Author: Kim du Toit

Pinochet Revisited (1)

Politics

Reader Norma asked this question of me under one of yesterday’s posts:

Sooo…how do you reconcile your admiration for Pinochet with your revulsion of Guevara/Castro, given that they used a lot of the same means to achieve their respective ends?  Is it all about the ends rather than the means?

I’m not an admirer of Chilean General and President Augusto Pinochet, by any means. What amazed me, back when I visited Chile with The Mrs., was how many Chileans, both ordinary working-class and the prosperous middle class, were admirers of Pinochet. So I attempted to bring some balance to the established trope about him, and looked at commentary and historical observations outside the usual “He was an evil dictator!” howls from the Left, both academia and most especially, the Press.

Norma was referring to a long-ago post I wrote called “The Pinochet Conundrum”, and I’d like to beg my Loyal Readers’ indulgence to read what I wrote back then, because it saves me having to rewrite much of it. The piece was actually posited against the problems facing post-war Iraq, where “moderates” in government were facing all kinds of radical Islam terrorist activity, and my point was that perhaps what Iraq needed was a strongman like Pinochet, who might do all sorts of barbarous things to the extremists, in order to turn the country as a whole into a modern, prosperous society (as Pinochet did for Chile). It’s a “conundrum” because you have to make all sorts of uncomfortable choices, some of which might go against the grain of long-held beliefs and, it should be said, decades of Leftist propaganda. Here’s the Conundrum, as I wrote it back then. Please read it.

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Quote Of The Day

QOTD

From the brilliant mind of Sarah Hoyt:

“Horrible tyrants don’t get toppled. Their softer, kinder successors do.”

Now get over there and read the rest, which explains the revolution we’re about to experience. (Warning:  Sarah is an expository writer, and when she makes an argument, she buttresses it with all sorts of logic, reasoning, historical perspective and personal experience. In other words, she doesn’t do bumper-sticker aphorisms, she does wisdom. If you think it’s “TL;DR” then I feel sorry for you.)

You Can’t Say That Here

Seen On Campus

Tyler Durden (the other one) talks about how free speech is increasingly becoming criminalized, and it’s absolutely true, of course. When someone can get jailed for “hate” speech (my favorite kind, especially when it pertains to politicians of all stripes and Marxist politicians in particular), and when simply wearing a T-shirt can get one into trouble (try wearing a MAGA shirt on the Berkeley campus, for example), it’s easy to prove Tyler’s thesis.

I have two anecdotes on the above, relating to my oh-so brief period as a full-time student at a four-year college. (I should mention up front that while U of North Texas is, by Texas standards, an island of PC and Green groupthink, it’s like Hillsdale College by comparison to Yale or Berkeley.)

Anyway, sometime during my second week on campus I was strolling towards the coffee bar at the student union building or whatever they called it, when I saw a small expanse of lawn, maybe forty feet square, in front of which was a small sign designating this lawn as a “free speech zone — permit required” area. I happened to see one of my professors walking towards me, and I stopped her.

“Am I seeing things, or is this the only place on campus where someone can make a speech? And you need a permit?”
“Uh huh,” she replied, clearly oblivious of the trap I was setting for her, “You get it from the Student Affairs office.”
“Doesn’t sound very free to me,” I observed. “If one has to get a permit to speak, it could, theoretically, be turned down?”
“Oh, they hardly ever refuse a speaking permit.”
“Hardly ever doesn’t really seem to jibe with free, does it?”
“Well, they try to avoid allowing anything that would rile up other students.”
“So if I stood up there, permit in hand, and started yelling that women and niggers shouldn’t be allowed to vote, there’d be repercussions?”
She flinched at the sound of the word “niggers”, which was my intention all along. “You’d probably be suspended!”
“So really, it’s not a free speech zone at all, is it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Exactly how is it free, when I have to get permission to speak, the content is subject to penalty, and where I can speak is constrained by regulation?”
She had no answer to that, but walked off with a horrified look on her face. As did I. I can only imagine the discussion in the faculty lounge later that day. (Despite the evidence that I was a troublemaker, I still got an A for the course because after a few lectures it was clear, both to the prof and to the other students, that I could have taught the class. So why did I take the class, then? It fulfilled a stupid requirement, and as it was an easy A, it freed up time for me to concentrate on Post-WWII German Economic History, which was an absolute monster.)

The second of my many brushes with this free speech foolishness was when I saw a student, a young kid of maybe nineteen, wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt. As we were in a classroom waiting for the professor to arrive, I thought I’d have a little fun.

