Listen and Believe?

Posted on 25th February 2016 by MRDA

Kesha GIF

Seasons may come and go (and come again), but a timely convergence will never get altmodisch.

Last weekend saw an outpouring of grief and obits in response to the death of Harper Lee, esteemed author of the acclaimed and adapted novel To Kill a Mockingbird; much of said acclaim for her brainchild no doubt arises from its theme of fighting for justice in the face (and a place) of entrenched and vehement prejudice, a theme to which any so-called “social justice warrior” can signal solidarity.

Speaking of such, the same weekend saw an outpouring of outrage in reaction to pop starlet Kesha’s claims of contractual and coital coercion at the hands of her producer, one Lukasz Gottwald, more commonly known as “Dr Luke”. Predictably, a swarm of SJW social-media solidarity glommed around her, urging those with the power to #FreeKesha, and all and sundry to take Kesha’s word on the matter as holy writ.

From my somewhat limited reading of this case, it looks like a long and messy battle over contractual constrictions, spanning a number of years. One could make the argument that having entered into said deal voluntarily, Kesha has the obligation to honour its terms as agreed; one could also make the argument that, to quote John Badcock, “the binding power of a promise has limits”, that what may have been to mutual benefit today may become decidedly lopsided tomorrow, necessitating a rearrangement, or severance, of terms. Both viewpoints have their merits and, in some cases, may even be reconcilable.

What I’ll never see merit in, however, is the wretched line of thought best exemplified by the inane SJW slogan “listen and believe”.

I mean, I understand why otherwise well-meaning everypeople might be tempted to do just that in regard to allegations of “misogyny”, “sexism”, and all, what with being deluged with torrid testimonials, sloppy stats, and Lifetime lamentations asserting the radical notion that women are perpetual victims. Couple that with the overwhelming (and ever-replicating) urge to breed, the relative statistical neoteny of the double-x demographic, and the propensity of the average homo (non)sapiens to respond to feels over facts, and it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that folk who can’t see will just herd.

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However, when it comes to those who aspire to be more than bipedal bovines, who actually give a fuck about weird concepts like “justice” and “due process”, I’m audacious enough to expect more in the way of rigour, scepticism, and critical thinking. Take Kesha’s claims that Dr Luke force-fucked her whilst pinning her down in a contractual chokehold: her own words in a previous out-of-court testimonial call the veracity of her current claims into question, with the singer stating that Luke made no sexual advances toward her, never mind roofies and rape.

Of course, alternative explanations for this discrepancy have been offered. Stockholm Syndrome. An overdeveloped sense of obligation. Capitulation to threats made by the good (?) Doctor. Indeed, any or all of these motives could’ve given rise to her previous protestations, and the fact that said testimonial hit the press in an edited form further fuels the aforementioned speculations. Whatever stance one takes on the matter, I think it safe to say that she’s lying about something, making the whole listen-and-believe proposition all the more laughable.

Insensitive? I’m too amused to give a fuck, especially given that those who espouse the sentiment flagrantly disregard it when it runs counter to their narrative, subjecting denial to far more in the way of scrutiny than affirmation. Having recently seen this dynamic play out elsewhere, the tragicomedy certainly isn’t lost on me.

My bitter laughs intensify upon contemplating the grand feats of social justice these hectoring herd animals could achieve if only their words were heeded more readily:

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My, my…what does that remind me of?

Ah, yes…

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If anyone can explain how the mobs who murdered/condemned Will Brown and Tom Robinson weren’t the finest, most proactive examples of Listening Believers, I’m all ears; their modern-day Twitterati counterparts have quite a way to go to top those epic feats!

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As for myself, I’ll take “question and verify” over “listen and believe” as an operating slogan, whether the topic be Keshagate, Cologne, Jimmy Savile, Rotherham, or any other media panic, rape-related or otherwise. Opting for light over heat, epoché over emotionalism, reflection over reaction, and hard fact over herdsteria may not accrue clicks, insta-gratification, or even anything approaching a clear answer; it may accrue me a reputation as a “denier”, “rape apologist”, and other such sweet nothings; hell, I may even fall short more than a few times, despite my best intentions. Still, I think it worth a shot: sure beats the asinine alternative!

