This post starts out darker than usual. At the end, it turns out, there’s a logical explanation for the phenomenon.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Well, in one sense it’s totally obvious: You’re not going to be aware of less evil over time; that wouldn’t make sense.
For me it went like this:
It starts with the realization that the media and the universities are a passel of utterly evil liars.
Then you realize that women prefer jerks to nice guys. (Yes, I hammer on this a lot, but it’s important to emphasize this truth. Not just because booty! but also because Game is one of the things that’s destroying the Left, particularly in its feminist manifestation.)
Then you realize that every single leftist who ever claimed to value facts, logic, science, reason, and just plain old reality was lying his ass off. They just claimed they wanted a debate because it kept us looking up facts while they were infiltrating our institutions, letting a flood of invaders into our countries, and just generally making war on us. It was a deception that was put forth as a political and martial strategy.
And the same goes for their claims that they valued freedom of speech. They actually said this, and put forward every indication of really meaning it, back in the 1960s and 1970s, or so I’m told. But it was all a lie designed to get us to let our guard down. As soon as they had a significant amount of power in, e.g., the universities, they said, “Ha! Suckers! Now that we have power… we don’t believe in freedom of speech and we will try to silence everyone who disagrees with us!”
Then you realize that the Republican/Democrat thing really is all one big Uniparty. I mean, I actually thought there were differences between Dems and Repubs. Or maybe there were, in the past, but that has changed in recent decades. Watching the GOPe betray its base on immigration, try to thwart President Trump at every turn, and try to scuttle Roy Moore’s Senate run are only the latest manifestations.
When I first realized that the world was like an ever-unfolding onion of evil, I felt sick. Was there no end to it? Was I living in some sort of Satanic experiment in which the Devil was studying the effect on a person of having pleasant illusions stripped away over and over again?
Nope. I had this simple insight:
Evil is revealed gradually over time because the more extreme the evil is, the more it tries to hide itself, so the more time it takes to uncover the truth.
(OK, chicks digging jerks isn’t evil per se, but you know what I mean. We’re talking about things that are nasty here, from boinking jerks to truly evil things.)
In other words, the difficulty of seeing the truth about a particular matter is not randomly assigned to that matter. It’s endogenous: The nastier the truth is, the more the perpetrators will try to hide it. If you shoplifted $2.00 of stuff you’d go through a certain amount of effort to hide it. But if you killed someone, you’d go through a hell of a lot more effort to hide that.
And it’s the other way around for good institutions, good people, etc.: They’re generally not gradually revealed over time because they don’t try to hide themselves. Why would they? They’re right in the open from the get-go! So there’s no gradual revealing of good that matches the gradual revealing of evil.
When I realized this I emerged into the bright clear sunlight of reason. Whew! It all does make sense. The universe is not that insane and evil. This is exactly what one would expect to see in an imperfect but sane universe!
Leaders at the church that George Washington attended decided that a plaque honoring the first president of the United States must be removed.
Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia will take down a memorial marking the pew where Washington sat with his family, saying it is not acceptable to all worshipers.
“The plaques in our sanctuary make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome,” leaders said, a reference to the fact that Washington was a slaveholder.
“Some visitors and guests who worship with us choose not to return because they receive an unintended message from the prominent presence of the plaques.”
First of all, bullshit to that last line. I can just see someone going up to the pastor and saying, “I was going to be a member of this church, but I’ve changed my mind because I’m convinced that the Washington thing means you’re going to try to enslave me.” Right.
Secondly, even if anyone said that, it would only prove that they’re insane, and that you don’t want them in your church.
To even bother engaging with the left is to engage with insanity, overt insanity.
Nancy Werlin’s Impossible is a blast of female sexual psychology in 200-proof form.
Folk music, long walks on the beach, and magical elf rape.
The central idea is that an elf knight has cursed a line of women. The novel’s curse is based on the folk song Scarborough Fair (apparently another title of the song is The Elfin Knight). In the story, the curse is actually the origin of that song. The curse began centuries ago with a human woman, Fenella Scarborough, because she rejected a marriage proposal from the elf.
The curse is this: Each woman in the line is raped by the elf when she is seventeen. She becomes pregnant with a daughter and must accomplish three seemingly impossible tasks, set forth in the elf’s curse, before the daughter is born. Thus, e.g., “Tell her to find me an acre of land, between the salt water and the sea strand.” Etc. If the mother fails, she will go insane and the curse will be passed on to her daughter. If the mother completes the three tasks before her daughter is born, the curse is broken forever.
No woman has ever managed to do this, as of the novel’s opening, so the curse is still in force.
By the way, this means that the elf dude is the father of all these chicks. Then he rapes them when they’re seventeen. Eeeeeewwww! Why why why would you do that? In fact he possesses a human male and magically accomplishes the rape that way, so he’s not actually related genetically to the girls, but still!
