QED

Fair-Weather Prattling

empty talkI switched on a BBC World News program and found myself listening to a round-table debate among three women and two men. There was only one white man. I know he was white because of his appearance and because, inevitably, he was referred to as such at one point to emphasise his innate bias. I recalled the BBC debates of my youth with people like Malcolm Muggeridge. They were all (‘biased’ and oldish) white men in those days. The standard of debate was far higher and the provincial accents not so evident or jarring. Or, is that my nostalgia showing? Or, is it yet one more symptom of a civilisation in its death throes? Both I would say.

Britain is allowing in some refugee children who have been encamped in Calais. The only trouble, as the white man said, is that some of them look as though they are 25 years old and all are male. I think it was agreed that the border-control people should lift their game without arriving at the obvious conclusion that corruption of one kind or another must be afoot.

A story was told of a lady with two young children who had agreed to foster a refugee child but, instead, had found a hulking young man on her doorstep. Reportedly, she is afraid for her safety and for her children’s safety. Ho-hum! I kid you not, at one point, we were told that it isn’t the fault of male refugees that they treat women badly; it is the fault of their culture. They know no better. No mention of Islam. Ho-hum!

All agreed, as you would expect from the BBC, that Britain had a responsibility to take in refugee children – though, to be fair, the white man did plaintively refer to homeless British children requiring support too. Nothing to see there; let’s move on — and they did, to Donald Trump. He was introduced into the conversation by one of the women as the “orange monster”. What followed was furious agreement that Mr Trump was unspeakable. But that wasn’t the end of it. Sexism is alive and well in the US apparently.

According to another of the women, the fact that Trump would win easily if only men voted and that Hillary Clinton would win easily if only women voted, showed that men were prejudiced against a woman candidate. The objection raised to this line of reasoning was that many women had found themselves voted into high office in the US and elsewhere with the support of men. But the more obvious retort that sexism can cut both ways was not made.

But there I go again forgetting that sexism, and racism too, only runs one way. Women couldn’t possibly be expected to vote for a lecherous man. On the other hand, Mrs Clinton’s persecution of women ill-used by her husband is forgivable. Because she is a woman?

As an older white man, I have a gender-related view of the voting landscape in the US. It is not the spurious and sexist one proffered on the program. Women for many years have been more wedded to the Democratic Party and less to the Republicans than have men. Men, relatively speaking, are more plugged into politics and therefore more likely to be swayed one way or the other by policies than are women, whose political preferences are more stable.

I would suggest that the sharper-than-usual gender gap of this election is to do with men seeing the need for the kinds of policies espoused by Trump and with women objecting to Trump’s character as they see it. It has little or nothing to do with men not wanting a woman for president. Why feminists need to put everything in this gender-preference perspective is annoying to say the least.

As to Trump’s character, it seems to me, as we used to say, that he has been a bit of a lad in his time. Most men don’t act around women as he evidently has, but many men do. I have seen them and wondered how they got away with it – patting women’s bottoms and such; particularly as those I saw were not rich and powerful. I dare say if they had become rich and powerful any number of women could have claimed they were groped by them decades later. At the time, none seemed to do other than to take it in their stride. This brings me to the latest woman dumping on Trump.

Karena Virginia, lawyered-up, said that Trump, in the company of friends, had admired her legs in 1998 and that she felt objectified. As reported: “He then walked up to me and reached with his right arm and grabbed my right arm. Then his hand touched the right inside of my breast. I was in shock. I flinched.” She said she saw Mr Trump again about five years ago at a business event, and that he looked at her “up and down”.”I had come to the realisation that I was the victim,” she said, adding that Mr Trump “had violated me when he groped me years earlier”.

Really, this is the most trivial and tenuous complaint that I can think of. Why did Trump take her arm? Maybe he wanted to introduce her to his friends as a pretext for asking her out. Too forward? Perhaps. Did she turn resulting in her breast touching his hand? Who knows and who the heck cares? If this is the worst ‘sexual assault’ this lady has suffered I can tell you I have suffered worse and lived not to tell the tale.

