The above video is an interview of Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist at the University of Toronto, by Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and pundit. I don’t expect that the reader take time from other pursuits to watch it, but if you do, it is informative. Peterson talks about how far afield the gender identity movement has gone.
Over the past months I have become familiar with Steyn, and enjoy his writing and speaking style. He is a climate change skeptic, and at one time called Michael Mann’s hockey stick “fraudulent.” In response Mann sued Steyn.
The case now rests in the DC court system, and it will be years before resolution. That part of our legal system is dysfuntional. Steyn took it to that venue because DC has an anti-SLAPP law, Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, and in his view Mann’s lawsuit was designed only to make him shut up. It all has a theatrical feel about it, however. I wonder if both sides are players.
Peterson brought to mind how far I have traveled from liberalism. That’s why I put the video up. He speaks mostly about gender identity, how absurd it has become. In my own family, I last saw one of my grandsons wearing a dress … the absurd proposition behind it being that kids don’t know their real gender in early development, and need to be given time to gravitate toward the real one. It’s one of the monstrous deviations of our times that rather than helping kids achieve man or womanhood, we confuse them. (This blog is a safe place, and I can speak freely. My kids do not follow my work.)
My focus here, however, is not gender politics and its laughable pretensions. Rather, it is liberalism. First, indulge me in a bit of my own background. Skip ahead to the words “OK, pick up here” if you don’t want to suffer through it.
I was born in raised in very religious Catholic and conservative home. I feared Communism and the bomb, believed that there were infiltrators in government and our other institutions. This lasted well into my thirties, by which time I had achieved self-employment (I was a terrible employee, and me as my own boss was my only option), and at last had time and money to start exploring the world. At first I was merely reinforcing my upbringing, but my obsession was about JFK – who killed him? One day I was reading a book called The Fish is Red, since renamed Deadly Secrets, by Warren Hinckle and William Turner. In it I stumbled on a passage describing a master plan by Fidel Castro to overthrow the Argentinian Frondizi government. A defector turned documents over to Miami Cuban exiles. The Argentinian and Cuban governments claimed those documents were forgeries.
The crux was that the U.S. State Department claimed that after exhaustive study that the documents were genuine. In fact, they were crude forgeries. For me, it for the first time exposed American duplicity in international affairs, bald-faced lying. Worse yet, the Cubans had been telling the truth. This was a revelation. In my black/white world, Americans were honest, Cubans liars. That one short passage, pages 129-31 in the book, fired a Cruise Missile in my dike of certainty.
It was not long to follow that the dike collapsed as I saw American dishonesty at every turn in international affairs, and eventually domestic. I experienced what I now call “The Bounce,” wherein upon learning that one side was corrupt, I assumed that the other side was not. I became a flaming liberal.
During my liberal fling I met many people and joined many groups, the nadir of my journey being the Ralph Nader presidential campaigns of 2000 and 2004. One man I met and admired was Steve Kelly, now a writer here at this blog. I have some unkind things to say about environmentalists, but Steve is different. His cause is pure, his methods honest, his energy boundless. He seeks preservation of wild lands, and I support him in this. We have enough timber and minerals so that we don’t need roads in every forest. Some areas of our land are best left alone. Grizzly bears need a place to live too, somewhere where “man himself is a visitor.”
The group I joined and worked through in that same endeavor was Montana Wilderness Association. It still exists and over the years has gotten fat on grants from groups like the Pew Charitable Trusts (the Sun Oil fortune), and is now thoroughly compromised and discredited. They have a huge staff compared to when I was with them. It is now just an industry front group, nothing more, a group that Senator Jon Tester runs to for “environmentalist” support when he attacks Montana’s remaining roadless lands. MWA is a disgrace.
OK, pick up here. What about environmentalists who are not Steve Kelly or the various groups he is affiliated with? Either I could not see clearly, or they have moved far afield of their original charters. The most recent manifestation of their corruption is known as the Green New Deal, described in this post.
