On the Vietnam War

Excellent passage from Valley of Decision: The Siege of Khe Sanhn, by John Prados and Ray W. Stubble on the stress of combat in South Vietnam:

"In fact, Vietnam was a searing experience for all those who went through combat. World War II veterans may have seen battles unfold on a larger scale, but nothing rivaled Vietnam in the constancy of risk, the immediacy of danger.  The average World War II Marine spent seventy days a year in combat. A Marine tour in South Vietnam lasted only thirteen months, but in that time an infantryman could expect to be on combat detail for some 270 days. Moreover, combat in Vietnam seemed wholly illogical--veterans of the 'big war' proudly recalled the islands they had captured, the objectives seized. Marines the Vietnam spent their days repeatedly sweeping the same terrain, capturing the same hills and hamlets, sometimes falling victim to ambushes in the same places" (108).

I've always thought the brave men who served in Vietnam should be considered "the greatest generation."  Not only were they fighting for a government that woefully mismanaged the war and for a country that treated them worse than garbage, but they had to live in constant fear of attack.  The enemy was everywhere. There was no security: this wasn't like World War II where the Allies would clear and secure territory and then set up bases for future advancement.  Technology had also developed since 1945 or since 1953, making war all the more brutal and deadly.  Plus combat Marines were usually sleeping outside, in the rain, without the most basic facilities for human hygiene or comfort.  And they were draftees--just normal, working class kids who answered the call to serve their country. I wonder how many of us today would actually be able to handle all that.

Caitlin Moran: On Female Pubic Hair

Not surprisingly, Caitlin Moran holds the same opinions I do regarding female pubic hair and its political importance and connection to consumerism.  A few selections from How to Be a Woman:

"Hair is the opening salvo in decades of quietly screaming 'WHO AM I?' while standing in front of an array of products in the drugstore, clutching an empty basket."

"Pubic hair must be confined to a very small area or, increasingly, removed completely…While some use the euphemism 'Brazilian' to describe this state of affairs, I prefer to call it what it is--'a ruinously high-maintenance, itchy, cold-looking child's vagina.'"

"'I remember when it was all furry round here,' I will say sadly in the changing rooms of the gym, surrounded by smooth, pink genitals. 'Hairy toots as far as the eye could see. Wild and untamable. An arbor of nature. Playground of my youth. I used to spend hours there. Now…now it's all waxed and empty.  All the wildlife has gone. The bulldozers have moved in. They're going to build a new Safeway, there, on the vaginas.'"

"It is now accepted that women will wax. We never had a debate about it. It just happened--and we never thought to discuss it."

"I can't believe we've got to a point where its basically costing us money to have a vagina. They're making us pay for maintenance and upkeep of our lulus, like they're a communal garden. It's a stealth tax. Muff excised…God DAMN you, mores of pornography that have made it into my undies. GOD DAMN YOU."

"The real reason all porn stars wax is because, if you remove all the fur, you can see more when you're doing penetrative shots. And that's it. This gigantic, billion-dollar Western obsession with Brazilians and Hollywoods, which millions of normal women have to time events in their lives around, endure pain and inconvenience for…is all down to the technical considerations of cinematography."

"The crotch, the upper lip, and the armpit are miles apart…What happens to them, and why, is wholly different--primarily because armpits aren't intimately associated with sexual maturity, or, indeed, sexuality at all…So what you do with your armpits is just an aesthetic concern--and not really part of the Struggle."

FISA Amendments Act

Well, at least no one can accuse California Senator Dianne Feinstein of being inconsistent.  It's not just your Second Amendment rights she's after; Feinstein wants to gut the Fourth Amendment, too.

After an "unusual special session," Congress voted to reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which "allows for the federal government to spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant, without probable cause, and without even informing the allegedly relevant oversight bodies in Congress as to the number of Americans being spied on." Read more from Reason.

Feinstein urged her colleagues to vote down proposed amendments (by Senators Rand Paul and Ron Wyden) that would have strengthened constitutional protections.  In Feinstein's opinion, the government would never abuse its FISA power (no, of course not), and desperately needs to continue surveillance operations in the aftermath of 9/11…eleven years ago.

Slowly but surely, we are moving closer and closer toward becoming the police state that Feinstein wants America to become.  As long as liberals keep electing goons like Feinstein and Schumer, the gradual erosion of our constitutional liberties will continue unabated into the future.

Caitlin Moran: On Pornography

I recently started reading Caitlin Moran's How To Be a Woman, and, as expected, I found her comments on contemporary pornography to be spot on.

"Essentially," Moran writes, "the Internet vends a porn monoculture."  Precisely. When a person searches for pornography on the Internet, the majority of results will be short clips or pictures from mainstream American studios, filmed in the San Fernando Valley.  The woman will likely be slim and Caucasian (although mainstream "niches" feature women of other ethnicities as well), wearing heavy makeup and ridiculously revealing clothing, and sporting a completely hairless pubic region.  Her male partners will also likely be completely hairless, and will most certainly be well endowed.  The short video will begin with the woman performing oral sex on the men, who will often handle her roughly, slap her face, call her degrading names, and force her to gag on their genitalia.  The men will then proceed to penetrate the woman's vaginal, anal, and oral orifices, until the scene concludes with the men masturbating until they ejaculate on the woman's face. (The material from European studios will be mostly similar, although perhaps without the derogatory language and with most certainly with more fashionable clothing.)

As Moran observes, "That single, unimaginative, billion-duplicated fuck is generally what we mean by 'porn culture.'"  She then goes on to list several of its signature characteristics that have had a tremendous influence on the world outside of pornography: "Brazilians. Hollywoods.  Round, high plastic tits. Acrylic nails that make it impossible to do up a shoe buckle, or type. MTV full of crotches and tits. Anal sex being an assume part of every woman's repertoire. Posters for makeup, or TV shows, that show women glassy-eyed, open-mouthed, and ready for a faceful of come.  Knickers being replaced by thongs. High, high heels that aren't really made for walking--just lying back and being fucked in." Aside from the breast implants (which are no longer in fashion), Moran's list is certainly accurate.