Give us all a break, Donald Trump wants to secure the borders, to send rapists packing and to rid the United States of Islamic extremism. Women should be worried about Muslim men and their attitude to women; particularly Muslim men from backward cultures or those who take their religion seriously. That is a real problem. Trump’s personal transgressions which, so far as I can see, stop well short of Bill Clinton’s (and of others in times when such transgressions were kept under wraps) are well beside the point. Women might see Trump as a lecherous orange monster but he is the best thing going for them in this increasingly Islamicised world.

The character of modern Britain is far different from the Britain of my youth. Women have a more prominent place and there is much more racial and cultural diversity. As we know, the same can be said of Australia and all Western nations. There is much good in this, no doubt. But a unified and masculine attitude of mind is necessary to counter threats. Diversity and feminisation is a fair weather indulgence. What I heard on the BBC was fair weather prattling, akin to Nero’s fiddling.

Western civilisation needs Trump. Western women need Trump. Feminists need Trump, as distasteful as this might seem to them. Let me go on. Christians need Trump. Jews need Trump. LGBTs need Trump. This is not the time to fret about Trump’s personal weaknesses for women. It is the time to rely on his strengths and his policies.

26 thoughts on “Fair-Weather Prattling

  • Jody says:

    Nobody needs Trump; now or ever. The Republicans have abandoned him and those who have not will have it hanging over their heads for years to come.

    Clinton will start her Presidency as the most loathed President in US history – from day 1. If the GOPs can’t get their house in order in those years I despair further for the fate of the USA.

    I’m so tired of hearing about identity politics and the plight of women. In this country feminists and progressives are trying to do to men what the Taliban and Islam has been doing to women for centuries – putting a bag over them and shutting them up. Now that suppression is going to be officially sanctioned in Victoria with gender and domestic violences classes about how bad men are. That’s right, put them into burkas and keep them in their place.

    The more things change the more they stay the same.

    • en passant says:

      Jody,
      Your blind hatred of Trump could lead to something far worse. I hope you get what you wish for, as we will in Oz when the Turncoat is finally turned out and we get the economic destruction of Oz voted in. Do you remember the Buddhists who immolated themselves in Vietnam in 1963 to protest the Diem Government and try to bring about its downfall. They got their wish and were almost destroyed as a result.

      I received the following from a former Army Brigadier when proposed rebutting an article written by a former Chief of the Defence Force: “You seem to have assumed that the traditional mission of the Infantry (“to seek out and close with the enemy, to kill or capture him, to seize and hold ground and repel attack, by day and night, regardless of season, weather or terrain”) is the mission of the modern ADF. It is not. The ADF has a much broader mission extending to aspects of national security and which encompasses humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR). An effect of climate change has been to intensify weather systems (pump more energy into them), making storm events (cyclones, tornados, floods, bushfires etc. more intense and damaging than hitherto, as insurance company records readily attest. [Forgetting to mention the fact that we simply have more people and infrastructure in adverse weather prone areas …] The ADF is being increasingly called on to provide HADR in such circumstances.

      I replied (in part): “Your enlightenment of my fossilized views on the function of the ADF as a social-engineering Petri Dish is truly concerning. …. I would not join the Army today. So when the warriors depart, the remainder can have a luv-in, pillow fights and sleepovers. Much better than mud & blood, but I doubt the hard men of our enemies will find the Anzac’s of tomorrow equal to those of yesteryear.”

      You may not like Trump, but as Kipling said, it is the rough men who allow you to sleep easy.

      • Jody says:

        I don’t have a blind hatred for anybody; I make a call based on the erratic and narcissistic behaviour of Trump and history has shown the disastrous consequences of these types of leaders. How easy it seems to be to become enthralled with a demagogue who promises easy solutions to complex problems.

  • denandsel@optusnet.com.au says:

    The seriousness of any crime is now determined more by who did it, rather than what was done.
    – That is why TA looking at his watch while being abused by Julia Gillard was regarded as a bigger crime and received more media attention than has the issue of female genital mutilation by Muslims in Australia and elsewhere.
    – That is why generations of academics and media people can and do overlook the fact that 100 million people were killed last century by socialist governments when trying to enforce their failed and lethal economic systems, while they simultaneously go into apoplexy about the dangers of supposed CO2 induced catastrophic AGW, when the extra CO2 has so far been proven to be more beneficial than harmful.
    -That is why Bill Clinton has been and will continually be forgiven by the majority of the leftist media for actual sins up to and including rape [and while his wife covered up for him by hounding the women Bill abused]and why genuinely lethal misogynist behaviour by Islamists is tolerated or ignored while just simple boorish behaviour by Trump [who is uncivilised rather than criminal] is regarded more seriously by the MSM than barbaric Islamic mass killings.

