That “Life of Brian” trans scene: brilliant, prescient, and now forbidden

The New Neo Posted on by

In an odd coincidence, two days ago I sent a friend a video of one of my favorite comic scenes from “Life of Brian,” made in 1979:

And last night I saw this article about a new stage production based on the movie. Guess what?:

Cleese told an audience at his one-man show last week that when the scene (co-written with the late Graham Chapman) was performed at a read-through for the new show in New York last year, doubts emerged. ‘At the end, I said to the American actors: ‘What do you think?’ And they said: ‘We love the script, but you can’t do that stuff about Loretta nowadays.’

Can’t.

‘So here you have something there’s never been a complaint about in 40 years, that I’ve heard of, and now all of a sudden we can’t do it because it’ll offend people. What is one supposed to make of that? But I think there were a lot of things that were actually, in some strange way, predictive of what was actually going to happen later.’

We now have the institutionalization of that “struggle against reality” that was mentioned in the clip. But whatever you think of trans people and even if you are largely sympathetic and supportive, the truth is that a biological man cannot become pregnant and have a baby.

Many trans people admit that, and are appalled at what today’s extreme trans activists have done in their name. There are actually a number of trans YouTubers who have embarked on trying to make it clear that they know that there are important biological differences between people who are born in a sex and people who transition to it, and it is not the least bit disrespectful or transphobic to admit the truth on the subject.

And then there are the de-transitioners, many of whom appear on YouTube as well. When I was writing this post I came across this recent video by a young man from Norway who was born a biological male, became a trans female (not a female; a trans female), and now realizes he is a male and always was. His story is harrowing, heartbreaking, horrific, and heroic. I’ve cued up just a couple of minutes that happen to be relevant to this post, but I recommend the entire video while warning you that it’s not for the squeamish:

NOTE: This is also an excellent interview with an endocrinologist who describes how science has been jettisoned in the treatment of the disorder.

“Defund the FBI”: but how?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve seen many many articles and comments saying that the only solution to the rampant partisan corruption of the FBI is to defund it. Here’s an example of one such article. It’s by Roger Kimball, and the following excerpt is couched in the form of advice to Donald Trump if he manages to get elected in 2024:

Disband the FBI. We should never have allowed a national police force to come into being.

Move the bits of the government you can’t actually destroy to other parts of the country.

Do these things instantly—the day you take office. The deep state will howl. The bureaucrats will oppose you. The lawyers will sue you. Do it anyway. Act first, deal with the consequences later.

Conduct metaphorical dawn-raids on their people and institutions just as they weaponized the Justice Department against you and your supporters. That would not only be the retribution you seek, it would also be reciprocity. Speed and thoroughness will be of the essence. If you hesitate, if you are half-hearted, you will be lost…

The focus should be on eclipsing Washington, D.C. as the seat of government. It has long been obvious to candid observers that there is something deeply dysfunctional about that overwhelmingly Democratic, welfare-addicted city.

First of all, for Trump to even attempt to do any of that it would be necessary for him to get elected, which I don’t think will happen. But just for the sake of argument, let’s say he does. And let’s say he attempts this in some top-down action – because for it to be done with the agreement of Congress, both houses would have to be in firm Republican control and not just Republican control but control by the most radical elements of the right. So that’s another reason it’s not going to happen.

But again, what if Trump or some Trump-like figure tries to do it by diktat? That would lend credence to the long-claimed idea of the left that Trump has always wanted to be a dictator. And who would be enforcing his directive? The current FBI or DOJ, the Washington DC police force, the Capitol Police? Who would close the FBI offices and/or fire everyone? Wouldn’t Trump himself (or the Trump-like figure) be more likely to be arrested in a coup? And wouldn’t most Americans agree that he should be arrested? Half of America (or even more) may distrust the FBI, but that doesn’t mean they’d be in favor of it’s dissolution in that manner.

And even if most people did approve, the Deep State would not. And they are no longer afraid of the will of the people. Among other things, they believe that they control the outcome of elections – whether through “rigging” achieved by court cases approved by leftist judges, the cooperation of an almost wholly-leftist media, or outright fraud in situations where it can be accomplished, or some combination of all of these things.

