MMX2010

Not even close to being good enough, RJ. Your statement, "But right now I don't think anything I respond with will be productive because either you or I, or probably both of us are emotionally compromised to reply rationally." is just a passive-aggressive way of trying to make me admit EQUAL FAULT in our discussion. "Probably both of us"? Seriously!?!? RJ, just ask yourself one question: Did you use the word "bigotry" / "prejudice" BEFORE asking me about my experiences with tattoo'ed / pierced individuals? I adore this question because it's factual. Just scroll back and find the first post in which you used the word "bigotry" or "prejudice" - it's post #59. It reads as follows: "What is your experience with tattoo'd and pierced up people in your life? Have you had particularly negative interactions, hell even relationships, with those kinds of individuals? Or is this all just a prejiduce you have against tatoo'd and pierced individuals, MMX? I thank Robert for sharing his experience and that helps me understand where he's coming from. But for you, I just see it as hyper critical prejiduce based on shallow values. Until you share your personal experiences with obese, tatoo'd, and pierced people--you're just spouting bigotry." Because I never revealed (and still haven't revealed) any of my experiences with tattoo'ed / pierced individuals, it was (and still is) impossible for you to "see it as hyper-critical prejudice based on shallow values." The only thing possible was for you to feel offended by my non-association with tattoo'ed individual. But rather than state, matter-of-factly, that you felt offended, (RTR, ftw), you turned your feelings-of-offense into "Until you share your personal experiences with obese, tattoo'ed and pierced people - you're just spouting bigotry." (In other words, you ORDERED ME TO OBEY YOU, under penalty of calling me "bigoted" if I didn't answer you.) "Bigotry" is the second-strongest accusation you can make on the FDR message board, (behind only "child abuser" / "supporter of child abusers at the expense of abused children"). So you didn't merely "grab the gun in the room", RJ. You grabbed the rocket-propelled grenade in the room! And the only two things you have to say are...what? (1) I dunno if I'm ever going to reply to you ever again, MMX. (2) You, me, or probably both of us are too emotionally invested and irrational right now. That's it? Own what you did, RJ. The facts are on my side, not yours. (Or, if you don't want to own what you did - just run. After reading about r, K, rabbits, and wolves, I know exactly what you're feeling right now. So if you want to run, run. If you want to apologize, apologize.)

In my opinion, (which may be wrong, because I'm no lawyer), is that there's no such thing as, "Well, he was resisting arresting. But now he has given up." Instead, I think Garner resisted arrest the moment he said, "It stops here...". And he doesn't actually stop resisting arrest until he's been put in cuffs. ------------------------ As an aside, I'm still an anarchocapitalist. But I find myself accepting that the police are comprised of non-questioning, militarized law-enforcement agents. This agreement, strangely, makes me much more willing to take their side in cases like this. Also, their constant experience with the worst of human society arguably made them disbelieve Garner when he said he couldn't breathe. After all, how many times do suspects lie that "I can't breathe." and "You're hurting me!" - just to anger the cops?

It's not that what you're saying is wrong. It's that your Frame is completely backwards. You're questioning my words from the Frame of, "How do they reflect on the advice-recipient?" - but I'm Framing those words in terms of, "How to they reflect on the advice-giver?". ------------------------ Here's what I mean: In post #67, James Dean says (among other things), "I am saying the most consistent way to determine if people have unprocessed trauma is to ask them, not to rely on physical markers." In post #69, I replied (among other things), "You cannot negotiate desire. Nor can you make someone feel something they don't feel by merely giving them advice." In post #72, he replied (among other things), "But where would that desire come from? For me it comes from a sense that the person is virtuous and rational, a quality that is easily ascertained by being vulnerable and connected to them. His word, "me", made me giggle in humorous, dismissive, contempt because he just didn't get it. I don't think you, me, or James Dean would give a homosexual man pages and pages of advice as to how to get women to sleep with him. But if we did, I'm sure we'd be deeply embarrassed by it - because we've been taught to respect homosexual desire. (Not necessarily to condone homosexual behavior, mind you - but to, at bare minimum, respect homosexual desire.) When James Dean gave me pages of (terrible!) advice as to how to discern whether tattoo'ed / pierced individuals have unprocessed childhood trauma, it was as if he was giving a homosexual man advice on bedding ladies. But when I pointed this out to him, he talked about himself. So he simply never realized that, in order to give someone helpful advice, you have to understand their needs and desires FIRST. But when he didn't apologize, I knew he would never get it. Nor would he get that, without an apology, I don't care what advice he gives me on any subject. My finances are bad right now, so I could seriously use some money - but if James Dean gave me unsolicited stock advice, I would ignore it. And if the stock produced a 900,000,000% increase in two days I wouldn't feel bad that I "lost" the money - because I'd feel good that I ignored his advice. So, when I say, "In other words, when they're wrong, the people who listen to them must pay the price. And if you don't agree with them. you're "bigoted". Contrast this with my position, "If I'm wrong, then I will pay the price. And you all can do what you please.", I'm impugning their lack of leadership ability - as well as their bizarre unwillingness to accept that I exclude tattoo'ed / pierced individuals.

