One of my recurrent themes is that dopey intellectual frameworks can lead to wacky results that are often the opposite of what the dominant thinkers say they want even in purely "Who? Whom?" terms.
For example, from the end of the 1960s onward, we've been lectured over and over again about feminism, the social construction of gender, the inappropriateness of noticing biological differences between men and women, the nonexistence of instincts, and so forth and so on.
One of the side effects of this revolution, however, was that it left society intellectually disarmed for dealing with the rise of steroids. In feminist theory, steroids -- biochemical masculinity in a vial -- shouldn't exist. This lacuna meant that society was vulnerable to exploitation by a small number of clear-eyed and self-interested individuals, such as jocks who made themselves ultra-masculine by going on the juice.
The most remarkable example is of course mucleman Arnold Schwarzenegger, who rode chemically boosted masculinity all the way to being Governor of California. The triumph of Barack Obama is pretty funny, but it's a dry story compared to the all-out absurdity of Governor Schwarzenegger.
By 2003, the triumph of feminist ideology had left Arnold's political enemies with no vocabulary for explaining to voters: Look, don't you get it? Everybody naturally feels the urge to follow manly leaders, and therefore you people want to vote for Schwarzenegger because he seems so much more manly than everybody else. But, he's hoodwinking your natural instincts, he's just injecting himself with artificial male hormones. It's a scam!
But, virtually nobody said it because, after 35 years of feminism, nobody wanted to hear it. So, 35 years of social liberalism in California brought us Governor Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.
But, virtually nobody said it because, after 35 years of feminism, nobody wanted to hear it. So, 35 years of social liberalism in California brought us Governor Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.
Steve, feminism is one giant test by women of men, to sort out the Alphas from the beta males. So, I would argue Arnold's steroid use was entirely consistent with feminism.
ReplyDeleteFeminism is nothing more than a female revolt against beta males. Feminists don't mind and in fact celebrate Alpha males even or particularly WHEN they do awful things. Charlie Sheen shoot his then-girlfriend Kelly Preston in the leg? A mere bagatelle. Charlie Sheen's other failings, which are legion? Again a mere detail. Joe Beta Male forgets the 8 month anniversary of their third date? RAGE!
The same holds true for John Edwards, acquitted while flirting with female jurors. Women don't CARE about things men care about. Steroid use, cheating on your dying-of-cancer wife, women JUST DON'T CARE.
What women DO care about is being Alpha. That is, socially dominant. Arrogant. Cruel (cruelty turns women on, more than anything, as a signifier of social dominance) behaviour. Cocky-funny demeanour. Arnold had it all. Women don't CARE if it came out of a bottle or not. Just that he had it.
Indeed Arnold's natural A-holeness and social dominance allowed him to succeed far beyond his Mr. Universe competitors, who were often bigger and stronger. Despite a weird German/Austrian accent that reminded people of Nazis and other stuff.
Steve you're thinking like a man. You have to learn to think like a woman. Feminism is all ABOUT pushing up men like Arnold. Feminists love the guy. He's Alpha, that's all you need to know.
Despite a weird German/Austrian accent that reminded people of Nazis and other stuff.
ReplyDeleteIt never reminded me of the Nazis. It just reminded me of a German/Austrian accent because, um, that's what it is. Maybe it reminded you of the Nazis.
This reminds me of a story that appeared in the Bay Area legal newspaper, The Recorder, around 1998. It seems there was a S.F. prosecutor who was virtually unbeatable. They interviewed a bunch of lawyers as to what jurors liked so much about him, and the consensus was that he was a handsome, athletic-looking guy who kept a twinkle in his eye. The following week, there was a firestorm in the "letters" section from a bunch of women lawyers, outraged that a man could get props for looking handsome and virile.
ReplyDeleteWhen will California produce its own Not Sure and turn that state around?
ReplyDeleteIt always struck me that Nora Ephron's sugary sweet movies like Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail were very anti-beta. She cloaked the message by making the differences between the Alpha and Betas very subtle so the chicks wouldn't have to reflect on their animal instincts. Yes I said it, Tom Hanks is an Alpha. He is too smart to run for governor, but I bet he'd win in a landslide.
ReplyDeleteIt always struck me that Nora Ephron's sugary sweet movies like Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail were very anti-beta. She cloaked the message by making the differences between the Alpha and Betas very subtle so the chicks wouldn't have to reflect on their animal instincts. Yes I said it, Tom Hanks is an Alpha. He is too smart to run for governor, but I bet he'd win in a landslide.
ReplyDeleteIt's got what plants crave.
ReplyDeleteIt never reminded me of the Nazis....Maybe it reminded you of the Nazis.
ReplyDeleteHe's got Nazis on the brain.
We sometimes forget that feminism is now a very old political movement. There were feminist writers in the early 1800s, but it seems to have been picked up at an institutional level by about the 1860s. ..
ReplyDeleteOne of the male feminists of this radical pre-War period was an English writer by the name of W.L. George. He wrote a tract called Feminist Intentions which I want to look at. George began his piece as follows:
The Feminist propaganda...rests upon a revolutionary biological principle. Substantially, the Feminists argue that there are no men and that there are no women; there are only sexual majorities. To put the matter less obscurely, the Feminists base themselves on Weininger's theory, according to which the male principle may be found in woman, and the female principle in man. It follows that they recognize no masculine or feminine "spheres", and that they propose to identify absolutely the conditions of the sexes.
Well, not sure of finding it in 'women', but they surely found the male principle in the lab.
The Russian political activist Alexandra Kollontai told readers of her autobiography that as a young girl in the late 1800s she already knew,
That I ought not to shape my life according to the given model ... I could help my sisters shape their lives, in accordance not with the given traditions but with their own free choice ... I wanted to be free. I wanted to express desires on my own, to shape my own little life. [12]
Kollontai was a supporter of the “new woman” of the early twentieth century who was “independent inwardly and self-reliant outwardly”. She described the modern woman as having “broken the rusted fetter of her sex” to become “a human being”. In public lectures she wished that women were less physically distinct:
[Kollontai] longs for the female body itself to become less soft and curvy and more muscular ... She argues that prehistoric women were physiologically less distinct from men... [13]
The woman of the year 2000 will be an outsize Diana, anthropologists and beauty experts predict. She will be more than six feet tall, wear a size 11 shoe, have shoulders like a wrestler and muscles like a truck driver....
ReplyDeleteHer proportions will be perfect, though Amazonian, because science will have perfected a balanced ration of vitamins, proteins and minerals that will produce the maximum bodily efficiency, the minimum of fat.
She will go in for all kinds of sports – probably will compete with men athletes in football, baseball, prizefighting and wrestling.
She’ll be in on all the high-level groups of finance, business and government.
She may even be president.
Too bad about the last one.
dopey intellectual frameworks
ReplyDeleteIt's only "dopey" right up until you realize that:
A) The Frankfurt School was never sincere in any of their arguments for the frameworks, and
B) The frameworks accomplished exactly what the Frankfurt School intended for them to accomplish.
At that point, it isn't "dopey" anymore - in fact, it all makes perfectly good sense.
This is the post you should have labeled "A rant".
ReplyDeleteEverybody naturally feels the urge to follow manly leaders, and therefore you people want to vote for Schwarzenegger because he seems so much more manly than everybody else.
ReplyDeleteUh, right. But if "everybody" has this irresistible urge to vote for manly and masculine men, how do you explain "Governor Jerry Brown"?
How do you explain effete metrosexual Barack Obama beating war-hero John McCain?
This theory of yours has a few flaws.
'Brought to you by Carl's jr'
ReplyDeleteLook back through the years at all, and there are a lot, Jerry Brown interviews and he comes across as driven. Alpha-Freak. He is elderly and he is still ambitious.
ReplyDeleteSchwarzenegger's alphaness was about more than his physicality -- it was also about his insouciance. And that alphaness was only one part of what was an attractive persona: there was also his optimism, his personal success stories (body builder, actor, businessman), and his sense of humor. That last part was a big differentiator for him as an action star. He was at home in silly situations in a way other stars wouldn't have been: Arnold with his head wrapped in the wet towel in Total Recall looked silly, but didn't jar you out of the story; can't imagine Dolph Lungren, say, pulling that off.
ReplyDeleteI find that I can annoy a young female of my acquaintance just by pointing out that all the serious advances for women were achieved (in Britain anyway) decades before modern Feminism was invented.
ReplyDeleteI was a kid when Jerry Brown was running for the presidency and I dont ever recall him smiling. Others mocked him, but he was not self effacing. Don't get me wrong, that's not a compliment, he reminded me of my humorless uncle.
ReplyDeleteHere's the law that was crucial in Britain. 1919!
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_Disqualification_(Removal)_Act_1919
Much of what explains California political "success" stories such as Arnold and the second coming of Jerry Brown can be chalked up to luck (Gray Davis for Arnold) and rookie mistakes by an otherwise talented opponent( Meg Whitman in the case of Brown) and primarily an electorate that pays no real attention to politics until there's a huge increase in DMV fees.
ReplyDeleteThis state is so big, so populous that most voters have absolutely no idea what goes on in Sacramento nor do they try to find out.
There was also Jesse Ventura in Minn.
ReplyDeleteBut it would be wrong to attribute Schwar's success too much on muscle and steroids. MOST bodybuilders would not have succeeded politically--or even in Hollywood.
Schwar's success owed to his body but also his wit, humor, personality, likability, charisma, charm, self-deprecating humor, goofiness, etc. In PUMPING IRON, he's the only one who comes alive though some other guys are even bigger than him. Why? He's a natural with people. He's very disarming with always something funny to say.
He's not a musclehead. He has a real head. And no amont of steroids could have done that.
Reagan had the same kind of charm and personable quality that gave his authority a soft edge.
http://youtu.be/BmxA4OsXY6I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnx7UMQ2drg
Schwar, like Kissinger, also used his accent to his advantage. Most foreigners try to lose it, but Schwar used it to add flavor to his personality.
ReplyDeleteMen of special talent can transform flaws into advantages. With Kissinger, the accent made him sound more distinguished, erudite, intellectual.
So, instead of laughing at them, we laugh with them, and even allow ourselves to be laughed at by them.
Schwar even got away with his gap tooth. He made it seem special too.
