Good news, ladies and manginas: Apparently some MRAs don’t think it’s time to go out and start shooting people. At least not quite yet.
Some background: In recent days numerous MRAs have taken up the cause of a man named Thomas Ball – who burned himself to death outside a courthouse in Keane, New Hampshire in a protest against what he saw as unfair treatment in family court. Ferdinand Bardamu of In Male Fide has declared him “a martyr for the cause of men’s rights, a casualty of feminism’s stripping one half of the population of their humanity.”
Before killing himself, Ball wrote a long manifesto outlining his grievances and suggesting that the time had come for men “to start burning down police stations and courthouses,” describing the inhabitants of such buildings as “[c]ollaborators who are no different than the Vichy of France or the Quislings of Norway during the Second World War … So burn them out. “ (He offered specific advice on how best to do this, including tips on how to select the proper bottles to use for Molotov cocktails.)
All this has inspired some in the MRA to start talking ominously about violence. On The Spearhead, W.F. Price has responded to this talk with a piece suggesting that the time isn’t quite right for the MRAs of the world to take up armed struggle. Not just yet, anyway. As he puts it:
It is never a good idea to pick up a gun and start shooting to address some vaguely defined injustice — that is savagery. Before the American Revolution, for example, patriots took pains to spell out a long list of grievances that justified rebellion. …
We have to make our own lists, air our grievances, and give the state the opportunity to redress them. … Before anyone resorts to the same methods the state uses against us, we must put every reasonable effort into working with the law and the political system we have. Because this effort is still in its infancy, any calls for armed resistance are entirely premature and counterproductive, and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Obviously, the flip side of this argument for delay is a justification for killing people if these “grievances” aren’t dealt with in the way that those in the MRA would like. Price’s reference to the American Revolution is an interesting one, because of course the central issue of that struggle was, you know, taxation without representation. The colonists couldn’t vote out the king if they didn’t like his policies. In case anyone has forgotten: we actually do have the vote now, which was kind of the whole point in the first place.
Of course, many of Price’s readers are a bit more impatient than he is. In a comment that drew (last I checked) more than 40 upvotes and only two dissenting downvote, Taqman took issue with Price’s call to delay the armed struggle:
Tell that to men who are facing imminent imprisonment for failure to pay child support.
They don’t have the luxury of time and can’t wait a couple of decades for the manginas of the world to wake up and decide that a gentlemanly form of armed resistance is now acceptable.
The ironically named Firepower, meanwhile, took a little swipe at Ball’s own actions, but didn’t challenge his advice for the rest of the men of the world:
What IS crazy is having to point out that setting YOURSELF on fire is a ridiculous way to “win” anything.
Set your enemies on fire. To even have to remind this questions the long term chances of victory for such a pathetic lot.
Jean Valjean suggested that political action was pointless — due to all those damned women who vote:
No amount of “stoic logic” will make politicians see our point of view.
Politicians are in the business of getting re-elected rather than the business of good governance. So long as women are the majority there will only be tyranny of the majority.
Peter-Andrew:Nolan(c) — you knew we were getting to him, right? — expressed his profound disappointment that more Spearheaders weren’t willing to embrace a violent solution:
Gee you guys are whimps and tiptoe around the ‘use of force’ like freaking ballet dancers. Are you so scared to speak about this when it is CLEAR the guvment LOVES using force against you and lots of other people too?
And he made the argument personal, explicitly denouncing, by name, the judge he claimed had “criminally abused” him with his rulings:
Judge [name redacted’s] life is now in my hands. He lives by my consent and my consent alone. …
And, like Ball, he declared judges to be essentially treasonous:
These judges pretended to be your servants. They are evil, evil people who deserve the kind of treatment reserved for those who commit treason.
There is more to Nolan’s comment(s) than that, but to get into it would require going down the rabbit-hole into his particular brand of crackpottery, which seems to involve him setting up his own courts to try judges he doesn’t like. (I frankly don’t understand his belief system and don’t care to.)
Now, it should be noted that a few Spearheaders actually objected to Nolan’s violent talk. But the last I checked, the comment I just quoted had more upvotes than downvotes. W.F. Price took more flak for suggesting men wait a little longer before taking up arms than Nolan did for, well, you saw what he wrote. That tells you a lot about The Spearhead, I think.
EDIT: Added quote from Ferdinand Bardamu; removed similar quote from The Spearhead.
