[Reality Edition.] Thinking Not Feeling; Fall of France & US; Rape Culture and Identity Politics - Intermission.

The economic woes of Europe and the US are in no way solved, they’re growing, for reality hasn’t finished with socialism yet: not by a long way. 

On September 6, 2012, I penned a blog on how our freedom was being daily suffocated under that socialist fallacy of feeling about issues, rather than thinking them through. Good to see one of the world’s great thinkers agrees:

Talking about feeling on issues rather than thinking them through, New Zealand’s previous Revenue Minister, Peter Dunne, has again highlighted the contradiction of those statists residing in the Fortress of Legislation - and those who support the system they have come to represent - whom have destroyed the Free West. After Christmas Peter posted a link to, of all things, Edward Snowden’s Christmas message about the onslaught of the Western surveillance state. I can never let this double-standard, especially from a former Minister of Taking and the tax surveillance state, go unchallenged.

Important for everybody "@LePoint: VIDÉO. Edward Snowden : "La vie privée est importante" http://t.co/kiuCVt14Af”
— Peter Dunne (@PeterDunneMP) December 26, 2013

@PeterDunneMP Our privacy is more important than threat of terrorism, (true), but we r 2 have no privacy from our own tax state - explain?
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) December 26, 2013

Of course there was to be no answer. But just as this ex-minister is determined to try and live in the delusion of contradiction, President Hollande of France is determined to show the world the destruction wrought by that Left delusion of feeling a country can live on theft of an individual’s hard-gained earnings, in order a socialist elite can feel good about itself. With that country’s national debt now on 93.4% of GDP, not only are the wowser socialists deliberately destroying their wine industry, but the entire economy. France is on the brink, again, and will most likely fall, again, as those who could save it, the wealth creators, are thinking logically, and prudently escaping with their families and loved ones from the vicious tax surveillance state that Hollande has forced on them:

Since the arrival of Socialist President François Hollande in 2012, income tax and social security contributions in France have skyrocketed. The top tax rate is 75 percent, and a great many pay in excess of 70 percent.

As a result, there has been a frantic bolt for the border by the very people who create economic growth - business leaders, innovators, creative thinkers, and top executives. They are all leaving France to develop their talents elsewhere.

And it's a tragedy for such a historically rich country. As they say, the problem with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur. Where is the Richard Branson of France? Where is the Bill Gates?

"Do you see that man in the corner? I'm going to kill him. He's ruined my life!"

This angry outburst came from a lawyer friend who is leaving France to move to Britain to escape the 70 percent tax he pays. He says he is working like a dog for nothing - to hand out money to the profligate state. The man he was pointing to, in a swanky Japanese restaurant in the Sixth Arrondissement, is Pierre Moscovici, the much-loathed minister of finance. Moscovici was looking very happy with himself. Does he realize Rome is burning?

 

The economic woes of Europe and the US are in no way solved, they’re growing, for reality hasn’t finished with socialism yet: not by a long way. This is further proven by the US’s jobs-to-population ratio stuck at the lowest levels in a generation, despite a US$878 billion fiat money stimulus, that forms no part of a laissez faire capitalism.

Reality, as the saying goes, is a harsh mistress. Although that’s probably sexist, if deconstructed, isn’t it?

Coincidentally, I'm currently working on a piece about rape culture feminism; an -ism based on identity rather than individualism. My thinking has changed on this, from an initial unthinking feeling of a rape culture as correct, as given to me by the media, to a questioning of the underlying assumptions of a rape culture premise based on distorted, and distorting, views of human relations. Readers of this blog will know from my posts over the latter part of 2013, this topic has become increasingly important to me, as it should be to all of us who dream of the free, civilised society. For this is the further inveigling of neo-Marxist brutishness into the lives of individuals: radio announcers Willie Jackson and John Tamihere were silenced by a rape culture seeking not dialectic, but vengeance. I will show it is quite possible these two men were fired from their show for merely doing their jobs - running a talkback show: talking to callers; questioning callers; bringing items of public interest up for debate. But rape culture feminism, in a move pregnant with symbolism, found them guilty in the questioning, so went for the boycott in a campaign instigated and run by white male Marxist Giovanni Tiso. Indeed the instance of a white male strutting in with his righteous indignation to rescue the little women is so full of irony it's hilarious, at least, if it were not so serious. And what Tiso did was serious, because he shut down not only Willie and JT's radio show, but diverted all the properly directed energy there had been in the debate surrounding the horrible Roast Busters, and the violence of rape in our society, to two radio jocks who were paid to be controversial, and there the energy from a useful discussion was dissipated entirely. I've not even heard of the Roast Busters since. What a waste that deflection was. Nothing is ever gained by silencing. Nothing. That point is quite possibly the only point on which I agree with Chomsky:

