Bill Van Dyk – Page 19 – HystericallyBored

2017-07-24

Terrorism Response Paradox

Some reporting on the spurious “Toronto 18” terrorist cell makes the same mistake I believe most people make when it comes to understanding the motivations for a terror attack. Rosie DiManno, for example, in the Toronto Star, asserts that the goal of the Toronto 18 Cell was to alter Canadian policy on the war in Afghanistan and free prisoners of war.

The members of the cell– goaded into making stupid comments by paid informant Mubin Shaikh– served the interests of the government and police very well: they were crowing about how they stopped a deadly terrorist cell, even if the only actions these keystone jihadists ever took were at the direction of Mubin Shaikh (who conveniently forgot to record certain conversations).

But the goal of terrorism is not to win specific political objectives. The terrorists know they are a minority and can never win a battle in direct confrontation with the powerful state they seek to overthrow. That is why they are guerrillas, and not an army. It is to provoke the government into over-reacting, thus provoking moderate sympathizers into joining, so the movement can win more recruits, until it is strong enough to win a direct confrontation.

Can it work? What do you think the result of the Iraq invasion was, in terms of the size and scale and membership of ISIS? Yes, it worked very well indeed. Exactly according to the cookbook. Well, even better: it did more for ISIS membership than Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi could have dreamed.

So every time there is a terror attack, what do the Western Nations do? Exactly what the terrorists want them to do. Over-react. Scream headlines. Mass hysteria. A frantic urge to strike back, as hard and forcefully as possible. Let’s get out there right now and help them recruit as many new adherents as possible.

Not everyone is on board with the stupid response. I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of people who seem to understand this and express the intention of carrying on with their lives without fear or suspicion, because they believe that they should, not only because it’s the best way to live, but because it may well be the most effective response to terrorism. It diminishes their power. It makes them look weak and ineffective. It makes us look strong and confident.

[whohit]Terrorism Response Paradox[/whohit]

2017-07-24

The Soiled American Church

After tapes were released showing Trump discussing women he’d like to assault in the most disparaging and vulgar terms with a TV host, you might have expected that evangelical Christians would have bailed on him in droves.

If there was anything at all sincere in evangelical Christianity; it it actually meant anything to anyone in America; if there had been an ounce of integrity in the leadership of those denominations, Hillary Clinton would be your president today.

This is not a quaint little eccentricity. This is the heart and soul of what America represents to the world as a Biblical Faith, the same faith that challenges atheism and materialism and evolution and promiscuity and gay marriage and, we are to understand, health care and social security– speaking with its forked tongue: forget everything we told you about morality and ethics: Donald Trump is Jesus’ choice for president.

Pat Robertson declared that he could “see” Donald Trump sitting on a throne in heaven, at the right side of the Creator. And he was not threatening to strangle him to send him there.

One could justly argue that religion in America is dead, and America is the most irreligious nation on earth. You simply cannot argue that you represent true spirituality when you vote for the most un-Christ-like candidate ever. When you endorse views that are antithetical to everything you have ever preached to everyone about your religion.

We are talking about their own standards here– their expressed disgust for American sexual morality and the “character” of politicians. It all means nothing. The next time you hear an American evangelical Christian talk about “values” and “morals” and “faith”, you now know that it means nothing more than a passion for cutting taxes on the rich and photo-ops for vulgar, grasping little patriarchs in the Oval Office.

[whohit]Evangelical Bankruptcy[/whohit]

2017-07-24

Pro Life: Neil Gorsuch

Progressives who find most conservative politics regressive, ignorant, or just plain stupid, regularly hear from more enlightened conservatives or moderates that so-and-so or such-and-such is NOT a typical conservative. Oh no, he is intelligent and fair and thoughtful. He’s not a racist at all. He doesn’t even sound like Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly.

How often were we not told that Paul Ryan was one of those exceptions: the “brains” behind the Republican Party who, after 7 years in opposition, claimed to have a brilliant replacement plan for Obamacare that would be both cheaper and better. Then we saw how singularly unimpressive he was. He had nothing. He had the same old, same old, same old: tax cuts for the rich. The free market, which has never reduced medical costs before, would suddenly, miraculously, reduce medical costs. And, snake oil salesman that he is, he assured us that the tax cuts would generate so much economic growth that the increased tax revenue would more than make up the difference.

