Pop Quiz: Who said the following?
“The historian can peg the point where a society begins its sharpest decline at the instant when women begin to take part, on an equal footing with men, in political and business affairs; since this means that the men are decadent and the women are no longer women.”
- Oswald Spengler
- David K. Meller
- L. Ron Hubbard
- [email protected]
ANSWER: 3. Apparently L. Ron thought some Thetans were more equal than others. (Citation.) Had this been an actual David K. Meller quote, it would have been filled with more exclamation points.
What does my age have to do with discussing Senator McCarthy? If I talk about ancient Greece, where there were certainly some interesting attitudes about women outside the home, does that make me 2500 year old?
DKM, you think it’s radical that women wear PANTS sometimes. Sometimes I feel like you’re a Victorian time traveler.
^Exactly. The way you pine for the 50s makes me think you’re older, or like Molly said, a time-traveler.
darksidecat-October23,2011@ 4:07pm-
I don’t think that he is a kindred spirit. I don’t think that I can ever think of a politician as any sort of “kindred spirit”. I was only using his rather witty counter to “what makes a communist” to a similar query, ‘what makes a feminist?” on manboobz. That is all.
Much of what happened in those years was regrettable, although it would help to remember that there was a war going on at the time (Okay, a UN police action) in Korea, we were fighting communists, and the other side had atomic bombs and also indeed had a massive espionage presence in the US and its allies!
Again, do you think that a “nazi scare” would have been amicably and humanely dealt with, if instead of Stalin, the development of the A- Bomb was accelerated by 18 months or so, and both Hitler and FDR had the damned things by early 1944! I daresay that things would have rapidly gotten VERY nasty for German Americans in this ‘home of the four freedoms’ whether they were pro-Nazi or not! If it makes anyone feel any better, I don’t think that an English-speaking person would have had the chances of a snowball in hell surviving in the Third Reich either! War, and even war preparation, always does terrible things to civil liberties, personal freedom, and legal safeguards, and McCarthy at worst, only symbolized his time and place!
Fuck yeah. I read that whole series twice as a kid, because when I first read it a lot went over my head and I was like “…is this as bizarre and twisted as I think it is?” Then a bit later I assured myself “nah, there’s no way it’s as bad as I think!” so I reread it and it was WORSE than I’d thought! And all the pedophilia and sexism and bestiality did not go over my head so much the second time. Yaaay. :p
When I found out — after having read Hubbard’s fiction — that he had started a religion I just about laughed my spleen out through my nose. A person like that has credibility? About anything? Especially a moral code? Wow oh wow.
Really? Because it got pretty nasty for the Japanese-Americans and yet the blue-eyed whitebread Christian German-Americans never wound up in camps, somehow…
First time commenter, long-time fan. This post is such a fantastic mix of LR Hubbard and extreme misogyny that I’m inspired …
I’ve been pondering the causes of the visible change to virulent misogyny over the past decade. There are certainly parallels with past civil rights movements, as summarized best by Ghandi’s arc of struggle: “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
In the past, it was rare that widespread violence against women was condoned. This is consistent with chivalry and other types of “benevolent sexism” : as long as the repressed class stays in its place, its integrity is somewhat respected and even defended in society. However, when the repressed class seeks equality, the fragile defence of having a recognized secondary status in society is torn apart. At first, the “benevolent” mechanisms remain and coexist with the new claims to emancipation. This is Ghandi’s laughing stage, and many jokes are made contrasting the past subordinate status with the new claims to equality.
But once the society at large discovers that it’s not just a joke, that the subordinate class really is demanding equality, that’s when the real fight starts. Even the paltry protection of benevolent sexism is removed, and the naked struggle for power and equality comes to the fore. And in this phase of the struggle, MRAs represent perhaps the most strident articulation that some people are really, really, deeply, violently uncomfortable with the equal status of women. But the signs are elsewhere too, in the extreme gendering of everything from childhood onwards, popular entertainment with stereotypes getting worse by the day, social conditions made more difficult for women.
I just hope that the vast majority of Americans who agree with feminist goals haven’t been lulled into a deadly complacency by the lip-service paid to equality in the past, and are somehow getting ready and realizing that this is the real fight, the most decisive part of the struggle, which will determine durable victory. And this means recognizing MRAs and conservative politicians and the deplorable direction of media representation for the threat that they are: oppression’s last and desparate stand.
Too damn many of ’em. Outside of some ethnically segregated neighborhoods in the Northeast, you’d have had to lock up everybody and his dog.
About McCarthy: One of the things about that low-crime, hat-and-hanky, big-fenders-and-chrome era was that you GOT to ruin people’s lives. Often for no real reason.
Everybody who didn’t go to the right church, or vote for the right candidates, or had any especially unique or interesting ideas that didn’t make money, had it in the back of their minds that one day it all might come crashing down on them.
