Love and Trouble

The New Neo Posted on by

I recently read—or rather, skimmed—a book I got out of the library entitled Love and Trouble, by Claire Dederer. I’d grabbed it from the library shelf without really studying it because I was in a hurry and the title intrigued me.

But it actually wasn’t about love and it wasn’t so much about trouble, either. It was a slightly-interesting self-description of the life and times of a certain type of person. Call her a sexaholic or whatever the term-du-jour might be these days, but Dederer appears to be someone who is compulsively, repetitively sexual, and who cares little about such niceties as who her partners (one at a time, by the way, at least in her case) might be.

Why would I read such a book? Well, I didn’t know it was about that at first. Then, I kept waiting for the explanation and the insight, because the author (who was in her 40s when the book was written, married and faithful to her now-husband and struggling against the temptation to return to the old ways of her extremely promiscuous single days) is certainly intelligent and a pretty decent writer in terms of technical skill.

But no such luck. It was a puzzling and (to me) somewhat repellent memoir that showed little emotion except depression and even less self-awareness.

So why am I writing about the book? The part of the book I found especially interesting was the author’s depiction of herself as virtually irresistible. No, she doesn’t use that exact word. But time and again she describes how men (and some women) come on to her continually and everywhere–in the street, at parties, in classes.

It seems this forty-something woman can barely leave her home without being besieged by propositions and flirts. It’s as though she’s sending out strong sexual smoke signals, smells or pheromones or some other powerful je ne sais quoi.

This is a phenomenon I believe can happen with some women, because I’ve observed it. Over my lifetime I’ve had several friends and/or acquaintances who describe people as almost universally reacting to them exactly that way. I’ve personally witnessed some of it (not directed at me; my conquests have been a far more modest number). And—as with Dederer, from her photo on the book jacket—these people don’t seem (to me, at least) any more attractive, any nicer, any funnier, any more charming, any more anything I can detect, than most other women. Nor do the ones I know dress provocatively, or even act in an obviously provocative way.

It’s something else, and I’m not sure exactly what, because the ones I know have no distinguishing characteristics I can discern that would explain it.

I once read a biography of Ava Gardner. Now she (unlike the women I’m describing) was absolutely gorgeous. She was also a hypersexual person. And it seems very telling to me that Gardner is quoted as having said, “In bed, I’ve always known I’m on safe ground.”

I don’t think the majority of women would say that about sex in their single years. I don’t even think the majority of men would say it. Women and men may like sex and want sex, but “safe ground”? And with a succession of strangers? That experience of sex with a succession of near-strangers may be many things to many people, but I don’t think most women, anyway, would describe one of those things as a feeling of safety.

But I believe Ava Gardner sincerely felt she could do no wrong in bed and that it was therefore a very very safe place for her. And in her book Dederer describes herself in very similar terms—sex is the thing she’s best at, the place she feels safe and also powerful no matter who’s her bed partner. And she’s drawn to having this experience again and again and again, with a great variety of men.

You might think her story is a simple one, as in, “She’s just a slut.” Maybe you also think her problem is lack of religion. But I don’t see it that way. The vast majority of people without religion don’t act like Dederer, and there are plenty of people who are religious who struggle against the same sort of thing and lose the struggle.

No, I think something else is going on, but reading the book gave me no insight as to what it might be.

Gun control changer

The New Neo Posted on by

Leah Libresco, who used to write for the statistics site FiveThirtyEight (headed by Nate Silver), describes how the more she studied—in the mathematical, statistical sense—about gun-inflicted deaths and gun control, the more she changed her mind on the subject:

Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.

Libresco was brave to write her article. Gun control is one of the topics that rouses the most emotion of all, and that’s saying something. As a left-to-righter, I have become convinced (as Libresco has) that the statistics don’t generally support more gun control, although I wouldn’t oppose a few tweaks such as banning bump stocks.

Because Libresco is one of the somewhat small group of people who change their minds when encountering facts that contradict their previously-held opinions, I became curious about her. I discovered when I did a little research that this is not her first change experience. She’s written a book on her conversion from atheist to Catholic. That’s different of course, because she didn’t base it on the numbers—although in a strange way she did. This is one highly mathematical person. Here she talks about her experience:

Free speech in Canada

The New Neo Posted on by

I had somehow missed the fact that an extraordinary law called C-16 passed Canada’s Senate in mid-June of 2017 by overwhelming numbers, sliding the country further down the slippery slope of the tyranny of hate speech laws:

Canada’s Senate passed the Justin Trudeau Liberals’ transgender rights bill unamended this afternoon by a vote of 67 to 11, with three abstentions.