I will also show, thereby, in this piece I'm still writing, quoting almost wholly two feminists who believe in reason and individualism, how neo-Marxist rape culture feminism has become a feminism seeking only the oppression of an insidious Left-centric conformity which wants forever to stomp on the face of an individual human being, and to do that sadly via the ruthless mechanism of the state - the latter especially regarding the enforced gender quotas, in public and private office, which form part of this agenda, and are possibly only one election away in New Zealand. And as Willie and JT found out, when dissent is made an example of against conformity, the tactic is always initially to sully the reputations of those deemed to be drunk on their privilege, a tactic from which even the Law Review Girls were not immune. Just as for the sin of a single tweet into her timeline, on Twitter - social media - and on a matter not even regarding gender politics, the anonymous Thorny proceeded to write an entire blog on how drunk on privilege I must be, with the clear inference I'm a misogynist. And that ludicrous, slanderous post is still up. I'm calling bullshit to this. Further case in point, a sadly typical tweet by such an identity mired feminism on Twitter:

‘Men attention seeking’ is the catch cry shrilled by this feminism at those who would reason against it, seemingly ignorant this was the very tactic of Edwardian men against the suffragettes - diminishing their reality by calling them attention seekers. These neo-Marxist feminists have become what they despise. Albeit in the face of such a tweet as this, all I can say - meeting matronising with patronising - is stop drawing attention to white men, then, dear. You've scored an own goal, just like Tiso did. More importantly, as I have to mansplain it to you, stop feeling about men so childishly as mere identity – the stereotypical generic male invented by a rape culture feminism – because we men, unsurprisingly like you women, if you care to think about it, are all complex individuals, damn near all of us, not rapists. And understand how rape culture feminism, even this tweet, thus forces society into a confrontational paradigm between the genders. What is gained by that? My piece will show there's a constructive alternative that can set us all, women and men, each race, each religion, free to pursue our happiness - classical liberal individualism; because the opposite of sexism is individualism, just as the opposite of racism is individualism. An individualism, poignantly as regards this debate, that shows gender, race and belief stereotypes for what they are: stereotypes.

Compare that identity-bound tweet above telling generic white men to butt out, thus bringing stereotyped white men front and centre into the very frame the tweeter wants them removed from, to this tweet, informed by an adult individualism of a woman who is thinking, and who is simply, gloriously, herself:

I'm a grown woman. I can do whatever I want. #lifeofamuslimfeminist #Beyonce
— Aysha Syed (@ayshaspace) January 11, 2014

Unfortunately, however, I will not be able to finish my piece until April. Just as with socialism, reality exacts its price on us all. At the beginning of this financial year through boredom and burnout I took my eye too long off the reality of my workflow. Consequently - because under an individualistic ethic there are consequences - I am now having to work twelve and thirteen hour days until the last client’s work is completed. Other than the odd tweet – (follow me on Twitter) – there will be no further blog posts until that time. I won’t even have time, most likely, to answer to comments that you are free to post in the meantime. That said I'll end this post where I began, Mr Sowell. 

Another of my hobbyhorse topics has always been the doublespeak around the notion of fairness. From my post Taxing Language - Fair: What Do You Mean Please?

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

And so, Sowell to that wrecker of a country, President Hollande:

Catch you in April. In the meantime, I'm afraid I have to call intermission ….

Of Law Revue Girls & Thorny – Privilege & the New Puritanism; Blog Inequality; Identity Politics; Quotas.

