If anyone is interested, I was drilling 1-7/8" holes
through 14" of concrete. That was to run 1-1/4" conduit for a
subpanel and charging station. Those holes were not fun. I had to drill four of
them, two of them through almost 20" of century-old concrete.
Anyway, I lingered for a moment and watched. The show was
being hosted by a FOX news type blonde hussy who was talking about bombing and
killing and giving our enemies a taste of the red, white and blue – just before
it cut away to a Goldline commercial.
Then I realized he was watching 'The Blaze', Glenn Beck's
channel. Because you know... FOX news is too liberal.
I went home and poked around and figured out who she is and I
discovered a few online videos including this rather humorous one by Cenk
Uygur. By no means do I wish to endorse The Young Turks but he's often worth
listening to and amusing. I don't go looking for his videos but I stumble on them
and am usually not disappointed. His criticisms are useful, his solutions are
not.
The host on the Beck channel was Tomi Lahren and she's all of
about 23 years old, the age of one of my nieces. That was a little disturbing.
Of course I was at that niece's house on the night of 9/11 and I remember she
was a little girl... nine to be exact. The same age as Miss Lahren.
I certainly had my opinions at 23, and could probably
articulate them with some clarity. And yet, I certainly wouldn't have been
audacious enough to set myself up on television as someone to be listened to.
Why is she on television? Is it because she really has some
profound insights or is it because she's cute little blond that wears revealing
clothes?
Her opinions are absurd and immoral and not worth addressing
to be honest.
I found another video in which she attacks Hillary Clinton
and Elizabeth Warren as being 'old white men'.
Now, I'm certainly no fan of these women but for this young
lady to speak this way is a bit much. The fact that her star has risen says
more about her and the state of American conservatism than it does about
Clinton and Warren.
Conservatives have become a bit confused when it comes to
gender and questions of masculinity and femininity.
Now wait, isn't the culture confused? Yes, it certainly is.
But the reactions also exhibit confusion.
Lahren attacks Clinton and Warren for being masculine and not
feminine enough, but her understanding of femininity is confused with
sensuality. She thinks feminine means skin, cleavage, short skirts and red
lips. Feminine is the 'bimbo' porn-star look.
This has reigned in conservative circles for some time. Roger
Ailes, the founder of FOX deliberately put these kinds of women in the
spotlight because he knew that sex would sell. And apparently all the Christian
men have loved it. It's bizarre because Megyn Kelly reminds of the Tasmanian
Devil's bride from Bugs Bunny but apparently a host of Christian conservative
men think she's the berries. Gretchen Carlson looks like a worn out Barbie doll
knock-off. I know I'm being unkind but I'm not going to pretend to respect
these supposedly Christian women that have taken the feminist route, asserted
themselves in the public eye as leaders and have tried to sell themselves in
the process. They need to be denounced and in a much more serious manner than I
have attempted to do here.
For conservative men there's something perverse almost kinky
in listening to some sexpot yell and rant at liberals and demand that we should
bomb countries and lock people up. It's the same kind of perversity that likes
posters of bikini-girls with machine guns.
This confusion has extended in the realm of men. Manliness is
about emphasizing a warrior image and ethic, even if the result is somewhat
comical. How this manifests itself changes with the cultural ebb and flow. At
present you have to grow a big beard, wear camouflage and look like the
buffoons of Duck Dynasty.
You have to drive 4x4 vehicles, make lots of noise with all
your toys, smoke cigars and show everyone how tough you are by having lots of
guns.
Of course 99% of this is facade and it's thoroughly pagan in
origin.
The values they are expressing have nothing to do with
Christianity. It's all about pride and the threat of vengeance toward anyone
who gives you a wrong look. It's pride in calling attention to yourself, even
to the point of having a hot little chick hanging on your arm. You want
everyone to be jealous but also afraid of you. If their eyes linger a little
too long, you threaten to knock their teeth out or shoot them with one of the
several handguns you have hidden on your person.
It's really a sign of immaturity and adolescence and at times
a celebration of anti-intellectualism, a rejection of nuance and 'big-talk'.