Never. For two reasons. (1) I respect the moderators' time way too much to bother them about this. They're promoting peaceful parenting, non-spanking, non-circumcision, and many other much more important topics. (2) I've been reading a lot of Rollo Tomassi's work, and am especially enthralled with his definition of "frame". Because of my understanding of frame, I was very quick to see that James Dean and Rainbow Jamz were framing their arguments in terms of, "The needs, desires, and emotional security of anonymous tattoo'ed / pierced individuals are more important than the needs, desires, and emotional security of MMX." And I was also able to argue in terms of a different frame, "No way. My needs, desires, and emotional security are more important because it's MY life - not yours, not theirs. Moreover, who are you to change my life: are you better than me, or not?" ------------------------------ Lastly, I'll PM you (but not immediately) about a very important idea I read about, and how I apply it to my FDR-interactions (and my off-board life as well).

Yup. I loved this article. ------------------ http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-04/law-puts-us-all-in-same-danger-as-eric-garner Law Puts Us All in Same Danger as Eric Garner By Stephen L. Carter On the opening day of law school, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you. I wish this caution were only theoretical. It isn’t. Whatever your view on the refusal of a New York City grand jury to indict the police officer whose chokehold apparently led to the death of Eric Garner, it’s useful to remember the crime that Garner is alleged to have committed: He was selling individual cigarettes, or loosies, in violation of New York law. The obvious racial dynamics of the case -- the police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, is white; Garner was black -- have sparked understandable outrage. But, at least among libertarians, so has the law that was being enforced. Wrote Nick Gillespie in the Daily Beast, “Clearly something has gone horribly wrong when a man lies dead after being confronted for selling cigarettes to willing buyers.” Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, appearing on MSNBC, also blamed the statute: “Some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes, so they’ve driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive.” The problem is actually broader. It’s not just cigarette tax laws that can lead to the death of those the police seek to arrest. It’s every law. Libertarians argue that we have far too many laws, and the Garner case offers evidence that they’re right. I often tell my students that there will never be a perfect technology of law enforcement, and therefore it is unavoidable that there will be situations where police err on the side of too much violence rather than too little. Better training won’t lead to perfection. But fewer laws would mean fewer opportunities for official violence to get out of hand. The legal scholar Douglas Husak, in his excellent 2009 book “Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law,” points out that federal law alone includes more than 3,000 crimes, fewer than half of which found in the Federal Criminal Code. The rest are scattered through other statutes. A citizen who wants to abide by the law has no quick and easy way to find out what the law actually is -- a violation of the traditional principle that the state cannot punish without fair notice. In addition to these statutes, he writes, an astonishing 300,000 or more federal regulations may be enforceable through criminal punishment in the discretion of an administrative agency. Nobody knows the number for sure. Husak cites estimates that more than 70 percent of American adults have committed a crime that could lead to imprisonment. He quotes the legal scholar William Stuntz to the effect that we are moving toward “a world in which the law on the books makes everyone a felon.” Does this seem too dramatic? Husak points to studies suggesting that more than half of young people download music illegally from the Internet. That’s been a federal crime for almost 20 years. These kids, in theory, could all go to prison. Many criminal laws hardly pass the giggle test. Husak takes us on a tour through bizarre statutes, including the Alabama law making it a crime to maim oneself for the purpose of gaining sympathy, the Florida law prohibiting displays of deformed animals, the Illinois law against “damaging anhydrous ammonia equipment.” And then there’s the wondrous federal crime of disturbing mud in a cave on federal land. (Be careful where you run to get out of the rain.) Whether or not these laws are frequently enforced, Husak’s concern is that they exist -- and potentially make felons of us all. Part of the problem, Husak suggests, is the growing tendency of legislatures -- including Congress -- to toss in a criminal sanction at the end of countless bills on countless subjects. It’s as though making an offense criminal shows how much we care about it. Well, maybe so. But making an offense criminal also means that the police will go armed to enforce it. Overcriminalization matters, Husak says, because the costs of facing criminal sanction are so high and because the criminal law can no longer sort out the law-abiding from the non-law-abiding. True enough. But it also matters because -- as the Garner case reminds us -- the police might kill you. I don’t mean this as a criticism of cops, whose job after all is to carry out the legislative will. The criticism is of a political system that takes such bizarre delight in creating new crimes for the cops to enforce. It’s unlikely that the New York legislature, in creating the crime of selling untaxed cigarettes, imagined that anyone would die for violating it. But a wise legislator would give the matter some thought before creating a crime. Officials who fail to take into account the obvious fact that the laws they’re so eager to pass will be enforced at the point of a gun cannot fairly be described as public servants. Husak suggests as one solution interpreting the Constitution to include a right not to be punished. This in turn would mean that before a legislature could criminalize a particular behavior, it would have to show a public interest significantly higher than for most forms of legislation. He offers the example of a legislature that decides “to prohibit -- on pain of criminal liability -- the consumption of designated unhealthy foods such as doughnuts.” The “rational basis test” usually applied by courts when statutes face constitutional challenge would be easily met. In short, under existing doctrine, the statute would be a permissible exercise of the police power. But if there existed a constitutional right not to be punished, the statute would have to face a higher level of judicial scrutiny, and might well be struck down -- not because of a right to eat unhealthy foods, but because of a right not to be criminally punished by the state except in matters of great importance. Of course, activists on the right and the left tend to believe that all of their causes are of great importance. Whatever they want to ban or require, they seem unalterably persuaded that the use of state power is appropriate. That’s too bad. Every new law requires enforcement; every act of enforcement includes the possibility of violence. There are many painful lessons to be drawn from the Garner tragedy, but one of them, sadly, is the same as the advice I give my students on the first day of classes: Don’t ever fight to make something illegal unless you’re willing to risk the lives of your fellow citizens to get your way. Don’t laugh. When I was in high school, I visited a night court session in a small New Jersey town, and witnessed a defendant being fined for eating in public.