“Why are you wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt?” I asked.
He looked down, as though seeing it for the first time. “‘Cause it looks cool.”
“You mean, you like the design, or you approve of his revolutionary ethos?”
I think he was a little confused by the word “ethos”, but he replied, “Both. He was a cool dude.”
“You know he was a mass murderer, right?”
The little shit smirked. “He was doin’ what had to be done.”
“Killing his political enemies, without a trial or any legal procedure, just lining them up and mowing them down with a machine gun?”
The kid started looking uncomfortable. “He didn’t do any of that.”
“You know there’s photographic and documentary proof that he did, right? And you know one of his most famous quotes?” (Long ago, I’d taken the trouble to memorize this one, for just such an occasion.)
“What?”
“To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail.” I paused. “Still think he was a cool dude?”
The kid was saved further embarrassment by the arrival of the professor, but after the class another kid came up to me and said, “Dude! That was awesome! Can you write that down for me, what Che said?”

Maybe, just maybe, I prevented at least one kid from becoming a Marxist. At worst, I exposed the other kids in the class to the reality of Guevara’s barbarity. One at a time, folks; one at a time.

Avoiding The Blue Meanies

Politics

“We don’t CARE how y’all did things back in California”
“Welcome to Texas. Now lose those bad Yankee habits”
“Californians welcome. Your politics, not so much”
“You screwed up New York. You screwed up California. Now can you leave MY state alone?”
or the all-time favorite:
“Yankees Go Home”

We are all familiar with the topic: Californians / New Yorkers / etc. get sick of their home states, pack up and leave for places less screwed-up, but bring all their bad political- and voting habits with them, and proceed to turn their adopted states into copies of the ones they fled.

Over at Maggie’s Farm, one commenter made this suggestion, which I found perfectly acceptable:

States should pass a constitutional amendment as follows:

1. Persons establishing a new state residency (i.e., not a change of residency within state) shall be prohibited from voting in state elections for a minimum of five years (ten years, if the prior residency is California).
2. The waiting period shall start on the date of issuance of the new resident’s state-issued voter ID.
3. New residents shall be registered to vote at the time of issuance of voter ID, in precincts reserved exclusively for national races (i.e. for president and vice president).

Loyal Readers of this website probably wouldn’t have too much disagreement with any of the above, although the “ten-year California extension” probably wouldn’t survive the Constitution’s Equal Protection challenge, but that’s okay. Remember, what commenter Craig suggests is but a microcosm of federal citizenship law for immigrants: you can’t become a citizen until you are legally resident in the United States for five years (with a couple of exceptions), and therefore you can’t vote, and so on.

This piece of commonsense would have a very salutary effect: remember, a newcomer to say, Texas, could always vote for POTUS and VPOTUS — that’s his absolute right as a U.S. citizen. But he couldn’t vote for anything to do with the state of Texas until he registers to vote and passes the five-year moratorium after which Texas citizenship is automatically granted. (And I don’t want to hear about “taxation without representation” from some Illinois transplant, because unlike Illinois, we have no state income tax in Texas, so the argument is moot — or as we call it in Texas, “utter bullshit“.) So we Texans could be spared the dolorous consequences of Blue staters’s bad habits, at least until we’ve had a chance to turn them into Texans.

This is actually of more than a little concern to me, because my area of north Texas is fast becoming home not just to people fleeing Blue-state bullshit, but corporations (e.g. Toyota) relocating here to escape Blue state taxation and regulation — and these corporations are bringing a large number of Blue state people with them.

This is a big state, and there’s lots of room for more folks; but there isn’t a lot for room for neo-socialist and Big Government nonsense in our state. We got to where we are by severely limiting government influence in our everyday lives — the Texas constitution is one of the most restrictive governmental covenants in the world — and by not allowing our government to tax its people into penury.

Just so we’re all clear on the topic: we already have a real problem with Latin American immigrants — the legal ones — bringing the typical Latin-American pro-government / welfare state mindset across the Rio Grande, without having a bunch of Californians and northerners doing the same thing across the Red River as well.

And don’t even think about gun control, newcomers, unless it’s keeping the bullets to a 1″ circle on the target. That, we Texans can all get behind; the other kind… as they say up north, fuhgeddabahdit. Literally.

Proliferation

The Gun Thing

When I was testing the new Ruger Mk IV pistol last week, I’d also brought along a rifle (my AK-47) for a little practice on the side. On that side of the range at Frisco Gun Club, there are four lanes set aside for rifles in a separate part of the building. When I walked in, there were three shooters already there, all shooting AR-15s, and all the AR-15s were tricked out with red dot sights, tac rails, flashlights, telescoping stocks — you name it, those rifles had ’em. And the shooters were taking this seriously: tightening the stocks, adjusting the sights (one guy even had a spotting scope — in an indoor range) and in general, going about their business with marked intent. (When I go to the range, especially when I’m with a friend or friends, it’s more of a social occasion, and we kid around, teasing each other and what have you; that didn’t happen with these guys.)