As a result of the proliferation of porn culture, according to Moran "12 percent of the images of women on the Internet are of them either on all fours, rammed into some highly unhygienic PVC, or being forced around outsized male genitalia, as if their sundry openings were some manner of tube bandage."

As Moran's description emphasizes, porn culture is not erotic.  In fact, porn is the complete opposite of eroticism.  Porn depicts the distorted bodies of 21st century consumer capitalism engaging in an uninspired performance of various sex acts.  While the overwhelming majority of mainstream American porn focuses on men dominating and abusing women, the process effectively dehumanizes and degrades all those involved.

In response to anti-porn Feminists, Moran notes that "the act of having sex isn't sexist, so there's no way pornography can be, in itself, inherently misogynist."  Instead, she writes, "it's the porn industry that's the problem.  The whole thing is as offensive, sclerotic, depressing, emotionally bankrupt, and desultory as you would expect a widely unregulated industry worth…$30 billion to be.  No industry ever made that amount of money without being superlatively crass and dumb."
 
Porn in its industrialized form is human sexuality distorted by consumerism and commodified.  Porn perfectly illustrates McLuhan's point that "medium is message": it does not matter that most porn is consumed without paying for anything other than an Internet connection, because the very process of consuming it transforms us into more prolific all-around consumers.  By feeding us plastic sex acts devoid of desire, porn distorts our relationship to ourselves, our bodies, our sexual partners, and our own desires.  We then attempt to fill the void created by porn with renewed consumption in all aspects of our lives.  The consumer of porn may witness countless ejaculations, and may himself ejaculate more often than is healthy, but he never achieves the satisfaction of orgasm.  Porn creates desires but does not satisfy them.

Moran correctly notes the deleterious affect that porn culture has on the young, both male and female alike.  While porn is only intended for adults, its proliferation ensures that children will nonetheless come in contact with it at some point.  As a form of sex education, industrialized porn presents a single homogenous conception of sexuality, entirely centered on the phallus.  Porn teaches young women that they must remove their pubic hair and wear revealing clothing to attract men.  They are shown that their pleasure is not important; instead, their role in sex is to please the man and allow him to take his pleasure from her however he sees fit.  Men, in turn, are shown a selfish and violent version of sexuality that essentially amounts to masturbation, using the woman to achieve orgasm. 

Moran imagines that young boys encountering porn for the first time would be "scared of someone who looks like an angry Burt Reynolds, bumming someone across a landing."  I would add that even adults who encounter porn culture for the first time can end up feeling disturbed, if not frightened, by what it communicates.  A short personal anecdote may help illustrate this point.

Like Caitlin Moran, I count myself as belonging to "the last generation before free online pornography starts being handed out, with the same largesse with which the postwar Labour government handed out milk and spectacles."  As a teenager, pornography for me meant magazines with pictures of naked women, from the frustratingly obscure Playboy to the more satisfying and revelatory Penthouse, Hustler, and Gallery.  When I first started viewing internet pornography while at college, it was still confined to photos rather than videos.  The closest I came to the porn industry was through film stills (such as the scene between Nikita Denise and Lexington Steele in Heavy Metal 2, which was an early favorite of mine for some reason).

Fast forward a few years.  It was late at night, and I was surfing the web for some porn.  I came across a page with a few short clips featuring an Asian woman and two extremely well-endowed Caucasian males. (I later learned that the scene was from Redlight District's Two in the Seat, featuring Tolly Crystal, Steve Holmes, and Brandon Irons.) I was both horrified and incredibly aroused by what I saw, as the men handled Tolly very roughly, using her for their pleasure.

Tolly is clearly not enjoying the experience.  Early in the scene, Irons tries to insert his finger into her anus while he is penetrating her vaginally, but Tolly pushes his arm away.  Irons nevertheless persists, at one point telling Tolly, "I'm gonna hurt you, bitch." (He also tells her she has a "filthy pussy" and calls her a "whore").  Meanwhile, Tolly performs fellatio on Holmes, who pushes her head down on his penis.  At one point, Holmes tries to kiss Tolly, but she vehemently refuses.   When the men take turns sodomizing Tolly, they are obviously hurting her.  As she winces and screams in pain, Holmes moans in pleasure, and Irons emits his own joyful exclamations.  After a lengthy double-penetration sequence, the two men ejaculate on her face.  Tolly's relief at the conclusion of the scene is evident--although her body is damages, she has survived the ordeal and will get her pay check.  

As a sexually experienced adult, I can appreciate the Bataillean transgressiveness of the scene.  It is so obviously wrong, in so many ways--Crystal, a Mongolian who came to the porn industry through Budapest, died shortly after the scene when she "fell" from a roof under mysterious circumstances. (It remains unclear whether her death was a suicide, an accident, or a murder carried out by Eastern European mafioso and/or human traffickers).  Yet to this day it continues to arouse me, and remains one of my the few mainstream American porn offerings that I still watch.

The problem, however, is that there are just too many scenes like this out there, offering essentially this same violent and sadistic version of sexuality.  Two in the Seat is arousing in the way rape fantasies are arousing--as an outlier, a variation on shared, consensual, non-exploitative sexual experiences.  But when it becomes the norm, it looses its transgressive character.  When there are too many rough and abusive porn scenes out there, sex itself becomes impoverished.

As an alternative to porn culture, Moran suggests a new, female pornography,"something that shows sex as something that two people do together, rather than a thing that just happens to a woman when she has to make rent.  Something in which…everyone comes."  Indeed, if there is one critique to be made of today's American and European pornography, it is that it is exclusively phallocentric.  Even so-called "lesbian" porn scenes revolve around penetration and often female "ejaculation" (urination).  As in Tolly's scene, when the men ejaculate, the scene is over and the woman's work is done.  Her pleasure is not even an issue, let alone a focal point of the encounter.  Men and women alike would benefit from more female orgasms in pornography, and less focus on the phallus and male ejaculation as the center and focal point of each scene.