We hear the same delusions about Neil Gorsuch, the Republican nominee to the Supreme Court. He is not like Thomas, who hasn’t said a word, hasn’t had a question, hasn’t even made a joke in 20 years. Oh no. And he is not as corrosive as Scalia, no, no, no, who ridiculed the very idea that old white men of the 18th century shouldn’t have the final word on justice in the 21st. Gorsuch, we are told, is brilliant. Even some liberals — so we’ve heard– think he has a great legal mind.

Well, Mr. Gorsuch has written a book. Yes indeedy. It is a book on whether or not the government should allow individuals to receive assistance in committing suicide. Now, when Mr. Gorsuch testified before Congress as to his qualifications for the Supreme Court, he made it very clear that he was neutral and objective, when it came to political issues, and considered every legal case on its merits alone. That’s why you have no right to assume he would automatically be against the rights of an individual to assisted death just because he appears to be every ounce the conservative he claims not to be. No right at all.

Oh, of course he is against it. He is a Republican who claims to be a Christian: he is in favor of death, generally, but not when you choose it for yourself. And not when it is in your body. And not when it’s purpose is to end intolerable suffering.

If you think it is a little harsh to label him as “in favor of death”, you would need to convince me that he is not in favor of capital punishment, or the death penalty, or a more powerful military, or bigger bombs, or war against nations that have the impertinence to deny us their oil wealth. He does give a nod to a nominal-consistency on the issue: “Once we open the door to excusing or justifying the intentional taking of life as ‘necessary,’ we introduce the real possibility that the lives of some persons (very possibly the weakest and most vulnerable among us) may be deemed less ‘valuable,’ and receive less protection from the law, than others,” Well, there you go. Surprise! He really is pro-life. Or is he?

“Introduce the real possibility”– do you understand how weak an argument that is? He is saying I can’t find a real argument against the right of an individual to make his own decision about when to terminate his own life in the face of intolerable suffering and incapacitation, so I argue that something else that might come afterwards should be illegal, therefore, physician assisted suicide should be illegal. If people are allowed to drive 50 miles an hour, they might later drive 100 miles per hour, so driving 50 must be prohibited.

I used to be perplexed, somewhat, by conservatives and their “pro-life” values. Most of them are not “pro-life” by any stretch of the imagination, in any sense of the meaning of “pro” and “life”. I’ve never understood why they would call themselves pro-life. It’s like McDonalds declaring that they are in favor healthy diets and good nutrition. Well, there you go: they offer salads. A chaser for your Big Mac.

In a later comment, Gorsuch tries to cover his tracks. He says that taking a human life by a “private” individual is morally wrong. So he slipped up in the early passage. He meant to say that life was sacred, “other than– of course– if my government wants to kill a few people in order to take their oil, which I, as a patriotic citizen joyfully embrace”.

What is a reasonable exception? When your government needs to give the oil companies access to more oil? When your government needs an airfield to supply the air force that helps with the war against the government that doesn’t want to give access to their oil to our oil companies? When we need somebody to attack because our citizens are frightened and angry that some terrorists have attacked our country and those terrorists are citizens of a nation we can’t attack because they voluntarily sell us their oil so we have to attack some other nation that had nothing to do with the attack but whom we hate anyways? When families of the victim of a terrible crime just can’t sleep at night until they see the perpetrator– or someone who may or may not have been a perpetrator but didn’t have a good lawyer– killed, to make things even? When a man has killed a police officer, but only if he is black or poor and can’t afford a good lawyer who knows how to plea bargain and negotiate and hire private detectives to cast aspersions on the character of the witnesses or the provenance of the bullets or whether or not someone was merely standing his ground?

Luck

A gentleman on Reddit– and everywhere else– posted that the New England Patriots, down 21-3 at one point, came back and won, proving that you should never give up, no matter how unlikely your success seems.

Kind of illogical really. Everyone’s excited precisely because this kind of turnaround is incredibly rare. It doesn’t actually “prove” you should never give up. In the normal sense of “proof”, it only proves that there will be anomalies and there is always a dim hope that you will be one of them. Would you want to make life decisions based on these odds? I will quit my current job because there is a .4% chance I will get a better one? I will break up with this lovely girl because there is 1.3% chance I can find a better one, who will also love me? I will vote for this politician because he will prevent a terrorist attack in my home town, even though there was only ever a .002% chance of that occurring?