To take a different but related topic, what of the criticism of the Durham Report not going so far as to recommend prosecution of anyone involved? There’s this [emphasis mine]:

The fact that Durham failed [to convict any of the Rusiagate perps so far] tells us a lot about the priorities of the Justice Department and partisan elements of the judiciary but little about the truth. Mueller was able to strong-arm guilty pleas from campaign flunkies such as Papadopoulos for not speaking carefully enough, but last year, Durham was unable to secure a conviction against Danchenko for blatantly lying to the FBI. To give you an idea of what Durham was up against, the judge threw out one of the key charges against Danchenko because when he told the FBI that he had not talked to Dolan, the evidence presented contradicting this was in the form of written emails, which did not meet the literal definition of physically talking to someone.

Ultimately, the most damning thing about the Durham report is that it makes no specific recommendations to stop something such as the Trump-Russia abomination from happening again. This may seem like a strange place to arrive at, given the voluminous corruption he documented. However, Durham’s report repeatedly noted how the FBI showed extreme caution investigating anything related to Hillary Clinton’s prodigious corruption and gave her campaign “defensive briefings” when it believed a foreign entity might be attempting to influence her campaign — a marked difference between the aggressive and clandestine efforts to target the Trump campaign.

If federal law enforcement and bureaucrats are going to choose willfully to employ gross partisan double standards and ignore the existing policies and are generally incapable of restrained and prudent judgment, Durham sees no point in putting new guardrails in place.

“The promulgation of additional rules and regulations to be learned in yet more training sessions would likely prove to be a fruitless exercise if the FBI’s guiding principles of ‘Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity’ are not engrained in the hearts and minds of those sworn to meet the FBI’s mission of ‘Protect[ing] the American People and Uphold[ing] the Constitution of the United States,’” Durham concluded.

And believing that Durham’s failure to successfully prosecute is mostly a matter of failure of will and/or active collusion with the perps, and that if only he had had the will to do the right thing he could have been successful, is in my opinion futile magical thinking. That doesn’t mean I believe that Durham left no stone unturned; for example, I find this the best indication that there was something amiss with the investigation:

The ringleaders of this crime against the American people, including Comey, McCabe, rabid Trump-hater Peter Strzok, then deputy assistant director of counterintelligence, declined to be interviewed by Durham, and he inexplicably declined to use his power to compel their testimony.

But did he have the power to compel their testimony? So far I haven’t been able to ascertain whether he did. Here’s an interesting article that mentions they refused the interviews but doesn’t deal with the question of whether he had authority to make them talk to him.

Unfortunately, the situation looks bleak at this point. I hate to be such a downer, but that is what I see.

A default? Not.

The New Neo Posted on by

Each time there’s a big hype about the debt limit crisis, it seems to be resolved at the last minute.

And on the topic of default:

Today the Wall Street Journal editorial board makes a point that I also have made repeatedly on this site: there is zero chance of a default on sovereign debt arising out of the current budget impasse in Washington. The press hysteria, which we have seen before, arises out of a deliberate misuse of the word “default.”

More FBI abuses

The New Neo Posted on by

See this:

The FBI improperly used warrantless search powers against U.S. citizens more than 278,000 times in the year ending November 2021, according to an unsealed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) filing.

U.S. citizens covered in that improper effort included people involved in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021; George Floyd protesters during the summer of 2020; and donors to a failed congressional candidate, the filing said.

The left should be as incensed as the right about this. But they sure don’t seem to be.

Martha Stewart, swimsuit model

The New Neo Posted on by

Sports Illustrated has decided to feature the 81-year-old Martha Stewart in its swimsuit edition.

Stewart was employed as a model in her youth, and she’s still an attractive woman. But I just don’t get it. Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition used to feature the usual sexy, young, extremely female beautiful models, but in the last few years (and I don’t know exactly when it began) they’re used many people who don’t fit that description, such as heavy people and transgender people. This is a trend in store advertising, too; I’ve noticed it over and over. Many times, it seems that the number of traditional beautiful models in an ad campaign is zero.

So here’s Martha, somewhat airbrushed I’d assume, but certainly not your typical 81-year-old:

The photo is rather artfully designed to conceal the parts more vulnerable to age and showcase the others. But there’s something about it that just seems sad to me. And if I were her stylist, I’d choose a suit with more – ahem – uplift.

I guess I prefer models in general to approach an unrealizable ideal. Isn’t that part of the point? Why should looking at someone young and beautiful make the rest of us feel bad? We know what we look like, and we know that most people never look like models, even when young. But wokeness dictates that more and more models look like regular folks – although Stewart doesn’t really fit that mold, either.