Whiskey, normal women might like alphas but feminists hate them too. Feminists lust after the alphas like other women but are too ugly to land one. So they engage in Nietzschean resentiment and convince themselves to hate them.
ReplyDeleteSteve, feminism is one giant test by women of men, to sort out the Alphas from the beta males.
ReplyDeleteFinally, a Whiskey comment I can really get behind.
Dealing w/feminism-drunk females, all I can say is, don't blink. It usually works out for the best in the long run, although, as Whiskey notes, this entails running the gantlet.
For example, although I'm not a hunter or sportsman, I keep a few firearms for home defense. Depending on the circumstances, I've been known to keep one under my pillow at night. Why not, it is unobtrusive and could make the critical difference in a rare but demanding situation.
The various women in my life have inevitably brought up the "guns are scary, why do you need one" blather.
My response typically is (and I quote), "This isn't woman business" and leave it at that.
Most women, accustomed to feminized males, are usually left spluttering. But they always accept and get over it and later on will often recall the moment ostensibly jokingly but at heart admiringly...
They will also remark, "I feel safe with you.." at later dates in contexts that have nothing to do with guns or other aspects of my masculinity, but the connection was made in their subconscious.
Never apologize, never explain. Civilization is going to need guys like us when the current reign of PC terror collapses.
Steve, every now and then you post something useful and sensible. As opposed to most of the time where you post things to cater to the various neuroticisms of your commentators. This time you've found the key of modern life: the mantel of equality is something that the most self-interested and ruthlessly ambitious cloak themselves in to squeak by without seeming amoral. Literalists who get caught up in the details of the rhetoric, whether liberal or conservative, miss the point.
ReplyDeleteSo if you are a masculine men like Arnold you pay lip service to feminism because crowing about how the world loves your machismo is unseemly and will remind people how jealous they are of you. And if you are a good looking successful white businessmen you get a few minority tokens and make some speech at a Boys and Girls Club because you know (and every black man knows) that even a black man as smart as you isn't going to be as successful as you. So you throw blacks a few bones here and there to keep the haters at bay. The rhetoric may be dumb but with this thin veneer of respectability you can get away with anything.
That's why so many folks come here: they take these talking points literally instead of wearing the cloak of liberalism to claw their way the top. And let's admit it: being white removes more road blocks (in general) than it gives you. And if you are in one of those odd environments where being white works against you just leave! Hell, if nothing else go teach English in Korea where they pay more for white teachers than for native anglophones of other races. In any case I can't get too mad at white liberals. They'll be the 1% while the rest of humanity, of all races, will be servants in their households.
Gloria
"But if "everybody" has this irresistible urge to vote for manly and masculine men, how do you explain "Governor Jerry Brown"?
ReplyDelete"
Depends on the competition?
And maybe it's not about mere masculinity of body as much as that whiskey factor.
And..
A leading HRT specialist says that he has prescribed male sex hormones to female politicians to help them "compete" with men.
However, attempts by national newspapers to find a woman MP prepared to admit having such an implant have so far failed.
"Steve you're thinking like a man. You have to learn to think like a woman."
"So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands. "
He actually was first rate governor, the problem is California has a terribly dysfunctional system of government.Arnold would almost certainly have punched out after one term to run for president but for the pesky natural born citizen issue, and he probably would have won.
ReplyDeleteIf Obama is re-elected, Arnold could do worse than bankroll a campaign for a constitutional amendment to eliminate the Crequirements. Conservatives think Obama cheated on this anyway (so why keep a law that only stops the Republican) and liberals think that he'd be a better president than any of the rest of the GOP.
Changing the Constitution to make himself eligible to run-- that would only add to his legend. :o)
As for the ungovernable California, it should reboot and just split itself up into 4 states. The four federal judicial districts are as good a split as any (maybe have Riverside switch to Central California to Southern California).
http://www.fedstats.gov/mapstats/fjd/06fjd.html
Feminists lust after the alphas like other women
ReplyDeleteThere are no such things as "alphas".
But, as mentioned around here recently, people have an amazing capacity to tell themselves lies.
If humanity in general had this urge to elect super-masculine politicians, then guys like Schwarzenegger should be the rule in politics rather than the exception.
ReplyDeleteAnd they're not.
Arnie got elected because of a wide variety of factors. Grey Davis, for one. Arnie's wealth and sense of humor, for two and three. His possessing a big chest and shoulders was really not a factor.
Yeah, count me in on those who say you have it wrong. Arnold never made it on sex appeal or manliness. He made very solid action movies, and he was funny. Had Gray Davis been allowed to run in his own recall, Arnold might not even have won--it was pretty close, if you count the fact that many Davis supporters didn't vote for the leading Dem candidate.
ReplyDeleteSteroids had nothing to do with Arnold's success. His resume as a self-made immigrant, his moderate Republican views, and his readiness to laugh at himself made the difference.
Steve's correct in why the argument isn't made - that the physique (and probably some of the attitude) comes from a bottle.
ReplyDeleteBut there are loads of juicers and only one Schwarzenegger. It's a lot more than just juice - IQ, optimism, humor, as others have said here.
White Privilege means you can teach English in South Korea. I never knew I had this winning lottery ticket right in my back pocket. Thanks, Gloria. I'm going to Starbucks to celebrate with a Full-Release!
ReplyDelete"The woman of the year 2000 will be an outsize Diana, anthropologists and beauty experts predict. She will be more than six feet tall, wear a size 11 shoe, have shoulders like a wrestler and muscles like a truck driver...."
ReplyDeleteThis came from a very interesting blog, how our present was imagined by those in the past:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/paleofuture/
look at the one by Wernher von Braun, and the one immediately beneath.
Steve, have you ever read this essay by W.L. George written in 1913? Lots of food for thought there:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/50742/
One of the side effects of this revolution, however, was that it left society intellectually disarmed for dealing with the rise of steroids. In feminist theory, steroids -- biochemical masculinity in a vial -- shouldn't exist.
ReplyDeleteNo one on earth takes that logical step. Really, this shows that's you're really disconnected from how people think.
"White Privilege means you can teach English in South Korea. I never knew I had this winning lottery ticket right in my back pocket. Thanks, Gloria. I'm going to Starbucks to celebrate with a Full-Release!"
ReplyDeleteYou're missing the forest for the trees, Mr. Anon. Being white isn't a winning lottery ticket anymore than being beautiful is. Ever seen an insecure, stupid beautiful woman? NO ONE is more abused than a beautiful stupid woman because loser men who've been rejected all their lives by beautiful women take out all their anger over that on her. And she puts up with it because she's too stupid to understand what's going on. But if perchance she figures it out and grows a backbone she will probably be able to make something of herself. Having an advantage doesn't mean you can't ruin it with self-destructiveness.
Anyway, if you are looking for reasons to be bitter about your life, and you like to racialize your bitterness, then I don't think you'll ever get the meaning behind my little screed. Though I'd be curious to see what our friend Truth thinks of it.
Gloria
Jewish feminist: Schwarz-Nagger.
ReplyDeleteSome women use steroids. More probably would, but are scared off by the possible side effects, which are worse for women.
ReplyDeleteOn the upside, women are more willing to give it up now.
ReplyDeleteSo there is a silver lining...
Also, Anonymous who doesn't want to teach in Korea (nothing wrong with that, by the way) what did you expect your whiteness to bring you?
ReplyDeleteGloria
" Nietzschean resentiment". I'm surprised that this is the first time I've seen "resentiment" used in this blog, considering how it's tailor-made for a good chunk of the discussion I see.
ReplyDeleteSteve you're going after a strawman caricature of feminism not believed by even 1% of the population. How about looking at the more common feminism of guys with daughters who push them into sports and masculine professions?
ReplyDeleteI wish other commenters would not let themselves get trolled by Whiskey so easily. His hatred and contempt of the fair sex is bizzare and all his posts do is express his resentment in slightly different language.
"How do you explain effete metrosexual Barack Obama beating war-hero John McCain?"
ReplyDelete-The media by default assigns any black guy as being alpha over any white guy.
"And let's admit it: being white removes more road blocks (in general) than it gives you."
-I'll remember that when I finally pay off the student loans for an education that a hispanic or black guy got for free; of course to do that, I'd need a job, but disparate impact is a b*tch, especially if you went to a college that was a lower tier than you could've gotten into if you didn't have so much white male privilege. Oh well, there's always watching tv where I can see people like me being constantly ridiculed as fools ultimately because they were more successful than everyone else.
"White Privilege means you can teach English in South Korea. "
- Yeah, meanwhile you can get the sh*t kicked out of you in a random riot or treated as a third class dog by perhaps the most racist group of people on the planet. But hey, you'll almost get an okay salary because anyone who googles the whole thing will recognize what a rotten deal it ls.
"...Governor Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho..."
ReplyDeleteThat guy doesn't have to drink beer with common white folk to get votes...
Feminism is weird. Most feminists loathe Paglia, but if anyone defines the current state of trashy skanky neo-feminist culture, it is Paglia.
ReplyDelete"Changing the Constitution to make himself eligible to run-- that would only add to his legend. :o)"
ReplyDeleteAnd thus life would imitate art, i.e. "Demolition Man."
This lacuna meant that society was vulnerable to exploitation by a small number of clear-eyed and self-interested individuals, such as jocks who made themselves ultra-masculine by going on the juice.
ReplyDeleteThere are probably niches still out there that a young, ambitious guy could really do well in by juicing. It could be something mundane like pharmaceutical sales. Juicing could give him that "command presence", confidence, energy to be a real rainmaker.
"Whiskey said...
ReplyDeleteSteve you're thinking like a man. You have to learn to think like a woman."
Thinking like a woman doesn't sound like a good recipe for transforming oneself from a beta into an alpha.
Steve, you should be reading this guy.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you should have him in your blogroll.
beating war-hero John McCain
ReplyDeleteBeing downed and held POW by an enemy is not an act of heroism. McCain participated in the war - not very successfully. Not necessarily his fault - could have happened to almost anyone. But it's not an act of heroism.
i discussed arn online before his election, many righties insisted he'd reform divorce law plus anti-fatherhood legislation, and kick feminism's butt
ReplyDeletei told them it'd never happen, he just PLAYS heroes
they got plenty angry about that! told me Just Wait until a year after the election...
i'm still waiting
this is the guy whose wife stood up before the world and proclaimed the u.s. A Woman's Nation
LOL!
what was most disturbing wasnt ah nulled's predicatble pussyism, but that so many guys actually believed he was gonna clean house, yeeikes
jesus only WISHES he could get True Believers like the fossilized, entranced american bi-polity
Alternatively, maybe a model of the world useful for picking up skanky girls in bars just isn't all that well-suited to predicting election outcomes.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you are in one of those odd environments where being white works against you just leave!