Don’t ignore the fact that there is a harm in obsessively following a course of action that has a only a microscopic chance of success. The most obvious harm is the waste of time spent by someone who has virtually no chance of success. Think of the hours and hours spent by marginal talents on trying to compete with far more talented athletes for a position on the varsity team. Imagine all of that time spent enhancing other skills that were far more likely to provide real rewards, like learning a trade, or taking courses, or even reading worthwhile literature, or volunteering at a homeless shelter or a food bank, or at church or school, or your neighborhood. But there is also the harm of repetitively absorbing failure and subservience and inferiority. It is not for no reason that we sometimes tell people to stop subjecting themselves to inevitable failure and learn to accept things the way they are.

There is another aspect to this: without the thousands and millions of wannabes, there would be no competitors, no infrastructure, no pool of adversaries that allow the top talents to eventually cash in on a mind boggling scale. Go to the Little League games, the skating and gymnastics competitions, the track and field events: before anyone gets to the big public crowd, most of your audience consists of parents or friends or relatives or classmates of your competitors. Without them, you would have been nothing. Without them, no coaches or infrastructure, or training equipment, or fields or gyms or rinks. And without all those weaker competitors, there would be no competition. Yet there are almost no real rewards for those weaker competitors.

Unless they learn to accept the con job offered by the sports establishment: keep trying. Never give up. Work hard, and some day you too can win. It isn’t true. Without the gifts, you will never win.

You get to be used.

[whohit]Luck and the New England Patriots[/whohit]

2017-02-06

Losing the Feminist Religion

Here’s a story that makes me cringe and should make a lot progressive-minded people cringe.

Julie Ann Horvath worked at Github, a programming network, from 2012 to 2014.

It is very hard to determine what exactly happened at Github because Horvath’s own comments make no sense. She claimed that she experienced some kind of awful oppression while working there.

Here’s one of her issues: another Github employee “asked himself over” to talk and declared that he was romantically interested in her. When she refused, he “hesitated” to leave.

That, my friends, is now regarded as oppression and harassment and “making me feel uncomfortable” so I ran into the bathroom and I cried.

And now I am suing them.

And it’s not about the money. Oh no, it’s never about the money.

[whohit]Losing My (Feminist) Religion[/whohit]

2017-02-06

Connundrum

This is an interesting legal problem. Francis Rawls’ employers, the Philadelphia Police Department, had reason to believe he had been frequenting an online service that was known to traffic in child pornography. They seized his computer and hard drives only to discover that they were encrypted by the Apple OS. They demanded that Rawls un-encrypt them. He refused on the grounds of self-incrimination.

There is, of course, a real legal principle that a person cannot be forced to incriminate himself. The police– in kind of a weird twist– suggested that he type in the password without telling them what it is. Why? How is that different? Because, they say, then he is not “incriminating” himself. They will do the incrimination when they look at the hard drive. Telling them the password, they claimed, could be “construed” as the forbidden self-incrimination.

I’m not sure if many people understand how weird this problem is. President Obama himself thinks the police should simply be able to call Apple and demand that they facilitate access to the hard drives by providing them with an application or a key that will bypass the user’s encryption. His analogy is a search warrant for a house: if the police think you committed a crime, and can convince a Judge that they have good reason for that suspicion, they can get a warrant and enter your house and look through your underwear drawer. Why shouldn’t they be able to look through your hard drive?

First of all, let’s get this out of the way: your hard drive is not your underwear. Your hard drive may contain the contents of your mind, your thoughts, your feelings, your interests, your fears, your imagination, your dreams, and even your beliefs. In a sense, it could be argued, the government thinks that now that there is a way to “read your mind”, they must be allowed to do it.

Would it be hard, given any average person’s computer, to find something incriminating among the thousands and thousands of files, images, tags, visited websites, that would be there?