  • brian.doak@bigpond.com says:

    Jody like quite a few females does not like Trump, perhaps because he is boorish. However, remember back to our philandering PM, Bob Hawke, he was an effective national leader despite his personal weakness for women. Conversely the loyally married PM, Gough Whitlam, a darling of the media is remembered by conservatives for his disastrous national leadership.

  • bemartin39@bigpond.com says:

    It is beyond comprehension how intelligent, reasonable people could possibly prefer Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump in the White House. One need not like Trump or even approve of his proposed policies to ardently wish that Clinton is prevented from winning the most powerful office in the world. The latter is an incorrigible, serial liar, a swindler and a thief, as well as the puppet of the dark, evil, background forces with the agenda of One World Government. Trump’s opponents are petrified at the prospect of him winning because he, unlike Clinton and and a host of western politicians, is not beholden to them. How good a president of the USA he might make is a secondary question. Clinton would most certainly continue the disastrous processes taking the country to an inevitably disastrous end.

    • mvgalak@bigpond.com says:

      I suggest , Bill, that you re-read your post carefully. ‘It is beyond comprehension how intelligent, reasonable people could possibly prefer Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump in the White House.”
      If, in your defence of Donald Trump and denunciation of Hillary Clinton you use arguments like the well-worn conspiracy theory of One World Government and dismiss the consideration of how good a president Donald Trump would make – I suggest that this kind of help Donald Trump can do without.

      • bemartin39@bigpond.com says:

        The Rothschilds and their cronies at the Bilderberg Group would read with delight your dismissal of One World Government as a well worn conspiracy theory. That is precisely the attitude they are keen to foster while they proceed undermining western civilisation, the most stubborn obstacle obstructing their grand design for the “benefit of mankind”.

        • mvgalak@bigpond.com says:

          All right, you win. Bilderberg group it is. As well as, if you wish, crop circles, alien abductions and Hogwarts School of magic. Anything at all. Just do us all a favour and do not support Donald Trump publicly. Please.

  • Homer Sapien says:

    Peter, most readers would agree that Christianity is the bedrock of Western society yet we become very lukewarm Christians. I can’t find anything on those pages which is explained in the light of the Bible. Take Trump for instance, just lusting after a woman in your thoughts makes you just as guilty as actually “knowing” her according to the holy Book. In that light, who amongst Christians would “throw the first stone” in the direction of Donald, yet the fast majority seems to do so?

    • ian.macdougall says:

      Which is an argument for not having a devout Christian in charge of anything. But fortunately most of that persuasion are less than devout, and are prepared to see through the opportunism and verbal froth of The Trump. Only That Trump would have the gall to run for (correction: try to buy his way into) the Presidency without ever having held any public office previously: testified to by the fact that his GOP campaign manager has now jumped ship. Clinton has a record in public office, which her opponents are going through meticulously. Trump has not even been a local neighborhood dog catcher.
      But That Trump is an excellent hot air generator, vague slogans and proposals like ‘make America great again’ coming thick and fast. But it is code for having a trade war with China, betraying a pathetic ignorance of economic history on the part of The Trump and his policy advisors, and an assumption that those on the other side cannot and therefore will not respond.
      The Trump has an excellent and established record for groping, and he is quite good at it. I refer not to his fingertip relations with women, but to how he finds his way around in the dark.

      • commerce@internode.on.net says:

        “Only That Trump would have the gall to run for (correction: try to buy his way into) the Presidency ”
        Wow ! Clearly you don’t do irony !