Crack: You are the one who brought your past into it. You are the one who makes such a big deal about being a vet. You are the one who lists 1980 as the year you graduated from Grant on his facebook page.
You want me to think you got your GED, or diploma sometime before that… then you’d best not have a public page, which you manage, which say one thing, when it was something else. There are words for that.
Your facebook page says you graduated from SFCC, in 1984. You were born in 1962. That means you were 18 in 1980. So you were in the Navy, and, “traveled the world” and then went to SFCC, in time to be graduating in 1984.
Your facebook page that says you graduated.
So… Navy when you were… 17 1/2 if you had a parent to sign off on it, and able to graduate from a two-year school in 1984.
No assumptions on my part in that math. Things you said in public.
I figure if it can survive exposure to YouTube comments, it can survive anything.
David,
This is a direction your readers are going in. I will play by your rules, but aside from a reference to my experience, this examination is not mine.
Dan,
He is accused of more than those simple charges. And where this is going – again – is not my doing (I’ve been asking, repeatedly, why it’s going here, but,…)
Pec,
Hitting a child isn’t enough to bring the government into anybody’s home. Like you, I don’t think “all corporal punishment is, ipso facto child abuse.” I have seen, first hand, how this stuff “works” and I say Thomas Ball nailed it. He was done wrong – I am not alone in that assessment. I speak from experience about just how wrong these things can go.
You seem mostly pissed, as so many are, that men will not just let this go – and we won’t:
The laws, as they are currently administered, are not just unfair to men, but a fundamental wrong to how this country is supposed to operate.
Pec, Pec, Pec – I was NOT born in 1962. (Why does this remind me of the anal exam sarah palin just went through with her e-mails? I guess the media, too, just wanted to ‘get the facts straight,” right?) As I said, I owe you nothing – you can try to reconcile the math all day long, without including (or understanding) the vagaries of life, but you’ll be alone in that – especially because you’re living up to my suspicions about why you want to go there. Sorry, but I will not help you.
I will say, as you noticed, I was married to a French woman, so – along with the travels during my music career – can you not understand something as simple as I have traveled almost this entire planet?
Crack
“He” being accused of more than those simple charges is one thing,
“My wife killed three people” is quite another……
Dan,
You are questioning the circumstances of my life – why, I don’t know, but that’s your prerogative. As I just said to Pec, the vagaries of life are not all easily explainable (especially under the conditions I live under which – when you consider the unique story I have related – you’ll just have to accept are not normal) and this is not the forum for me to go into *everything*
That said, this effort to discredit me personally is tawdry. It makes me sad to see the effort put into this, just because I defended Thomas Ball, but it’s nothing new – I have been under the gun from Day One – which is precisely why I will not back down.
You guys cannot win this way – you only weaken your position.
*ouch*
Did someone just use a 30mm with HE rounds?
Crack…. in 1999 you were 37… That was February, so it’s probable, all things being equal, that you were born in 61.
Which adds… one year to the time frame.
Doesn’t change one bit of the rest of it. You were the one who introduced your life to the equation.
You can maintain your position all you like, as I said, the actual jury isn’t you. It’s not me. It’s not the people who comment. It’s the people who are looking at it from the outside. You made the point about how you were findable. We went looking.
What I’ve found calls some of the aspects of what you’ve said into some question.
But you are being really defensive about it. If you enlisted under the MORE program, that’s fine. You are the one who said your mother beat out and then implied it’s what made you the man you are today. But your biography says your mother left when you were two. Then you were (for an unstated time) with your father [and it seems you name-dropped Maya Angelou], before getting some form of foster parentage.
Which of those periods of time were you being beaten with boards that had nails in them?
Your accusations of multiple murder… a bit less credible.
And… looking at Better Propaganda more.. the role you have (or had) there, implies that you were in a position to, at least, approve the biography there, (which is the one I said was lifted, almost verbatim, from the LA Weekly Article of Feb 1999).
Today, The Crack Emcee is working on his follow up (a, full-length, double CD: Maximum Base Liver b/w What Doesn’t Kill You,…) and, as Programming Director for Better Propaganda.com
That makes your defense that, You are comparing what I’ve said directly, to an online bio, to what reporters write – which do you think is more accurate? pretty low on the integrity scale. That, “online bio” seems to be part of what you have said directly, and it plagiarises the reporter you are denigrating.
