So apparently men are to blame for the Mating Gap

 As an upcoming book states, there is a lack of eligible men for these women to have babies with. (There are so many gaps now - there is an opportunity for a dirty joke here for sure.)

Obviously. The author is a professor of anthropology at Yale, after all, so she must know.

Now before we go further I want you to imagine the following scenario (and I know it is going to be a controversial and strenuous analogy, but bear with me). A historian wants to understand the reasons of the collapse of the Third Reich, so what does he (or she) do? Read all the interviews, speeches, memoirs about what Hitler thought the reasons were, and then writes a book that "the Jews were behind it".

This is literally the methodology. As the author says, she gathered egg freezing stories from 150 American women and analyzed them. 

And obviously the results are (drum roll):

• Men who are reluctant to partner with high-achieving women, leaving these women single for many years.
• Men who are unready for marriage and children, often leading to relationship demise.
• Men who exhibit bad behavior, including infidelity and ageism, which often leads to relationship instability and rupture.

So, as we know, it is all men's fault. The first point is patently false -there are lots and lots of studies showing the opposite, as in women are reluctant to engage with men under their own status while the opposite is not true. Heck, even the Guardian (which was very enthusiastic about writing about this issue highlighted in the book) wrote about it. 

I am fairly certain if you ask incels why they can't get a partner you will get a similar list, but obviously those basement-dwelling jerks would be wrong. For some reason people tend to rationalize why they are not to blame. Who knew. So it is very striking to base your methodology on accepting anything your subjects say on face value. And also not correcting for the fact that egg freezing is something that is only a serious reality for about 1% of the population. This is the very definition of Grievance Studies at work -it is men who cheat, it is men who refuse to settle down, it is men who are ageist and refuse to date higher status/earning women. All of which is patently false, or ignores the current reality of how the "new" society (patterns in education, economics, etc.) -and feminism itself-  disenfranchised men, and made marriage less than attractive. Or simply ignores the fact that women seem to have unrealistic expectations.

There are other voices that provide explanation about the "death of marriage" -and it ain't those blasted men who refuse to grow up and cheat with everyone with a vagina. They come both from the left and right.

Now, there are three things to be mentioned here. 

One is that the patently anti-scientific grievance-based social "science" is still in the rage, even in the highest institutions. (Although the fact that George Bush managed to graduate from Yale puts a lie to the supposed high standards of this institution...) This does not bode well for the future as often these questionable "studies" form the basis of policies and provide an endless supply of angry, radicalized upper-middle class crowd, which, when they get into a position of power (which they do due to their privilege of having connections), they will go full into activism mode. We have seen this at Disney (crashing and burning popular franchises), but even (perhaps) in the banking sector. (Obviously a collapse this magnitude is not going to be a single-cause one, but it would not be surprising if we learned that the leaders were happily doing their little activism projects while their ship was sinking -due to their poor, activism-driven decisions...) I am very interested (well, desperate really) to see this sort of activism sweeping into the fields of "hard" sciences (which it already has begun), because when engineers, scientists and doctors are not chosen based on merit, you will have a catastrophe at your hands - as we have seen with ideologically-driven experiments, like Communism, Nazism, and so on and so forth. And you can't make a logical argument against identity-politics deciding who should become, say, a neurosurgeon. After all, you can't argue that it is fine to have crappy writers, politicians, economists, businessperson, etc. chosen based on their identity (the whole equity, diversity and inclusion stuff) but you can't have it with professions where it actually matters... It either matters everywhere or nowhere. So enjoy your diversity hire engineer designing the airplane you are sitting on. It seems like the inmates are taking over the asylum. 

So that is one big problem. The second issue is that these hacks completely discredit sciences. I know it is just social sciences, not hard sciences, but these obvious distortions coming from academia will tarnish every other fields of science -immunology and climatology included- giving fodder to the other group anti-intellectuals on the Right. (Because make no mistake: identity politics is by definition anti-intellectual.)

The third: if you want to help these very rich, powerful women, who find that there are very few richer and more powerful men for them to date, well, perhaps, you should not engage in misguided finger-pointing... Not surprisingly these powerful men tend to date  younger women (as in the case of DiCaprio, many of them sequentially), without a financial risk to the fruits of their hard work. It certainly makes you feel better about yourself, and you can imagine yourself as fighting the good fight (because actually fighting the good fight, for example for the women of Africa, the Middle East and the rest, would be hard), but it will not help those women you profess to be wanting to help. It will make them even more miserable.

So for the love of god, please stop lying. And do not tarnish sciences like this. 

Migrants, refugees and terrorists - and the short memory of everyone involved

During the height of the migrant/refugee crisis in 2015 many -admittedly right-wing- media outlets and politicians asked the question about how many terrorists are entering Europe with the unchecked flow of people.

Remember the rat cartoon? That is sooo Nazi! (Except it isn't, but don't let a deliberate misinterpretation stand in the way of a good controversy.)

Remember when Hungary tried to enforce the Schengen rules as a border country, and got a shit-ton of flak for that? Just remember the name "Keleti Railway station".

For this they were called Nazis. Yes, I know we don't like Fox News and the Daily Mail; however the whole point of being a rational and liberal person is to actually use, you know, reason instead of labels. Unlike those stupid right wingers who are just putting everything you say into the category of "tree hugging pinko commie", and hence ignore it. No, liberals never would do that.
Ever.

Except they did. Or many of the people who pride themselves as liberals did so. Which is a shame; a shame we would like to quickly forget. They ridiculed, they accused, and they used red herrings so that the actual issue -how many terrorists enter Europe unchecked- was never asked. In fact if you search 2015 articles, you will be reassured, how unlikely it is for terrorists to go through all that suffering just to walk into Europe; after all they can fly, right? (A BBC article talks about Schengen issues pretty eloquently, although appears to avoid some tough questions involving events a couple of months prior...)