Moran then offers a brief vision of what female pornography might involve: "I suspect that female pornography, when it really gets going, will be something wholly other: warm, humane, funny, dangerous, psychedelic, with wholly different parameters to male porn." I agree with Moran on the dangerous aspect, as female pornography will certainly not be vanilla or politically correct.  Even Joan Sewell confessed in I'd Rather Eat Chocolate that, since adolescence, her fantasy has been that "these knights from the Middle Ages would ravish me" (essentially, that she was a prisoner having forced sex).  In my own experience, the women with whom I have viewed pornography tend to appreciate the rougher variety: gang rape, tentacle rape, etc.

What separates this sort of violence from the violence in mainstream pornography (aside from the fact that simulated rape scenes do far less damage to a woman's body than most "consensual" anal and gangbang scenes) is the ability to shift perspectives.  Whereas today's porn almost exclusively forces the viewer to experience the scene from a phallic perspective, Moran envisions female pornography as a polymorphous, pan-sexual journey: "In their fantasies, the women grow and shrink, shape-shift, change age, color, and location. They manifest as vapor, light, and sound, they strobe through conflicting personas (nurse, robot, mother, virgin, boy, wolf) and a zodiac of positions…Imagine if pornography was not this bizarre, mechanized, factory-framed fucking: bloodless, naked aerobics, concerned solely with high-speed penetration and ostentatious ejaculation. Imagine if it were about desire."

"Bloomberg, LaPierre, and the Void"

In what is perhaps the most sensible op-ed I've read in The New York Times in ages, Ross Douthat had the nerve to criticize mainstream American liberals.

Using Mayor Bloomberg as a figurehead for "the self-consciously centrist liberalism of the Acela Corridor elite," Douthat emphasizes Bloomberg's provincialism, and "his bedrock assumption is that the liberal paternalism with which New York is governed can and should be a model for the nation as a whole."

Appropriately, Douthat suggests that popular liberal proposals, such as a renewed "assault weapons ban" and crackdowns on "illegal handguns," would come with a tremendous cost.  In order to ensure effective enforcement, criminalizing harmless behavior (such as the mere possession of a weapon) requires the infringement of other Constitutional rights (in addition to the Second Amendment).  Further, at a time when our nation's prisons are full of non-violent offenders, weapons bans will ultimately place even more non-violent people behind bars, destroying communities in the process.  As Douthat writes, "cracking down hard on illegal handguns, for instance, would probably involve “stop and frisk” on a huge scale, and might throw more young men in prison at a time when our incarceration rates are already too high."  Liberals, however, seem completely ignorant of this practical reality, and instead advocate increased criminalization of firearms without realizing that proper enforcement would necessitate an expansion of law enforcement practices that they find to be objectionable.

Douthat's summary of contemporary American liberalism is spot on. "The establishment view is interventionist, corporatist and culturally liberal," he writes. "It thinks that issues like health care and climate change and immigration are best worked out through comprehensive bills drawn up by enlightened officials working hand in glove with business interests. It regards sexual liberty as sacrosanct, and other liberties — from the freedoms of churches to the rights of gun owners — as negotiable at best. It thinks that the elite should pay slightly higher taxes, and everyone else should give up guns, SUVs and Big Gulps and live more like, well, Manhattanites. It allows the president an entirely free hand overseas, and takes the Bush-Obama continuities in foreign policy for granted."

On foreign policy, today's liberals are the direct descendants of the liberal imperialists who spurred America's involvement in Vietnam.  The New York Times takes for granted that the United States should exert its military presence throughout the world, and only bothers to criticize the abuses of imperialist excess when a Republican occupies the White House.  Domestically, liberals favor civilian disarmament, secularism, political correctness, and excessive government regulation of all human behavior save what goes on the bedroom.  Ultimately, their faith in the power of the State to correct social problems is unwaverable (provided, of course, that the Democrats are in power).

What is perhaps most frustrating, however, is how liberals are incapable of accepting the fact that they might be wrong about something.  They know that they are right and that their views should prevail over those of others because they are smarter than everyone else (having attended the best schools and the best universities).

Living in NYC, most of the people I interact with are die-hard liberals who follow the opinions of The New York Times and The Huffington Post to the letter.  When they encounter someone (like me) who possesses different views, their reactions feature a combination of disbelief (how could anyone not agree with me?) and anger.  They are remarkably quick to turn to insults because they are not used to conversing with people who are not liberals--as Charles Murray shows in Coming Apart, they spend their lives in carefully guarded enclaves surrounded by other members of the liberal elite.  For them, I am insane for believing in the right to keep and bear arms, paranoid for not trusting my government, and anti-American for opposing U.S. imperialism.

As Radley Balko tweeted in a reaction to Douthat's piece, "I wonder if the angry commenters responding to Douthat's NYT column today realize that they're only proving his point."

In the posts that at least advanced some sort of argument, commenters parroted many of the anti-gun left's favorite cliches, arguing that no one "needs" an "assault weapon," that there is no reason for them "unless you are planning a massacre," and that any notion of resisting the almighty government through armed resistance is futile.  Joel Frielander from Huntington Station, NY bemoans "the tiny little brains of many of the gun owners," who mistakenly believe that "if you take one gun away from them you are taking away all of their weapons."  In her own column, Fellow Op-Ed contributor Maureen Dowd follows many liberals in misinterpreting the Second Amendment as applying only to hunters: "Hunters can have their guns without leaving Americans so vulnerable to being hunted by demented souls with assault rifles that can fire 45 rounds per minute."

Of course, the Second Amendment is not about hunting, but about self-defense and defending the nation from tyranny and foreign invaders.  Urban liberals who are not gun owners would of course fail to realize that, in a rural setting where the police are far away and the territory is much larger than a suburban lot, an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine would be a much better self-defense weapon than a handgun.  In that case, their provincialism can be forgiven.  But their defeatism in suggesting that an armed populace would be powerless to resist domestic tyranny never ceases to shock me.