~MRDA~

Posted in Culture, Gender Issues, Moral Panic, News, Politics, Racial Issues, Religion, Sex | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Obliterating Oblomov: MRDA@CurrentYear.com

Posted on 5th February 2016 by MRDA

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A month into 2016 C.Y, and I finally see fit to relight the fire of this long-unkindled Inferno. I’d planned to knock something together a little earlier to mark the transition into the new 365-day calendar cluster, but a combo of preoccupation and inertia put paid to that plan. During my period of near-Oblomovian despair and disrepair (punctuated by a stint or several at the gym, thank fuck!), quite a lot took place. The resident grinches of Dar al-Islam saw fit to ban Christmas in both Brunei and Somalia; New Year’s Eve saw celebrations get very much out of hand—or, rather, in hand—in cities across Germany, with the bulk of media coverage (which started days after the fact) focused on the fondlecaust in Cologne; Obama turned out an Oscar-hungry performance, squeezing forth  a press-conference tear for child victims of gun crime (whilst remaining dry-eyed over drone-bombing kids half a world away); rock icon David Bowie—along with a who’s who of other prominent celebs—succumbed to the big C, eliciting a cavalcade of commentary, both interesting and insipid; the Zika virus made its presence sorely felt in Latin America, resulting in the striking spectacle of heads of state telling their subject populations not to breed; a career of rape, genocide, and terrorism with desert pirates Daesh became significantly less lucrative due to pay cuts; and I had a good laugh at their enablers in Dar al-Saud telling UK critics to “respect” the death penalty in their god-pozzed shithole of a nation….weeks after calling presidentially-aspiring billionaire blowhard Donald Trump “a disgrace to America” for his Islam-averse immigration proposal: “Stop kill-shaming us, Britlords!”

Oh yeah…let’s not forget the current campaign to castrate Jonathan Swift (and his fanboys) for his “modest proposal”.

In short, how can I stay inert when there’s a whole wide world out there to hate?

Whilst I’m pretty pleased with last year’s output, various distractions kept me from writing as frequently as I wanted, resulting in me falling short of the goals I set myself last January; as such, I see the current year as more of a continuation than a fresh start, moving more in the direction decided in the previous solar orbit. Expect me to tear into both the political class and public as the need and mood arises, with the jeremiads, invectives, and philippics you, my readers (all five of you), know and love (or hate: masochism can be a helluva drug). As ever, I’ll happily challenge, critique, and even clawhammer the wonky ways ‘n’ whys of god, man, and beast…including the worldviews of those (un)near and dear to me.

Alongside all that, I’ll toss in some reviews and overviews of things I like, whether they be books, movies, series, or that really tasty kebab I had from the local (and not-so-local) eatery; and as for dusting off my more creative chops—watch this space!

My overarching credo for 2016: to set Obmolov’s bed aflame—and properly this time!

~MRDA~

Posted in News, Personal, Philosophy, Poetry, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Halal & Hypocrisy XIII: Remove Kebab?

Posted on 17th November 2015 by MRDA

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The south of France, and one man finds himself deeply disenchanted by the culinary delights on offer in his locale. So much so, in fact, that he took to the press, voicing his determination never to let another kebabish open in his town again.

Lushes and reprobates – I give you Robert Ménard: ex-secretary general of press freedom group Reporters Sans Frontières and currently disgruntled mayor of the supposedly shish-saturated town of Béziers. This blowhard first came to my attention a couple of weeks back, when I read about his distaste for döner at the Daily Sabah. Already something of a national celebrity for his animus towards Allahphiles—making a point of illegally collecting stats on Muslim schoolkids and personally declaring Syrian refugees in his town persona non grata—the somewhat megalomaniacal mayor now wants to obstruct the opening of any further lamb-spit houses in his locale.

Reading about this reminds me of one reason I kickstarted this series-within-a-series known as ‘Halal & Hypocrisy’: to shine a spotlight on those for whom fighting the Islamification of the Western world serves as a Trojan Horse for their own liberticidal bullshit. Whilst I may not be thrilled about the concept (and existence) of borders (at least not on a nation-state level), I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some sympathy for those who view them as a means of preserving treasured cultural and civil liberties—not to mention life and limb—in their lands (a la the late Pim Fortuyn). That said, I find it tragicomic how fervently those of such a persuasion appeal to the very institutions responsible for their malaise to make everything alright, especially when the latter either double down with a “solution” that further feeds the beast or take it as an opportunity to play bait ‘n’ switch by adding their own encroachments.

Ménard certainly fits the bill of the latter type of “saviour”, dragooning in a bunch of petty prohibitions on the back of some Saracen-smiting crusade. During his time in office, our hero-in-his-own-mind has imposed a curfew on Béziers’ younger residents, penalised public spitting (probably after taking a few gobfuls to the face), and even gone as far as to criminalise the airing of one’s laundry. All in the service of a reified, ossified concept of “French culture”, which he happily imposes on the actually existing cultural environment, like a hyperactive child with a new playset.

Then again, at least pleasure animates the puer at play; with his determination to dam the döner tide, this Ménard motherfucker signals and solidifies his credentials as a man who disdains the very concept of joy.

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Still, I suppose his joyless jihad amounts to more fun than addressing the town’s decades-long mass unemployment; it might explain his shift from socialism to the kind of rightist rabble-rousing that makes his friends in Front National sound decidedly middle-of-the-road.