ReplyDeleteAlready happening in South Africa and Zimbabwe Gloria. And soon in a lot of other places too. What happens when we dont have anywhere to leave to exactly?
but arnold had charisma and intelligence too. he wasn't just muscles. he was a self made millionaire on real estate deals, before he became an actor.
ReplyDeletethen, of course, he also became one of the most famous actors in the world ever. in some of the most well loved action movies ever. how does a political opponent counter that? when EVERY voter has seen the other guy lead, conquer, and defeat his on screen enemies, over and over, every time, for 20 years. it starts to be a part of who the person is. how the heck can any career politician compete with that level of mythology? they can't.
acting helped lead ronald reagan to the white house. and it probably would have lead arnold to the white house too, if he was eligible.
but arnold had charisma and intelligence too. he wasn't just muscles. he was a self made millionaire on real estate deals, before he became an actor.
ReplyDeletethen, of course, he also became one of the most famous actors in the world ever.
Right. But we know him solely because of his acting career. And he became a famous actor mainly because of his muscles. Not his great acting skill or intelligence. Without the muscles, he probably would have been a successful real estate guy or car dealer with a funny accent and slightly dorky demeanor.
Quite frankly, everything the psychriatric left fought for since the 'civil rights' tumult of the sixties was a stinky pile of bull-poopy.
ReplyDeleteIt will eventually come to light that the era of ERA, Kennedy, Johnson, MLK,'counterculture' etc was the most dark an destructime period of the Republic's history - an era that will eventually kill the Republic.
"But, he's hoodwinking your natural instincts, he's just injecting himself with artificial male hormones."
ReplyDeletewouldn't "gaming your natural instincts" be more apt here?
Women who use steroids have enlarged clits.
ReplyDelete"Thinking like a woman doesn't sound like a good recipe for transforming oneself from a beta into an alpha. "
ReplyDeleteRoissy Maxim #19: The alpha male thinks and acts more like a woman than a man in matters of seduction. He understands his adversary’s psychology, and uses it to shatter her defenses.
"Alternatively, maybe a model of the world useful for picking up skanky girls in bars just isn't all that well-suited to predicting election outcomes. "
Gamers would be proud of reagan's 'you're too old' reframing skillz
"A leading HRT specialist says that he has prescribed male sex hormones to female politicians to help them "compete" with men."
or they could simply lower their voice like Thatcher?
"There are no such things as "alphas"."
ReplyDeleteOh really? Then what do you call a man who is damn good at his primary way of asserting manhood by picking up drunk bar chicks? What do you call a man who can pretend to be powerful and worthy well enough to fool the type of a woman whose intelligence allows her to read "Fifty Shades of Gray"? How else do you describe a man who can go to a foreign country, visit a bar there known to be frequented by women who like foreigners and score? Or, even better, a middle aged American who can go to a second world country with a much lower average standard of living and make young girls swoon at a mere possibility of escaping their bleak futures, what would you call him?
You sound like a bitter fat girl or a jealous beta. You're probably both.
Whiskey! I am VERY disappointed in you, Mister!
ReplyDeleteI expect you to deliver accurate information on things like "Twilight", "Fifty Shades of Gray", pop stars, homosexual internet murderers and crap TV, seeing how, out of all the people who immerse themselves in this stuff, you're the one I interact with the most.
Come to find out, you lied. I had a conversation with a waitress at TGI Friday's a couple of days ago, and she said that the literary work in question is not about being tortured by a millionaire BDSM style and falling for him. She said it's about falling in love with a millionaire who used to like torturing women in his play room until he met the main character and got tamed by true love. Apparently, the roughest thing he does to her is rip her blouse while in the throws of passion and tug her braid, gently.
So far, this review has been confirmed by a Starbucks worker and a preschool teacher. What else have you misinformed me about, Whiskey? Look, if you're busy rereading Twilight, ordering Hunger Games or watching GossipGirl/Two and a Half Men, that's fine. I get behind on my work and hobbies too sometimes. Like, recently, one of my favorite bands put out a new album, and it took me 2 weeks to get it. Life gets in the way, it's understandable. But unlike what you did, I didn't go around claiming to have listened to the new CD before I actually had. When you're passionate about something, it's good to keep current, but it's more important to be honest. If you love the lowest rang of trashy, feminine pop culture so much, Whiskey, you need to respect it enough to spam about it accurately.
Anyway, the trust between us has been broken. I mean, is Russel Brend even a real person? From the praise you lavished upon him, I assumed that he raped a puppy on youtube, and the women you lust after made a group sex tape in his honor, or something along those lines. But now? I'm not sure he even exists.
For centuries men lived in a world of sexual Feudalism where an arrogant Alphatocracy horded all means of reproduction, leaving only leftover scraps of homelyness for the Betasants. History was an endless sexual-class struggle of Alpha oppressing Beta. The Alphas flaunted their near-Monopoly on reproduction units with such laws as the Droit du seigneur, where they had the right (but certainly not the obligation in case of obesity or ugliness) to bang any leftover reproduction unit scraps the Betas were able to corral.
ReplyDeleteBut over time, revolutionary religious concepts such as Judeo-Christian ideas on monogamy, and radical Greek political ideas such as democracy sought, in direct contradiction of human nature, to spread and redistribute the wealth of reproductive opportunities to all. Finally armed with these ideological weapons, the historic losers of the alpha vs. beta sexual-class struggle were about to turn the tables. “To each man according to his sexual needs” ran the utopian Beta slogans. For the first time in history, reproductive wealth was redistributed to the beta masses; although try as they might, they were never really able to get the pathetic Lumpenomegatariat laid. A dictatorship of the Betas was unleashed on the Alphatocracy, harems were seized and broken up; gulags were created for those who didn’t respect the oppressive and totally unnatural ”one-man, one-reproduction unit” monogamy laws. Alphatalist pigs either fled into exile, or worse were sent to re-education camps where they were trained to be satisfied with just one homely, overweight, and slightly foul smelling reproductive unit. The Alphatalists only method of rebellion was to whisper to their sons tales of their former glory days of outrageous sexual conspicuous consumption.
But Alphatalism could not be repressed so easily. For the first time in history Betas controlled the means of reproduction but could they really run these units properly? At first things seemed OK, reproduction was thought to be rising, but in a thousand subtle ways the means of reproduction units started to rebel and sabotage their Beta masters. It seemed in their minds that only the old Alphatocracy knew exactly how to keep those reproduction units tingling. The Betas were only able to maintain their control through a series of bureaucratic measures seeking to limit the freedom of the reproduction units. For example contraceptives were difficult to come by, abortions were banned, once locked into a forced union with a Beta, divorce was nearly impossible. Beta apparatchiks set up spy networks to root out the remnant Alpha threat. As the amount of repression required to keep the reproduction units compliant increased, the effectiveness of these measured decreased. A crisis was brewing.
Then the Alphatalists came up with a wonderful idea. They would win back their unfettered access to the reproduction unit hordes by preaching equal rights and freedom for all reproduction units. Calling it Reproduction Unitism, they demanded that the Evil Empire of Betas tear down those walls that were imprisoning reproduction units and impeding the proper utilization of these valuable resources. They called for free contraception, abortion for all, no-fault divorce, economic empowerment, and government checks for single units and their resulting (mal)production. All these measures appeared to be aimed at bettering the lives of the oppressed reproduction units but were actually designed to recapture Alpha hegemonic access to these units. Some reformist Betas, having never suffered blue balls under an oppressive Alphatocracy, and not actually knowing much about the reproduction units they were charged with controlling, started believing the unit’s promises that nothing would change if those walls did come down.
And thus the Beta Golden Age was over. And this is why the now-free reproduction units are so easily fooled by a Potemkin Alphas like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Better vote for a faux Alpha than risk being ruled four years once again by a real Beta.
35 years of feminism has also led to breast implants and mainstream porn. So it seems that false females also arise from it.
ReplyDeleteDo you know any women, Gloria?
ReplyDeleteNo man is nearly as abusive toward a beautiful woman of any cognitive ability than other women.
I don't really get your whole obsession with steroids. Are there any other politicians who've used steroids? I don't even think many famous movie stars use steroids. Schwarzenegger's basically a one-off fluke, and as other people have pointed out, he's got a lot going for himself other than large muscles. So I don't see much evidence that a "rise of steroids" has taken or is taking place.
ReplyDelete"But, he's hoodwinking your natural instincts, he's just injecting himself with artificial male hormones. It's a scam!"
ReplyDeleteIn what sense is it a scam? Artificial male hormones have the same effects as natural hormones.
re; "Never apologize, never explain." Ex Submarine Officer
ReplyDeleteGerman admonition, actually Prussian, I was raised with: Never Ask, Never Complain, Never Explain!
Perhaps this answers why German males are so often alphas.
Dan Kurt
Joe Beta Male forgets the 8 month anniversary of their third date?
ReplyDeleteThe anni in anniversary refers to a 366 day period this year and a 365.2425 otherwise.
I find that I can annoy a young female of my acquaintance just by pointing out that all the serious advances for women were achieved (in Britain anyway) decades before modern Feminism was invented.
ReplyDeleteThe Labour party made a party political broadcast which congratulated themselves on giving votes to women 6(?) years before the party was founded.
Alternatively, maybe a model of the world useful for picking up skanky girls in bars just isn't all that well-suited to predicting election outcomes.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that its well-suited-ness is going to be directly related to the demographics of the particular voting population in question.
"Ex Submarine Officer said...
ReplyDeleteNever apologize, never explain."
In politics, and society in general, this is very good advice. Conservatives, traditionalists, and reactionaries like us should make this our mantra.