Unfortunately, liberals will never understand that the government is not infallible, and that a massive, armed guerilla uprising could bring the government to its knees.  Although they see America as a force of good in the world, they nonetheless assume that the government would unleash the full force of the U.S. military on its own population (thereby destroying the very society and infrastructure that it wishes to govern over), and that all members of the military and law enforcement would just go on following orders in the face of armed resistance.  The right to own semi-automatic rifles with thirty-round magazines is at the very core of the Second Amendment, in that a well-armed populace ups the ante for the government and makes it think twice before oppressing a disfavored minority or the population as a whole.

King Cuomo Hates the Constitution

Andrew Cuomo hates guns. Well, not really. He hates YOUR guns. His security detail and police force can keep their guns, but he wants to take yours, and stop you from buying guns he doesn't want you to have.

 

According to the Daily News and Syracuse.com, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is trying to capitalize on the Newtown massacre by further eroding the gun rights of law-abiding New Yorkers.

Cuomo's proposals include reducing the magazine capacity limit from the current ten rounds to seven rounds.  This would effectively ban semi-automatic handguns in New York State, as very few (aside from 1911s, the Sig P220, and several compact pistols) accept seven-round magazines.  While manufacturers do make ten-round magazines to comply with the laws of New York and other anti-gun states, it is very unlikely that they will make seven-round magazines just to sell to New Yorkers.

(Of course, criminals will continue to use standard-capacity magazines that hold 15 rounds and more, because, well, they're criminals and they don't follow the law.)

Cuomo's proposal means that such treasured pieces of American history as the M1 Garand and the Winchester 1892 lever-action rifle will be illegal in New York State, since both hold eight rounds.

It's not surprising that Cuomo, an authoritarian populist, would want to keep the Garand from New Yorkers, since it was used to defeat the Germans in WWII. I'm not sure what he has against 19th-century cowboys, though.

In addition, Cuomo is proposing to make the new ban retroactive, and to confiscate guns from law-abiding New Yorkers. I'm not sure exactly how he would go about confiscating these weapons, since upstate New York (unlike New York City) does not require registration of rifles.  Perhaps he will just have his Storm Troopers go door-to-door and search every home in the state?

Come to think of it, there might be some resemblance between Cuomo and der Führer.

He's certainly got that sinister look down pat.

And here he is giving a very Hitler-esque salut:

In addition to guns, Cuomo seems to hate law-abiding New Yorkers.  But he loves criminals. In fact, Cuomo has gone on record saying that he wants to close state prisons and send the perps to Harvard. 

You can't make these things up. They say we get the leaders we deserve, but I have no idea what I could have done to deserve having this asshole as my governor.

Liberal Academics Hate Guns: DeBrabander

I swear, if I hear one more whiny, wimpy liberal whisper in a solemn voice that "we need to have a conversation about guns," I'm going to puke.

The gun prohibitionists have been preparing for this since their disappointment at the reaction to Aurora.  They carefully organized in advance in anticipation of the next mass murder in order to sway American public opinion against gun owners.  This is the equivalent of their Tet Offensive.

Well, what a surprise: liberal academics are capitalizing on the Newtown tragedy to advance their arguments against civilian gun ownership.

Wasting no time to capitalize on the massacre, Firmin DeBrabander published an opinion piece in Saturday's New York Times. DeBrabander is Chair of Humanistic Studies (what?) at the Maryland Institute College of Art (where?), where he teaches such helpful courses as Capitalism and its Critics, Modern Political Theory, and History of Psychoanalysis. Nice idea having a European Marxist tell Americans why they should surrender their guns, huh?

In his essay, DeBrabander argues that "an armed society. . .is the opposite of a civil society," taking a stance against the oft-repeated mantra that "An armed society is a polite society." "As ever more people are armed in public," DeBrabander writes, "even brandishing weapons on the street - this is no longer recognizable as a civil society. Freedom is vanished at that point."

Perhaps DeBrabander would do well to step outside the Ivory Tower (and the state of Maryland) to places like New Hampshire, Vermont, or Pennsylvania.  In these Northeastern "Blue States," law-abiding citizens have the right to bear arms in public, and often do.  That's a big part of their freedom.  You see, in those states (as in Colorado, Nevada, Washington, and a few other places), the government does not seek to oppress its citizens by imposing its own view of what is proper and acceptable.  People have the freedom to live and love as they choose, and the public carrying of guns in no way detracts from that; rather, it allows them to protect their freedoms should threats arrive in the public sphere. 

DeBrabander completely misinterprets what the saying "an armed society is a polite society" actually means.  For DeBrabander, "the suggestion is that guns liberally interspersed throughout society would cause us all to walk gingerly - not make any sudden, unexpected moves - and watch what we say, how we act, whom we might offend."  This is completely inaccurate.  All "an armed society is a polite society" means is that people will be more respectful of one another in public if they suspect that the other person might be armed.  This does not mean that free speech will be curtailed, or that no one would want to risk offending the political or religious views of another for fear of being shot.  Instead, it means that anti-social behavior would be kept in check.

When you suspect that the other person might be armed, you are less likely to try to rob, threaten, assault, or sexually harass her in public.  Firearms in public do not lead to a proliferation of "Wild West" shootouts; if they did, we would expect to see such occurrences on a daily basis all over the U.S., where most states allow citizens to bear arms in public.

But DeBrabander does not acknowledge this because, in all likelihood, he has never met a law-abiding gun owner.  Like many gun prohibitionists, DeBrabander consistently demonstrates his lack of familiarity with law-abiding gun owners, and instead engages in a fantastic rendering of what anti-gun liberals imagine gun owners to be like. For him, "guns by their nature. . .don't mix with taking offense. They are combustible ingredients in assembly and speech."  Again, how many incidents have their been in places like Washington, Colorado, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere--states whose populations hail from a variety of religious, ethnic, and racial backgrounds, and where the people possess widely divergent views on such controversial issues as abortion and gay marriage?  Contrary to what DeBrabander imagines in his fantasy world, in the real world, law-abiding gun owners do not whip out their weapons and start shooting when confronted with debate or argument.