How ironic that Monsieur Ménard, a particularly uncatholic Catholic, resembles the Jacobin “ayatollahs of secularism” he decries, by way of his top-down cultural Procusteanism.

Then again, that this townhall tyrant has a decidedly limited radius of authority counts as something of a small mercy; going by the sentiments he shared regarding torture in 2007, giving him Hollande levels of authority could prove potentially…interesting, for all the wrong reasons. A rather sloppily translated piece from Global Research turns out the following from his RSF days:

During the radio program “Contre-expertise” hosted by Xavier de la Porte on France Culture, August 16, 2007, Robert Ménard, the self-proclaimed defender of human rights and journalists, followed the steps of his sponsors and legitimized the use of torture, saying some extremely alarming things. Evoking the murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl, he emphasized that it was legitimate to torture suspects in order to save the life of innocents, reviving the argument of the most horrifying dictatorships and, of course, of the Bush administration(8).

Ménard goes further since he even legitimizes the use of torture against family members of kidnappers, that is against innocent people. “If my daughter were kidnapped, there would be no limit, I’m telling you, I’m telling you, there would be no limit on torture.”

Kinda makes me wonder if he’d advocate skewering kidnappers’ families on spits, slicing them to the bone, layer by layer, like so:

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It’d certainly fit the profile of the type of prat who, in railing against inimical Islamic infiltration, displays a distinct deficiency in discerning döner dealers from Daesh:

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On reflection, however, I probably could do with cutting Ménard a slice of slack myself, seeing as I find it increasingly harder to discern his mindset from that of a jihadi terrorist who shoots up a music venue in the name of his constricted concept of life. Both despise joys inaccessible to them, and have no problem letting the Other know it with force, whether wielded directly or by degrees of separation.

In their insistence on pushing their pet preferences on the unwilling, both betray a certain uncertainty regarding the ability of that which they treasure to transcend boundaries in an organic fashion; that is, despite ostensible differences, they share the same fundamental lack of faith in their cultural (and culinary) wares as the pandering progressives they no doubt despise.

Perhaps Ménard and friends could take some sales and presentation tips from their local döner dealers—it’d certainly be an improvement over their current form!

~MRDA~

Posted in Civil Liberties, Culture, Economic Issues, Halal & Hypocrisy, Moral Panic, News, Personal, Politics, Religion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Max Stirner Contra Humanism and Nationalism

Posted on 19th October 2015 by MRDA

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A favourite excerpt of mine from my favourite philosophical tome, The Ego and Its Own. Kinda supports my observation of nationalism and the ilk being humanism writ small (and, conversely, humanism being an expanded nationalism, both assuming an intrinsic worth and obligation in shared proximity, phenotype, planet, etc).

~MRDA~

Ridiculous is he who, while fellows of his tribe, family, nation, rank high, is – nothing but “puffed up” over the merit of his fellows; but blinded too is he who wants only to be “man.” Neither of them puts his worth in exclusiveness, but in connectedness, or in the “tie” that conjoins him with others, in the ties of blood, of nationality, of humanity.

Through the “Nationals” of today the conflict has again been stirred up between those who think themselves to have merely human blood and human ties of blood, and the others who brag of their special blood and the special ties of blood.

If we disregard the fact that pride may mean conceit, and take it for consciousness alone, there is found to be a vast difference between pride in “belonging to” a nation and therefore being its property, and that in calling a nationality one’s property. Nationality is my quality, but the nation my owner and mistress. If you have bodily strength, you can apply it at a suitable place and have a self-consciousness or pride of it; if, on the contrary, your strong body has you, then it pricks you everywhere, and at the most unsuitable place, to show its strength: you can give nobody your hand without squeezing his.

The perception that one is more than a member of the family, more than a fellow of the tribe, more than an individual of the people, has finally led to saying, one is more than all this because one is man, or, the man is more than the Jew, German, etc. “Therefore be every one wholly and solely – man.” Could one not rather say: Because we are more than what has been stated, therefore we will be this, as well as that “more” also? Man and Germans, then, man and Guelph? The Nationals are in the right; one cannot deny his nationality: and the humanitarians are in the right; one must not remain in the narrowness of the national. In uniqueness the contradiction is solved; the national is my quality. But I am not swallowed up in my quality – as the human too is my quality, but I give to man his existence first through my uniqueness.

History seeks for Man: but he is I, you, we. Sought as a mysterious essence, as the divine, first as God, then as Man (humanity, humaneness, and mankind), he is found as the individual, the finite, the unique one.

I am owner of humanity, am humanity, and do nothing for the good of another humanity. Fool, you who are a unique humanity, that you make a merit of wanting to live for another than you are.