Before I get out the red pill hammer and start bashing away, a couple of positive notes:
One bit of perceptiveness in all this is that Werlin has grasped the fact that Scarborough Fair is not a love song. In the Author’s Note at the back of the book, she says she adored Simon and Garfunkel’s version as a girl: “I had then found the song beautiful and sad and oh-so-romantic. I was big believer in romance and true love, and, of course, in having a good cry over same.” (LOL, “having a good cry.” Women!)
But Werlin heard the song again when she was older: “But thinking about the ballad’s lyrics as an adult–and focusing fully on the words themselves, rather than the gorgeous melody and harmony… I found myself puzzled and then a little horrified. The man, singing, demands one impossible task after another from the woman… It’s a pretty cruel song, I thought. There’s no way that the woman can prove herself to that man. He’s already made up his mind. I listened some more, and then suddenly I thought: He hates her.”
Quite. I always wondered about that myself. The melody to Scarborough Fair is beautiful, but the lyrics ain’t nice. Kind of like The Police’s Every Breath You Take, which seems nice until you actually listen to the lyrics and realize the song’s narrator is a totally obsessed stalker. You’re like, “Whoa, calm down, dude! Smoke a jay or something.”
The other positive, or semi-positive, comment I have about this is that the basic conceit is pretty good. Oh, what a better author could have done with this! The problem is that apart from the estrogen-drenched delusionality I’ll take on below, Werlin is not that good a writer. Among other things, her characterization tends to the artificial.
Preliminaries:
1) SPOILER WARNING, as always.
2) When I reproduce quotes from the novel I will elide some words for brevity. To avoid visual clutter, I won’t use ellipses (…) to indicate elisions.
3) This novel has quite a blend of things women want and things they think they want but actually don’t. For this reason, we cannot take it (or any female-written text about anything related to sex) at face value. We must say “No, that’s horseshit, women don’t really want that” about some of the novel’s aspects and “Yes, this is a woman revealing what women actually want” about other aspects. Isn’t this inconsistent? What’s the difference? Simple: Reality itself. Reality itself is what we actually heed, because reality is what we’re interested in. We do not use a woman-authored text to figure out what women want (God, no). Rather, we use it to illustrate things we already know about women from observing reality. E.g., we know women love to have beta orbiters; they deliberately collect them. That comes from reality. But a beta orbiter who helps you deal with a pregnancy from being proxy-raped by a magical elf knight, well, that particular example comes from the veering mind of Nancy Werlin. It is, in other words, a particular illustration of a common female psychological feature.
Speaking of elf rapes, let’s get into the story.
This novel is a particularly extreme, and therefore particularly clear, illustration of the Alpha fucks, Beta bucks female reproductive strategy. The main character, Lucy, is fucked – raped, actually – by the evil magical fairy knight. Note: Evil, high status, powerful: Almost an archetype of the dominant bad boy. It’s also stated that he is irresistibly attractive to women. (Literally irresistible. Like, he goes into a hospital that isn’t hiring and asks for a job, and the chick who works in HR is overcome with lust and she basically says, “We don’t have any openings, but I’ll create one for you.”) Then Zach, the hapless beta who has a pathetic crush on the main character, pledges to support the child that is the result of that alpha rape, no strings attached.
Plus, the main character is cursed, which creates wonderful – and unique! – drama.
Chapter 11: The main character, Lucy, is dating a dude named Gray. (Yeah, “Gray.” Why does he have to have such an annoying name?) One of the first clues we get that there’s going to be a certain amount of female delusionality in this book:
Gray had his cheek right up against her neck. He was kissing her there. So warm, his lips. Warm like his hands. Softer than she would have thought. And she could tell he was just as uncertain, just as inexperienced, and just as hopeful as she was. Which was perfect.
NO!!! This is not what females want! God, the delusionality power of women to convince themselves that they want something they don’t. Women want a man who is experienced. At the tender age of seventeen, a girl might not be expecting a guy to have a double-digit notch count, but she definitely wants him to be self-confident, not “uncertain.” Inexperience is never a positive to a girl. Once the chick and dude hit a certain age— say late high school, college— it’s always at least a mild negative to the female, even if it’s not a huge deal to her.
End of Ch 13, p. 75: Lucy’s date, the annoyingly-named Gray, has been possessed by the elf, who is using Gray’s body to rape her.
[Lucy] fought, as hard as she could. That, also, had been a terrifying shock, because if anyone had asked her ahead of time about her own strength, she would have had confidence in it… And, too, she would have said that Gray wasn’t strong. He was a skinny band geek, for crying out loud. She would have thought that of course she could fight Gray Spencer, any day, and win.