Next time you seek to silence an individual who has offended you in some way with words, especially one sworn to an ethic of do no harm, and you seek to silence them with their privilege, then wonder if you’re not simply reinforcing it. That’s privilege as a wall of your making, over which two people can no longer even shake hands to explore the differences that make life the celebration it should be, rather than each left to guard their side of the wall, wallowing in a morass of ignorance, and too often, fear.

[The first section below was originally this post’s ending; I’ve rearranged the order as the initial two sections were only ever about getting to this …]

Identity Politics and Privilege – Law Revue Girls & Context of Comedy:

On Twitter, Saturday night, identity politics got itself into its usual abject mess. Though of all its victims, I wouldn’t have put my money on the Law Revue Girls, clever makers of that  feminist parody of Robin Thicke’s execrable Blurred Lines:

Saturday night the Law Revue Girls Twitter account tweeted the following, defending feminist Lily Allen’s music video from being racist:

I would put calling @lilyallen racist up there with calling Macklemore privileged,  in the stakes of no purpose. Missing the message.
— Law Revue Girls (@LawRevueGirls) November 16, 2013

You can imagine what ensured. Let me show you:

For all those who don't understand why we make fun of #WhiteFeminists, the @lawrevuegirls multi part tweet defence of Lily Allen sums it up.
— Aunty Haurangi  (@_surlymermaid) November 16, 2013

And:

@LawRevueGirls yes, how nice for you #privilege
— Gina Rangi (@mokai77) November 16, 2013

Despite one of the Law Revue Girls described herself as a racial 'fruit salad', they belatedly attempted to extract themselves from the shit-pond they’d unwittingly dived head first into:

Not trying to start a war, I *just* think the world's a bit screwy if the only thing you notice when watching a music video is skin colour
— Law Revue Girls (@LawRevueGirls) November 16, 2013

They should’ve known better; the Left aren’t forgiving, and they’re hardest on their own, and so it on went all night. I suspect the Law Revue Girls will now do what all wise people should do – I’m not a wise man - when their privilege is stuffed into in their mouths: shut up. Even Left stalwart, Chris Trotter, admits this mainstay of Left politics, on the silencing of Willie Jackson and John Tamihere:

Rather than korero, the left-wing social media’s first instinct was to condemn, threaten, punish and shut down.

Because the Left typically, arrogantly, are not interested in interacting with differing opinion: they simply seek to shut that opinion down. (For Libertarians reading, that’s an interesting link).

Was Lily Allen’s music video racist? Here’s her defence: you decide.

That’s not the point for me anymore; which is this new linguistic puritanism stalking the land through our fellow citizens, sifting every word for privilege and thought crimes. Giovanni Tiso used this new puritanism of language (hence thought) to take down Willie and JT: I’ve written why I’m not comfortable with that. I wonder if Giovanni understands he’s put himself in the same moral arbiter role of ‘the people’ as Whaleoil has, who would shut down, I suspect, much of the comedy I love: I’ve written on that, also – can a rape joke be defended. About the time radshitzy, neo-Marxist feminist Thorny put herself so humourlessly in my life, checking my privilege for daring to enter her Tweet timeline – that’s all I did, I chipped in on a tweet – I noticed she was also attacking comedian Raybon Kan; I have no idea why, it would be some joke or other she thought he should be shut down for.

I love comedy. Read this link. I love comedy; ‘it lights a fire that warms the coldest nights of my mind’. I record the stand-up on the comedy channel to watch on Friday night: so let’s not kid ourselves where this leads. I suspect less than fifty percent of the stand-up acts on Apollo Live, et al, would survive this new citizen policed thought-crime puritanism. Of home-grown shows, I can guarantee you 7 Days, and Jono and Ben at Ten, two great shows, will very soon not pass muster.

I’m over it. And remember no surveillance Big Brother state can survive for long without an acquiescent people: the secret police usually only ended up on your door when your neighbour potted you in. So though this post doesn’t initially impact on the coercive state, you can bet it ultimately does: hate speech laws, cyber bullying laws, will be the legislative manifestation.