The bill adds “gender expression” and “gender identity” to Canada’s Human Rights Code and to the Criminal Code’s hate crime section. With the Senate clearing the bill with no amendments, it requires only royal assent in the House of Commons to become law [that assent was given a few days later, so the bill is now law].

Critics warn that under Bill C-16, Canadians who deny gender theory could be charged with hate crimes, fined, jailed, and compelled to undergo anti-bias training.

Foremost among these critics is University of Toronto psychology professor Dr. Jordan Peterson, who along with lawyer D. Jared Brown, told the Senate committee that Bill C-16 is an unprecedented threat to freedom of expression and codifies a spurious ideology of gender identity in law.

I have long known that the US is the only country in the world with laws that adequately defend freedom of speech (for now, anyway). I’ve also long known that in Canada anti-hate-speech laws have been used to try to silence people such as Mark Steyn who criticize Muslims. But I didn’t really know just how far the Canadian campaign against free speech had gone, although I have to say I’m also not surprised.

Here’s a video showing a discussion about this, where Jordan Peterson (professor at the U. of Toronto who has become fairly famous as a result of his stand against C-16) responds to a pro-C-16 activist. It’s quite an exchange. I’ve cued it up to give you a couple of minutes of the most dramatic part. I warn you, though—if you’re easily perturbed, take a chill pill or a bit of wine before you watch it, because your blood might start boiling at some of it. Peterson is the guy with the graying temples, by the way:

I find certain parts particularly chilling. There’s the part at about 16:12, where the eyeglassed person says “…because people have been making complaints about your behavior,” and then gives that little smile on “yes.” But in particular there is minute 16:56, where that same person asks in a quiet voice, “Are you open to learning?”

I imagine that’s what some said as they sent people to the Gulag, or in any of the many places around the world where there’s been no thoughtcrime that a little re-education couldn’t fix.

[NOTE: When I wrote a draft of this post a day or two ago, I didn’t think we in the US were as close to doing this as we apparently were, although of course I realized it could happen. Well, California’s the trailblazer.

Just for nursing homes—right? I’m sure they’ll stop there.

Look, if you want to work in a nursing home and the nursing home wants you to treat all residents with respect and call them by their preferred pronouns as part of that respect, fine. If you don’t do it, they can fire you because you’re not complying with their policies. But criminalizing this offense is wrong, wrong, wrong.]

Mass-murdering man of mystery [Part II]: Charles Whitman’s motives

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I can be found here.]

One of the strangest mass murderers in history was Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower shooter of 1966. It was a big big story and a profound shock at the time, and those of us who were around back then probably remember it well. Whitman—a young man who climbed a tower at the University of Texas and coldly (and skillfully, with a marksman’s abilities) executed passers-by—had once been an Eagle scout and a Marine and a good student. Earlier in the day, he had also killed his mother and his wife.

What could have happened to cause this behavior? Strangely enough, Whitman himself was one of those people who really wanted to know the answer. Continue reading →

Iran is thinking about it

The New Neo Posted on by

Iran reportedly may have had a slight change of tactics:

Tehran has repeatedly vowed to continue building up what it calls defensive missile capability in defiance of Western criticism, with Washington saying the Islamic Republic’s stance violates its 2015 nuclear deal with the powers.

But the sources said that given U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to ditch the deal reached under his predecessor Barack Obama, Tehran had approached the powers recently about possible talks on some “dimensions” of its missile programme.

“During their meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly last month, Iran told members of the (world powers) that it could discuss the missile programme to remove concerns,” an Iranian source with knowledge of the meeting told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Hard to know what this means, if anything. Negotiating—re-negotiating—any agreement with Iran promises to be a very tricky (literally) business.

Why the expose on Harvey Weinstein now?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t have an answer to the question I pose in the title of this post. But I certainly think it’s an interesting question.

Lots of other people have dissected the Weinstein flap and I refer you to what they’ve written: for example, Ace has been on the case quite heavily, and you can find plenty more in today’s memeorandum.