In my post-conservative years, I have, after the bounce, gradually returned to my conservative roots. I have many issues with those calling themselves that, as I believe markets need to be, to a certain degree, regulated; that our health care system is corrupt; and that all business naturally gravitates towards monopoly as its nirvana. As Dwayne Andreas of Archer Daniels Midlands so aptly put it, “The competitor is our friend and the customer is our enemy.”
But the conservative philosophy otherwise preaches against unwarranted intrusion in our lives by government, against excessive taxation, in favor of maximum personal freedom and the exercise of caution in making major changes in our public policies. None of us, after all, is wise enough to know the twists and turns that will result from rash moves. I am now also aligned with conservatives on anthropogenic global warming, and comfortably so.
After my initial alliance with liberals and mainstream environmentalists, I became disenchanted. I saw what happened to Montana Wilderness Association, and resigned after a long tenure, including years of service on their executive committee. I found most “big green” groups to be reliably aligned with power. I found the Democratic Party to be cynically corrupt, even unapologetic about it. And now I find an unholy alliance among Democrats, most environmentalists, and the Big Green groups about AGW. The agenda is not about climate. It is about command and control, a sinking of our economy and lives into a totalitarian state where government bureaucrats will tell us what we drive, where we live, what we eat, and how we get what little unreliable power from the grid that solar and wind can provide.
That is the essence of the Green New Deal and the type of people behind it. They are little dictators. They belong more in Orwell’s 1984 than Paine’s The Rights of Man. At this point they are lying about AGW, and most at the top of that pyramid know it. Climate and CO2, however, were never the issue. It was always about personal freedom. CO2 is the stalking horse for their attack, nothing more.
Piece of Mindful 
Gender identity movement = child abuse. It’s also another divide and conquer project, and no doubt mega bucks are being made pushing it.
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Enjoyable read, thank you.
One thing I admire about your writing — and that of the few peoples whose opinions I respect in the world today — is that you openly speak about your errors and missteps in the past.
And who among us did NOT get sucked into the AGW alarmism back in the day? I know I certainly DID. I remember watching and parroting the mantras from An Inconvenient Truth and feeling so much smarter than the people around me, people who were not as concerned as I was about the impending doom our planet was surely facing.
Not that I mean this as any ‘defense’ of my younger and stupider self, but I never got sucked into the more extreme LGBTIQ stuff, not even at my ‘nadir’ (as you so eloquently put it). I did however buy into the relatively-moderate ‘gay rights’ crap and was pro ‘gay marriage’ during my university student days. This was about a decade or so ago, before the idea of putting dresses on little boys had become an actual thing.
We’re living in a mad house; what I want to know is, how far can it go? This is neither the time nor place for me to wax lyrical about my metaphysical framework, but suffice to say that I no longer believe the masses have any real agency (on the micro scale i.e. as individuals). None of these imbeciles are going to ‘stand up’ for values or principles which go against the prevailing orthodoxy. They are simply not capable of doing so.
If this is the case, and I’m confident that it is, then what we are witnessing is not about stop. The trend towards utter madness on a societal scale will continue. Previously it was ‘gay rights’. Now it is ‘trans rights’. What comes next? Because whatever it is, it IS coming. And soon.
As I like to say, ‘what a time to be alive’.
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One clue to the future might be found in the writing of Georges Bataille… Some argue he is one source, or the key source, of the intellectual trend that became postmodernism in the university, and is now trickling down to all us rubes out here… The white male rationalism/ modernism of the 19th c. industrial age inspired Batailles backlash, towards irrationalism and the disintegration of norms. The privileging of the madman (see Foucault, an heir to Bataille), the aboriginal, the minority of any sort, the dionysian.
And yet, strangely, this program is being enacted by those very “arch rationalist” institutions… Corps, global planning bodies, unis… That claim their authority as the arbiters of reason and exemplars of bureaucratic protocol. Maybe using it as class warfare? Feeding the masses Bataille while they remain gray eminences? Or are they even more infected?