Here’s a look at the bygone days of fashion.

And here are a lot of photos of Martha Stewart in her own modeling days, mostly in the 1960s. She was gorgeous. But I have some trouble perceiving it as the same person, although it is. It’s not just youth versus age; it’s that her actual features in many of the photos look very different, too.

Hillary was protected from investigation by the same agencies who hounded Trump on false charges…

The New Neo Posted on by

…promoted by Hillary.

Andrew C. McCarthy writes:

…[There were] many ways the FBI went easy on [Hillary] Clinton, as Durham reveals the agency dropped at least four criminal investigations related to her.

The Clinton Foundation was understandably suspected by FBI agents in three different field offices — Little Rock, Washington, and New York — as a dodgy vehicle enabling donors, very much including foreign regimes and their operatives, to give goo-gobs of money to Hillary and Bill Clinton without appearing to violate the campaign finance laws.

But McCabe was infuriated, during the stretch run of the 2016 campaign, when the Wall Street Journal reported that he had tied the hands of investigators on the Clinton Foundation case…

To push back against that, McCabe had his subordinates leak that the Obama Justice Department had pressured him to shutter the Clinton Foundation probe.

This was true. In fact, it is substantiated by Durham. He found that the bureau had meetings with top Obama DOJ officials who were hostile to the investigation…

The Obama DOJ, including its appointed U.S. attorneys in Manhattan and Brooklyn, made clear to the FBI that they had no interest in a Clinton Foundation case…

This was a pattern. As Durham found, even when there may have been evidence that foreign powers were trying to cultivate Clinton and possibly try to bring her under their influence, the same FBI that couldn’t open a case on Trump fast enough became paralyzed.

As McCarthy says, it was “quite a contrast.”

And although we already knew this, at least the general outline and patterns, the details are interesting.

The question is, as usual: what to do? It’s all very well and good to say “Defund the FBI! Clear out the DOJ!” and that sort of thing. But it can’t be done without gaining political power and numbers. And does anyone think those numbers will be attained in 2024? I certainly don’t.

Societies that destroy themselves: the war on agriculture

The New Neo Posted on by

AGW-espousing environmental activists and the war on modern agriculture:

Liberals want organic farming–no intensive nitrogen fertilization–along with an end to animal husbandry and banning of pretty much all effective herbicides and pesticides. All great ideas, if you don’t care about billions of people dying. Just ask anyone in Sri Lanka or the Netherlands.

Chris Morrison writes:

“The full horror of the ‘nitrogen’ war on agriculture is becoming more apparent every day. Food supplies around the world face collapse if the use of nitrogen fertiliser is severely restricted under Net Zero requirements. It is claimed that the fertiliser is warming the Earth and causing the climate to break down, as the by-product nitrous oxide is released into the atmosphere. In fact the entire global food supply is in danger of being trashed for the sake of what recent scientific work notes is almost unmeasurable 0.064°C warming per century.”

It’s a self-induced destruction, engineered by supposed “elites” and opposed by the rest, for the most part. When societies purposely harm themselves in obvious ways, it’s often under some idea or theory that dictates it necessary to achieve some greater ideal. Communism told people it was necessary to break a lot of eggs to make a tasty Communist omelette, and AGW alarmists feel they are tasked with saving the world.

Which for some reason reminds me of this:

In April 1856, 15-year-old Nongqawuse and her friend Nombanda, who was between the ages of 8 and 10, went to scare birds from her uncle’s crops in the fields by the sea at the mouth of the Gxarha River in the present day Wild Coast region of South Africa. When she returned, Nongqawuse told Mhlakaza that she had met the spirits of two of her ancestors. She claimed that the spirits had told her that the Xhosa people should destroy their crops and kill their cattle, the source of their wealth as well as food. Nongqawuse claimed that the ancestors who had appeared to them said:

The dead would arise.
All living cattle would have to be slaughtered, having been reared by contaminated hands.
Cultivation would cease.
New grain would have to be dug.
New houses would have to be built.
New cattle enclosures would have to be erected.
New milk sacks would have to be made.
Doors would have to be weaved with buka roots.
People must abandon witchcraft, incest, and adultery.
In return, the spirits would sweep all European settlers into the sea. The Xhosa people would be able to replenish the granaries and fill the kraals with more beautiful and healthier cattle…

In the aftermath of the crisis, the population of British Kaffraria dropped from 105,000 to fewer than 27,000 due to the resulting famine.