I’m going to go sideways on the issue for just a second: I don’t believe you can discount the fact that disclosures by Edward Snowden and others in the past few years have raised serious issues about whether or not the government is itself abiding by its own laws in terms of accessing private information. This is not a trivial issue. Obama says, trust us, we’re law enforcement, we have integrity. Snowden’s disclosures show that you don’t have the high road, and no, you cannot be trusted. If you were given the power to access anyone’s private information, you have demonstrated that you will lie and violate the constitution to do it.

Back to the main track: what if the government and the police started whining about the fact that they don’t have recordings of everyone’s private conversations in their homes that they could access– with a warrant, of course — to try to stop child molesters and drug dealers and terrorists? Why can’t they install listening devices in everyone’s home (they could already just use your phone, with the right access)? They promise they would only listen to the recordings when they have good reason to suspect a crime has been committed.

The courts have been very, very clear that the police cannot try to obtain such recordings without a warrant. They can’t just pick out a house and put a recording device in it to see if you are committing a crime. Why not, they would argue? If you are not committing a crime, what do you have to fear? And what if the police say, we will install the recording device but we will never examine the recordings unless we have reason to believe, in the future, that you have committed a crime.

That’s the big difference between a wiretap in the past and what the government is now doing. In the past, if the police obtained a warrant, they could install listening devices to record any conversations taking place from that moment forward. But if the police acquire the ability to search your computer without your authorization, they are, in essence, compelling your testimony. They are forcing you to incriminate yourself.

What the government now wants is the right to go into your past.

As an aside, suppose the government proposed to give itself the authority to do this, to plant listening devices in every home? Suppose a courageous Senator or Representative amended the bill to require that every government official and politician must also allow all of their private conversations to be recorded? Do you think it would pass?

Never. If the government ever considered such legislation, I can guarantee you they would give themselves, and the police, exceptions– for “national security” reasons, no doubt.

[whohit]The Retro Warrant[/whohit]

2017-02-06

What Next, Trump?

There is a tendency to greet the cynical view of the prospects for Donald Trump’s presidency with the comment, “well, nobody thought he would get elected either”. It is not new information that unlikely things sometimes happen. Trump might turn out to be a great president. In four years, we might all be looking back at millions of new, high-paying, union jobs, better and cheaper health care for more people, peace in the Middle East, and our inner cities, and a world that fears and respects America.

Maybe, at that point, Ivanka will run and succeed his father. It’s unlikely so… it could happen.

I personally think it is far more likely that the Trump presidency will end in chaos and disgrace and the Democrats will recover and run a competitive candidate in 2020.

Here’s why.

Firstly, Donald Trump is so ideologically incoherent and random that he may end up having more conflicts with the Republicans in Congress than with the Democrats. Trump appears to be a pragmatist with populist attitudes on many issues, while people like Paul Ryan and Mike Pence are hard-core ideologues who wish to ram their programs through regardless of the consequences. They are hoping to use Trump, the way Cheney and Rumsfeld used George Bush Jr. But Trump really believes in his own genius and he is unpredictable. He is also a spendthrift by nature, with delusions of his own competence. If he really wants a big building program funded by the government, to create some of those high-paying jobs he promised, he may have a fight on his hands.

Are these people clever enough to do what most governments do when they over-promise? Come up with a plausible counterfeit that costs a lot less, accomplishes nothing, but let’s you claim that you kept your promise?

I would expect that Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee may be a conventional conservative preferred by the Republican establishment, because he promised he would, and because he will be replacing Scalia. Will the next appointee after that be as conventional? One of Trump’s closest advisers is his daughter, Ivanka, who appears to have differing views on women’s issues and who may well have an influence on the selection of any possible candidate who might upset Roe vs. Wade (which a second appointee could do) and who might set back women’s rights significantly, like equal pay for equal work, and family leave. She is also someone who may be more conscious of the impact on the historical record if her father’s administration turns out to be the one that makes a mess of Roe vs. Wade. (I say “makes a mess of” rather than “ends”, because if the Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade, it does not assert a new law: that will be up to the states, and each state will craft their own response. )

The biggest potential boondoggle is health care. Trump has made a very, very large point of repealing Obama care, and the hyenas in Congress will gladly proceed to divest 20 million people of their health care insurance. But will the sane Republican establishment go along? If they simply repeal Obamacare, they may end up with a very, very large pool of incensed voters in the next election. (It is clear that many people who voted for Trump don’t believe he’s really going to take away their health care.) More likely, Republicans in Congress will try to draft something that actually resembles Obamacare, and then maneuver to do something, anything that looks like repeal, so they can claim to have kept their campaign promise (a promise many of their voters probably wish they would forget).