Another article: http://www.nhregister.com/opinion/20141204/norm-pattis-eric-garner-decision-right-call Norm Pattis: Eric Garner decision right call Eric Garner paid with his life for making a simple mistake: He played street lawyer when officers tried to arrest him. The time and place to dispute facts with a cop is not on the street. It is in a courtroom. Resist an officer trying to arrest you, and you may well end up injured, or even dead. Store owners on Staten Island had complained to local police that Garner was selling individual cigarettes, known as loosies, in front of their shops. Apparently, that’s against the law. It may well be a silly law, but it is a law that is on the books. Daniel Pantaleo, a young police officer, approached Garner with other officers. You can watch Garner protest on YouTube. “I did not sell nothing,” he says, as he backs away. Pantaleo was about to arrest him. Police officers need not witness a crime take place to make an arrest. When it comes to minor offenses, they can arrest a person on the speedy information of others. In this case, it appears as if store owners complained about Garner, and officers, in reliance on the store owners, sought to arrest him. Obviously, I have no idea whether Garner sold cigarettes or not. Most likely, the cops simply relied upon the accusations of others when they approached Garner. All that was necessary to detain him was a reasonable suspicion, more than a hunch, that he had broken the law. To arrest him, they need only conclude that there was a reasonable belief he broke the law. Garner had every right to argue with the police, but the law requires all of us to submit to officers when they try to arrest us. If we resist, they are entitled to use reasonable force to overcome our resistance. It is generally foolish to pick a fight with a cop: not only are they trained in the use of force, they also come equipped with lethal tools to use to assure they win any confrontation. In the Garner case, officers used what are called “take-down” holds to bring him down. They are trained to do that. You can see officers reach for his hands to make sure he did not swing them at him. Another officer got behind Garner, and ended up with his arm around Garner’s neck. Then Garner was on all fours, and still four officers could not get him into a position in which they could handcuff him. Officers are trained in such situations to use the ground as leverage. That is precisely what they did in this instance, seeking to pin him so that they could get his hands behind his back. As the officers and Garner struggle on the ground, Garner gasped: “I can’t breathe” eleven times. You can hear the officers telling him to put his hands behind his back. He doesn’t, and perhaps cannot, comply. One officer, Pantaleo, ended up with his arm around Garner’s neck, in a choke hold prohibited by the New York Police Departments. I’ve watched the video of the take down a dozen times, and, candidly, it looks just like any number of arrests I’ve seen. Police with suspicion confront a man to question him or arrest him. The man objects, and gets angry. The officers decide to take him into custody. The man does not comply with the officers’ commands, so they use force. White, black, Hispanic, the results are always the same – the struggler loses and is sometimes injured or killed. An autopsy of Garner revealed that he died due to compression, or pressure, on his neck and chest. Among the contributing factors was the fact that he suffered from asthma and was obese; he also suffered from hypertensive cardiovascular disease. There’s no reason to suspect the officers knew of his medical history; the law does not require them to know it. The police killed Eric Garner. This is a homicide, plain and simple. But it is a long leap to go from homicide to a crime, and the Staten Island grand jury had good reason to refuse to indict, or charge, Pantaleo with a crime. To prove murder, the grand jury would have had to conclude that Pantaleo had the conscious objective to kill Brown. The videotape reflects a struggle, not an execution. To prove manslaughter, the grand jury would have had to conclude that Pantaleo was aware of a serious risk of injury and proceeded nonetheless. This is a closer call. Choke holds are prohibited because they do cause a serious risk of injury when pressure is applied on the carotid artery. But what should the officers have done? Should they have walked away from Garner because he protested? That’s a standard with ridiculous consequences. The place to say the police got it wrong is in a courtroom. Not on the streets. To prove negligent homicide, the grand jury would have to conclude the Pantaleo engaged in conduct that was a gross departure from the standard of care. This garden variety arrest of a man in response to garden variety criminal allegations simply isn’t shocking to those schooled in the business of evaluating police conduct. Pantaleo most likely will face police discipline for using poor tactical judgment in how he helped take Garner to the ground. But that does not mean the take down itself was without justification. It was justified under current law, and it happens daily on streets throughout the United States. Efforts to transform the Garner homicide into a race case are irresponsible. We need to have a serious discussion about race in the United States. And the manner in which communities, particularly communities of color, are policed is often deeply troubling. But Eric Garner was everyman, not just a black man, in his deadly struggle. The death of Eric Garner is not an example of racial injustice. It’s a tragic consequence of a man who refused to take his grievance to a courtroom, where it could be sorted out without violence. He paid for that mistake with his life. That does not make him a martyr. ---------------------------------------------------- Norm Pattis, a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer with offices in Bethany and New Haven, blogs at www.pattisblog.com. He is also the author of “Taking Back the Courts” and “Juries and Justice.” Email [email protected].