As a collectivist, DeBrabander also imagines gun owners to be "extreme individualists" : "Private gun ownership invites retreat into extreme individualism. . .and nourishes the illusion that I can be my own police, or military, as the case may be."  Obviously, DeBrabander has never been to a target range or shooting club, but instead imagines millions of lonely isolationists shooting at targets in the woods.  Target shooting and hunting are fundamentally SOCIAL activities that bring together people from all different backgrounds to share in a mutual pastime.  But, like most gun prohibitionists, DeBrabander is so terrified of guns that he can't even conceive that they could be used in a non-violent, social manner.

As a counter-example to the violent, anti-social individualism of gun owners, DeBrabander points to the "power of the Occupy Wall Street movement, as well as the Arab Spring protests," which "stemmed precisely from their non-violent nature."  If the Occupy Wall Street movement had any power or accomplished anything whatsoever, I'm unaware of it.  As for the Arab Spring protests, how's that working for you now? Now that Islamist regimes have proliferated in the region, further increasing its instability.  Those uprisings only occurred because the military was ready for a regime change in Egypt and Tunisia.  In Libya and Syria, the military chose to remain loyal to the dictator, making armed rebellion the only viable option.

DeBrabander goes on to make some contradictory statements regarding government power.  With regards to the Occupy Movement, he writes that the power of free speech "was made evident by the ferocity of government response to the Occupy movement. Occupy protestors across the country were increasingly confronted by police in military style garb and affect."  While I share DeBrabander's uneasiness with paramilitary police forces, the militarization of law enforcement seems to me an even stronger argument in favor of an armed populace.  The dispersal and disappearance of the Occupy movement under the threat of force also seems to demonstrate the WEAKNESS of protest when not supported by the threat of violence: the government gives you free speech to say whatever you want because it knows that YOUR WORDS DO NOT MATTER and are powerless to change the status quo.

Continuing with his fantastic musings, DeBrabander goes on to imagine what would have happened if the Occupy protesters had been armed: "Imagine what this would have looked like had the protestors been armed: in the face of the New York Police Department assault on Zuccotti Park, there might have been armed insurrection in the streets."  Or, perhaps, the NYPD would have simply let them stay there and continue their peaceful protest.  For DeBrabander, "the non-violent nature of protest in this country ensures that it can occur." In reality, the absence of the mere possibility of violence ensures that the forces in power will be able to quash protests whenever they decide the time has come, so that protests will remain pointless exercises rather than mechanisms for meaningful change.

At the same time that he criticizes the militarization of law enforcement, however, DeBrabander thoroughly rejects the notion "that guns provide the ultimate insurance of our freedom, in so far as they are the final deterrent against encroaching centralized government, and an executive branch run amok with power."  Instead, in DeBrabander's view, "it goes without saying that individually armed citizens are no match for government force."  It's tough to respond to such a conclusory statement, but world history seems to show that armed populations succeed in resisting tyranny, while unarmed populations have no choice but to succumb to state terror.

However, in DeBrabander's fantasyland, armed citizens remain as isolated individualists, and would never band together to resist oppression.  Which is why he reiterates that "guns undermine…community. Their pervasive, open presence would sow apprehension, suspicion, mistrust and fear, all emotions that are corrosive of community and civic cooperation. To that extent, then, guns give license to autocratic government." Why DeBrabander uses the conditional tense here is beyond me, as guns are already pervasively present in many states, with little effect on community or civic cooperation. Of course, in reality, the open presence of guns makes DeBrabander apprehensive, suspicious, mistrustful, and fearful, which is why he doesn't want anyone to have guns.  Individual gun owners do not feel these things, WHICH IS WHY WE GET TOGETHER WITH OTHER GUN OWNERS AND GO SHOOTING. Nothing says "trust" so much as standing next to someone who is shooting a "high caliber weapon."

(For the record, DeBrabander further shows his ignorance when he says that "high caliber weapons" were the "weapon of choice" in Newtown, apparently unaware that the .223 Remington is on the lower end as far as calibers go.)

An armed populace forms the bedrock of our freedom as Americans.  It is the final assurance that our government will not turn against us; our guns are our last line of defense against tyranny.  As a community, American gun owners know this: we are trustful of each other, but distrustful of our government, for the precise reason that the tendency of government is toward despotism.

The New Assault Weapons Ban

The usual suspects have spoken again. Before the blood has had the chance to dry at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Senators Dick Durbin and Dianne Feinstein are going to propose an "Assault Weapons" Ban on the first day Congress reconvenes in January.

According to Feinstein, the bill will ban the sale, transfer, importation, and possession of whatever  she declares to be an "assault weapon." The proposed ban will function prospectively and not retroactively, so individuals who currently own such weapons will apparently not face government confiscation.  (So NOW is the time to stock up on ARs and AKs.) And the bill will also limit magazine capacity to ten rounds.

The Democrats should be ashamed of capitalizing on a tragedy to further their own anti-gun agenda. The facts aren't in yet on the Newtown massacre, but it seems that the killer took three guns from his mother--a 10mm Glock, a 9mm Sig, and a .223 Bushmaster--and used them in the shooting. No word yet on the magazine capacity of the rifle, either (although it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference given that he was shooting at unarmed children).

Sandy Hook is not about the particular weapons used. It's about an irresponsible mother who somehow allowed her mentally ill son to have access to her firearms.  She paid for it with her life, and dozens of innocents paid for it with their lives as well.  There is simply no law that can be enacted to prevent this sort of tragedy.  The government simply cannot protect us from everything, despite all we've been taught by our state-run schools and our liberal media. Tragedies will happen in a free society; lives will be lost as a result of all our civil liberties, and not just the right to keep and bear arms.  (Unfortunately, all the media attention to these killers virtually assures that another tragedy is already in the making.)  

