Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Making Misogyny Respectable Again


They went fishing in the dustbin of history, and guess what they found? That’s right, you guessed it: they discovered the discredited strategy of shaming public officials, holding them up to opprobrium, dispensing with the niceties of debate and even trial… punishing them mercilessly for crimes real and imagined.

It sure beats due process. It also beats democratic elections and deliberative debate. It's called mob rule.

#GetTrump Resistance fighters have reached peak insanity and peak stupidity by publicly humiliating women and children. They banded together to force Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielson from a restaurant. They showed up outside her door to violate her personal time. They expelled Sarah Huckabee Sanders from a restaurant, and then, when members of her party went to another restaurant, they ganged up on them too. They even launched attacks on the president’s son and granddaughter. And they assaulted Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi at a movie theatre.

They wanted to show how strong and empowered they were. Because attacking women is always a good way to show off your toughness. Violating a woman's personal space shows how tough you are. Did anyone consider the implications of violating a woman's privacy? Of course, not. 

If you didn’t notice, they are attacking women and children… and thus are making misogyny respectable again. Once you find reason to attack women, other people will feel that they have been given a green light to assault women. Good job, folks.

Anyway, we are back in the days of Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, when cadres of Red Guards ravaged the bureaucracy by humiliating everyone who held power in the government or the party. Anyone who knows history can tell you how it turned out. A million and a half people murdered by the Red Guards. The situation got so completely out of hand that Mao had to mobilize the army to put down the teenage demonstrators. As for the nation, it was completely destroyed—the extreme poverty rate after Mao’s death was north of 80%.

Once upon a time in America the nation rose up in outrage over the fact that certain people were not allowed to use public accommodations. In certain parts of the South African-Americans were banned from eating at lunch counters. We went to considerable lengths to rectify this egregious wrong. Now the armies of the progressive left see no problem in throwing people out of restaurants because they work for the American government. If not throwing them out, assaulting them with taunts and jeers, ruining the restaurant atmosphere for everyone else.

Evidently, the government will need to lean in against the protesters, in order to restore a semblance of public civility. Because otherwise, we are in far more trouble than you can imagine.

Petula Dvorak gets it mostly right in the Washington Post. She doesn’t really get it right when she says that it’s fine to hate Donald Trump. She is wrong because hate is not a constructive passion. Saying that hate is good for me but not for thee tosses the national conversation into a very dark place. Hate is something best kept dormant.

But she is right about this:

When American businesses stop serving people they don’t like — whether it’s because of their politics, their jobs, the color of their skin, whom they love or whom they worship — we’re breaking the social compact of a civilized society.

It’s not just about Trump administration officials. Dvorak continues, showing the consequences that descend on us when we rip up the social compact:

●A transgender woman was asked to leave a lively Cuban restaurant in downtown Washington for trying to use the women’s bathroom.

●A pharmacist in Arizona cited moral objections and refused a woman’s prescription for miscarriage medication.

●A black man was banned from shopping at his neighborhood grocery store in Maine after asking the clerk why both he and his wife were asked to show their IDs to buy a bottle of sake.

Dvorak notes that some of these people were members of a legally protected class. And that Sarah Sanders was not. Thus, the government cannot prosecute the perpetrators.

And yet, prosecution is not the issue. The issue is violating the norms of civil society. Once you do it, what’s good for thee also becomes good for me.

If you were asking yourselves how it got to this point, I cite Victor Davis Hanson’s sage analysis:

Had the defeated Hillary Clinton only accepted the results of the Electoral College, like all other defeated candidates, there would have been no post-election collusion hysteria. Had Clinton acted magnanimously like other sorely disappointed losers—Jimmy Carter in 1980, Walter Mondale in 1984, Michael Dukakis in 1988, George H.W. Bush in 1992, Bob Dole in 1996, John McCain in 2008, and Mitt Romney in 2012—there would have been no accusations of scandal.

It’s not just that there would have been no post-election collusion hysteria. There would have been no feeling that the election was illegitimate and that the Trump presidency defied democratic and civil social norms.

Consider the old adage: the fish rots from the head down. Our leaders send us signals. They send us signals by their behavior and their actions. If they fail to show proper respect for the winner of an election, their supporters, those who love them beyond reason, will conclude that they had been robbed. They will then conclude that they can go to any lengths to right the wrong inflicted on Hillary.

Hillary Clinton: the presiding genie for the return of American misogyny. Consider the irony in that….

4 comments:

  1. A “social compact,” huh? Well, “social” is about relationships, and “compact” is about agreement. Relationships don’t work this way, and there is no shared agreement about what anything means anymore.