Way to go on making a case for Vets all being stand-up people.
You can maintain your position all you like, as I said, the actual jury isn’t you. It’s not me. It’s not the people who comment. It’s the people who are looking at it from the outside. You made the point about how you were findable. We went looking.
And all you will have found is that various outlets have details with minor conflicts – proving what, Pec? Here I am – still – just as I’ve said.
The better question is why you’re obsessing on doing this so badly? What will you have gained? I came here to discuss an issue, but no matter – you guys are going everywhere but to that issue. Which is fine, as I said, you can’t win at this. I’ve already got two concessions – one from you – while I stand here letting you pretend you’re the TSA.
And you’re being sillier and sillier with your questions:
How many foster mothers do I have, Pec? Which do I regard as my “mother” under those circumstances? You don’t know and you won’t find out, do you know why? I’ll tell you:
It has NOTHING to do with the topic at hand.
You are merely on a smear mission, as I first stated, but no one is being slimed but yourself.
If you are a vet, this behavior is below you.
@Crack:
You’ve spent this entire thread, apart from your first post, railing about how everyone is misinterpreting you, everyone is lying, everyone is putting words in your mouth. And when people finally give you evidence that, in fact, none of these were true, you switch to “Well, why are you obsessing over this? I didn’t come to talk about me, I came to talk about X.” Dishonesty reigns supreme with you, doesn’t it?
I mean, damn… A lesser man than Pecunium would have given up to your half-assed accusations ages ago. Own up to your own actions.
Your accusations of multiple murder… a bit less credible.
And you will try to sell that “bit” as a full-blown lie, won’t you?
You’re a sleaze, Pec. You should go into journalism,…
kirbywarp,
You’ve spent this entire thread, apart from your first post, railing about how everyone is misinterpreting you, everyone is lying, everyone is putting words in your mouth. And when people finally give you evidence that, in fact, none of these were true,…
You have exposed nothing – NOTHING – as a lie. You have some conflicting dates on websites (Off by a year – ooooh! String him up!) and limited information on the murders – you know *something* did happen, though I’m not at liberty to discuss *everything* here, as I said before.
If this is how little evidence you guys use to claim a man is discredited, is it any wonder Thomas Bell gave up?
You’ve proven nothing but you are not only unfair but also, as I said, sleazy.
@Crack:
Thanks for ignoring the rest of the paragraph, where I make my main point. Here it is again:
“you switch to “Well, why are you obsessing over this? I didn’t come to talk about me, I came to talk about X.””
Its this that irritates me. I couldn’t care less about your personal life, but making a huge defensive fuss for pages of comments, then insinating that we’re the ones making a big deal… Ugh. Like I’ve said before, my faith in humanity is slipping.
The Crack Emcee: Re. the topic at hand, listen. I responded to you, you didn’t respond back. If this isn’t a topic that interests you, don’t respond this time and I’ll consider myself out of the conversation that appears to now be about vets and your personal life.
My question is: I think that as far as parents reprimanding their kids, teaching them manners, teaching them respect — that’s awesome. That should be supported and applauded. And if Tom Ball had reacted to his daughter licking him by trying to teach her about personal autonomy and respect for other people’s bodies in some appropriate way, that would have been great. But he didn’t. He hit her several times and split her lip. Which may have been his attempt to teach her about personal autonomy in some twisted way, but really goes across that line of showing boundaries and deep into mistreatment and violence toward a child.
There just are boundaries between what a parent can do to reprimand a child and what is actually abuse of that child. And if the state’s not going to protect a child from a parent who wants to cross that boundary — who is? And shouldn’t someone step in to protect children, especially when we can see that abusive behavior toward children leads to a cycle of violence?
Ball, not Bell.
What is it with these guys who can’t even spell their own martyr’s name right?
kirbywarp,
Its this that irritates me. I couldn’t care less about your personal life, but making a huge defensive fuss for pages of comments, then insinating that we’re the ones making a big deal… Ugh. Like I’ve said before, my faith in humanity is slipping.
You are also siding now with a man – Pec – who is practically demanding the names of my foster mothers, as though knowing them will change anything. Don’t you understand a smear campaign when you see one? Isn’t what Pec’s doing evil to you?