I dunno. Why don't you find a hermit / social isolate and ask him?

Have you (or him) tested his testosterone levels, to determine whether his is low?

Seconded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J-SzqUqIEM When I watched both of those videos together, I was struck by: (1) Jon Stewart's possible (if not probable) ignorance about the "special legal protections" afforded police officers, (2) The American public's likely ignorance of same, and (3) the (likely large) extent to which both entities are dissatisfied with "civil solutions" - i.e. lawsuits.

I don't know whether you're questioning whether I am "a socially isolated person" and a "hermit" because I refuse to associate with tattoo'ed / pierced individuals, or whether you're implying that Rainbow Jamz and James Dean are "socially isolated people" and "hermits" because they encouraged me to associate with / be open-minded-about tattoo'ed / pierced individuals. IF it's the former, then I'm sad that you asked such a question without asking me anything about my personal relationships. For all you know, I could have much better relationships than you because (or despite that) I don't associate with tattoo'ed / pierced individuals. Or my relationships could be equally satisfying as yours. Or they could be worse - but, even then, you'd have to assert that they're worse BECAUSE I don't associate with tattoo'ed / pierced individuals. ------------------------ IF it's the latter, I don't think "social isolation" and "hermit-ness" propelled Rainbow Jamz and James Dean to make their arguments. Instead, I think non-curiosity and arrogance propelled them. Rainbow Jamz FIRST accused me of bigotry and THEN asked me about my experiences with tattoo'ed / pierced individuals. He didn't realize, (and it'd be nice if you helped him realize), that accusing people of "bigotry" isn't an effective way of getting them to open up to you. If I accused you of "bigotry", wouldn't you be smarter to keep silent than to defend yourself - especially because I'm just a stranger on the internet and not someone you care about? Rainbow Jamz, apparently, never considered this. James Dean never asked me questions about my current and past relationships, while saying things like, "So are you saying that you would not benefit from virtuous people in your life? because that is what I'm advocating, that you associate with virtuous people and that virtue has nothing in particular to do with how one looks, dresses, does their hair, or pierces their body." If he were ONLY talking about himself and his relationships, with no expectation that others (or I) follow him, then I'd have no problem with his statement. But he wants others to follow him WITHOUT ascertaining whether his audience actually has worse relationships. He doesn't know (and doesn't care!) whether his audience has: (A) BETTER relationships - which would mean that we should ignore his advocacy, (B) EQUAL relationships - which would also make him best-ignored, or © WORSE relationships - which would give him some authority to give advice. (But, then again, he'd have to assert that he has better relationships BECAUSE he associates with tattoo'ed / pierced individuals.) Instead, he alludes to his virtuous relationships without providing any details, and alludes to my "non-desire to hang out with virtuous people" without knowing any details about my relationships. When I asked about his purposes, he stated, "I do hope to present a strong case for the legitimacy of tattooing, which I believe I have done and an currently awaiting any rebuttal anyone can come up with as I requested several posts ago." But his unwillingness to explore the relationships of his audience, (and mine in particular), fills his arguments with the unmistakable stench of, "Hey! You! The people who I'm trying to convince! You guys don't matter! Only people-with-tattoos-and-piercings matter because 'tattooing is a legitimate art form!'." (Gee, I wonder why he hasn't changed anyone's minds about tattoo'ings and piercings...) ------------------------- If it's neither of those, please clarify what you meant.

My other father-figure / mentor, Mike Cernovich, has a beautiful saying, "Don't let perfect be the enemy of better." No, the Ten Rules will NOT remedy the racist attitudes that many cops have. However, the Ten Rules WILL make better the lives of the majority of Black/Hispanic people who follow them. The Ten Rules aren't perfect, but they are better for you.

Agree with this 100%. You expressed it more eloquently than I ever could.