After the wave of attacks, of course, the narrative changed; now we can read about how these pesky terrorists used the crowd to mask their presence (just like the rat cartoon suggested), how they abused Europe's naivety to enter and do their shenanigans; but no one in the Guardian, Independent, New York Times, etc. stopped and said: you know, guys? We were wrong. No; what you get is a report on terrorists using the Balkan route to enter Europe, and then an attack on the one politician who dared to mention that it is a very real danger. The terrorist in question came through the Keleti Railway station into the EU I would like to stress. He was helped by well-meaning people (or, being somewhat cynical, people who sought to get political capital out of the situation), who then marched to the Austrian border to demonstrate how evil it is to enforce the law. In other words: terrorist (well, several, as we know) did what those Nazis were warning us they would. Now what? Do we apologise? Or do we keep going on with the offensive?


In fact, they still seem to be very much attacking the one guy who was right in this case. Don't get me wrong; Orban is no saint. He needs to go; this post is not about him. It's just in this one case he was right, and he was right when it mattered- during the height of the crisis, and not in hindsight. Since then his 2015 suggestions of refugee camps outside of Europe (oh, are they hellish? YOU NAZIS!), the protection of borders (I wonder how you do that without fences to force people use the border checkpoints?) -even by the Guardian, and so on have been adopted quickly by the people who called him (and the whole nation of Hungary) a Nazi; and refugees are now called migrants. (It's interesting that even the Guardian changed its tone, and nobody seems to care.)


Yet nobody had the guts to say: you know what? We fucked up. These other guys were right. They just pretend the past did not happen, and by the magic of the media, indeed it has been erased from the history books. And we're not talking about an ancient kingdom's past, or if the Black Prince was indeed such a blood-thirsty tyrant. We're talking about changing what happened two years ago. We're talking about decisions made that cost lives. Could have been some of these events avoided? Who knows? But that does not absolve people who made them, who called others trying to argue for a different approach Nazis, and then now pretend the whole thing did not happen.

It is truly Orwell's worst nightmare coming to life.

Don't let good bigotry to go waste

When is it OK to be bigoted, xenophobic (or racist, although this is a bit of a murky distinction)?

Why, when you're talking about those smelly Eastern (well, Central) Europeans! Just do a quick search on the comment section of any so-called progressive, liberal newspapers, and you will find extremely bigoted views expressed against Poles, Slovaks, Hungarians, all in the name of liberalism, equality, anti-xenophobia and European Values.

Seriously. Just check it out. (Yes, it's only one. You can look for the rest. It's not very difficult.)

Anyhow, enter Mr Frenchman. (If you wanted to know his name, you can find out. He DID say he does not hide behind an anonymity, he DID post his comments under his own name, he IS a journalist, and he DID try to erase all his misdeeds. I find especially the last part repugnant.)

Anyhow. Do a quick read of this reddit post from a black girl asking about Hungary.

Mr High Horse, a self-confessed journalist and teacher assesses that "most of Hungarians ARE racist", and then brings up two unsubstantiated little stories, and a lot of (probably intentionally) misinterpreted things (like a candy called Negro) to support his claim. Let's stop here for a second. Someone, claiming to have journalistic integrity and whatnot, talking from a liberal point of view simply makes a bigoted statement that essentially puts him into the same camp as the people he decries (racists, not Hungarians). Then proceeds to make a couple of off-hand comments, and when he realizes he really, really put his foot in his mouth, he proceeds to erase his comments and delete his account.

I decided to immortalize this little performance as it is very much a representative sample of the treatment of these smelly Eastern Europeans all over the Continent, with the exception that most journalists and politicians are not forced to face a reality check. Well, here's an indication for you what would happen in a larger scale if that was the case.

How to argue as a Hungarian

It’s quite simple, really. You call your opponent a Nazi or a pinko liberal Commie, and boom, you don’t actually have to argue with them. After all, who in their right mind would start arguing with a Nazi? Or a Commie? From this point, you don’t actually have to take anything they say into consideration. You have a right –what right? you have an OBLIGATION!- to disregard the facts your opponent comes up with, and you can simply ignore anything he says. All you have to do is insulting him; that’s it.

This is the sad state of affairs right now. People shout at each other without actually listening to what the other has to say, because deep inside they already know. Except, of course, they don’t. But it does its job: it effectively shuts down any conversation. This mentality makes discussions, clashing of differing ideas impossible. It’s us versus them. If you are not in my team, you are playing for the enemy. If you don’t agree with me, you ARE the enemy; no ifs or buts about it. You are either a traitor to the motherland, or you are a Nazi, so you’d better be in my echo chamber or else... Trolls are tolerated if they play in your team. This is, of course, an intellectually lazy solution: you don’t actually have to think for yourself: your opinions are premade for you.

I’ve ran into this many times either online or during personal conversations. Depending on your differing opinion, you can be labelled a Nazi or a dirty liberal (well, looking at how intellectually corrupt the Hungarian liberal political and intellectual elite is, I can’t fault people to dislike liberals). In fact, you can be both at the same time saying the same thing to different people. It’s insane.

So this is what lies behind all the political discourse, all the personal discussions; this is how the country operates. This is why it is impossible for a member of the opposition actually agree about anything with the ruling party, even if they would do the very same thing once in power –or agree with them in person. This is why friendships break up, this is why family members refuse to talk to each other. You can’t discuss your differing point of view. If you don’t agree with me, you are no friend of mine. The country is incredibly bipartisan. No wonder nothing gets done.