The ethic of this blog is individualism. It is only a classical liberal individualist ethic that will ultimately heal the –isms: sexism, racism, et al. I’ve written further on collectivist identity politics on my post regarding that radshitzy clique of neo-Marxist feminism, but for the record:

In some enlightened age we will meet each other as individuals, representing only ourselves,.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 16, 2013

Next time you seek to silence an individual who has offended you in some way with words, especially one sworn to an ethic of do no harm, and you seek to silence them with their privilege, then wonder if you’re not simply reinforcing it. That’s privilege as a wall of your making, over which two people can no longer even shake hands to examine the differences that make life the celebration it should be, rather than each left to guard their side of the wall, wallowing in a morass of ignorance, and too often, fear.

[Following, is how this blog post started …]

Gender Quotas:

I’ve been meaning to get back to the Labour Party’s gender quota again: passed, at last, in their annual conference some weeks ago, they'll be running a quota to ensure women comprise 50% of their caucus. This weekend, my loquacious slanderer, Thorny, has kindly provided me with the impetus to make a comment, albeit vicariously. By showing the logic hole, or at the least, missing piece, in her latest post, Ladies, Step Up To The Platform, - Just Not The Mic - nice title Thorny - I wish to keep a promise I made to the Labour women MP’s in this old post of mine concerning this year’s Labour Party leadership contest, which ultimately no woman MP contested (link below):

… all I’m saying is a Labour woman MP must have a tilt [for the Labour Party leadership]. Because this will become my business if, when Labour ever gains that sandpit in the Fortress of Legislation, it then attempts to implement not just a gender quota within the party - which I couldn’t care less about, that’s Labour Party business - but also force it on the private sector, making gender quotas an issue of the voluntary, free society, versus the coerced one again. If no woman contests this [leadership], I'll be pointing out the double standard here. [Why should you demand, by force, what you’re not prepared to do the hard yards for?]

I would love to put the below questions to Thorny by posting on her site, but like so many Left blogs, she lacks professionalism, either deleting comments, or worse, over-writing and mis-representing them, so here we go. Thorny is opining the representation of women in Martyn Bradbury’s Lefty diatribe, The Daily Blog:

Just one question.

How the fuck are you going to do any of that when you’ve already got a roster which is 38% women …

But those women only provide 6% of the posts?

I have done this math.  I have a goddamned spreadsheet.  Because I’ve seen so many people comment about the fucking flood of chaff which covers the TDB front page.

38% women posters.  6% of the total posts.

Trouble is, the accuracy of her conclusion of misogyny, or certainly larceny, can only be proven by a second series of related questions, namely:

Have more women that those 38% approached Bradbury about contributing content, and has he turned those women down?

If this is the case, Thorny has a valid point, given Daily Blog’s Left-Liberal-quota agenda nonsense. Unfortunately Thorny provides no evidence of this; so I’d be interested to know from Bradbury’s point of view what the answer is. Perhaps someone might ask him for me: while I read widely amongst the cross section of blogs, my experience has been very few of the Left have any interest outside their own bullying world view, and if I'm not mistaken, that walking ego, Martyn Bradbury, has blocked me, also.

Further, of the 38% of female contributors providing only 6% of content, are they actually producing an equivalent 38% content which Bradbury is then refusing to publish? Is their productivity that of the men on the site? Bradbury can only publish what he’s been furnished with.

Again, if that is the case, Thorny has a point, but no evidence is provided of same. It’s just the accusation not backed up with detail, and the smear against a Bradbury it's postulated is concerned only with his ‘liberal cred’- (on which Thorny may well be right).

Until those points are answered factually, then based on the fact that ultimately no Labour woman MP did put their hand up to contest the Labour Party leadership, preferring, instead, an enforced quota, I’m going to fantastically – don’t you dare take this out of context – put myself on Bradbury’s side of the equation, until the numbers are given one way or the other.

Mind you, the Left continuing to pull itself apart: what a shame. I guess the bright side is the more time they spend being vicious to each other, the less time they have visiting viciousness on the rest of us.

Blog Inequality:

By the bye, Thorny’s statement in her piece that her blog is ranked in Ken Perrot’s Open Parachute blog rankings, led me to do the irresistible: checking her ranking against mine. Damn: she’s above me in the blog rankings :) Over October she was placed fortieth, I – ahem, low posting month – was way down at eighty fifth.