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“Postmodernism” has always befuddled me. I have no idea what it means.
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It’s become a meaningless garbage word, but it does apply to a real promoted intellectual movement, which has reverberated through society.
I view it in relation to Modernism, which is embodied in the scientific optimism of the 19th c. and British colonialism— the white man would systemize the world and everything in it. Natives, women, gays, religious fundamentalists, the Other in any form would be subjugated to rationalism. Bureaucracy and the machine age would create a utopia.
Postmodernism, descended from the Frankfurt school intellectuals, rejected Modernism. It celebrated the irrational, the marginal, the oppressed, emotional, etc. Batailles wanted fragmentation of society, disintegration, a war of all against all, iirc. Which is what we seem to be getting, as it trickles down somehow from on high.
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Cabaret (1972), the film was on tv recently, the whole cabaret scene seemed to hold a mirror of what’s happening to-day in the West. I didn’t watch it all, it was tiresome freakshow, but I knew the end, the rise of a rightwing party.
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Thanks for lighting it up for me … I wonder how important high-flying academic ideas are in general. Very little affects the common man or woman unless it is part of their TV viewing, so I don’t see where postmodernism matters. but I’ve been wrong before.
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Climate change has moved activism away from forests, water, wildlife and into an abstract, computerized monolithic “cause.” It shifted away from on-the-ground activism into “energy,” where the foundations have all consolidated their money, and to a single source, where all the grant-dependent organizations have migrated with hands out, on bended knee. Control is always the name of the game. For the disobedient there is scorn and retribution, and no financial support. We’ve (true grassroots forest activists in various local organizations) been broke since 1987, but still here by the grace of God.
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Patrick Moore, formerly of Greenpeace, talks about how that group shifted in the 1980s from concrete objectives to invisible and ethereal ones – he’s well worth a watch and listen if you ever have time.
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This should keep you entertained fro several hours.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/tag/Greatest+Scientific+Fraud
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John Le Bon asks how far can it go. It’s already there. Netflix is loaded with trannies. Seeing a male wearing a dress would be sight for sore eyes compared to what has been rolled out in recent decades not just years. I can’t begin to tell you how many trannies it appears have been paraded in front of as Hollywood’s Most Beautiful Women. For example in my opinion Cher, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Aniston, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Uma Thurman, Amanda Peet are all men. Trannies in Hollywood are and have been everywhere for decades especially in Mark’s piece about Hollywood scarlets of yesteryear. I got my ass beat by the cops then hauled out of my house for 2 years all because some passerby picked up my blitzed out of her mind girlfriend at the time who mumbled something about being struck in the eye at my house. No such thing occurred. Yet I was beaten to a pulp then taken to Emergency shackled top to bottom even to the bed then to jail. That’s my proof a police state exists. Hollywood is proof what’s to come is already here. My current female tenant who I sleep with and my last girlfriend whom both sneak other men in to screw every which way while I’m drugged asleep or sound asleep which the hoes deny all of it even the telling pics found on their phones are proof to me that countless men of today are being overrun abused cuckholded used up by femme fatales gutter slugs who aren’t even attractive enough to appeal to a deaf dumb and blind man. Yet they are everywhere gaslighting whoring thieving lying their way through life always yearning to open wide for the big dicks playing royal flush hand of victim cards against the rest always beating the odds in life’s casino known now as one giant hell on earth meat grinder.
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Trannies is a subject that we ask readers to discuss in other venues. I do not truck there.
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Why are you so afraid of just that topic?
Who is “we”?
What does “I don’t truck there” mean?
The transgenda is way bigger than some (un)dead Beatle or faked photo. It is the termination of fecking Nature.
Why is there a self-imposed ban and taboo of arguably socially the most destructive agenda of them all?