This is not a foolish idea. After Obamacare was passed, both parties became aware of adjustments that were needed to make the program work properly– not unusual for large pieces of legislation. But the Republicans– hoping to make it fail– refused to allow any of these changes to be made. Now they have a chance, and then claim that they invented the program and take credit for it. The irony is that they did invent the program, as a wholly inadequate and disappointing substitute for a single-payer, universal health-care system. Obama adopted it thinking some Republicans would support their own idea making it “bipartisan”.

In some election down the road, they will claim that the Democrats will harm the program and only they can be trusted to preserve it: that will complete this cycle of political evolution.

Paul Ryan and his acolytes– who really believe this man is smart because he talks in complete sentences– really want to get rid of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security entirely. Because America is such a great country that it alone among the developed nations can’t afford such lavish social spending. But Trump wants to be popular, maybe even as the man who saved Medicare. And he doesn’t care about debt– it was never a major theme of his campaign.

Here’s another thing: it is clear that many of his cabinet picks and advisers really have no idea of what a conflict of interest is, or don’t really care. The courts are not controlled by either the Executive or Legislative branches of government. There will be lawsuits and hearings and investigations and I’m not sure Trump’s appointees in general are smart enough to know when not to give in to temptation.

These are not team-players. Many of Trump’s appointees will be delighted to see other appointees fail and lose influence. They might even help.

[whohit]The Trump Dump[/whohit]

2017-02-06

The Unthreatening Male Lead

I just watched “Silence”, Martin Scorcese’s new film about the horrendous persecution suffered by Roman Catholic converts in Japan in the 17th century. The artistic success of this film is almost entirely dependent on the slender shoulders of it’s lead, Andrew McCarthy, as Father Rodrigues. (The story is written by former film critic Jay Cocks and director Martin Scorcese; nothing in it should encourage either of them to dispense with a real writer in the future.)

Rodrigues is tormented by his conscience as he becomes aware of the suffering of the Christian converts on his behalf (they are hiding him), and because of the faith his church has taught them. Some of them die excruciating deaths rather than betray him. Others do betray him. He himself endures terrible trials which lead him to profound questions about his faith, his God, and his own morality.

I find it hard to believe that Scorcese really wants Andrew McCarthy as the star of this film, any more than I believed he wanted Leonardo DiCaprio as the lead in “The Departed” or “The Aviator”. Andrew McCarthy is there for a reason and anyone who understands Hollywood knows what it is. If you are an ambitious director like Scorcese and you want the kind of budget that affords you monumental and expensive location shoots and effects and costumes and extras– you need to assure your investors that your film will make money. And to do that, you need a bankable star, no matter how unsuitable, to play the lead in your film. If Andrew McCarthy, or Leonardo DiCaprio, or Toby McGuire has agreed to star in your film, a studio will guarantee you tens of millions of dollars.

For some bizarre reason, the sexually unthreatening male child actor has become the box-office dominatrix of Hollywood. Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, Andrew McCarthy, Tobey McGuire, and others convey boyish charm and callow manners and have huge appeal for a segment of the movie-going public. Their most distinctive quality is their de-sexualized boyishness. When Kate Winslet makes out with Leonardo in “Titanic”, it reminded me of an older sister teaching her little step-brother how to French kiss. Creepy and antiseptic. It was impossible to imagine Jack going any further than sketching. It was impossible to imagine that he knew what further was.

I can’t prove it, but I suspect that the popularity of these boy-men figures is largely to do with the female movie-going public. Movies are filled with intimate scenes of interactions between women and men. These scenes are comfortable for women to watch as long as they don’t contain a hint of genuine sexuality. The unconscious ideal of this audience is warm, safe cuddle in a comfy bed, with a puppy of “man” who adores you and is inexorably compliant with your wishes. They will fetch you an aspirin tablet and sit on the couch and watch Oprah and Ellen and Dr. Oz with you. Just as they are comfortable with a black man who looks as innocuous as Will Smith or Denzel Washington, or as funny as Eddie Murphy.