So she was dating a guy whose ass she thinks she could kick. Uh, no. Females don’t do this. See, this is what we red-pillers mean by female delusionality. When she was writing this, Werlin might have thought, “Here’s something that’s totally plausible, that a human female – a young female of breeding age, no less – would do: Date a young man who she thinks she could beat in a fight.” NO, Werlin. Bad Werlin! No alpha rape for you! Neither you, nor any other woman, would be attracted to a guy whose ass you think you could kick. Not a good move, Nancy, if you want your characters to seem like actual humans. This is an extreme example of the artificial characterization I mentioned above.
Ch 26: Zach offers to help Lucy and be all supportive n shit. She says, Thanks, and if you don’t, then you can F off. His response is, “I totally deserved that,” which is completely fucking ridiculous. This whole scene is just chicks thinking that they want a wussy, which they don’t. Or maybe they do want a beta male who’s a wussy, because it makes the beta easier to control. They don’t want sexy-man who’s a wussy, though. Wussies aren’t sexy to women; even blue-pilled dudes know that.
The relevant passage:
Finally he spoke. “I”m just so angry for you, Luce. I know you’ll be okay. You and the baby. With my head I know that. But I’m still mad. It’s all going to be so much harder for you than it ought to be.”
“That’s why I need you for my friend.”
“I am your friend,” Zach said.
“Really?”
“Really.”
Lucy interrupted, suddenly fierce. “But let me say this. If you can’t be the friend I need now, if it makes you too uneasy or sad or angry or whatever it is, then you can go. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out. I’ll find better friends than you. I mean it, Zach.”
Jeez, what an asshole. Wuss-boy’s response:
“I deserved what you said to me just now.” NO HE FUCKING DIDN’T! “I know I did. I’m glad you said it. I needed to hear it.”
What a spineless, wimpy, self-abasing wuss! What the fuck is wrong with this guy?
Anyway, what we have here is the female craving for pointless drama, combined with grrrrrrl power fantasy – “I’m a total bad-ass, with a side order of tough guy!” – combined with their weird thing that they want a guy who will spinelessly kiss their butts (they don’t). Ugh.
I’m seriously annoyed that he doesn’t take a knife and stab her in the fucking eye.
Actually, that would have been really cool dramatically, because no reader would have been expecting it.
Moving on to Ch 29. Lucy and Beta Orbiter Extraordinaire are reading the diary that Lucy’s mother wrote before the curse hit and she went bonkers. When they’re done:
He sneaked a look at Lucy, who was also finished reading. She said quietly, “I’m going to read it again now. But I want to read it at my own pace and not have to wait for you. Okay?”
“All right,” Zach said. And then: “But you want me here, right?”
“Yes.” It was only a whisper, but it was clear.
“I won’t go far,” Zach said. “Just over here.” After a moment he added, “Here are my balls in a basket, since I’m not using them.”
I may have made up that last part about the basket. But seriously, dude, what are you, her servant? Get a spine, and a sack.
All purpose beta orbiter, will do whatever you tell him, no questions asked! Cheap! Note: Heavily used.
At the end of Ch 31 Zach, Lucy, and Lucy’s foster parents (remember, her Mom’s insane) are sitting around the dinner table. When everyone else is distracted, we get this eye-roll-inducing declaration:
Zach turned to Lucy and whispered:
“There’s something else you need to know. I’m not just your friend. I am completely in love with you.”
Grrr, that’s not how you do it. Wait until you’re alone together at least. The proper way to make a declaration is to be like Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind and propose that the girl become your concubine. Watching Scarlett squawk like a wet hen in response to that is worth the price of the book. Or, in modern times, you lean in really close… so close your lips are almost touching hers… and you say, softly… “You have the nicest ass of any chick I’ve ever boinked.” Then she says, “Oh honey, do you really mean it?” And you say, “Well, top ten. Top twenty, absolute minimum.” Then she says, “Oh, that’s so sweet!” and fellates you.
Start of Ch 32, wuss boy is thinking about the object of his pathetic affections. He thinks:
I just realized this, just today, just when you told me off. I loved you for that.
What the fuck?
I’d be happy forever if you’d only smile at me—although, come to think of it, I wish you’d kiss me.
Well, make a move, wuss-bag!
You make me laugh; you make me cry.
I might cry from the pain if this book gets any more ridiculous. It’s worse writing up these notes, because I have to linger on the text to write it down, whereas when you’re just reading it you just note the page number for later and quickly move on.
Anyway, the author decided the foregoing wasn’t outrageous enough, so his thoughts continue:
Nothing matters but you. Nothing matters but you.
Nothing matters but you.