  • mburke@pcug.org.au says:

    In any half reasonable let alone perfect world, neither Trump nor Clinton would have survived the primaries. If Martha Stewart did serious time for lying to the FBI about some relatively trivial insider trading matter, on a similar scale Clinton would be serving a much more severe jail sentence for her lies to the FBI, and Trump would be suffering the dismemberment of his empire and, perhaps, doing time himself. But we are not living in such a world and Trump and Clinton are the only choice available assuming that abstention is not a sane option. If Trump is elected, he will be faced with a hostile media the like of which not even George W. Bush on his very worst day would have had to contend. He will face a fractious Congress with a large number of Republicans every bit as hostile to him as the most rabid Democrats. In short, his every move will be monitored and dissected by the media, and Congress would have no difficulty finding the necessary super majorities or whatever is necessary to curb his most outrageous legislative or policy extremes. On the other hand, Clinton will be aided and abetted by an adoring media and a supine Congress. They will support her in stacking the Supremes with SJWs and continuing Obama’s disastrous domestic and foreign policies. If Fort Knox still contains any American gold, she’ll find a way to divert it to her family and supporters. God help us all. Nobody else could.

  • bemartin39@bigpond.com says:

    It is an unmistakable sign that the Clinton camp is preparing itself for possible defeat when the New York Times publishes a reasonably balanced article concerning the opposing candidates. Who would have thought? Check it out.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/opinion/sunday/the-dangers-of-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0

  • pgang says:

    It’s all up-side for Trump now. He’s polling well and the Democrats have used up all their weapons of character assassination. The faked up sex scandal hasn’t dented Trump. There is nothing left for them to argue now whereas for Hillary it just gets worse.

  • padraic says:

    I am with Jodie and Peter on this one vis-à-vis the accusations against Trump and the hatred by female ‘progressives’ towards men. It may come as a shock to the lesbian feministas that men are attracted to women and vice versa and often demonstrate this attraction by non-violent, non-threatening tactile responses – at one end of the spectrum such as kissing on both cheeks, arms around the waist in a dance etc and at the other end lightly touching a woman’s breast or a woman pressing her breasts against a man’s back. This sort of behaviour has been around ever since Eden and is a very personal interaction between the sexes and to be sorted out by the individuals concerned. These days, the Education Departments want an activist approved checklist for every aspect of human behaviour and some of what they approve of these days goes well beyond what Trump is accused of. Most women I know support the original feminist aims of equal pay for equal work and equal opportunity but are repelled by their strident interference in the natural healthy relations between men and women. It has reached ridiculous proportions in some areas. Not so long ago I was at a function and overheard a midwife who was complaining about not being able to show new mothers how to attach their infant to the breast for feeding purposes, as had been done for aeons apparently, because it constituted “inappropriate touching”. They now have to show the mothers a video and that is practically useless. What happened to “secret women’s business” and “secret men’s business”? Trump may have gone too far, but why are all these women being trotted out just when he is campaigning for president? How low the “progressive” Western media sunk with this “holier than thou” and shallow approach to an election that has world-wide implications. The rest of the world is looking on in either amazement or amusement at the drivel being written by these progressive hypocrites.

  • Keith Kennelly says:

    Jody

    Money counts.

  • ian.macdougall says:

    Then again, Angela Davis, that rather perceptive commentator with a famous background as a black activist has opined that Trump is laying the foundations for a native American fascist movement.
    “If poor white people are suffering, if they’re seeing that their children will be even poorer than they are, Donald Trump is now saying: ‘Yes you are suffering, I feel your pain … it is because of immigrants, it is because of Mexicans, it is because of black people in the inner cities, it is because of Muslims,” she said.
    “He’s creating an enemy on which they can project their own suffering and pain. And this is very scary because this can certainly be interpreted as the making of a fascist movement.”
    Hitler based himself on the ‘we wuz robbed’ indignation of a horde of demobilised, demoralised and defeated German WW1 soldiers and financially stricken petit bourgeois people, particularly in and around Munich. All they lacked was firepower. They had the mood and the motivation, and Hitler pointed them all to a target population of eminently blamable scapegoats: the Jews.
    Thanks to the peculiar history of the US and the power of the NRA and the gun lobby generally, the wherewithal for a new civil war is widespread in that country, and Trump is not exactly trying to avoid starting one. Anything that in his view helps his business interests I suppose.
    Read all about it at the website of the (choke! caaargh! splutter! hawk! spit!) ABC.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-20/us-election-angela-davis-warns-trump-paving-way-for-fascism/7951408

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