Posted in Egoism, Philosophy, Politics, Texts of Interest | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Either Way, It’s American Displacement Day

Posted on 13th October 2015 by MRDA

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Yesterday yielded another round of commotion regarding the infamous Christopher Columbus, designated “discoverer” of the so-called “New World” (Leif Erikson moans from Midgard!). No doubt, the less-than-vocal majority of Statesiders were simply thrilled to get a day off from work; the more vocal, however, reheated their rancour over the late Double-C’s conquering, raping, enslaving ways, wishing instead for an “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” to displace the dastard. Not surprisingly, this generated a bit of an uproar from the more reactionary elements of the World Wide Web, who predictably countersignalled in favour of Columbus.

Now, on October 13th, 2015, I sit here typing this whilst high (or, rather, low) on my favourite empathy-suppressant. Clearly, it’s a shitty batch, what with me feeling somewhat sympathetic to the prog pouting over this issue. Going by several accounts of his exploits, Columbus and his crew were certified cunts, engaging in kidnapping, murder, rape, and kiddy sex slavery, amongst other fun activities; all this after being, by CC’s own account, warmly welcomed by the Amerindian tribes who would become their all-purpose prey. Taking that into account (plus the fact he never actually set foot on the North American mainland) it does seems rather grotesque of Statesiders to dedicate a day of pomp and pageantry to his “discovery”; kinda like “Good War” enthusiasts fellating Bomber Harris for raining down death on civilian populations.

That said, I find the desired (and partially realised) replacement of the occasion with an Indigenous Peoples Day to be sublimely silly and short-sighted. For all the shit suitably slung the way of Columbus, Cortez, and all the other Christians who murdered Indians, they were but the most proximate of predators on the calendar of conquest. A decade ago, I stumbled upon a rather illuminating piece of historical revisionism on the late and lamented Loompanics site; its author, Bill Wilson, made the case that those favoured by the IPD-endorsers had encountered and erased a preceding population of decidedly different descent:

Unlike contemporary Indians, these fossilized remains bear no resemblance to modern Mongoloid people. That fact is vitally important to the point of this article. Genetic and other testing long ago proved that the Cherokees, Navajo, Creek, and other tribes are descendants of Asian population groups.12 In light of recent evidence, their claims to be the “original” Americans rests on faulty ground indeed.

Even more disturbing for the PC crowd is what the rock art of these “Australian Americans” record. Cave paintings made at the same time that Asiatic people begin to appear in the region show scenes that are radically different from those made prior to their arrival. Images of serene and playful village life give way to drawings of executions, warfare and outright slaughter, scenes that only appear after the arrival of the Asiatics. These drawings correspond to discoveries of skulls in the fossil record that for the first time show Mongoloid characteristics.

The inference is clear: When the Asians began to arrive in the area, they began a bloody and violent crusade against the people already living there. This genocidal campaign continued until the aboriginal people disappeared from the fossil record. From nine thousand to seven thousand years ago the skeletal remains shifted from being exclusively Negroid to exclusively Mongoloid. Combined with the bloody scenes appearing in the cave paintings at the time, the fossil records reveal a disturbing fact: The true first Americans were wiped out by the people who now claim that title.13

Needless to say, the probability of the first Americans being Australian made the history of the “New World” all the more fascinating for me, with subsequent spotlight-shining bringing the proposed proceedings ever closer to high-definition (and much closer to an actual discovery than anything Columbus carried out). To quote Gregory Cochran’s overview of the most recent papers…

The background fact is that the earliest skeletons, especially in Brazil, look like Australo-Melanesians.  Long skulls.  If population Y were almost entirely standard Amerindian, with only a smidgen of Australo-Melanesian ancestry, they would have looked like Amerindians.  On the other hand, if the original settlers of the Americas were mostly or entirely Australo-Melanesian (or more exactly something vaguely related to those existing populations) they would have those long, narrow skulls.  This is the Paleoamerican model – and if true, it means that an Onge-like population arrived first, and that the incoming Amerinds almost completely wiped out them out later,  with here and there a bit of admixture.

With this noted, it’s worth asking the pro-IPD crew: Which indigenous peoples do you seek to honour? Given the ignorance and motivated incuriosity on this topic, it’s safe to say it ain’t the Australoids!

Me being me, I can’t help but laugh at those who call out one violent, barbarous displacement by unwittingly enshrining — by way of overgeneralisation — the architects of another. I can only imagine the mass mind-mangling, in the event of the “Paleoamerican model” gaining ground in mainstream discourse.

If the proverbial Sins of the Father apply to those who share Columbus’ continental descent, do today’s Amerindians need to be walking and wailing an eternal Trail of Tears for the actions of ancestors long dead? Hell, if one subscribes to the concepts of intergenerational guilt and collective blame, wouldn’t it make sense to see the rape, murder, and enslavement of Columbus’ hosts as just deserts for the massacre of the Melanesians?