Gah! Get a grip, dude! This guy needs some self-respect. Also, he seriously needs to shag a couple of chicas to get over his one-itis. And he really needs to hear the “Your girl is not your mission” speech.
The book has one funny line: When Zach, Lucy, and Lucy’s foster parents start to suspect that the curse is real, they begin thinking of ways to defeat it. At one point the implausibility of the whole thing suddenly hits Zach and he thinks, “We formed the Fellowship of the Ring when we all should have just gone on medication.” I laughed. That’s the only funny bit in the book, though.
Ch 34: Zach decides that instead of going back to college, he’ll defer for a semester, stick around, and help Lucy out. Now if this chick is really in danger of losing her sanity – that is, if Zach really believes the curse is real – then, well, maybe. I really don’t think he should do this, though, since he’s not banging her. It seems like a pretty draconian step. Can’t you just offer thoughts on how to defeat the curse by email from your campus? Whatevs. Seems pretty damn beta orbiter to me.
Ch 38: The most disgusting beta orbiter marriage proposal I’ve ever read. Lame-o boy gets down on his knees to propose – for fuck’s sake! – and waits there, minute after minute, while the beeeeyotch makes up her mind. Ugh! God! This is the woman’s conscious-level desire for a supplicating wuss on full blast. He’s sitting there on his knee, just waiting for her to say something. You have to understand how long this takes: It starts on page 221 and she doesn’t answer him until page 229! It starts in Ch 38 and bleeds over into Ch 39. Yeah, for 8 pages and two chapters she’s just sitting there ruminating about her answer. God!
Arright, put yer disgust shields on full and get ready. Here we go:
Later on, Zach acknowledged to himself that at this critical moment, the moment before he fell on his knees [Aaaaaigh! The pain!] and proposed marriage to Lucy – meaning every word – his mind was filled with one single, powerful thought, and it was this:
If this chick doesn’t do anal on our wedding night, I’m gonna divorce her.
No, sorry, that’s me again. Blah blah, Zach thinks:
I’m going to change my whole life plan right here, right now. For Lucy. And I know for a fact that it’s not the smartest move I could make for myself. But with everything in me, I believe that it’s right for her.
Aaargh! Are you begging for the sweet release of death yet? Grok this: We’re still on the first page of this bullshit!
The passage is a woman’s roar of female triumph at the notion of a man totally fucking himself over, in exchange for nothing at all, for her convenience. Ugh. The author must have realized, in a moment of sanity, that this is too much – or maybe an editor at her publishing house caught it and made her qualify it a bit. Let’s back up a little and continue:
I believe that it’s right for her—no. No. No.
For us.
Yeah, so the author tries to walk it back a little. Not nearly enough, though.
Steady, steady. Yeah, I know; it’s not pretty. Let’s skip to the second page of this monstrosity:
Zach was on his knees.
“Luce. Lucy. Lucinda Scarborough. Marry me. Please. [“Please.” Jesus! Unless you’re Mike Myers in that one comedy and you’re playing it for laughs, you don’t say “please” when you’re proposing marriage.] I want you, and I want to be your daughter’s father.”
AAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIGHHHHHH!!!!!!! The pain!!!!! There he is, offering to cuck himself for this chick’s convenience! Aaaaaaagh!!! Make it stop! The elf gets to have the sex, while Zach is offering to do all the work of raising the kid! Gah! And this scene is written by a woman, remember. This is it, the alpha fucks, beta bucks reproductive strategy, laid out right before your naked, horrified eyes. A BLAST of female id; plain, naked, and unashamed.
Hey, Game deniers: NOW do you get that the red pill community has something to say about female sexual and reproductive behavior?
(No, of course not. That group lives for denial of reality. Deny it all you want, punk-wads. It’s still true. And ya know how you’re always saying that we should listen to what women say they want? (LOL, as if.) Well, there it is, kids!)
So after making him wait a little, and repeat it, she eventually gets around to saying that she will graciously allow him the privilege of helping her deal with the mess that’s her life.
Keep that in mind as we move on to Ch 43. Lucy is talking with her friend Sarah. Sarah says,
“…you’re having trouble being the one who takes, instead of the one who gives.”
WHAT THE FUCK? There is nothing to justify this statement in the novel. Lucy is not a “giver.” She’s just a girl in a bad situation who lets everyone else help her deal with it. She’s totally a taker. This is the ideology of taking; it’s BS that says, “It’s okay for you to take from others with no guilt.” This is what a parasite would try to convince herself of as she contemplates her orbiter’s sad situation.
Sarah continues:
“Lucy, you have to learn to accept.”
Gah! That’s all she ever does! Sarah then recounts a false narrative about how Lucy helped Sarah deal with jerk boyfriend. In fact, that’s not what happened. What happened (back in an early chapter) is that Lucy told Sarah she was being an idiot about her boyfriend and Sarah ignored her and clung to her jerky boy. (More red-pill truth there, note.) Lucy didn’t do anything except say some words, like, “You shouldn’t let him treat you that way.” Yeah, what a heroic effort.