The very very short version is that Weinstein has been a big Hollywood producer and executive as well as Democratic donor for many many years, and he’s apparently been coming on to women in various crass ways for just as many years. It is alleged to have been an open secret known to those in the business and in the Party. But a public fuss wasn’t made (and he settled some potential suits out of court by paying money) until yesterday, when this story appeared describing the whole sordid mess.

It’s important to note that that link I just gave goes to the NY Times, which broke the story. That seems to me to be one of the most curious things about all of this. Why did the Times choose to turn on a man who—if the Times’ allegations are to be believed—was protected until now?

I don’t know the answer, and the articles I read that purport to tell us say nothing of value. Weinstein himself has apologized and admitted some of the allegations but plans to sue the Times because “they didn’t give me enough time to respond.”

I must admit this story fills me with a feeling of exhaustion. I guess I always assumed that Hollywood was rife with the kind of behavior of which Weinstein is accused, and that everyone—I mean everyone—who goes to Hollywood to make movies is aware of it. That doesn’t make it right, of course. It’s wrong. Weinstein was a powerful man whose power intimidated people, which is an element of the claim of sexual harrassment. But—at least from what I’ve read so far—there seem to have been few repercussions for women saying “no,” and the threat was implicit in Weinstein’s powerful position rather than explicitly part of his seduction (which is a kind word for it) routine. And he doesn’t seem—unlike Roman Polanski—to have included underage girls in his sweep.

If his behavior really was common knowledge, the hypocrisy of the Democrats who took money from him is evident. That hypocrisy included the MSM, until this Times expose. But again, is hypocrisy of that magnitude news? I don’t think so; after all, look to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal of about twenty years ago, and the John Edwards coverup of about ten years ago.

No, to me the news here (and the mystery) is really that the Times is leading the charge.

Harvey Weinstein supposedly blames the vast right-wing conspiracy (if the report is true; it’s not based on an interview with Weinstein himself, but rather “a source”):

Speaking to DailyMail.com a source painted a different picture, one of a man who felt that he was the victim of a sinister-sounding plot.

The source said: ‘Harvey feels is being set up by a team of people who are out to get him.

‘There are are conservative organisations who know he is long-time foe of the NRA, of Donald Trump, and a longtime supporter of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the Democrats.

‘He believes they are financing a team of lawyers who are digging up these stories.

‘There’s a political agenda behind this. Harvey feels it’s a conspiracy and that’s the most interesting part of this, where it originated from, not the erroneous reporting that’s going on.

‘He won’t be the last, other people like him will be targeted too.’

Yes, the Times has long been the instrument and puppet of the right. Right.

Weinstein says that much of the article is a lie:

Harder [one of Weinstein’s attorneys] said that he was preparing a lawsuit against the New York Times for writing a story that is ‘saturated with false and defamatory statements about Harvey Weinstein’.

He said: ‘It relies on mostly hearsay accounts and a faulty report, apparently stolen from an employee personnel file, which has been debunked by 9 different eyewitnesses.

‘We sent the Times the facts and evidence, but they ignored it and rushed to publish. We are preparing the lawsuit now. All proceeds will be donated to women’s organizations’.

How much of the Times’ story is true, and how much false? I don’t know; I think it’s always good to be careful in these matters because people do lie. But this certainly seems like a great deal of it is true, and I don’t even think Weinstein is disputing that but rather certain specifics in it.

And then there are statements such as this one from another of Weinstein’s attorneys who ordinarily finds herself on the other side of sexual harrassment cases:

As a women’s rights advocate, I have been blunt with Harvey and he has listened to me. I have told him that times have changed, it is 2017, and he needs to evolve to a higher standard.

‘I have found Harvey to be refreshingly candid and receptive to my message. He has acknowledged mistakes he has made. He is reading books and going to therapy. He is an old dinosaur learning new ways’.

New ways???? Excuse me? That’s almost humorous. Is Weinstein a sort of sexual Rip van Winkle, asleep for 20 years and just—as they say these days—woke?

Paglia and Peterson

The New Neo Posted on by

Recently someone recommended that I watch a video in which Camille Paglia and Jordan Peterson have a discussion involving—well, the sort of stuff this intense duo likes to discuss. I’m quite familiar with Paglia, but was previously unfamiliar with the intriguing Peterson (author and psych professor at the University of Toronto, and guy who might well qualify as a late entry into this select group of men).

Paglia’s veritable tsunami of words seems to inundate Peterson at first—and who can blame him? But he manages to keep up and provides thoughtful comebacks. I only watched about an hour of it, but plan to revisit Peterson in another post soon.

Paddock may have targeted still another music venue

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I advanced a theory about the grandiose and psychopathic motives of mass murderer Stephen Paddock. As evidence for my contention that he didn’t much care what open-air crowd he fired into and from which high-rise hotel, I cited the fact that it was reported that Paddock had tried to book a similar room at a different hotel for a different outdoor concert, and failed to get the room he wanted.

Now we’ve been informed that he apparently made a similar effort back in August, in Chicago:

Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock booked rooms in a Chicago hotel facing the Lollapalooza music festival in August, a law enforcement official told USA TODAY on Thursday.

Paddock, 64, booked one room at the Blackstone Hotel starting Aug. 1, two days before the festival opened. He booked a second room Aug. 3. The Blackstone confirmed in a statement that rooms were booked in Paddock’s name during Lollapalooza but that he did not stay there on those dates.

Both rooms had a checkout date of Aug. 6, corresponding with the final day of the music festival that drew tens of thousands of concertgoers to Grant Park alongside Lake Michigan. It was unclear if Paddock was in Chicago during the festival, according to the law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

If true, this is further evidence that my theory might be true. I’m not saying it is true, however, and at any moment I would totally abandon it in favor of another if evidence emerges that contradicts what I’m saying and points to an entirely different scenario.

When I wrote that I believed Paddock’s underlying motive was a psychopathic desire to kill as many people as possible and make a name for himself, I likened him to the Columbine killers, who originally had planned a more apocalyptic conflagration but whose execution of that grander and more fiery (literally, involving propane bombs in the cafeteria that failed to detonate but could easily have killed 600 people) plan left something to be desired. Now we hear that Paddock may have intended something similar, because he apparently shot aviation fuel tanks nearby:

The bullets left two holes in one of two circular white tanks. One of the bullets penetrated the tank, but did not cause a fire or explosion near the Route 91 Harvest country music festival, another knowledgeable source said late Wednesday.

The tanks are roughly 1,100 feet from the concert site, where Paddock killed 58 people and wounded almost 500. Several airplane hangars belonging to prominent corporations are also near the tanks.

To change the subject slightly, I notice that quite a few people are saying that they don’t buy Paddock’s girlfriend’s claim of ignorance of both his motives and his methods. My response is that those people underestimate the ability of psychopaths or con artists or other intelligent criminals to cover their tracks and fool those around them, both in personal terms and in practical terms. For example, Paddock could have easily kept his firearms somewhere outside the home in storage, or locked them in cases in some attic or basement if they were on the premises, and his girlfriend wouldn’t necessarily have pried or cared or suspected a thing if he never expressed any unusual hostility towards anyone. She was living with an alpha-male high roller, and I doubt she noticed much to make her suspicious—because Paddock (an intelligent and crafty man) planned it that way.

I’ve noticed time and again—most notably in the case of Madoff—that it’s commonplace to believe that family members or significant others must of course have known about that person’s criminal activity or intent. However, I think that’s hubris and ignorance. “Hubris” because I think those people are really saying “I would have known; I wouldn’t have been so stupid,” and that this is coupled with a lack of any true understanding of the highly-developed and tremonedouly deceptive play-acting skills possessed by the psychopath and/or con man.

Which brings us to another issue: did Paddock act alone? The simple answer is that we don’t know. And I certainly don’t know. Maybe he really was an ISIS operative. Maybe he was in league with some other destructive groups. Or maybe he just had help (for example, technical help in procuring and modifying his weapons) from someone who was ignorant of Paddock’s actual plans.

We don’t know.

But if I had to guess, I would say if Paddock got any help at all it was of the latter variety—technical help from someone who may not have been aware of his ultimate aims. At this point I see Paddock not only as a psychopath, but as a proud and narcissistic one who walked alone.

[NOTE: For more on psychopaths see this and this.]

Some of the heroes of Las Vegas

The New Neo Posted on by

More stories emerge:

“”

I am in awe of people who have the calm, the courage, and the skills to act this way in crises. I have often wondered how I would behave, and I doubt I would be anything other than frozen in fear or running away as fast as I could. One never knows, of course, and one never wants to find out.