Arnold was a disciplined guy. He spent hours developing himself in a sport that at the time did not have a career path and then parlayed that into fame. A former body builder friend of mine once heard him use a phrase, “attack your weakness”. Unlike a lot of body builders, Schwarzenegger purposefully worked on the parts of his physique where he was least developed. That and steroids, was why he had such a balanced shape. Most body builders would focus on where they were already strongest or gifted and so ended up with extremely unbalanced and ugly bodies. If nothing else, he knew how to set goals.
ReplyDeletewhew. I thought you were going to announce that Schwarzie was really a transexual. I don't think I could handle that right now, after the Olympics.
ReplyDeleteGoofiest trend here: dividing mankind into alpha and beta. (goofy deined as people saying/beng stupid and self-defeating when they really know better)
ReplyDeleteAs a wise philosopher (me, actually) once said: there are two kinds of people. Those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't.
I won't from now on. This place with its goofs who believe in "alpha" and "beta" (often applying to first term to the biggest long-term losers on the planet), have cured me.
One of the big differences between the 80s and 2000s is the change in action heroism.
ReplyDelete80s was dominated by big guys, tall guys, guys with powerful machines.
Schwarznegger as Terminator, Conan, and other beefsters.
Stallone as Rambo and revamped Rocky.
Jean Claude Van Damme.
Chuck Norris. (Though not a good guy, there was a bigness about him).
Eastwood was not a muscle man but he was tall and had a big gun. He didn't have to move much. Just pull out his gun and blow everyone away.
POWER was at the center of 80s films.
But in the 2000s, smaller slimmer guys took over the action genre, especially Matt Damon as Bourne. Speed and wit usurped size and power. Bourne is tough but relies as much on his wit and skills as his muscles.
And there was Clooney, the cerebral killer in THE AMERICAN.
And Leonard Dicaprio and Johnny Depp.
In some ways, this was an encouraging development since I couldn't stand much of the muscle-meat-headism of the 80s. I like THE TERMINATOR but not Rambo movies, Rocky sequels, and other Schwarzenegger movies like COMMANDO.
Though Cameron stopped using muscle-men, I suppose machines are the big muscle in his movies, and in that sense, AVATAR is a big muscle-head movie.
Though recent action films have been, in some ways, more intelligent than action films of the 80s--has anyone tried to sit through COBRA?--, the emphasis on speed and choppy editing also makes for its own kind of mindlessness. Maybe it's the influence of Hong Kong cinema of the 80s. Since small Chinese guys didn't have brawn, they had to rely on quickness and acrobatics, and we can see that in MATRIX movies and BOURNE movies. But such hectic-ness isn't very conducive to good storytelling.
It could also be that the voters of California fall for BS and hype as much as the voters of Illinois fall for crooks!
ReplyDeleteOne of the side effects of this revolution, however, was that it left society intellectually disarmed for dealing with the rise of steroids. In feminist theory, steroids -- biochemical masculinity in a vial -- shouldn't exist. This lacuna meant that society was vulnerable to exploitation by a small number of clear-eyed and self-interested individuals, such as jocks who made themselves ultra-masculine by going on the juice.
ReplyDelete"Women MPs 'ask for testosterone'"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3044514.stm
"A leading HRT specialist says that he has prescribed male sex hormones to female politicians to help them "compete" with men."
Being downed and held POW by an enemy is not an act of heroism.
ReplyDeleteNobody said that "being downed and held POW by an enemy is an act of heroism". But what he did after he was downed and held POW was in fact heroic.
Being tortured because you refuse to make statements supporting the enemy is heroic. Refusing your own release and enduring further torture is heroic.
Please take the trouble to spend a few seconds researching McCain before you shoot your mouth off about his not being a war hero.
McCain fractured both arms and a leg ejecting from the aircraft, and nearly drowned when he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake. Some North Vietnamese pulled him ashore, then others crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt and bayoneted him. McCain was then transported to Hanoi's main Hoa Lo Prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton".
Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to treat his injuries, beating and interrogating him to get information; he was given medical care only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral. His status as a prisoner of war (POW) made the front pages of major newspapers.
McCain spent six weeks in the hospital while receiving marginal care. By then having lost 50 pounds, in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white, McCain was sent to a different camp on the outskirts of Hanoi in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week. In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years.
In mid-1968, John S. McCain, Jr. was named commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater, and the North Vietnamese offered McCain early release because they wanted to appear merciful for propaganda purposes, and also to show other POWs that elite prisoners were willing to be treated preferentially. McCain turned down the offer; he would only accept repatriation if every man taken in before him was released as well. Such early release was prohibited by the POW's interpretation of the military Code of Conduct: To prevent the enemy from using prisoners for propaganda, officers were to agree to be released in the order in which they were captured.
In August 1968, a program of severe torture began on McCain. He was subjected to rope bindings and repeated beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery. Further injuries led to the beginning of a suicide attempt, stopped by guards. Eventually, McCain made an anti-American propaganda "confession". He has always felt that his statement was dishonorable, but as he later wrote, "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine." Many American POWs were tortured and maltreated in order to extract "confessions" and propaganda statements; virtually all of them eventually yielded something to their captors. McCain subsequently received two to three beatings weekly because of his continued refusal to sign additional statements.
"How do you explain effete metrosexual Barack Obama beating war-hero John McCain?"
ReplyDelete-The media by default assigns any black guy as being alpha over any white guy.
Correct. Not to mention the rather obvious, that whatever McCain may have been forty years earlier in terms of a hard-ass flyboy, when he was running he was a creaky old geezer ready to fall over when the wind blew. Not to mention a wishy-washy campaigner too "polite" to hit Obama between the eyes with the ten thousand rocks readily at hand, given O's nefarious background. Hardly "alpha." Having Sarah Palin standing next to him made it even worse, since she's ten times the man McCain is.
Also, the anonymous who posted the variants on feminism -- well done sir!
And let's admit it: being white removes more road blocks (in general) than it gives you.
ReplyDeleteIf white women - like Gloria - did not have affirmative action working in their favor, would they still have this peculiar notion that being white confers a big advantage? I doubt it.
he became a famous actor mainly because of his muscles.
ReplyDeleteNo, he became a famous actor mainly because of his personality. The world is full of guys with muscles who somehow fail to become actors, let along highly successful actors.
The feminists seem to make a fundamental mistake about Testosterone. Testosterone is not "biochemical masculinity in a vial".
ReplyDeleteHow could that possible be?
Testosterone is merely a communications or signalling mechanism. All the real complexity is in the target tissues. Mammals use hormones like T to turn on the functioning of tissues at critical times. They also can evoke different responses with different amounts and concentrations.
As is well known women's tissues respond to T with heightened sexual response. This isn't because they have been given some masculine essence, it's simply that the female body uses this same signaling fluid. Other fluids turn other functions off and on.
We know in broad terms how biology works. Information is coded in DNA. The body transcribes that code into proteins out of which organs are built. So a little male fetus has structures that will perform male functions and behaviors. These are turned on at an appropriate times when they receive the signal.
Females are built differently. That difference is in the DNA derived tissues not in the signaling hormone. Give by mistake too much T to a female and you do not get a normal man, you get a female with some masculine characteristics like bigger muscles.
People build machines that do their internal communications with electricity. Some of these machines can play chess. To think of Testosterone as masculine would be like thinking that the electrons in my computer understand chess strategy.
Albertosaurus
In this shocking article, BALCO's Victor Conte explains which steroids athletes use, how they use them, and how they avoid testing positive.
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/athletics/7403158.stm
If link fails, Google "Conte's prescription for success" May 16, 2008.
Look back through the years at all, and there are a lot, Jerry Brown interviews and he comes across as driven. Alpha-Freak. He is elderly and he is still ambitious.
ReplyDeleteall top politicians -- very much including women -- are driven and ambitious.
As many have pointed out, what propelled Arnie to his success was his intelligence, humor, and celebrity, not his machismo. A Reagan-esque combination, and you will note that Reagan was not a macho action hero type at all. Usually did not play the leading man, had a gentle reassuring presence, etc.
There is no general rule on machismo leading to political success. Nixon, Carter, Bush II (the ex-cheerleader) were certainly not macho. LBJ was. Clinton was a great people person, great with women, and a natural 'alpha' (if such a thing exists) but was not macho.
"80s was dominated by big guys, tall guys, guys with powerful machines.
ReplyDeleteSchwarznegger as Terminator, Conan, and other beefsters.
Stallone as Rambo and revamped Rocky.
Jean Claude Van Damme.
Chuck Norris. (Though not a good guy, there was a bigness about him). "
3 out of 4 of the actors you mentioned there weren't especially tall. Stallone was 5'9", Van Damme about the same, and Chuck Norris was a couple of inches shorter (which is why he always wears cowboy boots with big heels).
Clooney and Damon are also about 5'9", which is the average height of American men. That average will probably drop as demographics change though, as the average height of men worldwide is 5'6".
Well, if you're not tall, you almost have to bulk up with muscles to be seen as "alpha". Although, given how fat and flabby most people are nowadays, you just need some muscles, and don't need to go all out like Stallone.
ReplyDelete"3 out of 4 of the actors you mentioned there weren't especially tall. Stallone was 5'9", Van Damme about the same, and Chuck Norris was a couple of inches shorter (which is why he always wears cowboy boots with big heels)."
ReplyDeleteBut they were 5'9 wide as tall.
"How do you explain effete metrosexual Barack Obama beating war-hero John McCain?"
ReplyDeleteBecause Obama looked tough whereas McCain looked weak ON TV. Also, Obama is not just an effete metro-sexual but a crafy multi-sexual. He can act gay when he wants too, but he can also express more charisma and power than all the white guys put together. He can sound gentle but also sound big and tough--at least more than white guys.
McCain might have gone through hell in Vietnam, but so did the VP candidate of Ross Perot in 1992. He might have been a tough guy in combat but he looked like a wuss before the camera gun.
In the age of big media, that's what counts. How one stares down the camera gun. Of course, Obama knows the camera shoots him with flowers whereas it, as it's controlled by liberal Jews, shoots bullets at conservatives.
Anon,
ReplyDeleteYou and the commenter you replied to are both right about McCain, in different ways. He was a hero in the sense that he courageously endured suffering once he was captured, rather than taking the easy way out. But he wasn't a hero in the sense of, say, an Audie Murphy or a Roy Benavidez.