And Lucy’s sole interaction with her own mother thus far has been to avoid her, on the grounds that crazy Mom will be a social embarrassment to her. She’s such a giver!
Sarah continues,
“So now, you get to receive. From everybody in your life. It’s all right. It’s more than all right.”
In plain English: “You don’t owe anybody anything, and you have every right to just sit back and receive all the effort, time, money, and other sacrifices which they lavish upon you.”
You’re such a giver! Falser words were never spoken.
Lucy gloats,
“Zach is changing his whole life, his whole future, for me and the baby.”
“Yes,” said Sarah. “He’s giving. Your job is to accept.”
“But I have nothing to give back!” Lucy found she was wailing. “He gives everything and gets nothing!”
Another roar of female triumph at the merciless exploitation of a hapless beta male. Yes, this is a roar of triumph. It’s not a wail of guilt. How do I know? Simple: If the author felt bad about this situation, she could have simply changed it. Have Lucy bake Zach some cookies, for fuck’s sake. Or whatever. But noooooope. She gives nothing.
However, a ray of sunshine enters when Sarah tells Lucy to at least spread her legs for Zach, so that’s nice. At least the guy finally gets some booty out of all this. Not until after they’re married, though, FFS.
The snippet has more unintentional red pill truth, by the way. Here’s Sarah:
“I’m more experienced than you are. We can thank the hateful Jeff for that.”
Jeff is the jerky boyfriend that Lucy was advising Sarah to ditch earlier in the book. Did Sarah ditch him? No! She fucked him! LOL, red-pill truth leaks out.
End of Ch 46 – start of Ch 47: At least Zach finally gets to shag Lucy, though she’s many months pregnant by this point. Note: Women don’t look any better or worse, facially, when they’re pregnant. But obviously their bodies aren’t exactly svelte.
Ch 48: Zach had known before the marriage that Lucy’s pregnancy had somehow increased his love for her.
Oh barf. Cuck.
Maybe his father had even been correct when he said that Zach was suffering from a hero complex.
Yeah, in the red pill community we call that Captain Save-a-Ho. Don’t be a Captain Save-a-Ho. (I know Lucy wasn’t trying to get raped, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s not Zach’s child.)
Well, I’m finally done with my red-pill comments on this thing. Man, that was exhausting. There is one more red pill aspect to this book, regarding the ending. I’ll reveal the ending below the next spoiler warning, for anyone who’s curious.
SPOILERZ BEYOND THIS POINT, BITCHEZ.
Lucy and Zach accomplish all three “impossible” tasks before her baby is born (just barely). Thus the curse is broken. The alpha bad boy elf receives absolutely no punishment whatsoever for his evil ways. His curse just ends and he walks away. Disgusting. But that’s Werlin’s female psychology at work. She just couldn’t bring herself – or maybe it didn’t even occur to her – to punish an alpha bad boy.
Dark corner of female psychology here, seriously. This being has raped who knows how many women over the centuries. It’s also revealed that after they die they go live with him as his prisoners and get raped more – for centuries! – until the curse is finally broken and they’re freed. And his punishment for all this? Nothing.
I’ve mentioned before that a game-related blog (In Mala Fide, I think) once referred to “the world-shaking amorality of the gina tingle.” Here it is, from the horse’s mouth.
There’s a loosely-affiliated community of aspiring rationalists called the Less Wrongers. The old website which was the focal point of the group is http://www.lesswrong.com and the new site, just a couple of months old (the beta version went live in September), is http://www.lesserwrong.com. The community’s goal is to learn how to think better.
A lot of the people in the community strike me as kind of fuck-witted, and all of them strike me as fuck-witted at least some of the time, and there is the usual problem of objective institutions not being a Nash Equilibrium, i.e., they are infiltrated, hollowed out, and converged by people with agendas wearing the original organization as a skinsuit.
BUT:
They are continually improving. They’re already notably more mentally competent, on average, than they were just a few years ago. The rate of change is certainly positive and significantly away from zero. This community, for good and ill, will bear watching.
Tax bill passes both houses of Congress, heads to the President’s desk to be signed into law.
Best part of it: It repeals the “individual mandate” that was the unconstitutional, overriding horror of ObamaCare.
BONUS: So-called “Justice” Roberts, who sold himself like a gutter whore to find that this thing was constitutional, will now see it repealed. It was all for NOTHING. Yes, Roberts: You sucked donkey cock for a five-dollar bill… and when you looked at the five dollar bill later, it turned out it was counterfeit.