An actor like Heath Ledger, Michael Fassbender or Christian Bale, on the other hand, would scare you, because you know he isn’t going to stop with the snuggle and he isn’t going to be compliant. Scorcese may have learned his lessons from “The Last Temptation of Christ”, which starred Willem DeFoe– a real actor without the boy-man appeal– and for which he was unable to raise the money required for crowd scenes, which he staged with trickery instead, and which were embarrassing to watch.

The role of Rodrigues calls out for an actor with genuine talent. The two essential characteristics of Rodrigues that are missing in McCarthy are these: firstly, a 17th century Portuguese priest would have been a powerful man with considerable status in his community and extraordinary confidence in his training and convictions. He doesn’t say “our religion thinks” this or that, as if some other religion might have a valid viewpoint. He knows. This is the way it is; God commanded it and I am the conduit of his grace and power. You people are all going to burn in hell if you don’t acknowledge the intercessory role of the church, and it’s priests, in your lives. We bring God to you. Without us, you are condemned to eternal perdition. When you sacrifice your freedom and your worldly goods and even your lives on behalf of the church, you are doing God’s work. McCarthy makes it feel like his trying to get you to join his boys club. Eventually, of course, Rodrigues does begin to have doubts about this transaction. But you can’t tell us the dramatic story of the rise of those doubts without first establishing the miraculous certitude and arrogance of 17th century Jesuit missionaries. Or there is no drama.

Secondly, early on in “Silence”, Rodrigues is anguished over the suffering and sacrifices made by the Japanese believers on his behalf. But he questions himself in an anachronistic, 20th century way, with an implied 20th century belief in the fundamental equality of man. The 17th century Jesuit believed that the glories of eternal salvation far outshone the comparatively brief agonies of their persecution. Martyrdom is glorious! Your reward is beyond measure. Rodrigues never alludes to this belief. Fair enough if Scorcese is trying to suggest that he never believed it– but he doesn’t suggest it. He just dumps Rodrigues into the middle of this circumstance and has him react with a modern sensibility. Although, one often senses McCarthy, the inept actor, possibly creating his own lines (some of them are that bad!) and gestures to attempt it.

[whohit]The Unthreatening Male Lead[/whohit]

2017-02-06

Our Town Hillsdale College

Hillsdale College

I adore the play “Our Town” by Thorton Wilder. It’s brilliant, imaginative, and heart-rending. But if the citizens of “Our Town” had a college it would be Hillsdale, and it would be quaint and precious and adorable and white and privileged and impossible.

If you look closely at Hillsdale and find yourself strangely attracted to it, don’t fight it. It’s a beautiful world that could function quite well in the kind of social and economic conditions of early 20th century small-town North-Eastern United States. Prosperous, homogeneous, safe, with an astonishing degree of social equality. The richest person in Hillsdale would have been a doctor, with a large house, and maybe a stable. And the poorest drunk in Hillsdale would still have been kindly cared for by a few of the citizens who would want to make sure that, no matter how little he deserved it, he didn’t end up too badly off, or frozen to death in a ditch some January morning. Maybe, as in the Andy Griffith Show, he’d be invited to sleep it off in jail one or two nights a week.

In this world, we all do our share. All of the able-bodied do their tasks, the women in the home, the men in the fields and offices and factories, the kids in the schools. And it works, because that man earns enough to support an entire family– all by himself! The teachers– those guys are pretty smart, so we teach our children to respect them. And we respect them. Crime? Not necessary because almost everyone is able to get by.

Except– there would be a drunk or two. But they wouldn’t be dealing whiskey or sneaking it in from Mexico. They’d steal it out of your kitchen cupboard while you were out hanging the wash. On the line.

In this era of American history, city government sometimes took over utilities to ensure that private gain did not come at the expense of public good. Boston took over their public transit; many cities built their own hydro stations. Nobody worried about whether or not it was “socialism”: it was just good common sense.

And an executive who paid himself more than 200 times what his average employee earned? Never! He’d hear no end of it from the church ladies.

It’s a wonderful world. From each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs. And if you could take his group of people, all of the residents of this town, and transplant them all to a planet where they could live in isolation from the rest of the needy, greedy, violent world–and keep them from producing too many offspring–they would all live happily ever after.

And Hillsdale would happily produce all their pastors and doctors and teachers.