The hagiography of McCain -- a man who endured suffering bravely, but who wasn't a particularly effective combatant -- was a point a long a downslope where we went from highlighting heroes of victory (Murphy) to heroes of suffering (Jessica Lynch). We've come along way from the likes of George Patton. Fortunately, the quality of our enemies has declined as well since his time.
"No, he became a famous actor mainly because of his personality. The world is full of guys with muscles who somehow fail to become actors, let along highly successful actors."
ReplyDeletehow about this: arnie's muscles were necessary but not sufficient to jumpstart and propel his acting career. let's face it, he would never have been noticed based on his acting ability alone.
btw, steve, you should check out 'pumping iron'. arnold puts on a clinic of alphaness dressing down poor niceguy lou ferrigno. arnold isn't just a juicing musclebound freak; the guy has smarts, charm, ambition, a cruel streak, and game. of course what he doesn't have are the best interests of california in heart.
eh, i'll save you some trouble: here's the scene i'm thinking of (8th video down):
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/24/arnold-schwarzenegger-8-crazy-scenes-from-pumping-iron-his-1977-documentary.html
"Women who use steroids have enlarged clits"
ReplyDeleteapparently another term in vogue is penoris.
and there's this gem by the guys over at muscleweek:
behind every muscular woman is her juiced up BB boyfriend holding an empty syringe.
goddamn patriarchy!
No, he became a famous actor mainly because of his personality. The world is full of guys with muscles who somehow fail to become actors, let along highly successful actors.
ReplyDeleteThere wasn't much personality on display in the Terminator movies, in Commando, etc. He's not a good actor in terms of the craft of acting.
Well, if you're not tall, you almost have to bulk up with muscles to be seen as "alpha".
ReplyDeleteYeah but even if you bulk up with lots of muscles when you're short, you can look rotundish and goofy because you're short. So even if you have more muscles you can look less alpha than a taller guy who's slender.
You and the commenter you replied to are both right about McCain, in different ways. He was a hero in the sense that he courageously endured suffering once he was captured, rather than taking the easy way out. But he wasn't a hero in the sense of, say, an Audie Murphy or a Roy Benavidez.
ReplyDeleteYour definition of "hero" (which appears to be success in combat) has never been the commonly accepted one. If you are using military medals to denote heroic status, then you should be aware that the US military awarded McCain numerous honors, including the Silver Star and Legion Of Merit.
The idea that nobody is a hero who has not won the Medal Of Honor is flat out goofy.
arnold puts on a clinic of alphaness dressing down poor niceguy lou ferrigno. arnold isn't just a juicing musclebound freak; the guy has smarts, charm, ambition, a cruel streak, and game.
ReplyDeleteThe question is, how much of it is due to lifting and steroids?
Lifting by itself raises testosterone and growth hormone levels, and steroids of course raise it even further.
Obama is not just an effete metro-sexual but a crafy multi-sexual. He can act gay when he wants too, but he can also express more charisma and power than all the white guys put together. He can sound gentle but also sound big and tough--at least more than white guys
ReplyDeleteThe typical white male on HBD blogs has some truly remarkable hang-ups and insecurities with respect to black males. I suppose you're one of those people who claim that "all the white guys in my neighborhood were terrified of all the black guys".
If you're somebody who defines all black men as being by definition more "masculine" than any white man (and clearly you are such a person) then it's circular logic to conclude that Obama is more macho than McCain, Romney, or Chuck Norris.
Personally, I think guys like you need a good psycho-therapist. Or a dad who instilled some common-sense and self-respect.
Arnold is a "pseudo-alpha". In a state of nature, he would've been destroyed in single combat in the woods somewhere without being able to rely on social manipulation and government monopoly on force.
ReplyDeleteif you're not tall, you almost have to bulk up with muscles to be seen as "alpha".
ReplyDeleteWhat does "alpha" even mean? I've never encountered a definition which did not make me laugh, and most game boys" don't even try to define it. I gather that one definition, being used on this thread, is that "alpha" means "having big muscles".
As a guy I've never been even slightly impressed by the size of another guys biceps or shoulders. But if I understand correctly, the entire point of these things is to impress me and other men?
doubtless:
ReplyDeleteThere are three kinds of people in the world: those who believe in the law of the excluded middle, and those who don't.
(I'm stealing this from something I read on the net years ago, but I have no idea what it was or where it appeared.)
btw, steve, you should check out 'pumping iron'.
ReplyDeleteArnold said in an interview that things were made up and contrived in "Pumping Iron" like his cold, arrogant, bullying personality in order to make it more dramatic and interesting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXQ2HELtIoY
That's why he says it was called a "docu-drama" and not a documentary. According to him the producers and investors of the movie thought that just showing training footage from the gym was too boring so they needed to make stuff up.
He says originally the intent was to make Lou Ferrigno the villain who bullies, psyches out, and beats Schwarzenegger. But they found out that Ferrigno had trouble hearing and was kind of slow and needed his dad's help all the time doing basic stuff, so they changed the villain character to Schwarzenegger.
"But they were 5'9 wide as tall."
ReplyDeleteNot really. Later '80s Stallone (circa Rambo 3) was pretty bulky, and of course Arnold was always huge, but Norris and Van Damme were more ripped than big. Van Damme, a former ballet dancer, could do full Russian splits, after all.
"Arnold is a "pseudo-alpha". In a state of nature, he would've been destroyed in single combat in the woods somewhere without being able to rely on social manipulation and government monopoly on force."
ReplyDeletethis is wishful thinking. social manipulation is a part of the state of nature. in single combat, in his prime, arnold would be able to overcome most men. lifting increases your strength as well as your size.
arnold's charisma, cruelty, unstoppable confidence, bemused mastery and deviousness would have been winning strategies in a small hunter gatherer band as much as in a large US state. he would have won over the admiration of his tribe's beta males and the sexual interest of zee vimmin. and he would have enjoyed hearing the lamentations of the omegas.
"What does "alpha" even mean?"
why do you care? judging by your vapid snark, you have no real interest in learning what it means. but since this is an open forum, i'll tell you:
in any group of men, the alpha male is the man who receives the lion's share of sexual and romantic interest from the most women, and from the hottest women, and the interest he receives is more intense than the sexual or romantic interest that the less desirable men receive.
if the above sounds tautological to you, perhaps that is because you can't resist conflating "alpha male" with "admirable man". the two may overlap, but they are not the same thing.
ps steve, i meant to write the "6th video" in my previous comment, altho the 8th vid will do as well.
"Because Obama looked tough"
ReplyDeleteLOL; if there was ever a time where you looked at Barry and thought "tough", do yourself a favor and don't leave the house alone.
"in single combat, in his prime, arnold would be able to overcome most men. lifting increases your strength as well as your size."
Roissy, dude, this is bad for the brand, Homie; you're supposed to BE an idol not HAVE one.
"Your definition of "hero" (which appears to be success in combat) has never been the commonly accepted one."
ReplyDeleteOh, sure it has. Go back to the ancient Greek epics and some measure of success in battle is usually part of the equation. Go back to American history prior to Vietnam and you'll see the same. Alvin York wasn't a war hero because he was captured and tortured; he was a war hero for almost single-handedly capturing or killing about 150 German soldiers.
"If you are using military medals to denote heroic status..."
I'm not. But I think to be a war hero, you ought to have had some success at war, and not just have been a victim. That used to be the common view before we became a victim-centered culture. George Patton famously admonished his troops against dying for their country, telling them it was better to make the enemy die for his country.
"The idea that nobody is a hero who has not won the Medal Of Honor is flat out goofy."
I haven't claimed that.
Models of the world (like the alpha/beta bit) help make sense of the world, and give us a language in which to talk about it. There are more-or-less two good things to use a model for, and two bad things.
ReplyDeleteWays a model can help you be smarter:
a. Do useful stuff, like predict what's going to happen tomorrow, or predict what the result of doing X will be to the system. Useful areas of science and engineering are examples--you think about the behavior of gas molecules using ideal gas laws because they help you do stuff or predict what will happen next.
b. Remember and understand and discuss stuff, like being able to guess that a Southern Republican is probably pro-life and anti-gun-control. A lot of the categories in the social sciences and humanities are like this: it's useful to be able to talk about information asymmetry or to break democratic political systems into categories like presidential vs parliamentary.
Ways a model can make you dumber:
c. Making yourself feel better. When someone works from the model of "Republicans are all racists" or "Liberals all hate America," this is what's happening. This is a way a model makes you stupid. Probably 95% of negative comments about a political or religious group that's not your own fall into this category.
d. Signaling your group membership. Most people don't actually know much about, say, foreign policy, tax policy, macroeconomics, evolution, genetics, climate modeling, etc. When someone starts putting on and applying a model of foreign policy or economics because it's what their political party or social movement uses, this is what they're doing.
As best I can tell, essentially all uses of the terms "alpha" and "beta" in political discussions here are (c) and (d), and reflect people making themselves dumber than they need to be. It's about as big a warning sign as seeing someone start tossing around "white privelege" in a liberal forum.
"Homie; you're supposed to BE an idol not HAVE one."
ReplyDeletemust have missed the memo that said being admirable and having admiration were mutually exclusive.
in any group of men, the alpha male is the man who receives the lion's share of sexual and romantic interest from the most women, and from the hottest women, and the interest he receives is more intense than the sexual or romantic interest that the less desirable men receive
ReplyDeleteNo, that is your definition of "alpha male". It is not the definition of "alpha male". The term "alpha male" was borrowed from the study of other animal species in which one dominant male drives off the other adult males and rules his own herd. In the true usage an "alpha male" means much more than "a male who gets a lot of sex". In fact the term says more about the alpha males relationship to other males than it does about his relationship to females.
As used by you the "alpha male" in some random group is the man who gets laid the most over some randomly specified period of time. But that's a tautology. Unlike prides of lions or troops of chimpanzees, groups of humans are almost infinitely fluid in size and composition, and they do not form themselves into the rigid sexual hierarchy your theory requires.
this is wishful thinking. social manipulation is a part of the state of nature. in single combat, in his prime, arnold would be able to overcome most men. lifting increases your strength as well as your size.