So some dates on websites conflict by a year or two – so what? The story hasn’t changed – foster child, military, college, music career, married, divorced with horrendous circumstances. What is being gained by this? How am I being discredited? As you said, this has been an all-day affair, and you’ve got bupkis.
And yet you – as so many others have tried – are declaring victory.
Tell me, kirbywarp, where is the smoking gun?
Bee, I’m sorry – give me a minute, please.
“You are also siding now with a man – Pec – who is practically demanding the names of my foster mothers, as though knowing them will change anything. Don’t you understand a smear campaign when you see one? Isn’t what Pec’s doing evil to you?”
Well, let me side with him as well then, because he hasn’t made any such demand. He asked if it was your mother or your foster mother who, you claim, beat you as a child. I think this is a perfectly reasonable question. Why are you getting so bent out of shape about this? You’re the one who brought it up in the first place.
Crack
I’m not questioning the circumstances of your life, and I hope that the victims of Dr. A. N. Other, and his presumed accomplice, get the justice they deserve for the crimes, or omissions or malpractises that they committed. For what it’s worth, I’m actually totally sympathetic to your general thesis that therapy cults are dangerous – they don’t result in spectacularly public deaths, but the unacknowledged relentless drumbeat of deadly harm that they do deserves far, far wider exposure.
But here’s the thing, I’ve actually met, interviewed and filmed the families of people who were genuinely the victims of cult murders in France and Switzerland back in the 1990’s – you know, burned to death, with .22 bullets in the head type murders, including minors. No ambiguity, no doubts, no equivocation, no semantics, no malpractise. I met, interviewed and filmed some of the lucky ones that left the cult in time – some by the slenderest thread of good fortune. I also met, interviewed and avoided filming charlatans who claimed things that were not credible or just plain flat out mendacious.
I have a high bar for this sort of thing.
@Crack:
Bah… why do I bother. Like I said, I couldn’t care less about your personal life. That’s pecunium’s job, it seems. But you are being dishonest when you try to turn every accusation of your behavior towards the details of your life. Again, you have made a bunch of accusations about posters lying, or putting words in your mouth, or whatever. And yet, after raising all this fuss, at the end of it you ask “Why is this such a big deal to you?” Its a big deal because we try to sympathize with your situation, and you accuse us of condesension. We try to point out that you don’t have the right idea about child abuse, and you accuse us of being pansies or of lying about your personal life.
For man trying to engage in honest conversation, your method is disgraceful. This isn’t about “declaring victory,” its about trying to hold a conversation in good faith, and you’ve completely ruined any chance of that.
Crack: You were the one who brought your mother into this. Remember, the whole thing about she beat you, anytime she felt like it, with boards that had nails in them, and that since you don’t think that was abuse, what Thomas Ball (show some love to another vet, and get his name right). did can’t have been abuse.
That’s what started it.
And no one said a word about it being wrong, or dubious, or anything else, until you (again) made a big deal about who you are.
So, you make an argument, and we respond to it, and you defend it, and add to it, and we are the one’s obsessing? This isn’t obsession.
You on homeopathy and “New Age” and Yoga, and how your wife thinks she’s a god, and that she committed murder… that’s obsession.
Asking you to be consistent, that’s not obsession. You want to explain why the one story (the one from 99) isn’t accurate, but you were willing to plagiarise it, and let it be put up at website you are a part of running?
I’m not saying you are lying about your wife (if I decide to do that, believe me, you won’t have to wonder. You won’t be the first person I’ve called a liar. Heck you won’t be the first person here that I’ve called a liar). I’m saying that what you’re arguing has some flaws. I’m pointing out that the only place that seems to think she committed crimes is you. You can blather about the sooper-seekrit police investigations in Europe, but hey… 9/11 Truthers can blather about the “inside job” and homeopaths can ramble on about “dilutions”. That they believe it doesn’t make it true.
We all have things we believe that may not be true. Here, I’ll give some examples.
I happen to believe (from looking at the evidence, reading the forensics reports, the autopsy report, some of the police blotters from Westwood in the time frame, and some other reports about his relationship with his ex-wife) that OJ wasn’t involved in her murder. I could be wrong.
I also believe (from those same sources) that if he was involved he can’t have acted alone.
I could be wrong on both of those (of those, the former is more likely to be wrong, but I stand by it; it’s what I believe).
I also know that even if he was involved, and in fact if he killed her, and Goldman, all by himself, the jury reached the correct verdict.