Contemplate that and despair, you lawless piece of shit.
Identity politics is the assertion “Because of my genetic characteristics” – genitals, skin color, whatever – “you owe me. You owe me affirmative action in job applications, welfare $$$, and you should ‘step back’ and defer to me.” (Fuck you, assholes.)
In terser form:
“Not because of anything I have done to earn it, but merely because of what I am, you owe me whatever I want.”
In totally terse form:
“I exist, therefore you owe me whatever I want.”
This is the ultimate dream of rabbits. It is rabbitry stripped down to its core, with all rhetorical obliqueness removed. The ancient dream of the ages, for rabbits, is just precisely this:
“I exist, therefore you owe me whatever I want.”
Once they have tried that assertion, there will be no going back. Anything else is weak tea compared to that.
They are eventually going to precipitate a civil war and people on both sides are going to be killed in large numbers. And yes, after that, fear of death will shut a lot of them up for a while. But it won’t be for as long as the naive will expect. Surprisingly soon after the civil war ends, a few rabbits will tentatively start in with the “You owe me because I exist” stuff again. We’ll defeat it, of course, but it will never go away. Like socialism (itself a less-overt expression of rabbitry), identity politics is too attractive to too large a set of people to ever really go away. I suspect it will be like herpes: Controllable to an extent, but once you’ve got it, you’ve got it forever.
From: Mrs. Stanton, Middle School Music Director
To: Michael Porkwit, 7th grade
Re: The Winter Holiday Concert
Michael,
This is just a quick memo regarding last night’s Winter Holiday Concert. It’s great to see students participating with such high energy. We teachers love to see that, and so do the parents! A couple of notes for future reference:
1) On the carol “Sing We Now of Christmas”: The first line, as you apparently know, is
Sing we now of Christmas, sing we now noel.
However, the second line is not,
If you don’t freakin’ like it, you can go to hell.
2) Backstage before the concert, Mr. Brandwich, in dressing like an elf and skipping about, was trying to be festive, not “as gay as a dancing lord.” (That remark would have been detention material, by the way, but no one wanted to ruin the holiday mood.)
3) At the conclusion of the performance, when the audience is applauding, it is traditional to simply smile and bow. It is not necessary to seize the microphone from the conductor and shout, “Word to your mama!” You will recall there was a confused pause in the applauding at that point in time.
With attention to these simple matters, next year’s concert can be just as memorable and more enjoyable for everyone,
Hopeless loser Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dumbass – NY) is tweeting that Trump should resign due to sexual harassment claims against him. We’ve known about these accusations since before the election, so why renewed calls about it now?
(1) The most obvious: Democrats have really been taking a beating on the sexual harassment issue for the last couple of months, and they’re desperate to “even up the score” by taking out a Republican or three. The more high-profile the better.
Also, as of yesterday, when she flung the tweet out, the polls about Alabama were looking bad for Dems. That was even before one made allowance for the standard leftist bias. The implication is that the Dems will remain in a weak position in the Senate come 2018. They were hoping to move things a little in their direction by replacing a Rep with a Dem.
(2) Gillibrand is an attention whore; also, she’s testing the waters for a 2020 Presidential run. Nothing plays to the left-wing base right now like calling for Trump’s removal from the White House. God, how unhinged are you people? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? There was an election. You lost. Jesus, get over it.
(3) It’s starting to dawn on some of the less moronic lefties that the Russia thing is a total wet firecracker. The “investigation” – an absolutely partisan, unfair, biased witchhunt – has been going on for months and they’ve got absolutely nothing whatsoever. Their big, huge bombshell was getting a former Trump associate (Flynn) to admit that he lied to the FBI about something that had nothing to do with Trump “colluding” with Russia over the 2016 election. (This whole thing has been so transparently baseless that I almost wrote “Trump” “colluding” with “Russia” over the “2016” “election”.)
This bullshit has been going on since before Mueller’s witchhunt. Recent revelations have uncovered the fact that people in the FBI are biased against the President. They really want to find him guilty of something serious. If there were the slightest hint of a scintilla of an iota of evidence, they would have uncovered it by now. It is hysterical, and not in the sense of “funny.”
So the less unhinged leftist politicians are getting ahead of the inevitable sad (for them) conclusion to the Russia thing and trying to find another way to get Trump out of the White House.
Hey assholes, I know how to have a chance of doing that: In 2020, repudiate your most extreme, insane, hate-filled whackos – the “trannies in your daughter’s high school bathroom, force people to bake gay wedding cakes at gunpoint, all whites are racist and should be genocided” psychotics – and run a campaign for normal, sane people.
In my previous post I argued that ad hominem and tu quoque arguments are not always fallacious. I want to be clear that I am not saying, to those who claim they’re always fallacious, “Yeah, you’re right, but you’re a bunch of eggheads, so I’m gonna ignore you.” I’m saying, “You’re wrong.”