Thankfully, this new "assault weapons" ban has zero percent chance of making it through Congress.  The Senate will pass it, but the Republican-controlled House most assuredly will not.  And any Blue Dog Democrat who sides with the party leadership can be assured of losing his or her seat in 2014.  Although the internet is ripe with anti-gun hysteria in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, it's safe to say that those calling for gun bans were not the ones voting for Republicans anyway.  (In fact, the majority of the internet anti-gunners probably live in liberal Democrat districts, with Representatives who would have supported the ban in any case, regardless of any mass-mailing campaigns.)  So it is very unlikely that any Republicans will be swayed to back the bill.

Senators Feinstein, Durbin, and others like them fail to recognize the need for semi-automatic rifles like the Bushmaster, or for magazines that hold more than ten rounds.  As urbanites, they fail to realize that, when you live in a rural environment, an AR-15 is a much more appropriate weapon than a handgun for defending yourself against attackers.  As privileged urbanites who have never had to live in a dangerous neighborhood, they fail to recognize that an AR-15 or similar weapon would be vital in the event of a riot.

More importantly, as collectivists and statists, liberals fail to realize that the population needs "military-style" rifles to keep the government's tyrannical impulses in check.  We're not asking for machine guns, tanks, surface-to-air missiles, or nuclear weapons: all we're asking for is our right to possess and use the same rifle that is standard issue for our infantrymen (minus the fully automatic option, of course).  That way, if a Hitler or a Pol Pot ever rises to power here, we citizens should at least be able to give his mercenaries hell long enough to turn the tide. (Guerilla warfare only works if the guerillas have access to the semi-automatic rifles used by their adversaries.)  You don't have to look too far back in American history to find a time when members of a disfavored ethnic, racial, or religious minority were persecuted, lynched, or herded into camps, either by the government or with its cooperation or tacit approval.  The right of the people to keep and bear arms makes it increasingly unlikely that such travesties will ever occur again.

We need our AR-15s and AK-47s to help keep you guys in check, Senators Durbin and Feinstein.  You will not take our Second Amendment rights from us.

In the Aftermath of Tragedy

Friday's mass killing of elementary school children and teachers was certainly tragic.  But the media-fueled frenzy to the incident brings to light some disturbing aspects of American culture.

Every time an incident happens that briefly cracks that façade of complacent consumerism under which we live, Americans enter into a moral panic of existential proportions.  The problem is that, for most Americans, the violence that our society depends upon is completely externalized: it occurs only in our gang-ridden ghettos or on the outer fringes of our Empire, and never within the cozy comfort of white suburbia.

Every time some middle-class psychopath engages on a mindless killing spree, we are suddenly reminded that something is rotten in the state of suburbia and that violence does exist within our midst.  But we remain blind as to how interwoven our everyday lives are with violence.

In the past year, President Obama's drones have killed upwards of 200 children in Pakistan alone.  Civilians, including children, continue to be slaughtered by American bombs in Afghanistan, their deaths as mindless and tragic as those in Newtown, Connecticut.  Thirty thousand children starve to death each day around the world, while Americans gorge themselves to the point of obesity.  Young women and children destroy their health working in factories and sweatshops throughout the developing world, so that we can purchase yet another cheap garment, yet another electronic gadget. Americans are even oblivious to the violence that takes place against animals in order to put meat on their dinner tables.

As Americans, we all have blood on our hands, at all times.  Yet we choose to remain blissfully ignorant of the costs of Empire, of the costs our lifestyle exerts on the rest of humanity.  Instead, we only care when it is our fellow American suburbanites who are murdered.  And then we turn our pathetic eyes to the government, and beg them to protect us from ourselves by further restricting our freedoms in the name of increased public safety.

America, imagine what it would be like to have a Sandy Hook massacre every single day.  Then maybe, just maybe, you could begin to sympathize with the people of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, and you might begin to understand for a moment why groups like Al-Qaeda can rely on a boundless army of recruits.

It's well past time to wake up.

Google Offers: Brazilian Wax

Found this in my inbox this morning: 60% Off Brazilian Waxing.

Ladies, please, don't do this to yourselves.  Seriously, you don't need to spend money and put yourself through great pain just to make your body acceptable for porn-addicted American males.  It's December, for fuck's sake, don't even bother to shave your legs!

Note the price, too, a suggestive $69.  Message: if you want him to perform cunnilingus on you, don't let yourself go! Remember, as a woman your body is naturally disgusting! You have to remove all your pubic hair to keep him happy!

Watch Out, Colorado & Washington!

Obama the drug warrior is on his way.  The Feds' best bet would be to use the DEA and federal law to go after low-level users. Massive waste of government resources, of course, but what else would you expect from our hypocritical, power-hungry despot of a President? Obama doesn't want anyone lighting up but him.  A pre-emption challenge just won't work in this case. 

Another option would be to cut off federal grants to CO & Washington, perhaps by getting Congress to pass a law tying law enforcement funds to marijuana illegality.  That worked with the drinking age.

Personally, I'm waiting for Obama to send in the predator drones.

Essam Attia

Artist Essam Attia was due in court on Dec. 3 after he was arrested and charged "with 56 counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument, grand larceny possession of stolen property and weapons possession after allegedly having an unloaded .22-caliber revolver under his bed at his Manhattan apartment when he was arrested early Wednesday" on November 28.  Read more: NY Daily News.

Back in September, Essam posted fake NYPD posters around the City to raise awareness about the surveillance state, drone assassinations, and the fact that both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are murderous imperialists who are determined to take away our civil liberties.

While Essam was expressing the truth, he should also have a First Amendment right to express himself.  The NYPD and the Manhattan D.A. obviously think otherwise.  That gun possession charge for the .22 just makes it even more obvious that the Bill of Rights simply does not apply in New York City.  Most likely, the police barged into his home at 6am with a no-knock warrant as well.