Not subscribing to such sentiments, I’d prefer to see October the 12th commemorated as ‘Let the Dead Bury the Dead Day’, with the descendants of both displacements figuring out less acrimoniously atavistic ways to coexist on this planet. I’d also tell those caught up in such concepts to wash the blood and spooge off their well-wrung hands, but that presupposes such being on them in the first place.

In any case, I suspect this sorry series will run for a few more seasons yet. Tune in for next year’s aggravating episode, I guess….

~MRDA~

Posted in America, Biorealism, Entertainment, History, Perspectivism, Politics, Racial Issues, Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

The Cult of Hope by H.L. Mencken

Posted on 12th September 2015 by MRDA

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As today’s the birthday of the Sage of Baltimore, optimism becomes an increasingly alien concept for me, and I saw a passing mention to this piece in Michael Rose’s Infernalia (which I plan to review in the next week or two), enjoy Mencken’s meditations on the absurdity of hope.

~MRDA~

The Cult of Hope

by H.L. Mencken

From Prejudices: Second Series, 1920, pp. 211-218

Of all the sentimental errors that reign and rage in this incomparable Republic, the worst is that which confuses the function of criticism, whether aesthetic, political or social, with the function of reform. Almost invariably it takes the form of a protest: “The fellow condemns without offering anything better. Why tear down without building up?” So snivel the sweet ones: so wags the national tongue. The messianic delusion becomes a sort of universal murrain. It is impossible to get an audience for an idea that is not “constructive”—i.e., that is not glib, and uplifting, and full of hope, and hence capable of tickling the emotions by leaping the intermediate barrier of intelligence.

In this protest and demand, of course, there is nothing but the babbling of men who mistake their feelings for thoughts. The truth is that criticism, if it were confined to the proposing of alternative schemes, would quickly cease to have any force or utility at all, for in the overwhelming majority of instances no alternative scheme of any intelligibility is imaginable, and the whole object of the critical process is to demonstrate it. The poet, if the victim is a poet, is simply one as bare of gifts as a herring is of fur: no conceivable suggestion will ever make him write actual poetry. And the plan of reform, in politics, sociology or what not, is simply beyond the pale of reason; no change in it or improvement of it will ever make it achieve the impossible. Here, precisely, is what is the matter with most of the notions that go floating about the country, particularly in the field of governmental reform. The trouble with them is not only that they won’t and don’t work; the trouble with them, more importantly, is that the thing they propose to accomplish is intrinsically, or at all events most probably, beyond accomplishment. That is to say, the problem they are ostensibly designed to solve is a problem that is insoluble. To tackle them with a proof of that insolubility, or even with a colorable argument of it, is sound criticism; to tackle them with another solution that is quite as bad, or even worse, is to pick the pocket of one knocked down by an automobile.

Unluckily, it is difficult for the American mind to grasp the concept of insolubility. Thousands of poor dolts keep on trying to square the circle; other thousands keep pegging away at perpetual motion. The number of persons so afflicted is far greater than the records of the Patent Office show, for beyond the circle of frankly insane enterprise there lie circles of more and more plausible enterprise, and finally we come to a circle which embraces the great majority of human beings. These are the optimists and chronic hopers of the world, the believers in men, ideas and things. It is the settled habit of such folk to give ear to whatever is comforting; it is their settled faith that whatever is desirable will come to pass. A caressing confidence—but one, unfortunately, that is not borne out by human experience. The fact is that some of the things that men and women have desired most ardently for thousands of years are not nearer realization today than they were in the time of Rameses, and that there is not the slightest reason for believing that they will lose their coyness on any near tomorrow. Plans for hurrying them on have been tried since the beginning; plans for forcing them overnight are in copious and antagonistic operation today; and yet they continue to hold off and elude us, and the chances are that they will keep on holding off and eluding us until the angels get tired of the show, and the whole earth is set off like a gigantic bomb, or drowned, like a sick cat, between two buckets.

Turn, for example, to the sex problem. There is no half-baked ecclesiastic, bawling in his galvanized-iron temple on a suburban lot, who doesn’t know precisely how it ought to be dealt with. There is no fantoddish old suffragette, sworn to get her revenge on man, who hasn’t a sovereign remedy for it. There is not a shyster of a district attorney, ambitious for higher office, who doesn’t offer to dispose of it in a few weeks, given only enough help from the city editors. And yet, by the same token, there is not a man who has honestly studied it and pondered it, bringing sound information to the business, and understanding of its inner difficulties and a clean and analytical mind, who doesn’t believe and hasn’t stated publicly that it is intrinsically and eternally insoluble. For example, Havelock Ellis. His remedy is simply a denial of all remedies. He admits that the disease is bad, but he shows that the medicine is infinitely worse, and so he proposes going back to the plain disease, and advocates bearing it with philosophy, as we bear colds in the head, marriage, the noises of the city, bad cooking and the certainty of death. Man is inherently vile—but he is never so vile as when he is trying to disguise and deny his vileness. No prostitute was ever so costly to a community as a prowling and obscene vice crusader, or as the dubious legislator or prosecuting officer who jumps at such swine pipe.