Another thing, foax…McCarthyism was never about Communism. It was the birth of dog whistle politics. Tailgunner Joe wanted to go after New Deal loyalists, urbanists, Jews, queers, eggheads, civil libertarians – anyone left of right. The Commies, who had been a fashionable intellectual option and then turned into a scourge, were the perfect target – anyone who had *ever* espoused left values could be painted Red.
Best part was, the ism survived the man. McCarthy was censured and disgraced, but that didn’t take back the blacklists or the ruined lives. Joe could go to his grave secure in that satisfaction.
Hmm… yes, and the Middle East is simply a Eutopian society. Right. >.>
You’re forgetting the courageous patriotic efforts of Agents Moose and Squirrel. 😀
My dear Mr. Meller! I read your comments with great interest, albeit also with great sorrow that you, like many a modern “man,” evidently refuse to make yourself appealingly fluffy and accept the loving, gentle dominance of a woman as Dame Nature intended!! As you are clearly a student of history, surely you must know how much trouble such “men” have caused in the last century by refusing to submit to wise female rule!!! Look, for example, at your fellow masculinists Hitler and Stalin!!!! (I assume they are fellow masculinists, with politics identical to your own, because they are men, but certainly not the nice, old-fashioned type of men a woman could rely on to cook up her dinner and bring her slippers of an evening!!!!!)
I ask you, if Stalin had stayed home where he belonged, fluffed his mustache, and obeyed the orders of a loving, gentle, generous, dominant, whip-cracking mistress, not to mention the occasional disciplinary spanking, would there ever have been a “Cold War”? I think not!!!!!! I urge you, Mr. Meller, and all others of the foul breed of modern “men,” curtail your civil liberties at once for the good of womankind!!!!!!!
PEACE AND SPANKINGS!!!!!!!!
SHAENON!!!!!!!!!
No, Mr Meller, you are backpedaling because this just became personal.
You started off talking about that appalling joke of Sharon Osbourne’s (which, feminist though I am, shocked and horrified me and I’m pretty sure my reaction was felt by everyone else here) and then you started generalizing and talking about how cancer was some kind of poetic justice against feminists, and then you went on to chortle about “cancer-ridden women going under the knife” and how hilarious that was. You posted that the same day that I “went under the knife” I saw that post four days later while still in hospital, hooked up to a fentalyl drip and I’m afraid I still don’t see the humor in the situation. I was so hurt and angry that any human being would say anything so cruel that I wasn’t even able to respond until now.
To everyone else, thank you so much for your kindness, prayers and good wishes. I truly appreciate them. This is a really tough time for me but I’ll survive it.
Also best of luck to Wisteria’s sister. I hope that her outcome is a complete success and that her illness never darkens her door again.
The Red Scare started well before Korea or the atomic bomb. Debs, founder of the Socialist Party of America, as well as many other socialist party leaders, did considerable jail time during the WW1 era. Communists and other leftists were banned from many legal and social rights before WW2 even began. The left was involved in the african american and women’s rights movements, as well as a central feature of many union movements (Debs had a long history as a union leader). The ACLU was, in fact, founded with the initial goal of protecting leftists againt massive, massive civil rights violations, before WW2 ever began.
This is also utter crap. Russia during WW2 was mostly focused on the war, not on infiltrating the US. In addition, the Soviet Union was….wait for it…on the same damned side as the US in WW2. And, I would suggest you actually read into the history of the Korean war. The Chinese did not enter the war until after the US declared its support for a specific faction, and the Soviets did not enter at all (though many Soviet leaders supported China). It was, in fact, the US who tried to meddle with local politics first there, not the Soviets at all. The US stuck its nose into what was already a pretty nasty local civil war, and escalated the shit out of it.
Of course, to know these things you might actually have to learn some history, rather than just talk out of your ass, as is your usual habit.
Addendum, the Soviets did not enter the war, but they did provide material, but not military, support the China (not Korea).
Meller: One more reason–see above–why allowing women to have a voice in legislation or the courts of justice and equity is probably a mistake (big time) for civilized men!!
No statute of limitations!
What… you are willing to not mention Dworkin? Or Solanas?
Have you taken down that hate-filled screed?
If you haven’t then you are still saying it, which pretty much shows that you still think it’s a valid thing to say. That makes your whinging about people actually holding you accountable for what you say, just that… titty-baby attempts to shift the blame.
You said you take pleasure in other people’s suffering.
“A woman is not automatically a feminist.
Some decades ago, a reporter asked a noisy but rather honest and patriotic Senator (as politicians go), who was investigating communist penetration of the government:
Senator McCarthy, how do you KNOW a communist when you see him?
the good Senator replied “If he walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and flies like a duck, it ain’t no sparrow”!*
Which is why we say you hate women.
(Pop Quiz part two! DKM, what do you think about the occurrence of domestic violence?)
I can answer that for him… It’s “reprehensible, but sometimes women cause it because they want to be hit; that’s why the work at pushing men’s buttons and making them snap.”