Now dweebs with no intellectual self-confidence will say, “Dear God, you can’t disagree with textbooks, man! They’re textbooks!”
I can, in fact, disagree with textbooks when they make statements that are ragingly moronic. And I did so in my last post.
Today I want to provide a different, more explicitly rigorous argument refuting the notion that argument ad hominem is always fallacious. I will do this by providing an argument that is both ad hominem, and logically sound. I will also note, for those who collapse in spasms of fear at the idea of disagreeing with actual textbooks!!! that the kind of argument I am going to present is common in the academic literature, including Economics, Psychology, and, hilariously, Philosophy. The Philosophy one is hilarious because the fuck-witted “Ad hominem is a fallacy!” stuff appears in textbooks for Logic classes, which are typically taught by… Philosophy departments.
Here’s the example argument, casual version:
“Joe said that a meteor is bound for Chicago and will kill everyone in the city in an hour or so. Yet he’s calmly sitting here in Chicago with his feet up on the ottoman, sipping a Riesling. So obviously there’s no meteor.”
This is good enough to make my point for casual readers. (For those who like to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, more below.) I’m refuting Joe’s assertion not by attacking his assertion (not directly), but by stating something about Joe. That is, speaking precisely, an argument ad hominem – “against the man” – and the argument is valid, not fallacious.
Just for thrills, let’s disassemble it and lay all the parts out. I am going to be careful but not anal-retentive about it; professional logicians are welcome to fill in the blanks even more carefully if they want to.
Assumptions:
1. Joe wants to live as an overriding priority. (He may also want other things, but remaining alive is priority numero uno.)
2. Joe is capable of assessing evidence pertaining to the existence and trajectories of meteors (note that if he’s not, nothing he says about the alleged meteor is credible anyway), such that he will believe a meteor is approaching if and only if there is evidence that a meteor is approaching.
3. Joe knows of at least one way to get beyond the meteor’s blast range, and to do so soon enough to remain alive.
4. Joe knows that, if there is a meteor, he will live if and only if he gets outside the blast range soon enough.
5. All methods for being outside the blast range soon enough require that Joe begin to travel immediately.
First conclusion, which follows from 1, 3, 4, and 5:
6. If Joe believes there is an impending meteor, he will begin to move immediately.
Second conclusion, which follows from 6 and 2:
7. If the evidence suggests there is meteor approaching, Joe will begin to move immediately.
Observation:
8. Joe is not moving; he is calmly sitting on his complacent ass in his Lakeside Drive apartment.
Third conclusion, which follows from 7 and 8:
9. The evidence does not suggest there is a meteor approaching.
Let’s re-write 7 – 9 more tersely:
A. If there is meteor evidence, Joe is moving.
B. Joe is not moving.
C. Therefore there is no meteor evidence.
If someone tells you this is an ad hominem fallacy, your only option, as a civilized individual, is to give them a wedgie. There’s nothing else you can really do.
The argument is not fallacious. It is correct.
Again, I want to emphasize for the intellectually pious that the foregoing kind of argument is entirely standard in various branches of the academic literature.
Additionally: If you say X is true because a textbook author asserted it, you’re making an ad hominem argument. This variant of it is usually dubbed “appeal to authority,” but it’s simply the other side of the same coin. In other words, ad hominem is usually interpreted to mean,
“(Something about the author of an argument) ➞ the argument is wrong.”
While an appeal to authority is simply,
“(Something about the author of an argument) ➞ the argument is right.”
Therefore, those who would claim that ad hominem is a fallacy, and cite textbooks as support for this claim, are, in technical terms, fucking themselves over. You tell me, doofuses: Are ad hominem arguments valid or not? Double bind, bitchez!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Xtra credit for nerdlingers: Put the A – C argument above in proposition-contrapositive form.
ANSWER KEY!!!
Using symbolic logic with the arrow (➞) indicating implication and tilde (~) meaning “not”:
The statement
A ➞ B
implies the contrapositive statement
~B ➞ ~A.
For example,
If something is a cat, then it is a mammal.
implies
If something is not a mammal, then it is not a cat.
Thus:
Proposition:
Meteor evidence ➞ Joe is moving.
Therefore, by the contrapositive:
~Joe is moving ➞ ~Meteor evidence.
A standard assertion in propositional logic textbooks is that tu quoque (roughly, “you do it too”) and ad hominem (arguing “against the man”) are logical fallacies. This is the received wisdom, which is wrong. They are not always fallacious.
I am going to refute this silliness, discussing both “fallacies” in the same post because, while they’re distinct in principle, they often travel together in practice. E.g., both often come up in political debates.