That's hardly fair; surely my viewpoint is being stifled here? In the worthy cause of combating blog inequality, shouldn’t her readers be forced to read mine to give equal weight to our views? Just as I am forced by that ruthless mechanism of state, the tax department, to share my income with all and sundry, and supporting Thorny's tax surveillance state I have no agreement with, then why shouldn’t Thorny be forced to share her readership with me?

… The answer is obvious: because such a notion is stupid. More than that: unjust. But that’s exactly what the Left advocate with my income, and if you speak up against them, then as is their modus operandi, they will simply seek to beat you into silence with your privilege.

Albeit, before leaving this topic, I would like to take the time to sooth my sore ego, almost the size of Thorny’s, who the odd time I’ve ‘interrupted’ her on Twitter since she first falsely foot tripped me, has - pot/kettle - laid the charge against me of attention seeking; ironically in the exact manner Edwardian gentlemen sought to side-line the suffragettes by condescendingly calling them attention seekers, as if they were but truculent little children.  It seems Thorny has gone full circle.

But of course my readership is minute: my central ethic, unfettered freedom of an individual human being to do and say as they like so long as they harm no one, is an ethic not shared anymore in the West. The battle I fight was lost a long time ago, and I'm just filling in time between drinks, while they remain legal. And I’m not overlooking the seeming illogic that Libertarian NotPC gets something like thirty thousand visits a month, way more than me also: people who believe in freedom tend to be working people, with little time for reading, and what is happening here is that over more than twenty years of hard grafting, Peter Cresswell has formed for himself a monopoly for that time – bastard. I’m working on my complaint to that oxymoronic Commerce Commission right after this missive, to see if I can get them to pare him down to my size: my recommendation will be that he only be allowed to post once a fortnight until his visits are reduced to my level. I don’t plan to do anything different, such as be more productive or more creative: I don’t need to so long as the state will intervene to take the share he has won in the market of blogs, and give it to me under the sanction of fairness.

Related Posts:

GenderPolitics / Rape Culture: The Unbearable Silencing of Willie Jackson and JohnTamihere.

Radshitzy Feminism, Police Investigative Technique:Identity Politics Deconstructing Law and Sense

This is None of My Business, but … Labour LeadershipQua Women & Maori MPs

Rape Culture: The Roast Busters

Of Comedy, Whaleoil, Kim Dotcom Freedom of Speech and Bounded Liberty.

Gender Politics / Rape Culture: The Unbearable Silencing of Willie Jackson and John Tamihere.

When she told her French friends about [why she would not attend a street protest against the communists], they were amazed. "You mean you don't want to fight the occupation of your country?" She would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison. But she knew she would never be able to make them understand.

Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

I’ve run the full gamut of gender politics this month, albeit without contradiction. From my blog piece against that brand of radshitzy neo-Marxist feminism suggesting the ludicrous notion that women should not be prosecuted for making false rape complaints, to adding my voice against a rape culture that has been driven painfully, finally, into our consciousness’s by the rapists calling themselves Roast Busters. My position on that is unequivocal:

… sex without consent is rape: it doesn't matter what a woman, or worse, a girl, wears, or if she is intoxicated. In a civilised, free society a woman can expect by right to not fear rape no matter her state. Just as men can expect to be victim of no violence.

But equivocation has beset me with the silencing of Willie Jackson and John Tamihere’s radio show. I don’t listen to Willie and JT’s show; their Left politick is anathema to me. I haven’t listened to their interview with Amy, in which their attitude was apparently supporting rape culture, making me most probably as uninformed in this piece as the Commissioner of Police was when he allowed himself to be interviewed on Campbell Live. But I have this inbuilt freedom loving radar that responds to individualism, and recoils from mob group think.

Nothing surrounding the silencing of these two men breaches Libertarian philosophy in any way. Blogger Giovanni Tiso started a campaign of putting pressure on their show’s advertisers, and those advertisers submitted to it, pulling their paid time. There was no government coercion involved: every action has been voluntary … that’s the correct way to bring about change. Good on Tiso.

