Public discourse and the alpha male
I have to be grateful to the CBC. I learned a new name in the news - Roosh V who also blogs @ Return Of Kings - news, commentary, and lifestyle advice for masculine men. He has two stops on his ‘world tour’ in Canada. He had one in Montreal with the one in Toronto coming up on the 15th of August.
As I said, I never heard of him and I probably wouldn’t have if it was not for the publicity. The news was so outrageous that I had to check it out. What I found is that OF COURSE, the CBC grossly misrepresented what the guy said and what he stands for; that our mayor was also as disgusting as usual condemning something without the slightest attempt of doing some fact checking before making an ass of himself in public. All he needed to know is how many people signed the petition started by Sara Parker-Toulson. (Just as a little aside: I overheard a conversation someone saying that John Tory would blow anybody for a vote – the other responding: yeah, even Kathleen Wynne.)
The reason why the subject caught my attention was not simply the orchestrated attack with the petition, the obvious misrepresentation in the media or the knee-jerk reaction of stupid politicians, but the fact that I was (and am) in the middle of writing something that could possibly produce a similar effect. I am making some outlandish – and for some even outrageous - policy suggestions to expose certain problems in our electoral system. Problems we should definitely be talking about. Problems that most people are aware of but hardly anyone dares to address fearing exactly the kind of reactions Roosh V discusses in his blog.
The story
The story here is not who Roosh V is, what he says or what he stands for. The story is the circus around it. Maybe not even that. If you look into it, you will probably just find it a petty she said – he said tit for tat. What should be the story is that we are even talking about it. That we have a state owned broadcaster spreading manifestly false accusations, that the mayor of Canada’s largest city can openly call for the restriction of free speech and that they can get away with it. The story is not the antics of the political left and their activist groups, the story is that their insanely intolerant, libelous accusations are accepted by the mainstream media and politicians without any critical review.
Do I care about Roosh V, a self-declared ‘pick up artist’ and his message? I don’t even like the concept. Picking up a woman in a public place is as strange an idea to me as finding one through a matchmaking service. I never used a pick-up line in my life. Even though I do not have any problem talking about my personal experiences, l consider the sexual ones a little too private to describe in the kind of details he does. Sexual assertiveness is not what makes a man an ‘alpha male’. The sex-appeal of the alpha male is the biological reward for all the qualities that make them alpha males. Strength of character, bravery, integrity, self-reliance and reliability, spirit of adventure and discovery, leadership, etc., etc….. I do not believe therefore that you can become an alpha male reading self-help books and attending seminars discussing “the problems that western men face today.”
On the other hand, I sympathize with the movement. I understand the frustration of the ‘Western Man’ I am glad to see the protest against the emasculation of our culture. I am very much concerned about the ways the gender relativists are trying to turn our boys into metro-sexual drones.
Even if I do not believe that sexual assertiveness is what makes a man, talking about what does, we absolutely must.
The political economy of debates
It is said that there are two ways of acquiring goods in life: the political one and the economic one. You either make it or take it, work for it and trade or use force or the threat of it to get it from those who produced it. Scientific, political, philosophical debates obey similar rules: you either convince your opponents with the logic of your argument and the evidence supporting it or you coerce them into accepting your arguments; you force them to stop advocating their own views. The political way to achieve things is always the easy one. You don’t have to work, you don’t have to think, you only need to be more ruthless in your determination to prevail over your opponent.
Presenting this issue as yet another attack on free speech is missing the point. We are way beyond that. The political left and statists of all colors discovered the effectiveness of the political ways. The promoters of the politically correct ideology of the day do not like the problems of this new zeitgeist exposed and since they do not have arguments to present to their critics, they just try to find ways to shut them up. It is not speech that they want to control but thought itself. They want to control what you can think, research ask questions about or discuss with the like-minded. It is the same story when it comes to the environment, poverty, race, some religions, gender identity, abortion, gun rights, income inequality, etc. etc. ……… The radicals want to settle every one of these issues with violence instead of open debate.
I don’t know how to win the war, but Roosh V is a warrior on the right side. How do I know? From the fact that the righteous sleazy ones try to shut him up.