Cuomo Is Just One More

 

USA Today

The Andrew Cuomo scandal seems another example of high-level Democratic politicians often being reprehensible people. And they seem able to rise high in the party without anyone noticing or, perhaps, caring. This in turn reinforces my growing impression that politics has become of late a moral choice: one cannot be a good person and attain and stay in leadership on the left.

Michael Avenatti was widely touted as a presidential possibility, as was Andrew Cuomo as of a year ago.  John Edwards came close. Elizabeth Warren faked her ethnicity to get ahead. Bill Clinton was a serial philanderer, if not a rapist. Ted Kennedy seems to have been responsible for a girl’s death. It looks as though Joe Biden is in the pay of China and others; his son certainly is.

 Really, are these the good guys?

When a Democrat who looks like a good, sincere human being comes along, they seem to be rejected by the party brass: Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, Mike Gravel.

Sure, there are scandals on the Republican side too. But far fewer. There, it seems to be an individual matter, and good men and women can rise to the top: a John McCain, a Mitt Romney, a Rick Santorum, a Ben Carson.

I do not think it was always this way. I think this is another of the consequences of unrestricted abortion. Everyone knows in their conscience that it is wrong. A political party that supports it is in flight from morality.

Addiction and Vice

Sex junkie?

I don't really get this Tony Clement scandal in the Canadian federal Conservative caucus. All we know at this point is that he sent lewd photos and a video to someone he believed was a consenting adult. Since he is married, this implies, but does not amount to, adultery. But we have chosen not to make adultery illegal. Clement, so far as I can tell, has broken no laws; his personal sexual morality ought to be no one's business. Perhaps, of course, there is more involved than we yet know.

Of more interest is Clement's public pledge to “get help” over his supposed personal problems, and Andrew Scheer's approving note that Clement was “seeking help.”

What sort of help?

If it were going to his minister or his priest for confession, I'd see the point. But it sounds like another example of our medicalization of moral issues. Which goes nowhere. Sin is not illness; medicalizing it is a way to avoid taking responsibility for one's acts, and the only way to avoid sin is to take responsibility for one's acts.

I expect good old AA is largely to blame on this. For all the good they have done, they may have started the bandwagon rolling with their insistence on alcoholism being a disease. A popular idea, no doubt, with alcoholics; but never true. Alcoholism is a vice. A vice is superficially similar to an addiction: it corrodes free will. But addiction is physical; vice is spiritual. Addiction may be treated with pills. Vice can only be treated with personal resolve, and no one else—no white-smocked professional—can do personal resolve for you. He or she can only help you in your avoidance a little longer.

As it happens, one's body can also become physically addicted to alcohol—hence the DTs. This was unfortunately helpful in creating the delusion that the two, the vice and the addiction, were the same thing.

It then became easy to extend the delusion to any other sort of vice, so that since Bill Clinton we speak of “sex addiction”; now there are officially “behavioural addictions.” And, presumably, no more sin in the world. By this fuzzy logic, anything can be an addiction, it is impossible to determine that any one thing is more addictive than another, and moral responsibility is altogether gone. Making all these addictions incurable, at least by known, conventional methods. And then we wonder why there is a sudden explosion in “addictions.” “It's not my fault. Nothing I can do. I'm addicted.”

This is especially troubling in our political leaders: to see that they themselves do not believe in, and do not accept, any moral responsibility. One is left to wonder: if Andrew Scheer or Tony Clement believe they are not in principle responsible for their own decisions and actions, why on earth would we put them in any position of responsibility?

Brown Down

So Patrick Brown has resigned.

There is something very wrong here. Only two women have come forward, anonymously, with accusations. No corroborating evidence. On that basis, just about anyone could take just about anyone else out of public life. Or rather, realistically, in the present climate, anyone can take out any man in public life. It is hard to believe no rival party could dig up even two partisans prepared to anonymously lie about their opponent. When such lies never have negative consequences for the accuser.

Perhaps, of course, there is more we have not heard. There is one reason to believe this is not just a political hit job: if it were, it would have been better for the Liberals or NDP to pull it just before the election, as was done to Roy Moore, instead of now, with four months still to go.