1. Tu quoque is not a fallacy when were are faced with two choices and must choose one. E.g., Suppose that in some election our only realistic choices are a Democrat and a Republican. If a Dem supporter points out that the Republican candidate has killed someone, it is perfectly reasonable for a Rep supporter to point out that the Democrat candidate has also killed someone.
That’s because the question we’re debating is not “What’s right or wrong?” but “Which of the two options should we elect?” Our choices are often about the lesser of two evils, and we should vote, not for a candidate who is perfect, which is not an option, but for the candidate who is the best available choice.
2. We also often hear argument ad hominem as an alleged fallacy. But argument ad hominem is only fallacious under certain conditions.
An example of an ad hominem argument that really is fallacious would be “Pythagoras really wanted the Pythagorean Theorem to be true, therefore, due to his bias, the theorem is wrong.” Whether he wanted it to be true is not relevant. Just look at the theorem’s assumptions and determine if the conclusion follows from them.
This is all very well if we are just deducing the logical implications of a set of assumptions. But that’s rarely what is going on in real-world discussions like political discussions.
Consider: “The New York Times, and leftists and general, have consistently lied in the past, therefore there is a high probability that their assertions today are lies.”
This is not fallacious. It’s simple reality. In fact, it’s an example of something that those same logic textbooks will tell you is a valid kind of reasoning: Inductive reasoning. Indeed, to deny it is to say, “You cannot form beliefs based on what you’ve observed in the past.” To deny it is to say, “No matter how many times the boy cries wolf and turns out to be lying, you cannot validly conclude that he’s lying this time.” Sorry, wrong. You can, validly, conclude that. In fact you must conclude it based on the evidence.
So we have, “The New York Times says President Trump made a racist statement,” and my reaction is just going to be “They’re lying.” Based on experience, it’s literally hundreds of times more likely that they’re lying than that they’re telling the truth. This is not engaging in an ad hominem “fallacy.” It’s forming your beliefs based on evidence.
In your life you will encounter plainly false assertions from obviously untrustworthy sources immeasurably more often than you will encounter proofs of mathematical theorems.
3. Another reason ad hominem is not always a fallacy: People’s actions reveal their beliefs and therefore something about their information. If someone tells me that he believes Chicago is going to be obliterated by a meteor tomorrow, but he continues to stay in Chicago, I can infer that he doesn’t really believe it. Whatever facts he knows have not actually convinced him that there’s an impending meteor. If he says, “Here are 50 pages of evidence that there’s an onrushing meteor,” I’m logically correct to say, “You’re staying in Chicago, so I can infer that the 50 pages contain no convincing evidence of a meteor.” So no, I’m not going to waste hours pouring over your alleged “evidence.”
This, of course, takes me to an old video game called Road Rash. “Finally!” you say. “I was wondering when he was going to get to Road Rash.” Road Rash was a motorcycle race game from the early 1990s. You were a biker on a motorcycle and you’d compete against other, digital bikers animated by the game. It had the following interesting feature: The game had hills, and occasionally a car would come at you in the opposing lane – which you’d be in because you were trying to pass another biker – from over a hill. Of course, you couldn’t see the car, so you’d get smeared by it. UNLESS! you had a couple of the digital bikers ahead of you. If they were near the top of the hill, they’d all move over into the right lane all of a sudden, because they could see the car. That told you that you’d better get over to the right as well. That is, you were inferring something that the other bikers knew based on their behavior.
These other bikers never spoke, but if they did, one can imagine them all getting over to the right, even as they said to you, over their shoulder, “Don’t worry; there’s no oncoming car!”
“Bullshit,” you’d say, “you’re getting over to the right so I’m getting over to the right!” This is both tu quoque and ad hominem… but it sure as shit isn’t a fallacy. It is simple, undeniable reality.
A more real-world example:
Suppose some white leftist tells me he thinks “racial inclusiveness” is vital, and “segregated” neighborhoods are bigoted and evil. But he lives in an all-white neighborhood. I can infer that he himself doesn’t really believe that “inclusiveness” is important. This is logically relevant, because it shows that even a person with a strong emotional incentive to find convincing arguments for it, cannot find an argument that convinces him. I am therefore entitled to conclude that no convincing arguments exist.
Maybe there are convincing arguments, but I can validly conclude that it’s improbable. In fact, it’s VERY improbable, because human beings can convince themselves of the most astounding bullshit when they really want to. If a leftist can’t make himself believe X even when he really wants to, then X is very unlikely indeed.
Hordes of “intellectuals” will shriek, “But that’s ad hominem and therefore a fallacy!” which is why “intellectuals” are held in such low general esteem: Because so many soi-disant “intellectuals” are so nakedly stupid and intellectually dishonest.
Neurotoxin 