The two cases where EI was most lacking were: (1) Why is it such a big deal that someone rejects you just because you have tattoos? (Let's just assume this happens, even though one can easily argue that you're being rejected because you have tattoos AND because of another reason.) Sure, you can chase the person down, call him a prejudiced bigot, and feel better about yourself in the process. But by chasing that person down, you're not signaling either self-confidence or that you possess many loving friends. (2) Even if you DID convince that person to change his/her mind, why would you take pride in having to convert / persuade someone to like you? Can you imagine a wife telling a crowd of people, "Yeah, at first sight, hubby couldn't stand the sight of me. But, thankfully due to my dogged persistence and argumentation skills, I persuaded him to give me a chance. Now we're in L-O-V-E!" It churns my stomach to imagine that scenario. ----------------------- I don't know whether you're familiar with either Return of Kings or the RooshVForum, but the ROK article and the RVF reactions to that article are pure comedic genius. (If this is your first foray into those two sites, the "masculine safe space energy" they create and communicate with can be highly unnerving at first.) ROK Article: http://www.returnofkings.com/45334/5-reasons-why-girls-with-tattoos-andor-piercings-are-broken RVF Thread: http://www.rooshvforum.com/thread-41331.html

In case you missed it, the best review of Michael and Debi Pearl's book. http://www.amazon.com/review/R2SHL0PTJJQUEH/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt/179-4903651-0970625#R2SHL0PTJJQUEH It's long, but please read., November 9, 2013 By Tiffany Case "tiffanyc" This review is from: To Train Up a Child (Paperback) I originally wrote a completely different review of this book. It was a bitterly, scathingly sarcastic "positive" review that I wrote in the grip of white-hot anger. I've known about the Pearls and their book for years now, but I had just found out that it was being sold on Amazon. I am going to copy and paste my old review in the comments section below, so people can still see it, but I want to come back and write something different. I'm changing my review for two reasons: First, satire and mockery are what I'm good at. But I am not going to convince anyone this way, just harden them in their own belief that there's a "war" on Christians in the USA and that they need to double-down on the most extreme views and practices. I'm instead going to try and explain where I am coming from, as honestly as I can. The people who already agree with me will up-vote this and listen, but I'm hoping someone else might listen too. Second, I see that most of the debates here are hung up on the details: Is it ever okay to hit your child? With objects, or only with your hand? Which objects? How young can you hit them? Before age one? Before six months? How much? One or two blows? Ten? Fifteen? Until they "submit"? Is it okay to make them skip a meal? A day of meals? Two days? To put them outside in the cold? Outside without a jacket? It turns into a debate about just exactly where to draw the line between spanking and abuse, and then a debate about whether that line even exists. For those of us who come from a regional culture where corporal punishment is okay (and I'm one), it can sometimes feel like an attack on our values and the values of our parents from people who live far away and live very different lifestyles. A lot of us got "whupped" as kids, and you won't win any points calling our parents abusers. I want to explain why someone who is not necessarily a hardliner about anti-spanking (though we don't spank, and I can explain why later on) can still find the Pearls disturbing. Because I believe that abuse isn't in the details of this book. I believe it's at the heart of it. I'm not going to talk anymore about switching babies or Lydia Schatz or plastic tubing. Instead I want to talk about the Pearls and their view of this world. This comes from reading their book and their blog, and from knowing a bit about the world they live in: ....1..... First, Michael and Debi look at a child and see evil. You can read this on their blog and in their book. They talk constantly about children manipulating people, trying to get the better of you, lying, crying in an effort to "control" their parents. This is not some crazy reading of their philosophy. You can find this on any page of anything they ever wrote. I know what I'm going to hear in the comments, which is, "Toddlers and children are completely capable of manipulating and lying!" Of course they are. Anyone knows this. Part of your job as a parent is to teach them honesty and respect. But the Pearls see something different: they see an adversary in a child. They see an opponent. They see an enemy that has to be absolutely defeated and subdued. Can you understand the difference between guiding a child and defeating them? All the Pearls ever seem to talk about is "breaking" a child, "breaking" their will, proving you are stronger, "defeating" the child, being stronger. Who isn't stronger than a child? ....2.... Second, the Pearls claim to know what babies and toddlers are thinking, but what they see in children is just a reflection of themselves. Psychologists use the word "projection" for this. It's like when Jim knows that he stole credit for Joe's idea at work. When Joe says "good morning," even though it's an honest hello and he has no inkling of what Jim did, Jim's own guilty conscience makes him see sarcasm or anger. Instead of looking at what children actually can think and know and understand at a given age, the Pearls project cunning intelligence and evil motives. They look at a baby too young to recognize