Posted in Culture, Moral Panic, Philosophy, Politics, Sex, Texts of Interest | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

MRDArous Aphorisms: Pleading the Fifth

Posted on 12th September 2015 by MRDA

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  • Creation: the act of killing something that does not exist.
  • Abstraction is an idyllic and immersive place to live….which is why it’s probably better off just visited from time to time.
  • Morality: the figleaf on the crotch of desire.
  • “Plausible deniability” is another term for “passive aggression”.
  • “Happily ever after” is the glorification of the freeze frame.
  • Show me a moralist and I’ll show you a lady (or gentleman) that doth protest too much.
  • Self-flagellation: The solipsist screaming “KONY 2012!”
  • With “the School of Hard Knocks” touted as an academy of esteem, one could be forgiven for thinking hardship the hallmark of privilege.
  • Prestige can be an ideal refuge in which to pine for pleasure.
  • In this world, self-interest in another person’s well-being is the closest thing to an Ideal Platonic “pure” motive…but fuck Plato!
  • The desire for time travel is the desire for parricide.
  • In the land of Weltanschauungen lives a species of resignation commonly misidentified as “realism”.
  • Passover: A great bedtime story for kids with vegetarian parents.
  • For some, “freedom” and “civilization” amount to nothing more than the degrees of distance between any given set of laws and the guns enforcing them.
  • To breathe is to be biased, but then, so is suicide.
  • Eternal pregnancy and stillbirth: both ever more tragic when the foetuses aren’t flesh and blood.
  • “Common sense”: Oxymoron extraordinaire!
  • Conceiving of oneself as a hard-edged “seeker of truth” serves as its own seductive romance.
  • “Ruler”, “king”, “dictator”, “dominus”, “emperor”, “president”: all mere descriptors for the most exalted of slaves.
  • Propriety doth make liars of us all.
  • Never underestimate the human propensity to fail to count beyond two.
  • “No enemies to the Right”: a splendid slogan to soften souls up for a Long Knives scenario.
  • My definition of Hell: A world where one’s only options consist of being either predator or prey.
  • “Many a true word is uttered in jest”, making “just kidding” and its variants the least trustworthy phrases in the English language.

~MRDA~

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MRDAing My Medusa: Pushing Past Perfectionist Petrification

Posted on 10th September 2015 by MRDA

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Regular readers of this blog (all five of you) will have noticed that there’s been fuck-all activity chez MRDA for the past month or three. Part of that comes from being wrapped up in entanglements elsewhere, of both the fun and not-so-fun kind; some of them even managed to straddle both camps. Another inhibiting factor has been a certain ennui in regard to the current of events flowing through the newsfeeds. There’s only so much one can sit and opine about one encroachment of civil liberties after another, and things seemed to be getting kinda monomaniacal in this here hellish abode.

Yet another inhibiting factor? The same one which, during a decent spell, keeps my Infernal input at about a dozen posts a year; in the words of someone unnear-but-dear to me, “perfectionism can be paralytic”. As such, I found myself passing up many an opportunity to opine, even within the somewhat narrow scope of this blog, lest I choose the “wrong” words, arguments, sources, moment, to express the thoughts running through my brainfield.

Paradoxically, I’ve come to think of my will-to-perfectionism as a massive, crippling flaw, holding me back from many an advancement.

Thus, in an attempt to rectify the flaw, I’m gonna make a point of posting here more frequently – on a wider range of topics. As well as the usual MRDA take on current (and not-so-current) events in the sociopolitical sphere, I’ll make a point of throwing some more philosophical, personal, and pensive pieces into the mix to keep things from ossifying into the one-track. Hell, I’ll toss in a few long-overdue reviews here ‘n’ there…and maybe even garnish things off with a few creative conniptions of my own.

In other words, for those of you who’ve been reading my ramblings from the ol’ LJ days, the Infernal renaissance will combine the scope and (hopefully) frequency of the Conniption era (minus the lapses into emo bullshit) with the high scribing standards of the current WordPress/Inferno era…though dialled down a notch to avoid perfectionist petrification.

Time for me to gore the Gorgon and bring Hell out of hibernation.

