As I observe Rod Dreher explain why he agreed to get interviewed by the NYTimes in a piece filled with ludicrous, stupid lies, I have this to say.

I engage in exactly zero discussions with liberals / leftists / Biden voters / ‘democratic socialists’ / pandemicians / anti-racists or whatever they call themselves. I don’t try to reason with them, I don’t offer evidence, I don’t explain my position. I’m open to discuss shopping, recipes, weather, gossip, etc. But the moment they start on with vaccines, Trump, horse dewormers, insurrections, etc, I change the topic or use the bathroom. There can be no debate with people who hold the power to wipe you out of productive life on a whim. The very act of engaging in a discussion perpetuates the massive lie that there is free and open debate.

I have to shut up and bite it at work every day while horse dewormer freaks are nattering on their bizarre (and actually very racist) conspiracy theory on every corner. There is no debate any more. I’m not going to allow these people to use me as a salve for their consciences all the while anything I say will be filed away to persecute me later. If you can say anything you want while I can’t because I’m terrified of what you can do to me, we don’t have a conversation. We have a hostage situation.

I’m talking right now about normal everyday people who have been duped by propaganda. The actual stormtroopers at NYTimes – these are horrid people working for a horrid organization. Only days ago they knowingly perpetuated the lie about 900,000 pediatric COVID deaths. This is a despicable thing to do but it’s one in 25 even worse thing the paper did on that day.

I’m not judging Rod, I’m sure he has his reasons. But we’ll be giving the benefit of the doubt and pretending that a conversation is possible right as they cut our tongues out.

Here’s a devastating article on the costs of the Karen slur. Please don’t use it. It’s as embarrassing as when white people use the word “whiteness” or black people say that blacks smell.

At a used book sale, I saw a man in his late twenties pick up a John Le Carré spy novel, The Dune, a biography of Shakespeare, and Virgil’s Aeneid.

I’m fascinated by people’s used-book choices. At a sale, I usually veer towards pre-1970 small-town Americana. There’s a lot of fascinating stuff that was published – novels, of course, I rarely read anything else – about small Midwestern towns, pioneer outposts, poor farmer communities in the South. There’s no way to find out that this stuff even existed without a used book sale.

And people do read a lot. Every time there’s a sale in my time (and there were two major ones just in the last month), I have to beat my way through the crowd. Readers haul books away by the cartful.

When feminism went wrong was at the point of denying physiological sex differences and exaggerating the psychological ones. Women are supposed to be as physically strong as men but utterly incapable of saying “no” to offers of unwanted sex, interrupting an uncomfortable date, or surviving a compliment in the workplace. Women are just as great as men in combat or at a police precinct. We can wrestle criminals to the ground but are useless at verbalizing our feelings at a date. In other words, we are shortish men.

As a result, instead of making the world more hospitable to women’s distinctly non-male physiology, we started #MeTooing around imaginary mental fragilities. We have denied physique and embraced the mystique. And the result is quite pathetic. I mean, name one significant feminist advance in the last 20, 30, 40 years. There’s nothing. But the fight to get women drafted into the army is gaining steam. Yippee.

I don’t need a freaking female mentor at work because having to deal with a male mentor will supposedly turn my brain into mush. But recognizing PUPPPS as a serious affliction would definitely be a big deal. Why do we hear so much about the uncomfortable dates of a few mentally unstable women but nobody knows what PUPPPS even is? I had to bring printouts from Google to my OB-GYN because he had no idea what it was. That caused me a lot more suffering than a colleague telling me I look amazing. And PUPPPS is just one thing. I could give a million examples. Female contraception stinks. The medical industry around childbirth is vastly flawed. There’s zero discussion around drug-free relief for menstrual pain. The way the medical system treats women who miscarried is shameful. I can go on and on.

Of course, now the very word “women” has been cancelled, so forget talking about pregnancy complications or menopausal discomfort. Who cares about that when somebody’s fee-fees are hurt? Let’s take to our fainting couches because we are mentally fragile mini-men.