ReplyDeletearnold's charisma, cruelty, unstoppable confidence, bemused mastery and deviousness would have been winning strategies in a small hunter gatherer band as much as in a large US state. he would have won over the admiration of his tribe's beta males and the sexual interest of zee vimmin. and he would have enjoyed hearing the lamentations of the omegas.
Single combat in the woods using tools, weapons, and strategy. Not bodybuilding contests in the woods or manipulating other men into gangs to overwhelm other men.
Arnold said in an interview that things were made up and contrived in "Pumping Iron" like his cold, arrogant, bullying personality in order to make it more dramatic and interesting:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXQ2HELtIoY
That's why he says it was called a "docu-drama" and not a documentary. According to him the producers and investors of the movie thought that just showing training footage from the gym was too boring so they needed to make stuff up.
He says originally the intent was to make Lou Ferrigno the villain who bullies, psyches out, and beats Schwarzenegger. But they found out that Ferrigno had trouble hearing and was kind of slow and needed his dad's help all the time doing basic stuff, so they changed the villain character to Schwarzenegger.
"Your definition of "hero" (which appears to be success in combat) has never been the commonly accepted one."
ReplyDeleteOh, sure it has. Go back to the ancient Greek epics and some measure of success in battle is usually part of the equation.
Don't be absurd. Hector was seen as a hero. Prometheus was seen as a hero. Alexander the Great was seen as a hero. Dying was never an impediment to heroic status. It was often practically a requirement for it.
Among non-warriors, Robert Scott, Ernest Shackleton, and George Mallory were seen as hero's in spite of (we might almost say because of) their failures.
"The idea that nobody is a hero who has not won the Medal Of Honor is flat out goofy."
I haven't claimed that.
Then why do you obsessively focus on Alvin York as the example of a hero? Your only other example was another MoH winner.
I think to be a war hero, you ought to have had some success at war, and not just have been a victim. That used to be the common view before we became a victim-centered culture
If you think that McCain (or Mallory) was a "victim", you're an idiot.
Police busted for smuggling steroids across Canadian border:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvDFOodjenk
"No, that is your definition of "alpha male". It is not the definition of "alpha male"."
ReplyDeletepeople borrow terms from science all the time and use them colloquially to describe observed human dynamics. let's not nerd out over this.
"In the true usage an "alpha male" means much more than "a male who gets a lot of sex". In fact the term says more about the alpha males relationship to other males than it does about his relationship to females."
humans are not wolves. many human alpha males attract lots of women without ever battling mano a mano with other men for access to those women. see: your local club DJ.
"As used by you the "alpha male" in some random group is the man who gets laid the most over some randomly specified period of time."
no. stop putting words in my mouth to assuage your ego. the alpha male is the one who attracts the most attention from the greatest number of good-looking women (and less attractive women). female attention is not sex. he doesn't have to follow through on all those mating opportunities.
"But that's a tautology."
as steve once said, great truths often distill as tautologies.
"Unlike prides of lions or troops of chimpanzees, groups of humans are almost infinitely fluid in size and composition,"
that's something a blank slatist would say.
"and they do not form themselves into the rigid sexual hierarchy your theory requires."
naturally, context matters. i never said it didn't. but context isn't the only variable. intrinsic male attractiveness matters -- whether that attractiveness is physical or psychological, or learned through game -- and generally speaking, the guy who can clean up with women in one niche stands a good chance of cleaning up in other niches.
"Single combat in the woods using tools, weapons, and strategy."
why would weapons be restricted only to his foe? a reedy nerd with a spear vs arnie with a spear doesn't sound like a fair fight. unless you want to argue arnold is really strategically stupid. i don't think the evidence bears out that assumption.
"Arnold said in an interview that things were made up and contrived"
he also said he didn't knock up a maid. look, no doubt the footage was massaged to maximize its dramatic impact, but the clips of arnold in 'pumping iron', plus eyewitness accounts, mesh well with what we know about him in real life. he's an amoral alpha male with a cruel streak and enough charisma and ambition for one hundred men.
"If you think that McCain (or Mallory) was a 'victim', you're an idiot." Anon, 8/17/12 2:40 PM
ReplyDeletere: McCain and Mallory.
Both were VICTIMS of being Amateurs. As Amateurs they doomed themselves to failure.
McCain was an Affirmative action Midshipman and Pilot given his father and grandfather were four star admirals. McCain was a reverse ACE: Five American planes were lost ( one damaged ) under him.
Mallory was a typical British Amateur who died mountain climbing without proper equipment believing that Pluck could win success over adversity. He paid with his life for such amateurism.
Dan Kurt
"No, that is your definition of "alpha male". It is not the definition of "alpha male"."
ReplyDeleteI think he's got you on that one, Roissy. Alphaness is not a state of being, it is A BEING. True Alphas are ahead of the pack at all times, whether women are present or not. They cannot help it because they can not be any other way.
For instance, you wrote:
"this is wishful thinking. social manipulation is a part of the state of nature. in single combat, in his prime, arnold would be able to overcome most men. lifting increases your strength as well as your size.
arnold's charisma, cruelty, unstoppable confidence, bemused mastery and deviousness would have been winning strategies in a small hunter gatherer band as much as in a large US state. he would have won over the admiration of his tribe's beta males and the sexual interest of zee vimmin. and he would have enjoyed hearing the lamentations of the omegas."
That's all well and good, but a true alpha would have been unable to resist adding something at the end, like:
"Of course I would have snuffed his ass."
Evander Holyfield is the quintessential example of an alpha male. Certainly he gets his share of tang, but what is "alpha" about Evander is that he JUST WONT RETIRE! Certainly he needs money, but he won the Olympic medal in nineteen-eighty freakin' four, he is now FIFTY years old, and he still believes he can defeat Vladimir Klitchko in a boxing match and would fight him, inside or outside the ring for free, if someone offered him the fight.
That's Alpha.
BTW; the guy I've met who laid more beautiful women than anyone I've met in my life, celebrities included, was a psudeo-gay, sensitive bisexual type. So was Lord Byron.
ReplyDeletere: McCain and Mallory.
ReplyDeleteBoth were VICTIMS of being Amateurs.
McCain was not an amateur. He was a professional Navy pilot. In Mallory's time, all mountain climbers were "amateur", just as Roger Bannister was an amateur when he ran the first sub-four-minute mile. In spite of what you seem to imagine, the word "amateur" does not mean "incompetent". It literally means "somebody who engages in the activity in question for the love of it and not for money".
McCain was a reverse ACE: Five American planes were lost ( one damaged ) under him.
Your facts are utterly fraudulent. McCain lost one plane when he was shot down over Vietnam, and another to engine failure. A plane which he flew was destroyed in a fire aboard the USS Forrestal - a fire which destroyed several aircraft, damaged the ship, and killed 134 crewmen. Before you make a bigger fool of yourself - no, McCain was not responsible for the fire.
While still a trainee pilot, McCain was responsible for the loss of one plane. One.
McCain was not a fighter pilot. He flew A-4's in the ground attack role. The insinuation that he should haave been racking up "kills" is ignorant at best and malicious at worst.
heartiste,
ReplyDeleteNice to see an experienced man of the world post here even if I do have the sneaking suspicion that you are mad, bad, and dangerous to know.
Gloria
as steve once said, great truths often distill as tautologies
ReplyDeleteWhat does that even mean?
the alpha male is the one who attracts the most attention from the greatest number of good-looking women
There is no such thing as "the male who attracts the most attention from the greatest number of good-looking women". In certain groups of people - groups containing both men and women - Joe Smith might be the guy who attracts the most attention from the greatest number of good-looking women. In other groups of people this same guy might draw the least attention from the greatest number of good-looking women.
This is partly because of variation within the population of men. But even more importantly, it is because of variation within the population of women.
generally speaking, the guy who can clean up with women in one niche stands a good chance of cleaning up in other niches
You live in a fantasy world. I'm a guy - a guy who gets hit on by a good number of attractive women. But it's very much "niche specific". Women who look for certain things in guys find me attractive. Women who look for other things - and this covers a good proportion of all women - do not find me attractive.
Men have different tastes in women. In spite of what "game theory" claims to be the case, women also have different tastes in men. The idea that that all women are attracted to an "alpha personality" (which nobody can ever define) is laughable. Women are attracted to men for reasons which are often inexplicable to men, but they are tangible reasons all the same.
"as the Droit du seigneur, where they had the right ... to bang any leftover reproduction unit scraps the Betas were able to corral."
ReplyDeleteTime to promulgate a new Internet law: anyone who alludes to this risible myth loses the argument.
The whole premise of this post strikes me as odd: because feminists say gender is a social construct, people don't care about cheating in bodybuilding competitions?
"as the Droit du seigneur, where they had the right ... to bang any leftover reproduction unit scraps the Betas were able to corral."
ReplyDeleteTime to promulgate a new Internet law: anyone who alludes to this risible myth loses the argument.
The whole premise of this post strikes me as odd: because feminists say gender is a social construct, people don't care about cheating in bodybuilding competitions?
"Don't be absurd. Hector was seen as a hero. Prometheus was seen as a hero. Alexander the Great was seen as a hero. Dying was never an impediment to heroic status. It was often practically a requirement for it."
ReplyDeleteThat's your second straw man argument so far. I never said anything about dying being a disqualification for hero status.
In any case, Hector was considered a hero before he died: he was the greatest warrior among the Trojans, and had killed plenty of Greeks before his time came. And it took the son of a god to kill him. As Dan Kurt's comment about McCain being a "reverse Ace" illustrates, McCain was no Hector.
As for Alexander, he died of a fever after conquering most of the then-known world.
If you want an example of a hero who died in battle and wasn't awarded a medal of honor, consider Admiral Nelson. He is considered a hero by the British primarily because he won a hugely important battle (Trafalgar).
"
ReplyDeleteEvander Holyfield is the quintessential example of an alpha male. Certainly he gets his share of tang, but what is "alpha" about Evander is that he JUST WONT RETIRE! Certainly he needs money, but he won the Olympic medal in nineteen-eighty freakin' four, he is now FIFTY years old, and he still believes he can defeat Vladimir Klitchko in a boxing match and would fight him, inside or outside the ring for free, if someone offered him the fight. "
-That's not alpha, that's just stupid.
""But, he's hoodwinking your natural instincts, he's just injecting himself with artificial male hormones. It's a scam!""