As I said, it walks, swims, quacks and flies like a duck, which is how you can tell he hates women.
Hell, the Chinese didn’t enter the war until… wait for it, we violated their borders.
They warned us that to cross the border would mean they were going to take sides (which they’d been avoiding) and when we did, they did.
Phillipa, Wisteria, my sympathy and support.
My dear Ms. Shaenon! I read your comments with great interest, albeit also with great sorrow that you, like many a modern “woman,” evidently refuse to make yourself appealingly fluffy and accept the loving, gentle dominance of a man as Sir Nature intended!! As you are clearly a student of history, surely you must know how much trouble such “women” have caused in the last century by refusing to submit to wise male rule!!! Look, for example, at your fellow feminists French, Jordon, Dworkin and Solana!!!! (I assume they are fellow feminists, with politics identical to your own, because they are women, but certainly not the nice, old-fashioned type of women a man could rely on to cook up his dinner and bring his slippers of an evening!!!!!)
I ask you, if Dworkin had stayed home where she belonged, fluffed her eyelashes, and obeyed the orders of a loving, gentle, generous, dominant, whip-cracking master, not to mention the occasional disciplinary spanking, would there ever have been a “Gender War”? I think not!!!!!! I urge you, Ms. Shaenon, and all others of the foul breed of modern “women,” curtail your civil liberties at once for the good of mankind!!!!!!!
PEACE AND SPANKINGS!!!!!!!!
NWOslave!!!!!!!!!
HAHAHAHA, LOL. Look at NWO try satire.
NWOslave, do you actually know anything about Dworkin? You might find reading a biography instructive.
1. Why does Sharon Osbourne, who’s only able to get onto TV because she’s related to Ozzy Osbourne, somehow represent the entire female population? There’s no hive vagina, where every woman agrees and holds the same beliefs. Sharon Osbourne said something stupid. I, as a woman, think she’s an asshole for saying it.
2. If Meller only meant “women who agree with Sharon Osbourne’s screed,” why did he laugh at “women who get cancer?” Because when you don’t qualify it, you’re really laughing at all women who get cancer. That includes me and… fuck you if you think my cancer was funny. The last thing that anyone who knows me thought about was that it was funny and I can’t tell you how many times my poor father sat by my bedside and cried, because he was afraid to lose his only daughter. Protip: This is how most men react to someone suffering from such a horrible disease. Laughing at someone with cancer makes you just like Sharon Fucking Osbourne. Dumbass.
@Nova,
1. This is what I don’t get. Why would anyone think that Osbourne’s speaks for anyone but Osbourne? It’s ridiculous. Do NWOslave or Mr Meller speak for all men or even all MRAs? Of course not, they speak for themselves and nobody else. But Osbourne is a celebrity and somehow that makes her an “authority”. Oh wait…not it doesn’t!
2. Exactly. And I can tell you, lying in hospital after cancer surgery and reading that “article” was a really unpleasant experience. And watching the colour drain from my father’s face as he took my iPad off me and read it wasn’t much fun either. He actually had to leave the ward afterwards so as not to start shouting.
NWO, this may have gone over your head but…
Shaenon didn’t actually believe in anything she said in that post. She was satirizing DKM (his writing style and views). Whatever you were trying to accomplish with your little switcharoo really…. just made you look like a dumbass
@Nova
“Why does Sharon Osbourne, who’s only able to get onto TV because she’s related to Ozzy Osbourne, somehow represent the entire female population?”
She doesn’t. However, all five hosts had quite the belly laugh. One of them made a lame attempt at humanity. First apologizing for being a “buzzkill” before regendering. The laughter quickly recommensed. Let’s not forget the roar of laughter from all of the female audience. This seems like an excellent representation of womens attitude towards mens agony. The feminist hosts and undoubtedly many a feminist in the audience seems quite telling.
Anywhere the clip was shown and comments were permitted lots of women and feminists expressed their opinions quite clearly. It’s extremely easy to say days later after the fact you were horrified or disgusted with the hosts as well as the audience. Anyone one of you could have rolled on the floor, holding your aching bellies from all the laughter and then wrote here about your sympathy and disgust. The video however shows the true reaction of a very diverse population of women.
To find out is a society is saturated in misandry or misogyny one needs only to look at the popular culture of the MSM. Was there ever a talk show with five men as hosts talking about a woman having her genitals cut off and thrown in the garbage disposal, and all of them laughing as well as the audience of men? Of course not. Such a society would be an inhuman, foul and vile culture rotting away from it’s own hatred.
@Shora
“Shaenon didn’t actually believe in anything she said in that post. She was satirizing DKM (his writing style and views). Whatever you were trying to accomplish with your little switcharoo really…. just made you look like a dumbass”
When a woman spews hatred and mockery of a man/men it’s satire. When a man spews hatred and mockery of a woman/women it’s misogyny.