"Welcome to New York City.  Please surrender your First, Second, and Fourth Amendment rights upon arrival."

Female Pubic Hair Removal: Porn & Male Preferences

The goal of Consumerism is to manufacture desires that individuals must then satisfy through expenditures.  So when anyone living in Consumer Society says he or she "wants" or "likes" something, it is worth asking whether that is an actual desire or preference, or one that is manufactured.  (I.e., when you're thirsty, do you really want a sugary fizzy drink, or do you just want one because advertising told you that you do?)

Consumerism gives us the illusion of limitless choice, but in fact carefully confines our available choices to that which those in power have already pre-selected for us.  For instance, you like certain songs you hear on the radio because someone else has already decided what kind of music you will even be able to hear in the first place. You like certain films and programs because someone else has already decided what you will be able to see in theaters and on TV.  And each of these screening decisions was made to further a single goal of maximizing profits.

The ultimate ideal of Consumerism would be to gradually erode and homogenize consumer tastes, producing a society of unsophisticated consumers who will consume easily produced items in a predictable fashion.

The multi-billion dollar porn industry is a key element of contemporary Consumer Society.  (I use the term "porn" to refer to the mainstream American variety of sexually explicit visual media, as opposed to international, non-mainstream, and non-visual varieties of pornography).  From the time they reach puberty, American males today are exposed to a particular version of human sexuality and to a particular image of the female body.  I will discuss the sex in a later post; here, I will focus exclusively on the image of the female body portrayed in contemporary American porn.

Thankfully, porn has largely moved away from the breast implants that became prevalent during the 1990s.  To its credit, contemporary American porn presents a much wider variety of female body types than can be found in mainstream advertising, Hollywood films, or women's magazines.  Today's porn features actresses with curvy bodies and smaller breasts--women who would be considered far too overweight and plain for mainstream advertising.  For the most part, female bodies are naturally proportioned and healthy-looking.

However, the one constant in contemporary American porn is the glaring absence of female pubic hair.  While a select few successful performers have in recent years rebelled against this trend by sporting pubic hair (Bobbi Starr, Kristina Rose, Kimberly Kane, Sasha Grey), the overwhelming majority of porn shows women with completely shaven or waxed pubic regions.

The problem with all this is that porn is shaping male desires rather than conforming to them.  Men are first exposed to porn during puberty.  Regardless of how careful parents are in protecting their children, there will always be at least one kid who manages to get hold of some porn and show his friends.  In reality, most boys today probably find a way to look at porn before their first real-life sexual encounters with women.  As a result, American men come to expect that the female pubic region should be entirely hairless.  Many men have actually never seen a woman with pubic hair, in porn or in real life.

Since it is so unusual to them, men today view female pubic hair as disgusting--just as men of previous generations would view armpit hair (think of all those jokes about French women) or leg hair as disgusting.  Consumerism shapes social norms, so that anything that fails to conform to that falsified normalcy appears disgusting, dangerous, and foreign.

Thus we end up with a vicious cycle.  Porn tells men that women should remove their pubic hair. Men tell women that their pubic hair is disgusting and that they should remove it.  From porn, men, and mainstream media, women come to believe that their pubic hair is disgusting and that they should remove it.  As more and more women remove their pubic hair, men have a gradually decreasing chance of ever encountering a naturally bushy adult woman, thus reinforcing their perceptions that female pubic hair is disgusting and inappropriate.

So it is not exactly the case that men want women to have bare pubic regions.  Truth be told, many men openly state that they do not prefer women without pubic hair, but rather prefer a natural bush or do not care either way.  The more commonly voiced preference among American males, however, is for the "groomed" look.  But even this so-called preference is a false one, fed to American men from the time they hit puberty by the porn industry.

Fascism & Female Pubic Hair Removal: Hygiene

The American twentieth century featured a gradual erosion of female bodily hair.  It began with the legs and continued to the armpits, until by the end of the century women felt the pressure to remove all or at least most of their pubic hair.

The immediate link between female hair removal and consumerism is obvious: more shaving means increased sales of razors, creams, and lotions. Today, female hair removal is a multi-billion-dollar industry that encompasses everything from standard household razors and creams to professional waxes and laser-hair-removal.

In order to convince women to spend their precious free-time and hard-earned cash on pubic hair removal, Consumer Society attacked on several related fronts: hygiene, self-confidence, peer pressure, and the perceived preference of males.

First, there is the completely inaccurate and misguided notion that a hairy pubic region is somehow unhygienic.  Males constantly repeat this mantra, to each other, to the women in their lives, and all over the internet.  Women also speak of feeling "cleaner" when they have a shaved pubic region.  This illusion of cleanliness is of course due to the fact that for over a decade now women have been fed the message that their pubic hair is "unclean," whether from their female peers, from men, from mass media, or from pornography.

A central tenant of Fascism is its focus on cleanliness and cleansing.  The unclean ethnic "Other" must be cleansed from the pure national race so that it can flourish.

In our Misogynist Consumer-Fascism, the unclean Other is woman, with her menstrual flow, her vaginal discharge, her vaginal odor, and her "unsightly" pubic hair.  The disorder of her Otherness poses a threat to the controlled order of the phallus.  For our male-dominated, phallocentric society, the vulva is a foreign body, composed of complicated folds, nooks, and crannies that lack the familiarity of the simple and dominant penis.  The vagina itself is a terrifyingly empty cavity that supposedly emits vile and noxious substances. Many American men seem to hold a notion that the female genitalia is inherently "unclean" and in need of constant maintenance lest it resort to its foul and repulsive natural state.

(Hence the sheer brilliance of South Park's "Poor and Stupid" episode [Season 14, Episode 8], where Cartman becomes a NASCAR driver for Vagisil, and there is much talk about making stinky vaginas "minty fresh."  Thankfully, Patty ultimately gets revenge on her husband for the shame he repeatedly makes her feel over her vaginal odors.)