ReplyDelete"In what sense is it a scam? Artificial male hormones have the same effects as natural hormones."
They're going after an alpha for better genes for their offspring and better protection for their offspring and themselves. He's tricking their 'alpha' sensors into believing he has the good genes. Granted, the 'roids still led to a good protector and provider in his case.
This is a very informed discussion. Clearly the glory of this blog is the quality of its readership. I'm impressed. So what can I possibly contribute?
ReplyDeleteWell one thing that sets me a bit apart is a certain familiarity with BDSM. I'm quite sure that as many a quarter of the men who comment here also have some experience with BDSM, but they wish to remain in the closet for now. That's fine. That used to be the situation regarding homosexuality when I was younger. It has all reversed for gays, maybe a similar transposition is coming for BDSM. But probably not real soon.
I also worked for many years as a sort of professional Alpha. At age fifty I went into corporate technical consulting. I marketed myself as a programmer but I soon found that I was in more demand as a tough guy. My first such job was as a "Tamer". That's what my boss wanted - someone to tame his unruly programmers and data base base administrators. My job was bring them into a state of submission. They had run off two previous managers. They conspired against me of course but they were no real match. I was very good at it.
My next job was nominally to run a couple information system projects but the real job was to beat up on the contractors. Then I once again was hired to bring a technical staff under control. I fired about half of them including my boss. I became the new CTO.
I've always been this way, just more so as I got older. Smart is good, but tough is better. Industry is eager for managers and executives who have alpha personalities.
In BDSM I'm a classic Dominant or Master. This always meant that I was in demand in that the sex-love arena too. Certain women find a Dominant man very attractive. Before I got too old I always had plenty of women. The BDSM web sites are filled with women desperate to find a "real" Dominant. Many men apparently like to fake it but ultimately reveal that they are actually submissive. This sort of would-be Dominant disgusts and disappoints submissives. When I entered the local BDSM sub-culture the word quickly spread among the girls. All of them wanted to meet me.
That's why I've always been amused by the guys who discuss "Game" here. They seem to be looking for a magic formula that they can use to pick up women in bars. I never went to bars. Why bother?
I kept a string of women for a while. In fact I began to write a software system to keep all of them under control. It's very much like the responsibilities you incur if you keep a harem.
People should read the Feynman books. He too discovered that there are plenty of women but that conventional advice to be sweet and solicitous will keep you lonely. Or just watch an Apache dance.
I'm currently reading "Chimpanzee Politics" - an ethology classic. There's no doubt that alpha is a real phenomenon among primates. BDSM too. None of this stuff is a mere social construct. It's real.
One reason it is good to be a Dominant in BDSM is because most real Dominants are also real ass holes. When they discover that many women want a certain amount of abuse, it goes to their head. They think they no longer need to be polite. They let their BDSM persona intrude into their vanilla life.
Albertosaurus
BTW; the guy I've met who laid more beautiful women than anyone I've met in my life, celebrities included, was a psudeo-gay, sensitive bisexual type. So was Lord Byron.
ReplyDeleteWhich celebrities do you know? Tyler Perry?
How did you find out that this "pseudo-gay, sensitive bisexual type" bedded "more beautiful women than anyone"? Did he tell you during pillow talk?
why would weapons be restricted only to his foe? a reedy nerd with a spear vs arnie with a spear doesn't sound like a fair fight. unless you want to argue arnold is really strategically stupid.
ReplyDeleteWeapons wouldn't be restricted. It's just that in single combat in the woods in a state of nature using tools, weapons, and strategy, he'd have to devise his own weapons, tools, and strategy. He wouldn't be able to rely on social manipulation.
he also said he didn't knock up a maid. look, no doubt the footage was massaged to maximize its dramatic impact, but the clips of arnold in 'pumping iron', plus eyewitness accounts, mesh well with what we know about him in real life. he's an amoral alpha male with a cruel streak and enough charisma and ambition for one hundred men.
ReplyDeleteWell if he's a liar, he could just as well have lied and acted during the docu-drama "Pumping Iron" and told the truth in the interview. If he's a liar, how do you know he was being truthful during the movie, and lying in the interview?
He's never really had a reputation for being amoral and cruel in real life, nor for being "alpha" in terms of bedding many women (even if he may have). He was an action star but never really a sex symbol.
The more I read the comments here, the more I'm convinced I'm just an animal. This conviction is less than inspiring. It makes me depressed. I can't wait for the sun to expand and end it all. Is that too dark?
ReplyDeleteTruth, we actually have a lot in common. We both stick up for our own race. You stick up for your own black race, and we stick up for our own white race.
ReplyDeleteWe don't expect you to stand up for our race, so don't expect us to stick up for yours. You take care of your race and we'll take care of our own race. Of course, there are many more whites who stick up other races than non-white races who stick up for other races, but there lies the problem with this world.
Before I got too old I always had plenty of women. The BDSM web sites are filled with women desperate to find a "real" Dominant. Many men apparently like to fake it but ultimately reveal that they are actually submissive. This sort of would-be Dominant disgusts and disappoints submissives. When I entered the local BDSM sub-culture the word quickly spread among the girls. All of them wanted to meet me.
ReplyDeleteThat is just a savage spoof of Albertosaurus.
If you want an example of a hero who died in battle and wasn't awarded a medal of honor, consider Admiral Nelson
ReplyDeleteGiven that the Medal of Honor is awarded to .. you know .. Americans, I can't say that I'm startled that poor old Nelson failed to get one.
Instead he had to be content with Nelson's Column being erected in Trafalgar Square in the center of London. It's 169 feet tall. Oh, the humanity!
"Steve, feminism is one giant test by women of men, to sort out the Alphas from the beta males."
ReplyDeleteOh for the love of...
I know a beautiful young feminist woman. She just got married...to a silly pushover Beta dork who probably nods his head at everything she says because she's hot. She was not using feminism as a test of Alpha v. Beta.
It is absolutely correct, though, that men should take a woman's feminism and shove it right back in her face. Relationships - marriage - are not meant to be antagonistic. And while I dated a few feminists, I would never marry a woman who thought that way.
Feminism is a lie meant to make women hate men; to make them think they bare some grudge against the men who are supposed to be their partners, their lovers, their soulmates. It's a shitty little ideology meant to undermine the family. The days when feminism had anything worthwhile to add to the conversation are long gone.
Truth - if there was ever a time where you looked at Barry and thought "tough", do yourself a favor and don't leave the house alone.
ReplyDeleteMade me LOL :-)
BTW; the guy I've met who laid more beautiful women than anyone I've met in my life, celebrities included, was a psudeo-gay, sensitive bisexual type. So was Lord Byron.
ReplyDeleteBut was he talking them into bed, or were they just falling for him - Albertosaurus style?
I take an Alpha to be somone who dominate those around him pretty clearly and that women are responding directly, he doesnt have to charm them first.
"because feminists say gender is a social construct, people don't care about cheating in bodybuilding competitions?"
ReplyDeletethey do start thinking that a girl can start growing muscles because women were kept out of gyms by cavemen.
"as steve once said, great truths often distill as tautologies
What does that even mean?"
that which survives, survives
In my opinion:
ReplyDelete" A man's man is a Woman"
A real Alpha Male is one to whom All Males are attracted to.
1) Post of the Year by Albertosaurus. Maybe Post of the Decade.
ReplyDelete2) I'd like to know more about Truth's acquaintance [and his methods]. What was his ethnicity [and education]? What were the chicks' ethnicities [and educations]? And was he just faking teh gheyness, or was it real?
"McCain was not responsible for the fire."
ReplyDeleteThat is a controversial topic with adherents on both sides to this day. One thing that is basically indisputable is that McCain was, to be charitable, a mediocrity in phase of his life before being elected to office.
" Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteTruth, we actually have a lot in common. We both stick up for our own race. You stick up for your own black race, and we stick up for our own white race."
No Sir, I'm not sure we do. It's quite difficult for some people to get the distinction, but I'll try again:
I don't stick up for the "black race" I stick up for people being honest, forthright, and holding single standards. That's it. I don't take any personal benefit from T.O. Catching touchdown passes, or Barry winning a nobel prize. You can stick up for whatever you'd like; it's still (mainly) a free country.
Anon:
ReplyDelete"Feminists lust after the alphas like other women but are too ugly to land one. So they engage in Nietzschean resentiment and convince themselves to hate them."
But a high proportion of political Feminists, the kind who run NOW and do political lobbying, are man-hating lesbians, anyway. They want all the women and are uninterested in men except as rivals to defeat.
I take an Alpha to be somone who dominate those around him pretty clearly
ReplyDeleteThen I've never encountered an "Alpha". I've never encountered a man who dominated those around him pretty clearly. And I'm deeply skeptical that sch creatures exist. (Which is why heartiste defines "alpha" differently)
I don't stick up for the "black race"
ReplyDeleteHardy har har.
I stick up for people being honest, forthright, and holding single standards.
Yes, I'm sure we've all noticed your constant championing of single standards for blacks and white, Jews and gentiles, Irish and Asians.
"McCain was not responsible for the fire."
ReplyDeleteThat is a controversial topic with adherents on both sides to this day.
It's not a controversial topic, unless you mean "controversial" in the liberal sense of "some people want to talk trash about somebody else even though the facts are against them".
http://factcheck.org/2008/09/mccains-plane-crashes/
There is no debate to be had here. The sort of people who think that McCain was responsible for the fire on the Forrestal are the same sorts of people who mutter about Cheney plating thermite in the Twin Towers.
I stick up for people being honest, forthright, and holding single standards.
Then maybe you could stop pretending that left-wing nut-jobs have a point of view which we need to take seriously.
Which is why heartiste defines "alpha" differently
ReplyDeleteYeah, Heartiste's definition of "Alpha" tends to be "He who makes the chicks uncontrollably wet between the legs."
Which, apparently, is NOT to be confused with "He who makes other men piss in their pants from sheer terror."
Now there may be some overlap between the two categories, but the Game Theory crowd tries to emphasize that the two are not necessarily one and the same.
The salient point about the Nelson example is that he was a war hero chiefly because he accomplished something in war. Had he been an undistinguished junior naval officer, who endured years as a POW, however bravely, it's hard to imagine that Englishmen of that era would have lauded him to the extent Americans of recent decades lauded McCain.
