female population’s relative liberalism to be a law of the political universe: Of course, women would, in the aggregate, favor the party of reproductive autonomy and social welfare, given their inherent interest in the former and their relatively greater propensity for empathy and cooperation.

Nowadays women depend less on men for financial security. Ergo, they vote for the political party that is willing to take care of them. If not hubby, the state will protect them-- through welfare and by criminalizing certain types of male behavior.

Obviously, the flaw in this reasoning does not make it to the Levitz brain:

When a larger percentage of women in Western Europe and the U.S. depended on husbands for financial security, they arguably had a material interest in some aspects of social conservatism, such as its emphasis on familial obligation and the stigmatization of (male) infidelity. As remunerative employment became more available to all genders, however, more women came to understand such conservatism less as a safeguard against deprivation than an affront to their autonomy.

And then there is this, the fact that more and more women are identifying as gay, bisexual or trnsgendered. There, that will teach those men:

As Rebecca Traister has incisively argued, the growing prevalence of singledom among America’s rising generation of women is one of the most potent forces in contemporary politics. In 2009, for the first time in history, there were more unmarried women in the United States than married ones. And today, young women in the U.S. aren’t just unprecedentedly single; they also appear to be unprecedentedly uninterested in heterosexuality: According to private polling shared with Intelligencer by Democratic data scientist David Shor, roughly 30 percent of American women under 25 identify as LGBT; for women over 60, that figure is less than 5 percent.

Of course, it makes a certain amount of sense. If men are toxic chauvinist pigs, why would any self-respecting woman want to enter into a romantic relationship with one of them? Besides, as is well known, women as well as most men do find females to be at least somewhat attractive. Only gay men do not find females attractive.

Besides, women loving women do not need contraception. They do not for the most part need to worry about STDs. And they quickly discover that other women are more interested in committed relationships than are men. And of course women know better than men how to give women pleasure.

All told, it does not seem like such a bad deal. 

And yet, there must be more to it. Blaming it all on men is a serious waste of little gray cells. Consider this: we now live in an age where hooking up is far more commonplace than it ever was. Many young women and girls have their first experience of male sexuality on their knees fellating a drunk boy they have just met. If you want to sanitize it a bit, let's say that they are learning the art of the hand job.

Fair enough, that is slightly caricatured, but sex without commitment, sex without dating and courtship, sex where a woman is supposed to service a boy and receive nothing in return-- these have become far more common. Compare that to girl-girl sex, and we can understand why women are increasingly renouncing men. 

I paint this disagreeable picture in order to emphasize that some part-- even if only a small part-- involves the way women have chosen to interact with men-- sexually speaking. It was not the dread patriarchy that told women to hook up. It was feminists who declared that women should be liberated from patriarchal constraints on their sexuality. It was feminists who told women to have sex like men-- promiscuously. 

Yet, women are still more likely than men to want to receive a telephone call the next day. When they do not receive one they feel used and degraded. That they contributed to their own self-degradation does not mitigate their sense that they have compromised themselves morally and now need to repair the damage they have caused to their self-respect.

Better to blame men and to renounce them. If presented with the choice between being labeled a slut-- the old walk of shame-- and renouncing men, the instruments of their degradation, more and more women are choosing the latter. 

Apparently, it has never crossed the addled minds of today’s young women that they might try dating and courtship before engaging in sexual transactions.

That women would get hurt behaving the way feminists told them to behave has not crossed the minds of those who are happy to win elections with women’s votes.