himself in the mirror, and see a master manipulator who cries not because he's uncomfortable or lonely or can't sleep, but because he wants to get the better of his parents. They look at a tiny toddler who can't yet even understand that different people know different things, and they think that the child is using her mother's fear of embarrassment to manipulate her into a hug. ....3..... Third, Michael and Debi don't just think you have to defeat a child, they think that control over children has to be total. A lot of people here have quoted the part of the book where Debi hands a toy to a fifteen-month-old she is babysitting (that's about the age most kids are just walking). The baby doesn't want to play with the toy. Debi hits him with a switch again and again until the baby "plays" with the toy she wants him to play with. (The Pearls describe the baby as doing this "begrudgingly" - which again, shows how they project evil intentions onto children and babies with no understanding of how a child's mind grows and develops in stages.) Pearl wants parents to keep switches highly visible in every room of the house, in every car. The intimidation and the threat of violence, for him, has to be constant. Pearl and his acolytes talk so much about having a home that is "peaceful" and "joyful." "Peace" is not the silence of a battlefield where all the enemies have been killed. "Joy" is not the smile of a hostage who smiles to keep the blows from falling. This isn't a minor quibble about how strict or how permissive to be. People will always disagree about this. This is about thinking that complete control is possible and desirable. The Pearls are right about one thing: The only way to make sure your child never, ever, ever does something you don't explicitly will them to do is to break them utterly. Is this what you want? A broken doll you can pose in the way you like? ....4.... Love. The Pearls talk about love. They talk about Christ. They have a lot to say on the subject. I used to work with abuse survivors. One woman I remember so vividly, her husband cut her face because she was "flirting" with their seventy-seven year old next-door neighbor. He said he was doing it because he loved her so much, he had to teach her. In fact, most every abuse survivor I met heard how she made him do it, and he loved her so much. Talking about love gets you nothing, in my book. It's words. Too many evil people in history have quoted the Bible. So let me instead ask the mothers reading this something: Did becoming a mother change you? I was blessed to be raised in a loving home with a large and loving family and true friends and to have a marriage that has been based on true and lasting love. I was blessed with faith as well. I knew love before I had a child. Nonetheless, the intensity and selflessness of the love I felt as a mother was new, and it is extraordinary. I feel more pity and patience and empathy now for other people than I had ever felt before in my life. Motherhood made me softer AND it made me stronger. Those things are NOT a contradiction. For most of us, a mother's love is the first and purest love we experience. It is the earthly model we have for God's mercy. Yet the Pearls mock mothers. They mock and cruelly shame and belittle. A mother's love, for them, is soft. It is weak. It's pathetic. Everybody has been in the store at one time or another, seen the mother caving to the bratty, screaming kid and felt disgusted. The Pearls take this embarrassment and fear of shame, and tell mothers to doubt everything their eyes and ears and heart tell them about their child. They tell you your instincts and common sense can't be trusted. They tell you to push down the horrible way that your child's cries make you feel. They tell you to avoid your doctor and your neighbor and your relatives who are not "saved." They tell you to listen only to them. They shame you and control you with the fear of being "that mother." I ask: Does Christ speak to us by changing our hearts with selfless love? Or does he speak through a book written by a dogmatic, prideful, and cruel man? I read so many things in these reviews and comments from mothers who feel this mix of pride and shame about their children's behavior. Women who describe doubting the Pearl's teachings "at first," or saying that they don't take the teachings "too far." Women who bend over backwards and try to hard to justify the teachings in this book, despite clear and serious doubts. It makes my heart hurt. This book doesn't just do violence to children; it does violence to the good and decency in a parent's heart. ....... I have not been a victim of abuse myself, but I know a lot about abusers and what they leave behind when they've ripped through a person. It's part of what fuels my anger at the Pearls. You can say that I'm blinded by anger, but believe me that I know whereof I speak. I can see these people for what they are. I've heard it and seen it too many times to be fooled. This is the philosophy of an abuser - not a strict parent, or Christian parent, or a spanking parent - an abuser. The projection of evil motives onto someone you're hurting. The need for complete and total control. The fetishization of domination and pain. The inability to empathize or understand what another person is feeling. Filling up your lack of understanding and empathy with a mirror image of your own evil thoughts. Turning sacred words like "love" into a lie and a disguise. Using the language of loving family to hide a heart that can't love another freely, just force their dolls act out a fantasy of what they think a loving child should look like. Abusers. Not because of the things they tell you to do, but because of how they frame the entire relationship between parents and children.