Lest you begin to think this is about race, consider this: any community around the world, given the prosperity and space and safety of early 19th century North-Eastern United States and Canada, would probably do as well. Given adequate space and food and supplies and wood and water and wildlife– we all would do pretty well, and we would all be relatively peaceful and humble. Look at Rosewood.

Look at Greenwood, Tulsa.

But take away all their property and force them all to take menial jobs and live in wretched poverty for a generation or two, and see what you get instead.

So what does happen when large numbers of people begin competing for a diminishing portion of these things? Conflict, crime, violence. War, of course. Hillsdale won’t produce the kind of leaders who can avoid it because their entire culture only works when there is more than enough for all of us. In conflict, Hillsdale can’t just assert that our culture is better than your culture; it must dominate.

Hillsdale is a quaint little gated-community of a college that has wonders and magic for all of its residents, and no relevance for the real world.

[whohit]Our Town: Hillsdale[/whohit]

2016-09-01

I Will Be Like Your Husband

If you have young children in the house, keep them away from the computer: the following details may disturb them and cause them to have traumatic stress disorder, some day.

On November 17, 2015 a Discipline Committee panel of the Ontario College of Teachers held a solemn meeting to discuss an onerous offense by one of their own.

Mr. George Bohdan Kolos (OCT since May 1976), represented by Legal Counsel, was charged with the following serious offenses.

Noticing that the tag on a shirt worn by a female staff member was outside of the shirt, he tucked it in.

Another time, he offered a colleague some chocolate.

She said, “no thanks– I’m good”. He said, “oh, I know you are good”.

For penalty and repentance, Mr. Kolos was slapped with a very, very stern reprimand by the Ontario College of Teachers. The School Board which employed him, after it’s own investigation, suspended him for one day, and then transferred him to a different school.

This kind of poisonous mind-set must be rooted out, of course. Mr. Kolos was also instructed to take a course– at his own expense!– on “boundaries and boundary violation issues”.

Your children may now re-enter the room.

What do you mean that these incidents do not sound all that serious? Did you know what he said, as he tucked the clothing tag back in? He said, “I will be like your husband and tuck your tag in”! The monster!

You may think I’m being sarcastic. I assure you I am. I can assure you that there is also some feminist-consultant-psychologist-herbal-vegetarian-puritanical-zealot who will be paid a small fortune to run the course on “boundaries and boundary violation issues” to repair Mr. Kolos’ mind. And Mr. Kolos– if he ever wants to teach again– would be wise to nod sportingly and purse his lips and gaze in awe at the splendor of her wisdom and good judgement and the majestic edifice of her imperial sanctimony. Or else.

Mr. Kolos retired June 30, 2014, after teaching for 38 “unblemished” years (according to the Disciplinary Committee’s own report). Nevertheless, no sexist offense is too small or insignificant for the tiny minds of the Ontario College of Teachers. Even the most seemingly casual remark can have a “negative impact on the work environment”.

No one, indeed, should have to tell someone who has been teaching — without blemish– for almost 40 years– “I don’t enjoy it when you say things that are so mildly provocative that one can barely discern the provocation”. Mr. Kolos should have known it.

Okay. I know some of my loyal readers– perhaps both of them– are thinking, “there must have been more to it than that”. That is not likely since the report on the offense is far more likely to enumerate only the most serious particulars. The report (in Professionally Speaking – The Magazine of the Ontario College of Teachers, September 2016) does make mention of the fact that he committed other similar offenses. His conduct was “serious, repeated and directed at numerous colleagues”. I believe it is very safe to assume that the two incidents described would not be the least serious but, more likely, typical, or among the most serious.

Incidentally, these disciplinary reports in Professionally Speaking, make fascinating reading. I was surprised by the number of female teachers who were charged with “inappropriate” contact with male students. That really is kind of shocking, not because I didn’t think it was likely to be true, but because we continue to be bombarded with public expressions of condemnation for men who do it, and very little public excoriation of women who do it.

And I know why. And I’ll bet you do too. The male “victims” just don’t want to make a drama out of it. They just didn’t feel the surging power in their loins as they contemplated the awesome power they possessed to destroy someone’s life and career. What a shame.

[whohit]I will Be Like Your Husband[/whohit]