You see this at its worse when the FOX news crowd attacks men like Kerry and
Dukakis because their shoulders are narrow or they don't go out and clear brush
in their free time like GW Bush and Reagan would do. There's also some
bitterness over the fact that GHW Bush was attacked as 'wimp' and so they've
made sure to counter that full-force and praise George Bush's manliness.
There's no doubt the world is messed up and our lost culture
has perverted and destroyed even what masculinity and femininity are supposed
to be. We have a generation of loud masculine women who flaunt flesh and yet
don't possess any feminine charm or grace. We have a generation of lisping
slope-shouldered men that strike men of my generation as homosexual even if
they're not technically so.
I've talked about this in a previous article.
Masculinity does not have to be tied to violence and
brashness. Look at the Amish. They are humble and quiet men and yet they are in
no way feminine. No one would accuse them of that. Even previous generations of
men were able to work office jobs and yet conduct themselves in a masculine
way. And yet that did not come with the same degree of crudity and bluster
that's become so prevalent.
Femininity among conservatives is largely defined as a
counter to butchy feminism. Femininity doesn't mean you have to wear a prairie
skirt and talk in a baby-doll voice nor does it mean you have to look like a
classy hooker while you talk about moral values.
In the other article I mentioned how European feminism has
manifested itself so differently. There's something about American culture
that's given to extremes and violent pendulum swings. Nuance is not something
Americans are able to do. Watch France 24 for example. The women anchors are
all feminist career women to be sure but they're neither masculine nor
sluttish. European feminism is somehow able to celebrate and maintain gender
difference. Women are not driven to be masculine. They're somehow more
comfortable in their own skin and want to celebrate it.
In no way do I mean to praise feminism of any variety but
this again just demonstrates there's something deeply flawed in how American
culture functions.
I've also found it ironic that many conservative women have
embraced feminism without realizing it. The sex angle of course can be a
manifestation of empowerment, a means to manipulate. I've also seen many that
have the long hair/long skirt look and yet totally dominate their husbands. And
I've encountered not a few of that crowd that are rank feminists in my book,
even borderline butchish and yet by the standards of the day, they're still
respectable middle class feminine looking women. I've even had a few criticize
me for looking 'scruffy'. I laugh at this. I'm immoral because I don't cut my
hair like John Wayne and let a few tufts grow out or allow my hair to pass my
collar. And yet these women wear their hair short, with their ears cut out, they
look and speak like men (with dangly earrings) and yet I'm 'immoral' in my
look.
I've literally had this happen a couple of times. I was being
semi-rebuked for my lack of proper conservative grooming by short-haired
feminist type women. They were speaking from a Christian conservative
standpoint. Little did they know or would even be able to understand that I did
not respect their opinion in any sense. The one is married to a eunuch in my
book but she was going to straighten me out because I had a week's growth on my
face and was about a month overdue for a haircut. Life is funny.
There's a great deal of confusion afoot and most make far too
much of it. I have more respect for people that have their eyes open, are
trying to work these things out and letting the Scriptures speak to them. It's
difficult. We're all affected by our culture and unless you deliberately try to
break from it and teach yourself to think outside its boundaries you've going
to be very affected by it.
Of course the twenty-three year old bleached-blond in the
short skirt that's become somewhat popular in conservative circles is not one
of these people. She's after the money and attention. She'd condemn a stripper
but she's no different. She just doesn't take as much off. But what she's doing
is pretty much the same thing. And she's being used too.
Beck's Blaze just demonstrates that from start to finish,
it's a commercial operation meant to manipulate an audience. Fear, be afraid
and give your money. At one time he thought he was spearheading a movement, but
he crossed lines and has been forced out. Now it's all about Glenn Beck . He's
tried to shift to a religious tone... a guru of Christo-Americanism which can accommodate
Judaism and Mormonism. He's a false prophet and deceiver and watching just a
few minutes of his channel makes that all too clear.
And yet how many Christian men are sitting and watching this?
They are feeding their flesh in every way... money, power, sex, it's just rank
worldliness with some false principles and bad ethics. Beck tries to give it a
religious veneer and nomenclature.
He's no different than Joel Osteen. It's just a different
manifestation of the same spiritual cancer. Those that follow him are under the
same judgment as the blind slaves to Osteen's lies and sorceries.