Police hierarchies also resist the ability of citizens to video-tape their encounters with police. By "resist", I mean "out-right lie to citizens about the legalities and illegalities of doing so".

Not to flex my own muscles, but I did so more strongly than you. The discussion on tattoos almost perfectly mirrors this former FDR-contributor's discussion of drug usage. https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/42628-im-angered-by-the-marijuanadrug-discussion-at-the-end-of-2846/?hl=drugs The OP - obviously a casual drug user - lectured the entire forum that "Not all drug users are like that", and concluded that the entire forum had "a personal vendetta against drug users". He said that the scientific studies on drug usage don't apply to every user of drugs, and stormed off the forum in rage. ------------------------ In this thread, some people with tattoos (and some people who merely support tattoo-possessors), lectured the entire forum that "Not all tattoo-possessors are like that.", and concluded that anyone who refuses to associate with tattoo-possessors are "bigoted" and "Wow, just wow!". They said that the scientific studies of tattoo-possessors don't apply to every possessor of tattoos, and down-voted my posts rather than address the most substantive parts of them. The only difference is that drugs are illegal and can contribute to violent behavior, whereas tattoos aren't illegal and aren't contributors to violent behavior. (Unfortunately, though, tattoo-possession is scientifically correlated with violent behavior AND specific mental disorders that are resistant to therapy / self-knowledge. So "correlation isn't causation" cuts both ways here.) ----------------------- More unfortunately, is that people don't realize that "The mistake of wrongfully excluding someone is much less costly than wrongly-accepting someone." It's much more damaging to yourself to marry the wrong person (a non-virtuous, selfish person) than it is to wrongfully dissociate from a right person (a virtuous, non-selfish person). So when they begin with "You're being bigoted for refusing to associate with a tattoo'ed person!", they're trying to produce more interactions between tattoo'ed and non-tattoo'ed individuals. But when their advice backfires, (as it statistically must do, at least SOME of the time), they're producing the worst possible mistake - (associating long-term with wrong-people) - at the expense of occasionally producing a good outcome - (associating long-term with right-people). In other words, when they're wrong, the people who listen to them must pay the price. And if you don't agree with them. you're "bigoted". Contrast this with my position, "If I'm wrong, then I will pay the price. And you all can do what you please."

I saw your question about two weeks ago, but wanted to reflect on it before I responded. The number one thing I got from the conversation was that I finally "broke" my father. I don't mean that he was not-broken before the conversation, and became broken as a result of it. I mean that he has been broken for a very long time but has been in denial about his brokenness, and that our conversation made him unable to deny his brokenness. The highly-condensed version of hour discussion went like this: *after thirty minutes of dodging, and constantly inserting stupid political commentary into his every response* Me: Why are you even talking to me? Him: Because you're my son. Me: That doesn't mean anything... *twenty more minutes of dodging, stupid political commentary, and insults/accusations towards me* Him: I no longer want to talk to you; you've won. ---------------------- FDR is the primary tool I used to trap him in his contradictions, and to assert that I would no longer allow him to ignore/downplay my emotions. But the "victory" he referred to reminded me of a Bible story, from Revelations - which goes, something like, "When God's children are up in Heaven, God will take them to Satan's corpse. And the believers will look at each other, and ask in highly shocked tones, 'This? THIS!? This is the Satan that caused so much havoc on earth!?'" "Breaking" my father made me realize how small he is, how small he's always been, and it made me angry to lose so much of my self-confidence and personal drive due to his smallness. It also did absolutely nothing to help me re-acquire what I've lost, because I can only re-acquire those things through my own effort, independent from his praise or condemnation. ------------------ I am happy that I also used FDR to confront my sister (my niece's mother) over how she was yelling at my niece. That happened about eight months ago, and my niece texted me, "I don't know what you said to mommy, but she's been a whole lot nicer lately. Thank you." To date, that is the single-best thing I've ever accomplished with FDR/philosophy. I also respect my niece a lot more than both of my parents, her mother, and my brother. Only my brother is respect-worthy, but we live about an hour apart and I haven't put much effort into introducing FDR/philosophy to him. (But I know he'll 100% consider the ideas, rather than just dismissing them outright. I am just unsure whether he'll accept any of them.) ----------------- So, overall I feel a sense of dull "goodness". There are no major victories in "breaking" your abusive parent. To see him stop pretending we have a loving, respectful relationship was only comparatively better than continuing to pretend. But this outcome is still far worse than if he would've been a much better father. Nor is there a "boost of creative energy" that comes from "finally winning, by asserting the truth of what happened, and what is". Whatever "creative energy" you get has to come from outside what happened between your abuser and you. Hope that helped.

Quoting the article: "When you put all that stuff together from pop culture, from deep religious and scientific treatises in the early part of the 20th century that were completely and thoroughly racist, then you have got a tremendously difficult problem on your hand. And that is to say, how do black people protect themselves not against simply the bullets of a police officer, but the metaphors, the stereotypes, the tropes that operate in that police officers imagination that are equally lethal because they lead to trigger-happy cops or at least trigger — hair trigger decisions where cops and up believing that they must use lethal force to contain a threat that is not even real, or if there is a real threat, resort to the most lethal form of resolution of the conflict as opposed to trying other things like driving away, like using mace, like tasing, like calling for help and the like. So, when we think about all of this, this is the dehumanization of African-American people. This is the failure to recognize our fundamental rights to exist in the state. This is using state authority to legally execute black people on the streets of America." It's odd (to me) that this statement is a question, but doesn't end in a question mark. One answer to that above "question" is illustrated here:

That's pretty funny. This topic on the Roosh V Forum discusses sexual identity. You only need read the first 30 posts: the men's dissecting of the various sexual identities is funny, and their suggested other identities are even funnier. (StrangerSexual makes me laugh every single time.) http://www.rooshvforum.com/thread-42862.html

I don't get it. Is there either an assertion or question in there, somewhere?