~MRDA~

Posted in Personal, Philosophy, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Furore Road!! Women Enter, One Man(osphere) Leaves

Posted on 19th May 2015 by MRDA

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When something I rather like gets compared to something that arouses my animus, it’ll grab my attention, if nowt else. Last Wednesday served as a perfect example of this, what with me coming eyeball-to-screen with the most outlandish of opinions on the latest chapter in the Mad Max mythos:

Post apocalyptic feminism, lol. I won’t be seeing the new Mad Max, or at least not paying for it.

I scoffed at the statement (scribbled by one who shall remain unidentified), with its knee-jerk, ideologically-driven dismissal of a film yet unseen by its writer; at the same time, I  wondered what the fuck had inspired such an asinine reaction (not to mention the scribe’s assertion that the supposed “subordinate status” of the pudenda gender made the concept of wasteland warrior wenches – feminist or otherwise — a categorical impossibility).

My question found a likely answer later in the day when I encountered a piece by one Aaron Clarey on the manospherian (yet non-MRA) mouthpiece Return of Kings. Retitling the upcoming movie “Mad Max: Feminist Road” for the purpose of his rallying call, Clarey made much of the promotional prominence given to the character of Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron, and her apparent loquaciousness in relation to the eponymous hero.

Charlize Theron kept showing up a lot in the trailers, while Tom Hardy (Mad Max) seemed to have cameo appearances. Charlize Theron sure talked a lot during the trailers, while I don’t think I’ve heard one line from Tom Hardy. And finally, Charlize Theron’s character barked orders to Mad Max.

Nobody barks orders to Mad Max.

Now, as a firm fan of this franchise, I must admit to sharing Clarey’s concerns about the prominence given to a non-eponymous character; all the review summaries I’ve glimpsed mention the chief focus being on Furiosa at the expense of our antihero, describing the film as “female-driven” on that account. News of the ostensible star of the show being shoehorned into a support role does put something of a dampener on my anticipation, but I guess I’ll find out in a few hours how much it matters.

That said, it really doesn’t sound like Clarey’s actually watched a Mad Max flick in his life nor paid sufficient attention if he has (what with him referring to the Aussie franchise as “a piece of American culture”). It doesn’t take a diehard aficionado to grok the taciturn nature of Max, what with him fitting the (typically masculine) strong, silent mould and all; in the iconic and seminal sequel, he utters a whopping total of sixteen lines, despite being very much the central focus. As for Max being a character no one barks orders at, I suppose that holds true, provided one forgets that he starts the series as an officer of the law under the command of a leather-daddy police chief (with a distinctly girly-sounding name), pretty much goes along with the settler community patriarch’s plan in the sequel (assisted by a – *gasp* – Warrior Woman), and finds himself complying with the wishes of not one but two women across the running time of Thunderdome.

Clarey finds himself on firmer ground when he cites the involvement of feminist playwright Eve Ensler, of Vagina Monologues fame, in the film’s consultation stages. With a sunken heart, I clicked on the link to the TIME Magazine article cited in Clarey’s piece only to find…anything but an advocacy of special-pleading victimologist misandry (but wouldn’t that make for a great villain troupe in a later installment, Miller?). Sure, Ensler pushes the myth of endemic sex trafficking, sees a woman falling in love as “surrendering her power”, and pulls that obnoxious femorrhoid tactic of claiming anyone with a good word to say about double-Xers as part of her tribe; she even has the audacity to claim the sight of sisters doin’ it for themselves to be such an unprecedented and objectionable trope as to need “sneak[ing] in[to]” the narrative. Still, when it comes down to the purported “feminism” in Fury Road, Ensler’s ejaculations reveal it to be nowt more obnoxious than…fighting for freedom from actual oppression and predation — perish the thought!

As established in previous installments of the series, “rape culture” exists as everything but a cute misnomer in the Wasteland: no need or time to stretch the definition of rape when the local marauders yearn to stretch the dimensions of your slit. As such, the premise of women fighting to escape a warlord looking to use them as brood mares for his hordes fails to elicit my indignation. Far from “blur[ring] the lines between masculinity and femininity”, as Clarey claims, Fury Road sounds painfully, acutely aware of the gender divide.

In short, the film sounds closer to Savage Streets than Baise-Moi in terms of its gender relations policy: make ‘em eat lead only if they (try to) make you give head. Personally, I say “yay(-yay-yahoo)” to that!

Reading the Clarey-on call for a boycott to stave off a mushroom-cloud menocide of cinematic proportions, I think back to similarly pathetic pleas by various other special interest groups, be they white identitarians shunning Machete and Thor for supposed endorsements of cultural and racial “genocide”; black identitarians protesting an art exhibit for its purported “white colonial supremacy”; antifa agitators picketing “problematic” performers; or (most appropriately) shrews trying to moan mammaries off Page 3. Whichever way you wanna slice or special plead it, all these fucking factions exemplify the Procrustean paw of politics, clawing away at all aesthetic appreciation beyond prescribed perimeters. I suppose it adds up to their idea of a fun night out.