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Little dictators and transgender has employable ring to it. Regardless rules are rules and now recall flashing on those comment rules recently and transgender not little dictators is listed. You’re smart is how I see it protecting accidently9 pissing off TPTB and causing your blood sweat and tears blog to get yanked by discussing big trouble with little china. More people might gain an understanding of certain things they weren’t intending to make sense of should transgender be allowed referencing.
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“There is no transgenda and jews are not, I repeat not, running the world.” Because, well, I have a jewish doctor and he’s such a nice man.
How sharp eyes can be so blind, peinlich.
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This blog has already touched on Transgender and the Holohoax, the regulars here had their say. Mark stated he could wake up one day and this blog might be removed, although seems like if it’s just a brief discussion then it won’t matter. There are other venues to get into a detailed analysis of issues.
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There are other venues. Go there, have your enlightening discussion. Not here.
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What does, I don’t “Truck there” mean? it means, I don’t tread there..I don’t go there. it’s plain and simple. Keep the “Tranny Shit” in your closet where it belongs. You’re a very curious man by nature,Mark. But not that curious. You appear to stand by your conviction. Sometimes you go a bit too far, But I give you credit for having learned to know when some things cannot be proven, it’s time to let it go until it can be proven otherwise.
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I did.
You want to maintain Jann Coulter and Charles Hopkins are “women”…??
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Understood. I guess my point and wish I was kidding but I’m not vent was to give my answer to John Le Bon’s question how far can it go? This after John remarked boys wearing dresses previous to his mentioning trans rights. So I chimed in with my messy pocket full of old receipts and scattered change. In other words I know my place. I only have my direct experiences to offer. I learn about history here. I frequent MMG and that’s it. I only give of myself at POM inhabiting vulnerability like the rest. I don’t mind being set straight. I’m the student who sits in the front near the girl he likes to prove he’s not shy because he can’t hear.
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The rules are there to keep the walls from busting down and having a group of unmanageable commenters take over the site. It’s a real thing with some people, not me, but there was a time when I was seeing twins everywhere. I know how it happens. So just leave it be. plenty of other stuff to discuss.
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Quote
… I wonder how important high-flying academic ideas are in general. Very little affects the common man or woman unless it is part of their TV viewing, so I don’t see where postmodernism matters. but I’ve been wrong before.
(End quote)
I wonder too, but I know for instance that Foucault was very big in the American Uni in 70s and 80s. Whether you read him directly or not, even the profs, you were getting all his ideas spread thru all the humanities courses. (He was in turn just a popularizer of Batailles.)
Thus, all those university educated folk go on to become tv and movie producers, work in corporate America, in law and politics and in general reshape the institutions the common man interacts with. Certainly I have questions about this process too but it seems to have some explanatory power for the strange turns culture takes.
Foucault himself may merely be a front for Tavistock or some planning group, for all I know, working to shape the middle and upper middle “educated” (schooled) classes.
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Man’s fictions are endless, until the sheer weight of it all causes man’s (relative, or complete; that is unknowable) extinction. All man’s fictions are ultimately built on nature, which in no way needs man to persist. A course correction is needed, but can/will that happen before man’s self-inflicted demise? That seems to be, OMHO, the need for all the elaborate distractions, fragmentation, false history, and socio-cultural intrigue. All paths lead back to nature, or not.
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Off topic: the mainstream Daily Beast floated the idea a few days ago of Jeffrey Epstein being an intelligence asset:
QUOTE///
“Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” Acosta had been asked. Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta. (The Labor Department had no comment when asked about this.)
///
Over on NakedCapitalism.com, a knowledgeable but normie punditry speculates whether Epstein was gathering dirt on lots of billionaires at behest of Intel. And other theories. They (the punditry) all carefully qualify their speculation as in the realm of tinfoil hattism — thus has any attempt to think critically about the news bern blackwashed as beyond the pale! People self censor their own thoughts, or at least fear them like a third rail, the moment they wander beyond the approved MSM guardrails.