    What’s telling in this is not who the Leftists attack, but who they choose not to attack. As usual, Ms. Dvorak calls out American business as the haters of protected classes of people. Yet Nielsen and Sanders aren’t protected, save that they are women, which makes them more vulnerable to Leftist modes of hostility. The Left always makes it clear they own free speech, while violence is available in ready reserve. It’s a threat that is always in play, because of their rage. So what recourse do people like Nielsen and Sanders have? That’s the crux of the problem: there is none. They don’t “deserve” it.

    The social compact of civilized society is eroding because it has become manifestly unjust because it is thought control masquerading as everyday politics. The Left imposes duties on certain people to accommodate others, while suspending any clear standards in order to solidify their identity-based constituencies. Democrats reward the loyalty of these groups with laws, carve-outs and enforcement. Then it’s up to the rest of us to live with it.

    The problem with transgenders is that they demand just treatment without any physical standard. This denigrates polite society in favor of a infinitesimally-small minority. Read the source articles from the Dvorak WaPo column. The male attendant at the bar asked to see ID, saying the women’s bathroom is for females (go figure). These stories have a sideshow quality, with an air of drama that does not befit the supposed offense. If you cannot figure out what your wedding tackle says you are, what are we to do or say? Sorry your feelings are hurt, but a social compact is based on objective social norms. There are greater reasons that society has designated men’s and women’s bathrooms than special treatment for the 0.6% of the population who cannot figure these things out. Yet his feelings are hurt.

    Sake is an alcoholic beverage, and the enforcement of alcohol statutes in New England is notoriously arbitrary, with sting operations, undercover cops, etc. trying to cite shops, bars and restaurants. There’s too much at stake to risk your liquor license. Read the source story about the black sake buyer in Maine, and you get a clear picture about what’s going on in America, and you’ll see why people are fed up with malignant race-obsessed malcontents. There’s nothing anyone can do to assuage this man’s outrage — he’s been raised with it. And his feelings are hurt.

    I don’t know about pharmacists and miscarriage prescriptions, but if you read the source article, Arizona is one of six states that permit pharmacists to not fill prescriptions on moral grounds. There you go... if you’re an Arizonan who doesn’t like it, work to get the law changed. There is nothing actionable here — the pharmacist was within his/her rights to refuse to dispense the medication. And a woman’s feelings are hurt.

    With regards to Nielsen and Sanders, yes, this is women attacking other women. For having the wrong thoughts. And it requires no courage. Kind of like the people who enjoy making fun of Christianity in the most vulgar and grotesque ways (formerly known as blasphemy). I’d like to see these same courageous activists direct their courageous satire toward Islam, and see how things turn out. Wow, those revenge knife attacks by Christians are really out of control, aren’t they?

    — Continued below —

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  2. — Continued from above —

    The real issue here is that our society has become increasingly legalistic, while the wider culture has become more subjective. While we have laws prohibiting all kinds of things, the increasing problem is we are creating laws that impose affirmative duties on others. We tell some citizens they must do _____, while effectively signaling to others that they can do whatever they want. It’s not just. People first become confused. And when the law is arbitrarily-applied and people are viciously shamed in the media, the targets become angry. We therefore have aggrieved classes of people protected because of immutable characteristics. Meanwhile, we have a larger population that does not get similar protections, yet bears all the risk. Protected classes eventually realize they can get away with unfairness, taunting and other social advantages as victims. It’s a great time to be a victim in America the past 10 years. Follow the incentives our social compact has for certain people, but not for others... that’s the source of the problem.

    When people are taken to task for these unjust “crimes” — based on whether someone’s feelings were hurt — the social compact degrades. The obnoxious, sniveling critics driving this one-way “conversation” about the social compact are invariably Leftists. That’s why we agree about less and less.

    In other news, Hillary doesn’t like the Electoral College. She thinks it’s unfair.

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  3. Asking Sanders to leave a restaurant is misogyny? And I suppose if she was male it would be misandry?

    And is Hillary Clinton trying to over turn the election results? She didn't join up when Green candidate Stein ask for a recount in 3 states after the election.

    IAC says Hillary doesn't like the electoral college, although I've only seen Trump speak against it, mainly because it is so humiliating to think he lost the national vote that he confabulates 3 million voters for Clinton to defend his loss.

    I agree with IAC that legalism is a poor substitute for civility. Baker and restaurant owners have the right to say "I'd prefer not to serve you" and customers should have the right to say "Thank you for sharing your sincere preference, I have other good options." and have the right to sue if there are no other good options and believe standing up will send a necessary message.

    Sex, Religion & Politics are all rude subjects and it is better to put things in context, and see a person in a role in one context and a human being in another. I'd tell people to imagine Sarah was your wayward sister or cousin whom you once loved, even if you don't like what she's doing now. Your influence ends when you show her unnecessary animosity, and you look like the bad guy to the world when she can take it.

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  4. "Sisterhood" is a sham. Always has been, always will be. Women who signed on to "feminism" on the basis of "sisterhood" were snookered big time.

    It's always been all about "power for me, you be damned, sucker".

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