That one isn’t one I will admit to possibility of being wrong about, because there are standards of evidence, and the Los Angeles County Office of the District Attorney failed to do what was needed to obtain a conviction.
But you aren’t offering any more evidence for the murders you allege your wife to have committed than NWOslave has to offer about, “the Rothchilds” (sic). Less even, because at least NWO has other people who believe it and are willing to spin theories so he can point to them as if they were some sort of proof.
You have an hypothesis. You are married to it. You’ve made a blogging career out of it. It’s an obsession.
You also have this silly fetish about what it means to be a vet. What it means is you were in the military (or even the Air Force :)). It’s doesn’t earn you any slack in conversations that aren’t about being in the military. I know a lot of vets. The top post here is about a vet. Some vets are stand-up people. I’d take them to a fight any day of the week. Some are dirtbags, and I wouldn’t trust them to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the bottom.
Being a vet gets you no slack. Spouting off about how you were a vet, actually raises the bar, if someone is presenting as something special. You present it as something special (e.g. the comment in Althouse where you use your stint in the Navy as some sort of proof of how American you are, and add that you can see four flags from your window and so far as you can tell you may be the last person in the world who really cares about America not going down the toilet). Extraordinary claims (such as “My wife murdered three people”) require evidence.
Bee,
The Crack Emcee: Re. the topic at hand, listen. I responded to you, you didn’t respond back. If this isn’t a topic that interests you, don’t respond this time and I’ll consider myself out of the conversation that appears to now be about vets and your personal life.
Again, I’m sorry, but as you’ve noticed, the witch hunt has moved to the forefront and, unfortunately, has to be dealt with. Next episode: Dan comes back with statements from the accused claiming nothing happened and everyone’s still alive – and that’s “proof” I’m a liar – watch.
O.K., to you:
My question is: I think that as far as parents reprimanding their kids, teaching them manners, teaching them respect — that’s awesome. That should be supported and applauded. And if Tom Ball had reacted to his daughter licking him by trying to teach her about personal autonomy and respect for other people’s bodies in some appropriate way, that would have been great. But he didn’t. He hit her several times and split her lip. Which may have been his attempt to teach her about personal autonomy in some twisted way, but really goes across that line of showing boundaries and deep into mistreatment and violence toward a child.
Come on, Bee – before there was blood, and now he’s hit her “several times”? Can’t you see you guys are making up details so the story can be something it’s not? And couldn’t Tom Ball, just once, have not known his own strength? He’s a guy – it happens, you know? Why should he be put through Hell, with outsiders taking control of his life, over that possibility?
There just are boundaries between what a parent can do to reprimand a child and what is actually abuse of that child. And if the state’s not going to protect a child from a parent who wants to cross that boundary — who is? And shouldn’t someone step in to protect children, especially when we can see that abusive behavior toward children leads to a cycle of violence?
Bee, I grew up in the ghetto, and you know what causes a “cycle of violence”? A lack of critical thinking in schools. People who don’t know how to reason. As I mentioned before, every boy in my neighborhood who got corporeal punishment in the home has grown up to be a decent man. Those without it became “gangstas” and died, almost to a man, from a bullet to the head.
I think you’ve bought into a number of feminist tropes, like the “cycle of violence,” that under real-world observation, don’t hold up. Many have called me a woman hater for saying such things but I have rescued more women – for being stupid – than I’m sure my accusers have. That’s why I’m sick enough, of all of it, to openly say the un-PC truth:
The so-called “root causes” are bullshit.
Thomas Ball did not appear to be as a man who abused his kids. His wife did not say he was – the government did. Even more important, his tale tracks perfectly – *perfectly* – with the unfair, wrong-headed, and downright evil system I encountered, and the one I’ve seen other men practically destroyed by. To ignore all of that is impossible to me, and that’s why I’m here to say there’s another tale here. I am not a “Men’s Rights” guy – I’m just a guy – but one who has been through the flames of this process and survived.
After you have done so, it’s impossible not to be moved by Thomas Ball’s story.
The Crack Emcee: No need to apologize. You’ve got a lot of conversations going on here …
Kirby: I don’t care about his personal life, per se, but it’s indicative of his methods. He has made specific claims, in various places, about how his life went. When I look at it, the pieces don’t add up. Where they don’t add up I am asking him to clarify. He doesn’t like being challenged.