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Also off topic… A new front in the carbon scaremongering:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/07/completely-terrifying-study-warns-carbon-saturated-oceans-headed-toward-tipping-point-that-could-unleash-mass-extinction-event.html
NakedCapitalism keeps up a steady drumbeat of these stories. Most of their readership seems about ready to slit their wrists over the imminent doom humanity faces… Though some take a grim delight, a schadenfreude in the collapse of industrial civilization… Understandable since who among us isn’t ambivalent about the mixed blessings of technology and the modern world. But probably it’s one reason they “believe,” because it satisfies their sense of justice. Ie, their resentment at the system means they see sweet revenge in a climate apocalypse that will bring those greedy capitalists to heel. In a fiery inferno of their own making.
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Deeper! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY08H4PyIys
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The elite need WILLFUL compliance by the masses. Fear is always the go-to move for them. There is going to be a major food shortage this fall. On a lighter note: What did the midget become when he put his penis into a potato? Yes, a ‘Little Dictator’……….drum roll-rim shot.
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They don’t need willful compliance. How much better for us to imagine we are free and making our own decisions.
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That is willful. They believe the cube (Saturn) box of flickering colored lights & sound is telling them truth & reality. Tell a lie long enough it becomes truth. A nation of box watchers slowly accepts, (willingly) murder, rape, child abduction, abortion, wars by false flag & no end as reality. Unplugged is not just an old MTV show.
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Epstein was a handler-provider of children for degenerate elite. Every act was recorded for leverage later on. His tombs beneath the mansion were destroyed. God knows what happened to all those innocents there. And this only one of how many that have been around since founding father Ben Franklin & the Hell Fire Club was in operation. ‘spoose Taos willl have a paper or two on Jefrey?
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MM would probably say (plausibly imo) that Epstein is part of the “men are bad” project to split the sexes and make people miserable. And that, while he may be a creep, these yarns are just “official conspiracy theory”, to feed the fear and paranoia of regular joes. More tabloid narratives to keep eyeballs on “news”, and deliver propaganda and misinformation.
If Epstein was really part of the super elite, providing other super elite with underage prostitutes, do you really think a totally controlled press would cover it? More likely he and most of the named players are Hollywood East, putting on a show as usual.
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Diverting eyes from the invasion of South & Central American hordes (now Congo) coming through TX AND to show how they roll & never go down like a regular Joe Lunch Pail. Or how short the growing season is this year (what did get planted) & major shortages are looming. Strange, Trump is padeo & they are not frying him in the elite press.
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Funding compliments of : http://www.11thhourproject.org/
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Quote from Steve’s link^^ “For us, growing beyond a linear economy based on extraction and waste towards a regenerative economy means advancing frameworks that value healthy ecosystems, active civic engagement, and social fairness.
We do this by looking through a systems lens, finding new opportunities for a healthier, more reciprocal relationship with the resources of our natural world.””” Got dayum lawyer & snake salesman lingo.
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Motorhead your timing is impeccable. Why do you always come at the end of POM posts versus blowing your wad at the beginning or dishing your hot rim shots in the middle of it all. I’m not saying you have a fetish for sloppy seconds all I’m saying is should POM readers wish to know when the next post is about to appear or when comments are sort of reaching a diminishing returns type comments stage lull all the readers need to do is wait for you to begin your gang bang flurry of comments tightly erect with caps when driving your point home to the reader who besides Mark is already most likely just getting out of bed or into bed onto something new while it seemingly takes you awhile to get there bringing up the rear with no one left really to pass the hot potato too. Other than all that I do enjoy your comments writing style and intellect.
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Hall monitor? K.
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Eye came across a book recently that I think is a fraud from start to finish. Thought a share with this crown was in order.
https://bendovermaryland.wordpress.com/2019/07/24/rare-book-review/
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