Not all of the courageous and selfless people are off-duty cops, of course, although police officers and ex-military are trained to respond this way. But there are others who respond similarly without having that sort of background.

Here’s one (and by the way, this man was ultimately saved by one of the officers in that first video, Tom McGrath):

“I don’t know what made me turn back around; maybe it was the screams, I don’t know…I really can’t explain why or what made me turn around. I just felt, ‘You know what? If I can help one person or multiple people, at least that someone’s life that was spared’…I’m not a hero; I’m far from a hero. I think I just did what anybody would do.”

This is very typical of people who act heroically under fire. They often say they don’t know why they did it, and often modestly (and seemingly sincerely) minimize the heroic nature of their actions and describe them as ordinary and commonplace. I’ve noticed that time and again.

Also notice how, when the interviewer praises Smith, at first he looks down. It’s as though he doesn’t want the praise and certainly doesn’t bask in it. A true hero.

Please stay with that video to the end. He has a message on race.

What about banning bump stocks?

The New Neo Posted on by

So far, I’m with this guy on the question of a bump stock ban:

…as much as it pains me to say it and with full knowledge of the potential implications for a slippery slope, I think we need to consider a ban on both bump stocks and these automatic fire conversion kits…

These conversion kits and bump stocks only exist for one reason, and that’s to allow a semiautomatic rifle to fire as a fully automatic model. You can pull out your amateur lawyer thesaurus (or professional copy for you actual lawyers) and try to talk your way around this subject, but there is no other purpose for these products to exist. If you accept that the law forbids the possession of fully automatic weapons in all but the most limited cases, then these products should also be illegal unless the purchaser already qualifies for ownership of a fully automatic weapons. For everyone else they should be banned.

This seems reasonable to me. However, I also don’t think it much matters in terms of preventing the amount of carnage in most crimes. It’s not as though bump stocks are often used in mass murders or other murders; in fact, as far as I know, this is the first time, and there are undoubtedly other ways to get around bans if a person is determined. And mass murderers tend to be rather determined.

What’s more, I have read in multiple sources that although bump stocks tend to increase speed of firing they also reduce accuracy. That means that, under more “normal” circumstances (i.e. not shooting into a densely-packed crowd) the sacrifice in accuracy might make for fewer casualties rather than more. But in the Las Vegas massacre, or other crowd situations, it is more likely than not that bump stocks enhance the murderers’ kill-per-minute rate.

Paddock certainly seemed to think so, anyway. He had quite a few in his arsenal.

In somewhat related news—what’s up with Bret Stephens? Anyone advocating an end to the Second Amendment must either be on the side of government tyranny, or of criminals, or be totally unaware of the historically-documented perils of gun confiscation. I recommend that people in that latter group familiarize themselves with the work of Stephen Hallbrook (short version here, medium version here, long versions here and here).

[ADDENDU: The NRA issued a statement supporting additional regulation on bump stocks in return for some other changes.]

Marco Rubio asks some good questions…

The New Neo Posted on by

…of the US Army:

It is extremely concerning that someone who so often expressed such hostile views towards the United States’ system of government was able to obtain a commission. Rapone’s revolutionary ideas were harbored long before he was commissioned as an Army Second Lieutenant. Were West Point administrators or faculty aware of his views and behavior?

While I strongly believe academic institutions must respect the exchange of ideas and allow students to voice their opinions, members of the military who harbor anti-American views and express their desire to harm our country and its leaders are unfit to serve and defend our nation””and certainly should not enjoy the privilege of attending or graduating from an institution such as West Point, a taxpayer-funded military academy.

This is clearly not just a matter of law but also of common sense, and I can only assume Rapone’s unchecked behavior is an extreme embarrassment for the United States Army and the United States Military Academy. Please provide me with all relevant information regarding West Point’s efforts to ensure cadets who actively support the destruction of our government do not waste more taxpayer funds or prevent a more worthy candidate from attending an institution like the United States Military Academy. The Army’s premier officer commissioning source must ensure an individual like Spenser Rapone is never given the opportunity to lead or serve beside American soldiers.

I wonder if he—or we—will ever get any answers.

The Army is reported to have opened an investigation.