My former friend is married to a part-time prostitute / cam-girl. She works about six days a month, and they don't have much money. Before he lived with her, he had high aspirations of becoming a musician, a stable career in the military, a good body, and a reasonably healthy mood. Now, he's going to declare bankruptcy in January - (because he got medically discharged from the military) - hasn't written a new song in three years, has become overweight, and suffers from anger/anxiety/depression. His main goal in life is to have his wife attend therapy, so that she can become happy, independent, and wealthy. And whenever she attends just one therapy session, and experiences just one breakthrough, he becomes ever-more dedicated to the process of "helping her grow". When I stopped living with him, I sent him a note, which concluded, "I don't know why you married the complete opposite of your ideal woman in the hopes of making her your ideal woman, rather than just marrying your ideal woman in the first place." Josh's question, "Does looting work?" sounds exactly like my male former friend searching for a way / (rejoicing over a potential way?) to turn a far-less-than-ideal form of government into one "closer to his ideal". But why rejoice in such victories, when you can just prefer a drastically better government in the first place?

The majority of MGTOWs are not MRAs. I would guess that only 20% of MGTOWs are MRAs. Of the other 80%, about 75% have zero interest in MRA-politics. They know that MRA-politics exist, and shrug their shoulders in response. The other 25% are overtly-hostile to MRA-politics, and the two most common hostile arguments are: (1) "To engage in MRA-politics is to perpetuate the subservience of men to government, women, and culture. Men shouldn't be subservient; they should lead." (2) "To engage in MRA-politics is to engage in a massive fight against both female biology and modern American culture. It is much more enjoyable to understand female biology - (through studying game) - in order to acquire prettier females to sleep with but not necessarily to commit to; sex with pretty women is preferable to politically-induced celibacy."

Sorry. I misread what you wrote as "Parenting" instead of "Protesting". Anyway, your thesis is that looting "works" because it "produces social change" and "reveals police corruption". However, there are (unprovable, yet plausible) accusations that the federal government ordered Ferguson officials to not intervene in the looting. There are also (unprovable, yet plausible) accusations that the federal government bussed in protesters in the hope that they would riot/loot. Lastly, there is also the (unprovable, yet plausible) presumption that the government ignores corruption most of the time, and only reveals/terminates a particular piece of corruption when it suits the government's interest. (So, for example, the federal government knew that the Ferguson police department is corrupt - but "allowed" the police department to stay that way, because it "didn't see the need to intervene". Furthermore, the end result of all government intervention is the expansion of government.)

Nathan...... Not only is David Twyman unlikely to be surprised, but neither is everyone in this thread - (all of whom agree with him, have upvoted him, and have downvoted you). So, Nathan, what self-knowledge have you gained from the 100% disagreement that your thread has produced?

I've been devouring the articles of Gregory Hood, Republican, conservative, White nationalist. He argues that the "You shouldn't judge people by their appearance." position inevitably leads to the destruction of White, English-speaking nations - because a nation that stops "judging people" stops being a nation, and a culture that refuses to "alienate people" becomes overtaken by any other culture that's willing to alienate people. http://www.radixjournal.com/journal/2014/11/18/a-god-to-damn-us That very long article begins with the following four paragraphs. "The former Army Ranger known as Peter Kassig met his end under the knives of the Islamic State as Abdul Rahman Kassig. Even after his death, his mother is making media appearances wearing the hijab. For that matter, James Foley was a convert to Islam, as were other hostages. And while some undoubtedly convert in the (futile) hope of better treatment, it appears that many of these cases are sincere. Nor is this surprising, as the likes of Kassig, Foley, and others who have been taken captive in the Islamic State’s territory defined their lives by their efforts to help Muslims thousands of miles away from home. Even liberal Whites ostensibly motivated by vacuous concepts like “human rights” can’t help but be impressed by those who possess actual strength of belief, especially from Third Worlders immune from charges of racism or cultural imperialism. Of course, many of these Third Worlders actually are racist or imperialist, but that reality is easily ignored by liberals who insist on viewing them as agency free moral mascots. Yet the fact that some Whites (even former Army Rangers) are willing to dedicate their entire lives to serving the Other and literally renounce their own identity at the moment of death testifies to something deeper than simple egalitarianism. It’s a kind of ethical exhaustion--liberal Whites are weary of the moral responsibility of existence and survival. The very absurdity of our culture (if we can even call it a culture) shows that many Whites are looking for a way out. They actually seek escape through foreign occupation. To be occupied is to live in a world where meaning and cultural context is provided by a foreign people. You can be a religious minority (or an atheist) in a majority religious society and be “free,” but power, narrative, and taboo are ultimately in the hands of someone else. The same goes for being a racial minority or sexual minority. This feeling of occupation is what underlies the fury of most minorities towards their host societies, no matter how well they are treated. To most people, being a minority is alienating--even if no one is specifically insulting you, you recognize you exist at the sufferance of someone else. However, to many liberal Whites, this feeling comes as a relief. In a kind of parody of Christianity, powerlessness constitutes a certain moral authority because it removes the possibility that you can inadvertently oppress someone else. It’s the only way to be free of White guilt, as even charity is just an expression of privilege. To the egalitarian mind, freedom really is slavery."