ReplyDelete"2) I'd like to know more about Truth's acquaintance [and his methods]. What was his ethnicity [and education]? What were the chicks' ethnicities [and educations]? And was he just faking teh gheyness, or was it real?"
ReplyDeleteHe is black (big surprise) from Chicago, in his 40's when we hung out now in his 50's. The women were across the board in ethnicity (but predominantly white). The ranged in education from 18 to 65 or so (when he needed money) He has been with two or three white demi-celebrities (lived with one), married one of the most beautiful women in Ireland and when he divorced her, hornswagled the judge into awarding HIM (a much older black man with a checkered past) custody!
He has a bill in his name in the California state legal code, and denies being bisexual, but wears full-face makeup every day.
One of his token quotes: "'Truth' when you're trying to get a woman, talk about your kids, let one tear fall down at the right time...only one, not two, that makes you look like a crybaby."
He is, also, a sometimey actor in L.A. who you may have seen in this movie or that.
Thanks, Truth - let me mull that over.
ReplyDeleteThe salient point about the Nelson example is that he was a war hero chiefly because he accomplished something in war
ReplyDeleteNo, the salient point about the Nelson example is that he was decorated far, far beyond some "medal of honor" which does not even exist in Britain.
it's hard to imagine that Englishmen of that era would have lauded him to the extent Americans of recent decades lauded McCain
What are you babbling on about now? The extent to which Americans of recent decades have lauded McCain has been to acknowledge that he, like many other soldiers in the Vietnam War, behaved heroically. Nobody is claiming that he single-handedly saved mankind from being enslaved by aliens or whatever it is you imagine to be the standard for heroism.
Yeah, Heartiste's definition of "Alpha" tends to be "He who makes the chicks uncontrollably wet between the legs."
ReplyDeleteWhich is a dumb definition. "The chicks" are not some uniform mass of people all reacting alike to the same things. I've never encountered a man who "women" liked. I've met men who some women liked.
A real Alpha Male is one to whom All Males are attracted
ReplyDeleteThen, obviously, no "real Alpha Male" exists or is ever likely to exist.
Had he been an undistinguished junior naval officer, who endured years as a POW, however bravely, it's hard to imagine that Englishmen of that era would have lauded him to the extent Americans of recent decades lauded McCain.
ReplyDeleteHe was not a junior officer. He retired from the Navy as a captain, the equivalent of a full colonel in the other services.
Somehow I do not think a naval aviator qualifies as 'undistinguished'. It is an unusual and quite hazardous sort of service. Also, the Navy was the service the least implicated in the VietNam War. Only about 2% of all fatalities in VietNam were of Navy personnel. Prisoners of War were also unusual. About 3 million personnel were stationed in IndoChina at some point. The number who were prisoners of war is numbered in the low thousands. It is a reasonable wager that the number of Navy personnel in PoW camps can be numbered in two digits, and that John McCain knew them all.
T - your descriptions sounds an awful lot like Edward Lawson, although Wikipedia seems to think that he might have died recently.
ReplyDeleteWell, if you're not tall, you almost have to bulk up with muscles to be seen as "alpha". Although, given how fat and flabby most people are nowadays, you just need some muscles, and don't need to go all out like Stallone.
ReplyDelete8/17/12 12:11 PM
+1. 15 minutes of 10 pound in each hand barbells every morning before coffee and a little bit of paying attention to excessive carbs in diet will firm-up the medium-average not-quite-obese American man in a few months. Pants will fit better, women will comment that you look "healthier", and you will be smarter with more endurance. Not bad for no cost, and it's likely that your BP will go down and heart/lung function improve. Do occasional fartlek running and all will be better.
PT will save you from slow-moving zombies and slower-than-you human predators. New Triathalon: Shoot-Move-Hide.
Cheers.
A lot of TMI in this thread.
ReplyDelete"He was not a junior officer."
ReplyDeleteRight, he was a mid-ranking officer (a Lieutenant Commander) when he was shot down. My mistake for referring to him as a junior officer.
"No, the salient point about the Nelson example is that he was decorated far, far beyond some "medal of honor" which does not even exist in Britain."
ReplyDeleteI assumed we're all aware that the Medal of Honor is specific to the US, which is why I didn't find it necessary to explicitly note that. If it makes you happy to imagine I didn't know that, then feel free to revel in your imagined gotchya.
In any case, you are either missing the point of the Nelson example or you're being deliberately obtuse. Nelson was lauded to such an extent because he was the victor in a crucial battle. Had he lost that battle and been held captive by the French for years, he wouldn't have been been.
"The extent to which Americans of recent decades have lauded McCain has been to acknowledge that he, like many other soldiers in the Vietnam War, behaved heroically."
It's true that some of the McCain worship was due to Americans attempting to compensate for the contemptuous treatment of Vietnam War troops by the antiwar left of that time, but it was also part of a broader cultural trend elevating victims, the apotheosis of which might have been the attention granted to Jessica Lynch, the US Army private who had the misfortune of being captured by Iraqi troops. Or maybe the apotheosis of the trend was McCain running for President, with his POW experience as a keystone of his biography.
Think of US Presidents who leaned on wartime biographies in their run for office. Did any spend most of their wars as POWs?
Which is a dumb definition. "The chicks" are not some uniform mass of people all reacting alike to the same things. I've never encountered a man who "women" liked. I've met men who some women liked.
ReplyDeleteThat's what older folk would think - that no one particular kind of man would appeal to all women simultaneously.
Similarly, as recently as my formative years, guys would classify all chicks into one of two broad categories, which [if Komment Kontrol will allow me to be so blunt] were:
A) Nice Girls, and
B) Bar Whores.
But my impression from reading Heartiste, Roosh, Whiskey et el is that the category of "Nice Girl" is an endangered species [rapidly going extinct?] and that increasingly the guys on the front lines are encountering ONLY the "Bar Whore".
So if all young women nowadays are little Jenna-Jamison-Wannabee Bar Whores, then it's entirely possible that there is indeed just one particular male personality which appeals to all of them simultaneously.
that which survives, survives
ReplyDeleteThat was the episode with Lee Meriwether, right?
as recently as my formative years, guys would classify all chicks into one of two broad categories, which [if Komment Kontrol will allow me to be so blunt] were
ReplyDeleteA) Nice Girls, and
B) Bar Whores.
That's not what I mean at all. Some women like tall guys and some like short guys. Some women like assholes and some women like nice guys. Some women like jocks and some women like smart guys. Some women are attracted to men's hands, some to men's butt's, some to men's eyes.
It's irrelevant what categories men put women into. What matters for men trying to have sex is what categories women put men into. And those categories are not "alpha" and "beta".
I assumed we're all aware that the Medal of Honor is specific to the US
ReplyDeleteThen I'm perplexed as to why you keep mentioning it in non-US contexts.
Nelson was lauded to such an extent because he was the victor in a crucial battle.
No kidding. The notion that a hero is defined as "a victor in a crucial battle" is still asinine.
It's true that some of the McCain worship was due to Americans attempting to compensate for the contemptuous treatment of Vietnam War troops by the antiwar left of that time
What "McCain worship"? If the US had built a 300 foot tall "McCain's Column" in "Hanoi Square" in downtown Washington DC then you'd be entitled to twitter on about "McCain worship".
a broader cultural trend elevating victims
McCain was only a "victim" in the same sense Nelson was.
Jessica Lynch, the US Army private who had the misfortune of being captured by Iraqi troops
Your inability to master simple facts is getting tedious. Early mistaken news stories claimed that Lynch had fought heroically. It was later revealed that she had not even fired her weapon. Nor did she display heroism while a POW.
It's irrelevant what categories men put women into.
ReplyDeleteWhat's relevant is whether [or not] the categories are an ACCURATE REFLECTION OF REALITY.
Some women like tall guys and some like short guys... and some women like nice guys. Some women like jocks and some women like smart guys. Some women are attracted to men's hands, some to men's butt's, some to men's eyes.
That's how NICE GIRLS think.
Some women like assholes
And that's how BAR WHORES think.
What we are hearing from the guys at the front lines is that the Nice Girl is an endangered species, and that, increasingly, they are encountering only Bar Whores on the prowl.
Which, in turn, means that, increasingly, guys are having to dial up the ass-hole-ish-ness to "11", or else they're going have to be satisified with yet another lonely weekend of internet pr0n and hitting the hand.
What's relevant is whether [or not] the categories are an ACCURATE REFLECTION OF REALITY.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's not. For the most part it is women who decide whether or not sex will take place. It does not not make a damn bit of difference whether Bob puts some woman into the "Nice Girl" or "Bar Whore" category. All that matters is whether he wants to sleep with her, a decision which has nothing to do with the two categories mentioned.
That's how NICE GIRLS think.
No, that's how women think.
What we are hearing from the guys at the front lines is that the Nice Girl is an endangered species
We're all on the "front lines". Frat boys in college don't possess some special insight here. On the contrary ...
as recently as my formative years, guys would classify all chicks into one of two broad categories, which [if Komment Kontrol will allow me to be so blunt] were
ReplyDeleteA) Nice Girls, and
B) Bar Whores.
That sounds an awful lot like: "Any woman who would sleep with a guy like me is a whore!"
Which a surprisingly large number of American men actually believe.
A prerequisite for better relations between the sexes is for men to stop loathing themselves.
"What we are hearing from the guys at the front lines is that the Nice Girl is an endangered species, and that, increasingly, they are encountering only Bar Whores on the prowl."
ReplyDeleteThat's because the idiots spend all their time in bars.
"That sounds an awful lot like: "Any woman who would sleep with a guy like me is a whore!"
You're slightly off here, Komment Kontrol Kook; any woman who sleep with you is a prostitute, not a whore.
The commenter Gloria sounds like a Rachel Maddox type pc trained anti white liberal. Spouting msnbc talking points about being white opens all these doors which is bs. Trying getting a summer job as a white kid. All the bizness want minorities.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't feminists be glad to know that the stuff of manhood is something that can be ordered through the mail? That is equality in the most literal sense, right there, since the only thing an extremely well-juiced woman can't do is make sperm. After a certain point, the extreme long-term effects even include a small penis among them. Why fight against what you can join instead?
ReplyDelete