There actually was a cattle disease going around at the time, but it was killing far fewer cattle than ended up being slaughtered once belief in this vision spread.

You can read more about it here.

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

Psst: if you’re pregnant, you’re a woman

The New Neo Posted on by

Note the language in this article [emphasis mine]:

According to a small study, pregnant people using any form of cannabis should consider stopping due to potential harm to the fetus…

The study used data from the medical records of 109 pregnant people from an obstetrics clinic at Central Michigan University’s College of Medicine…

The team observed that some pregnant people use marijuana early in pregnancy for morning sickness in the first trimester…

“Urinary THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) testing is more objective than self-report, since pregnant people may not want to state that they are using cannabis,” Moore said. “However, one study suggests that very few pregnant people (0.5 percent) use cannabis strictly for medical purposes…

All the pregnant people, where do they all come from? All the pregnant people, where do they all belong?

The article is very consistent in using this language – right until the last paragraph, where suddenly there’s a slip [emphasis mine]:

“The best recommendation is that women should be advised to quit marijuana use prior to becoming pregnant,” Phoebe Dodge, study co-author and incoming pediatric resident at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, said in a statement.

Send her to the Gulag!

I’m being flippant here, but I’m aware that there really are people who wish to be seen as men and some of whom actually appear to be men, and yet have retained their female organs of reproduction and can and do become pregnant. But they are a very small subset of the people who become pregnant, and yet medicine has reorganized its language in ways that sound preposterous and in some ways are preposterous. After all, if a trans man becomes pregnant, at least for that pregnancy we should be able to include, in a very general way, that person in the set of people known as “women.”

Only women become pregnant. Not all women can and not all women do become pregnant, but all who do are indisputably women. If even doctors can’t acknowledge that, we are in a heap of trouble.

But we already knew we’re in a heap of trouble.

Progressive “therapy”

The New Neo Posted on by

I wrote a post yesterday about the preponderance of “woke” therapists, and today at Instapundit I see a piece with a link to this article in Commentary about social justice couples therapy.

Of course.

The Commentary piece refers to this article in The New York Times Magazine that quotes a clinical psychologist and professor named Orna Guralnik:

“In my practice, I’ve found that engaging with these progressive movements has led to deep changes in our psyches,” she writes. “My patients, regardless of political affiliation, are incorporating the messages of social movements into the very structure of their being.”

Oh, we on the right have incorporated knowledge of these messages into our being, all right. We just reject them because we find them pernicious and destructive.

She adds:

“Coming to see the working of implicit biases on us, grasping that our views are contingent on, let’s say, our gender, class background or skin color, is a humbling lesson,” she writes. “It pushes us beyond assuming sameness, opening up the possibility of seeing our partner’s point of view.”…

Then there’s the mixed-race couple, James and Michelle, who came to Guralnik because they were fighting during the pandemic. She writes, “Her husband wasn’t consciously aware that whiteness was a perspective that was constricting what he could imagine or comprehend.” Fear not. His thinking was corrected. “Engaging with the question of systemic racism did not polarize Michelle and James but rather helped them do the important psychological work that I doubt I, as their therapist, could have inspired in them on my own.”

Being a therapist is hard, and working with couples is really really stressful and often unrewarding. How nice to have a slogan-filled political solution that some of your clients will buy, especially if they live in a blue city or state. It will make your life as a therapist easier. But as the author of the Commentary piece points out, that’s not therapy, that’s DEI training.

To give a little background, though, therapists have often come to the field with frameworks through which they view the world, and some of those ideas inform their work with clients. There are many many different approaches to therapy, some more touchy-feely-warm, some sterner attempts to emphasize “reality-based” thinking in their clients, some far-out, some psychoanalytic and Freudian (not at all popular these days, but which had its heyday), some what’s called “solution-focused.” When I was in family therapy school I had to write a lengthy paper – really, a thesis – on my own approach to clients and my own theory about how people change. Politics had nothing to do with it, but obviously we all choose approaches with which we are comfortable for a variety of reasons, and no one is immune to biases of various kinds.

My own approach was rather eclectic. Maybe some day I’ll dig the paper out of my ancient files and offer a few quotes from it.