My trouble is, as Lindsay Mitchell aptly put it:

But it's still a disturbing example of the repercussions of thinking the 'wrong stuff' out loud.

Yes. That. On the surface, everything is right here. Real strides are being made to turn back the insidious rape culture destroying our society. And yet … and yet, in my mind there ‘lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison.’ But I know I will never be able to make the radshitzy clique understand. Nor even the centre anymore.

On other hand, no matter how much I disagree with a commentator, it gives me a queasy feeling seeing voices silenced by a mob #justsaying
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 11, 2013

Mindful that the mob believes, seriously believes, despite the lessons of history, that it owns my income, that I should not drink so much, I should not smoke, nor ensconce a high sugar-content jam. That I am owned, in other words, by them.

Individuals: we’re complicated. But long live the individual. The silencing of Willie and JT doesn't fit right with me. While there must be admonition, there must also be room for grace, learning, changing, and carrying on. What was ever solved by forcing voices into the void?

Update 1:

Below is simply a comment I’ve put up below in answer to a questioning of my approach. I reprint below simply because it explicates in some important ways, my position above. (Not in any way to ‘get at’ commenter Katie who I am delighted is, for now at least, reading my blog).

Albeit short, my piece had the nuance of Kundera's quotation, yet you've read it in a straight line, Katie.

Nowhere in my post do I admit the ultimate result was wrong, necessarily, just that it did not 'sit right with me': and because I understand the evil of the mob baying for blood, over an individualistic sensibility, it still does not fit right with me.

I vested myself mainly in the last two paragraphs, but some random points that are important to me:

A man I have been following for a long time on Twitter, a very technical, reasoned man, who's opinion I have grown a lot of respect for, has said of the interview - which I no longer have a concern to listen to - quote:

" I did listen to Amy's interview and it could easily be mostly (&properly) playing devil’s advocate to elicit all her views."

I suspect I would take that point of view over a mob that starts out bent on change, then converts to bent on retribution (that ugly thing).

Giovanni Tiso has tweeted of at least one advertiser who is angry with what has happened. That advertiser was quite willing to accept Willie and JT's apology and continue on advertising, and became quite infuriated after saying so, and themselves coming into the mob's anger fuelled frame. That was their right to accept the apology.

Back to my own stance, if I had my livelihood taken from me every time I made a mistake I'd be broke: we all would. I, too, would have been happy - if I listened to their show - with a personal apology, and thus changed behaviour. We learn from our mistakes, change, move on. Giovanni's campaign turned from light to dark, when it became a campaign not to show the presenters' they were necessarily wrong, but to seek retribution by taking their livelihoods from them.

That's my opinion, that's what would have sat right with me. But I said quite plainly that what did happen breached none of the libertarian principles I hold. Good on Tiso.

Regarding my last two paragraphs, don't ever confuse morality or the truth of an issue or fact, with having the numbers: when Galileo's lone voice stated the Earth moved around the Sun, the Catholic Church tried him for heresy: the opinion of the numbers didn't change the truth of Galileo though. So with many moral issues. That Kundera quotation is one of the wisest writings in our modern literature, informed as it is by an underlying humanity born of reasoned observation.

I hate a mob in almost every instance. It's a sensibility that is part of me. I hated being forced to play team sports at school, I keep pretty much my own company, I don’t go on street protests even for issues I care for greatly. Because the mob can so easily turn against you. And especially as this particular mob also thinks they own my income and can tell me how to live my life regardless I harm no one. That is unfortunately the fundamental basis on which our democracy is constructed, a tyranny of the majority, in the ugly face of which my single voice saying no, that is immoral, will always be the truth.

Here's an interesting question for you. Despite my vociferous condemnation of rape culture on my Roast Busters post, last year I wrote a post that defended the ability of a comedian, or person in certain circumstances, to make a rape joke (even if I would never do same). Here’s the post, does it make me guilty of the sins of Willie and JT? Am I to be run out of town by the mob also? Does it make me a misogynist? (An offensive accusation I am seeing tossed so flippantly around against anyone who puts themselves against the radshitzy cliques).