While I was busy with the AK, two of the AR guys finished up and left, and their places were taken by two more AR guys, also with tricked-out rifles and all the stuff which would make Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer have a heart attack (I wish) if they saw it. The two new guys were likewise professional and intent on tuning up their rifles, and one had a suppressor screwed onto his barrel. My plain-Jane AK looked like a muzzle-loader by comparison (but it was just as accurate, so I didn’t feel too bad).

It was the first time I’ve ever been at a range where all the other guys were shooting ARs.

Me, I was just there to make sure that my two 20-round mags were still feeding okay — any excuse for trigger time, right? — so I only popped off twenty or so rounds, then headed over to the pistol range for the real business of the day.

But I have to tell you, I really, really liked the way the AR guys were going about their business. Even though they were a bunch of individuals, they looked like a very competent citizen militia… and the whole thing smelled like freedom. I like that smell.

It looks like we’re turning back into a Nation of Riflemen, at last.

And I couldn’t be happier.

Update: I changed the pic, because I prefer the thought that women are becoming riflemen in ever-increasing numbers.

Closing The Gap

Men & Women

Oh good grief. Via Insty’s Stephen Green (who should know better), I came across this foul piece, which attempts to examine the so-called “orgasm gap” that supposedly exists between men and women — i.e. men have orgasms more frequently than their female partners — whereas with lesbian women, there is little or no gap.

“…95 percent of straight men reported usually or always achieving orgasm when sexually intimate. Only 65 percent of straight women did.”

Okay, there are two ways of looking at this. One is to see the article as a not-so-subtle dig at men, who it appears are not satisfying their female partners adequately — they reach their Big Moment too soon — whereas the Dickless Set are doing a better job of it. Big whoop.

Another way to look at this phenomenon is to understand that women are impossibly complicated creatures when it comes to bedroom delights. Obviously, Madame requires a considerable amount of, shall we say, incentive before she deigns to favor us (and herself) with a climax. The always-irascible Howard Veit once put a man’s perspective on this situation with excellent brevity and candor:

“As I watch far too much daytime TV and get drenched with the almost total commitment to the feminist rant about how bad in bed we men are because we can’t satisfy all them sexy women out there, I can’t help but ask: Since when have we men all come to accept as fact that if a woman can’t enjoy sex it is the fault of men?  Bullshit.  It’s my job to show up at the party with a stiff dick, perform like a wild man for five or so minutes, shoot my baby seed into her, and then pretend I care for her.  If a woman can’t achieve orgasm it’s her fault. I never have a problem ejaculating, ever.  In fact it feels so good I always come back for seconds, eventually.  In fact I sometimes let her go to sleep and go straight over to my girl friend’s house and do a crazy.  And BTW when was the last time you checked out the women standing in line at the grocery store or department store?  It’s a miracle any man can get it up for most of them fat slobs… Women having trouble with orgasms probably have desensitized their vaginas from over-use of sex toys (thrill sized dildos), vibrators that they have used so often they now have to have one that’s 20hp and must be kick started, or in a pinch pick up a homosexual once in a while for a little anal.  Poor babies, maybe Obama Care will pay for their sex toys so they’ll be in a good mood once in a while…”

(Howard, if you read this, please get in touch. I miss your writing terribly.)

Of course, if I’m going to be perfectly candid about this errr ticklish topic, it’s also a well-known fact that some women never have an orgasm with a partner, no matter how long they are pleasured:

…in which case, there’s always booze, as noted in this wonderful study done in the U.K. a year or so ago:

Millions of women drink alcohol before having sex because they lack confidence in their bodies, a study has found.
Almost half of those questioned said they preferred sex while under the influence of alcohol because it helped them to lose their inhibitions and be more adventurous.
Researchers, who surveyed 3,000 women aged between 18 and 50, found the average woman has slept with eight men, but was drunk with at least five of them.
On two of these occasions they couldn’t even remember the man’s name the next day.
Three quarters of women claimed they felt more able to let their hair down and go wild after a few drinks.
Four out of ten have ‘always’ been a bit tipsy when they have slept with a partner for the first time. But astonishingly 48.5 per cent said they preferred sex while under the influence.
The study also found that 75 per cent of women said they liked to drink before getting into bed with their husband or boyfriend. Some 6 per cent of women have never had sex while sober.
More than half of women polled claimed drinking with a prospective partner was ‘part of the dating process’ so they were bound to be a bit drunk when they had sex.
It was also revealed 14 per cent of women in a relationship can’t face sleeping with their partner unless they had a couple of glasses of wine beforehand.

Which reminds me of that old joke:

Question: “If a guy has six beers and a woman has six beers, who’s going to come first?”
Answer: “Who cares?”

I think I’ll just let the subject lie there, so to speak.