Still, whilst Clarey and co exhort my fellow Y-chromosome-carriers to join hands with them in sobling solidarity, I’ll be at the local cineplex, checking out this new addition to a much-loved universe. If Fury Road represents a cinematic decline, I for one intend to enjoy it.

UPDATE (Same day, hours later): After finally watching the film (which I thoroughly recommend), I must say that rumours of Furiosa’s prominence at the expense of Max have been considerably exaggerated; the latter gets more than enough screentime, focus, plot relevance, and badass moments to warrant having his name front ‘n’ centre in that title. The other characters certainly flap their gums a lot more, though I struggle to remember an instance of Furiosa “barking orders” at our protagonist. In the tradition of the Alien and Terminator series of film’s, Fury Road shows that one can put strong and capable females in prominent roles without going all feminist with it, making the gee-whiz reactions by feminists laughably baffling, and Clarey’s RoK article ever the more fucking retarded. The film also does an aesthetically pleasing job of depicting the pitfalls of male disposability – not bad at all for a “feminist” flick.

To reiterate: Get a fucking grip, or a room, gendersphere – I don’t care which.

~MRDA~

Posted in Culture, Entertainment, Gender Issues, Moral Panic, Movies, Politics, Racial Issues | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

MRDArous Aphorisms: Go Fo(u)rth!

Posted on 17th April 2015 by MRDA

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  • Too often, folk who exhort you to “broaden your horizons” simply wish for you to narrow them to a rut of their choosing.
  • The laugh track: a confession of insecurity, if not abject contempt for both audience and material.
  • Pride: the psychological prophylactic.
  • To the oversocialised, all else appears autistic.
  • The “edgiest” explanation isn’t necessarily the most accurate.
  • Holding Eris at bay just gives her apples full sway.
  • Regardless of form, communication amounts to arrogance.
  • “Unprecedented” is not a synonym for “impossible”.
  • Mansplaining: Feminist for “logic”.
  • If you advocate male infant circumcision on the rationale that “he won’t remember”, what logical objection could you possibly have to “newborn porn”?
  • To be apart from the world whilst being a part of it – this I call mastery!
  • The romance of “the people”, of the beleaguered “masses yearning to breathe free”, is a fine thing to believe…provided you stay the fuck away from reality!
  • One person’s inconsequential annoyance is another’s existential nightmare.
  • Too often, an appeal to “loyalty” is a veiled way of saying “Betray yourself!”
  • Sometimes, the bottle can be a bridge to honesty with the self.
  • Whenever I hear talk of a “movement” these days, I can’t help but prefix it with “bowel”.
  • “Inner”? “Philosophical”? “Long-term”? Anything but the pomp and charade of “higher” values!
  • Innuendo: description and example.
  • “Separation of church and state” is often the bureaucrat’s way of saying: “Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me!”
  • The Internet, where the polarities of intellect reside and collide.
  • Troll maxim: “Every day is April Fool’s Day”
  • Strength or weakness: which of the two is father to your compassion?
  • They’ll scold you for “running away from your problems”, but what if your problems stem from the fact that you won’t?
  • Traditionalism: A euphemism for necrocracy.
  • Limitation: the heart of identity.
  • All things are halal to me.
  • If it ain’t my problem, why do I need to be “part of the solution”?
  • Following one’s interests > following “one’s” interest group(s).
  • The outsider, exception, anomaly, suffers more for his commonalities with the general run of humanity than he does for his points of divergence.
  • Pessimism: Another prophylactic to dull the disease of disappointment .
  • At the masquerade ball, ambition often finds itself mistaken for that thing called “humility”.
  • Sometimes, I can’t help but think that “read between the lines” is coded speech for “insert bias here” or “make shit up”.
  • “You’re shameless!” = ” How dare you not have a weakness I can exploit!”
  • Borg cube audition: “I’m just saying what everyone else is thinking.”
  • The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose”… just as I cite him for my own.
  • “I did it for a higher cause!” = “Diplomatic immunity!”
  • If sin is so ugly, why are so many attracted to it?
  • Whenever someone preaches “unity” amongst bitterly fragmented parties, I always wonder who they want the “united” to beat up on, instead.
  • When you consider the canvas, the use of the phrase “line in the sand” to signal firmness sounds kinda ironic.
  • I wonder: Will the SJWs of transhumanist times bemoan their “oppression” by “the Circuitry”?
  • We live under a climate where one’s very existence stands to be weaponised, whether as bullet or bull’s-eye or both.
  • The urge to create and the urge to destroy: sometimes the two don’t stand apart.

~MRDA~

Posted in Aphorisms, MRDArous Aphorisms, Personal, Philosophy, Quotes | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment