Them or Us

It's interesting, and perhaps revealing, that from what I've seen so far, the most incisive and in-depth coverage of the Duggar scandal seems to be coming from "gossip" oriented sites such as Gawker and Jezebel. Not in the "hey, let's revisit the creepy details of teenaged Josh Duggar fingering his sisters while they sleep" sense, but in the much more important "do y'all know what these fucking people fervently believe and preach" sense.

And while of course it's sad and awful about the specifics of what Josh Duggar has admitted to doing, the fact is that the sisters in question are all adults now. They can leave the cult any time they want, get away from the parents who chose their brother over them, simply because he has a penis and they're just females, pure chattel. That they so far have chosen to stick with it is proof that Stockholm syndrome is a thing.

Probably due to these sites' typically snarky, irreverent tone on virtually any and every subject, they are much better suited to tackling this sort of story than any network news org would bother with. Looking not only at the Duggar family but at the individuals and organizations that underpin their belief system, as well as the entire Quiverfull cult (it's a "movement" much like the eight-pound growler I had after surf-and-turf and oatmeal stout the other night), and understanding what their overall goals really are is critical.

It's Not Even Past

Let's not put too fine a point on it -- if the events and actions and social dynamics in the south over the past 150 have taught us anything, it's that Billy the Torch didn't go nearly far enough. The fact that there are still no shortage of fools in that region who persist in mythologizing what was nothing more (or less) than a brutal, racist, genocidal machine, a society built on nothing but the extracted blood and unpaid toil and pain of others, only reinforces that fact.

People like Jack Bridwell suppress and avoid those truths because they are inconvenient, difficult to accept. Republican politics since 1964 has taken advantage of that revolting, absurdist mentality, and owned the entire region since then. That is not a coincidence.

Nationally, that strategy has translated into soft-focus gimmickry, mostly revolving around mythologizing an America that never was. The verb that pops up most consistently in their marketing materials is "restore"; they continuously promise to "restore" "America," whether that's "values," "greatness," whatever. I think the word they're really looking for is "instauration," which is very similar but not precisely the same.

Keeping Score

What Driftglass said. Only the political punditocracy has such non-existent accountability measures. The blogosphere is infinitely more self-regulating; chumps like Bobo Brooks and Billy Kristol would be run out of town on a virtual hot rail for their infuriating consistency at being wrong. But there they are, everywhere you turn, cluttering up various media portals, in print or in person.

It's bad enough that such people continue to cash fat checks in spite of their reliable wrongness. More pernicious is how it leads to institutional forgetfulness, the slate wiped clean with each appearance, so long as no one says anything politically incorrect.

Which, as it turns out, is entirely the point and purpose of that industry -- to legitimize what is profoundly illegitimate, to lend unearned credence and gravitas to analysis and opinions that, if they didn't affect so many lives in so many deep and painful ways, would be comical in their level of error and shoddy craftsmanship. They want to take your money and freedom, sure, but they need for you to grant them your permission, to thank them for it afterward.

Ladies' Man

In the wake of the Isla Vista killings a couple days ago, it's certainly not shocking but might still catch some (including yours truly) unawares that there is something called a "pick-up artist [PUA] community." If you have the stomach to wade through such guff, you're a better person than me, but from the Slate article one can still glean the basics -- that these communities are populated by men who hate women (or at least view them as things to be acquired by any means necessary) and probably hate themselves and each other as well.

Certainly there are "alphas" and "betas" in this world, and the trope of the "nice guy" getting "friend-zoned" by his heart's desire is the staple of many a rom-com over the years. This is not in dispute. I suppose my puzzlement with this "community" thing of stratifying and stat-ifying "the game" is that, while it is a game, the rules are simpler than these doofuses seem to understand.

[Edit:  I had a half-dozen or so common-sense "rules" worked up for your entertainment, but decided to punt because it came out sounding uncomfortably close to these bro-douche PUA assholes. The basics of it should be obvious to anyone who isn't emotionally or socially stunted -- go out with your friends once in a while, because that's how you meet new people; don't overthink it or fixate on a person you barely know; be self-aware of things you may need to work on.

Perhaps most importantly, talk to women as if they're human beings, and not "objects" of your "affection." See previous advice about being self-aware. And relax -- you're trying to get laid, not come up with a cure for cancer. Look at some of the other folks getting laid. How hard can it be, really?]

You look at the self-inflicted trauma of someone like Elliot Rodger, and all you can do is wonder. Here's a kid who had money and toys at his disposal, and at least some connections that women would dig. But, uh, I'm gonna go out on a limb and speculate that anyone who barfs up a 140-page manifesto about he's going to torture and slaughter the whores who didn't see what a knight in shining armor he was, there's someone who could have benefited from the above Obvious Rules.

Same with the PUA guys. These poor bastards have channeled their inability to self reflect into this weird obsession with developing a method or process to snagging that smokin' hot babe. This sense of entitlement permeates popular culture; every year, there's a number of popular movies and teevee shows featuring some fat schlub punching way above his weight -- say, Kevin James married to Salma Hayek. Notice that this never happens in the opposite direction; you are never going to see a movie with, say, Melissa McCarthy married to Brad Pitt.

This gets reinforced and conditioned over the years, until you get a particular strain of tool who thinks he's entitled to the hottest chick in the room. These guys (okay, okay, I did check out the PUA site a bit; I had to rubberneck at the 50-car pile-up), once you drill down a bit, really seem to be motivated by the urge to "get back" at the cute chick they obsessed over in high school, but who failed to see their awesomeness and drop to her knees forthwith.

So they buy into this "neuro-linguistic programming" schtick, and think they can basically hypnotize or convince any woman they talk to into jumping their bones. Inevitably they are disappointed when they try out their "game" and it doesn't work. Or it does work, and they get laid, but fireworks and rainbows don't shoot out of her ass, and they feel gypped. After all, they were entitled to having their greatness validated.

Just as rape is not really a crime of sex, so much as a crime of power and assertion, so does this PUA thing come across less as an effort to find love or sex or even an emotional connection with another human being, but an attempt to claim status and peer recognition. Where most Americans have been properly conditioned to self-actualize by acquiring money and toys and jacked-up four-by pick-em-up trucks to compensate for lack of penile girth, these twits have convinced themselves that they need to overthink what, for even average guys, is one of the easier things in life to do -- get laid.