Female pubic hair is just one element of the female genital region that apparently disgusts American men.  However, female pubic hair is something men can easily control by removing it, thereby exposing the vulva to the male scientific gaze.  As long as they can see the vulva, without any hair in the way, the vulva no longer seems so mysterious and frightening.  Instead, in real-life the bare female vulva is as familiar and unthreatening as the shaved pussies American men have been staring at and masturbating to all their lives, in their controlled world of pornography.  (Or as the hairless vulva of a pre-pubescent child.)

Although his obsession with female genital hygiene stems from both sexes, it is the product of an exclusively male-dominated Fascism.  It is therefore no coincidence that men are largely oblivious to their own uncleanliness. 

As anyone familiar with humanity can attest, the male body is obviously far dirtier than the female body.  To put it another way: men smell like shit.  The wealth of hair around a man's anus ensures that he will not be able to cleanse himself properly after defecation unless he washes immediately afterwards.  The perineum and the scrotum will also absorb some of the fecal smell, particularly if the man sweats during the day.  Even a man with a shaved pubic region will smell awful after a day of sweating.  And uncircumsized penises have a particularly unpleasant smell all their own.  Yet we do not see commercials telling men how they can "keep their anus fresh" or stop their balls from sweating or make their foreskin more hygienic.

Similarly, unlike women, men always expel a thick, sticky, glutinous substance when they achieve orgasm.  Yet a man who patently refuses to perform oral sex on a woman (even a woman without pubic hair) will nonetheless expect to ejaculate in her mouth and even have her swallow his semen, despite its nauseating consistency and unsavory flavor.

This phallocentric attitude is perfectly captured in this clip from Andrew Dice Clay circa 1987.

After talking extensively about how important it is for women to perform oral sex on men (beginning at around the four-minute mark), Dice offers his reflections on the female genitalia: "You ever see a vagina up close? It's frightening. It's like a haunted house down there. It's covered with shrubbery and weeds. You gotta cut through with a machete."  Of course, that was back in 1987, before most American women removed their pubic hair.  Dice would be much less frightened by today's hairless vulvae, thanks in large part to the fact that so many American men have embraced the misogynist attitude of Dice's on-state persona.

Women are constantly bombarded with these false notions that their genitalia are unhygienic, whether it be from the mass media, from their male peers, or from social institutions.  This Daily Beast Article on Yale Sex Week relates the story of a middle-school sex-ed class, where "the boys and girls were separated: Boys were taught about wet dreams, and how they’re OK; Girls taught about periods, and how to stay clean. The message to boys was 'you’re sexual beings, don’t worry about it.' To girls, 'you’re dirty, don’t forget to douche.'"

The perceived necessity of female pubic hair removal is just the latest effort by Misogynist Consumer-Fascism to establish the female body as unhygienic so that women will purchase products to alter their natural bodies.  The pubic razor and the professional wax have now become standard consumer products, joining the douche and the feminine wash among the unnecessary items women purchase to keep their womanhood under control and mold it to masculine sensibilities.

(For the record, of all the women I have performed cunnilingus on, I have never once encountered a single one whose genitalia smelled unpleasant.  And the overwhelming majority of these women had full, natural bushes.  And this includes quite a few encounters when the woman was coming straight from a long, sweaty workout at the gym.)

People of course have the freedom to groom their pubic regions in whatever manner they choose.  However, it is important to question WHY you want to remove your pubic hair, whether it be by trimming, shaving, waxing, or laser-hair-removal.  Why is it that a woman will say she feels "cleaner" without pubic hair?  Is it even possible that, in America (and the world) today, a woman will desire to remove her pubic hair entirely of her own accord, without any influence from the New Fascism? Consumerism always sells slavery under the illusion of choice and freedom.

Unfortunately, regardless of her own personal reasons for doing so, each time a woman removes her pubic hair, she is conforming to the wishes of those who whine that "pubic hair is gross," who leave comments like "shave your pussy bitch!" all over the internet, and who urge women to "keep it clean."

Remember, the obsession with cleanliness and cleansing the Other is a central tenant of Fascism.  What distinguishes this New Fascism is that it concentrates its efforts on the very essence of a woman's womanhood:  her genitalia.  Cleansing through pubic hair removal is just the latest in a long line of campaigns that attack the defining physical characteristics of the female genitalia, whether it be menstruation, vaginal discharge, vaginal odors, or the pubic hair that began to sprout when a woman made those first steps from childhood to puberty on the path to becoming an adult.  By virtually requiring women to remove their pubic hair, today's Fascism seeks to ensnare women in a perpetual, child-like state of submission to adolescent male desires and to the forces of Consumerism.

Control the dangerous Other by sheering off her womanhood.  Keep her clean so you can use her with minimal disgust.  Then dispose of her when you're through.

The New Fascism

Pasolini spoke of consumerism as "the new Fascism."  Of course that was back in 1975, when he was filming Salò.  Consumer-Fascism isn't so "new" nowadays, especially in the U.S., where consumerism has been deeply engrained since the early 20th century.

But the current, early 21st-century version of Consumer-Fascism seems to have focused on a particular target: women.  Contemporary consumer goods from magazines to internet pornography to video games are the vehicles through which Fascism works its oppression, either on women directly or indirectly by shaping male behavior toward women.  This latter method is perhaps the most dangerous and innovative.

Specific features of Misogynist Consumer-Fascism include the following: a presumption of female uncleanliness and a fascination with maintaining feminine hygiene; a direct assault on the female body, particularly the pubic and genital region; increased social pressure on women to succeed in the workplace; an insistence that women maintain their traditional role as homemaker and mother; professional dress codes that continue to sexualize women while endowing men with phallic authority; an encouragement toward males to remain in a state of perpetual adolescence; and a culture of internet pornography that provides both sexes with a phallocentric and brutally misogynist view of human sexuality and gender relations.