But even if the accusations were true, at least from what I have so far seen, Brown does not seem to have been guilty of anything more than misjudgment or social awkwardness. During a drunken party ten years ago, he had a young volunteer down on a bed and was kissing her. But, according to her, he stopped once she made it clear this was not consensual, and never tried anything like it again. Another girl says he asked her for oral sex. She said no. He drove her home. In both cases, he and they were single; no adultery involved. And yes, all were of age.

And there is worse: The Globe and Mail is actually raking Brown over the coals for denying the allegations. How dare he? Of course, all accusations must be true, so long as they are by women against men, and that man is not named Clinton. Global News has called his resignation, which came within hours of the allegations, “tardy.”

It seems we are now into full mass hysteria. Witches are suddenly everywhere. If they deny they are witches, that is proof positive. It only shows how far the rot has gone. In fact, all men are witches.

Perhaps some good will come of this. For one thing, it is so far over the top that it may cause some folks to sober up. For another, I must confess, my first reaction to hearing that Brown had stepped down as Ontario PC leader was a heartfelt prayer of thanks. He had been acting dictatorially in the nominations process, and had abandoned the traditional Tory policies in order to offer about the same platform as the Liberals. It looked like a cynical move: those to the right had nowhere else to go, and he might more easily pick up votes in the centre.

That may be clever politics, but it speaks of someone without principles. It is never a good idea to elect someone without principles to high office.

Now perhaps the party will offer up a better candidate, with time enough to go before the election.

I suspect that is part of why Brown was out so fast. He ran and won as an outsider. He had not made many friends within the party with his strong-arm tactics. He had no ideological base. So he had little personal or ideological support once it looked in the party's interest to dump him. As surely it was. Better to dump him now than risk this controversy getting worse, with less time to find a new leader.

Men? It's All Your Fault

Absolutely no comment.

A recent piece in the New York Times reflects upon the sex scandals rocking Hollywood and Washington, and argues that it all just shows how evil men are.

Superficially plausible: it is only men who are being called out for sexual misdeeds. However, this is simply a result of men being expected to make the first move sexually.

Pamela Anderson has made a good point, and is being raked over the coals for it: why would a woman go into a man's hotel room alone in the first place?

If she does, given the current vague and ambiguous rules of engagement, isn't it fairly reasonable for the man to conclude that she is voluntarily in the game and on the hunt?

For every man being accused of unwanted sexual aggressions, there is probably a woman guilty of using sexual favours to get ahead. But the men, if they miscalculate, lose their career and their public reputation. The women face no consequences. They can even play the game, get the preferment, then years later turn on their boss and accuse him of sexual misconduct.

Either way, it is a bad thing: women getting sexually harassed, or women getting advantages through sex. Allow it, and a lot of innocent men and innocent women are harmed.

It turns out that there were good reasons for traditional morality. One great advantage—and only one of many—to “no sex outside marriage” as a rule was that it made the boundaries perfectly clear; there could be no misunderstandings. This same calculation also explains why, traditionally, having men and women mingle in the world of work was considered a bad idea. Not incidentally, it also explains, on the same basis, why homosexual employees were considered a problem. In all these cases, too much chance for sexual attractions to get messed up in the mix.

We have knocked down all these fences, all the fences that made our civilization function. And feminism has been in the forefront in doing this. Much of civilization is such fences, which is why the left hates civilization. It prevents us, after all, from getting what we want, when we want it. We have created this problem, and are still, it seems, thrashing about for scapegoats.

According to the NYT piece, the crisis reflects on “the nature of men in general,” “the grotesquerie of their sexuality,” the “ugly and dangerous nature of the male libido” “the implicit brutality of male sexuality.” “Male mechanisms of desire are inherently brutal.” So, in order for women to continue to do whatever they want, men must be put in chains.

Go back and substitute the word “Jews” or “Jewish” for “male” or “men” in the above statements. Or substitute “black” and “blacks.” Or “women” and “female.” How does it sound? That will give you a pretty clear idea of who is being oppressed in our present society, and who is being privileged.

Surprised? You have not been paying attention.

A chilling statement from the piece:

“How naïve must you be not to understand that sex itself is about power every bit as much as it’s about pleasure?”

Indeed. And how emotionally dead must you be to not even think about the possibility of it being about love? Everything to some is either for pleasure or for power. Everything is for self.

Fatty Weinstein

Roscoe Arbuckle

I have not been following the Harvey Weinstein scandal. I try to make a point of avoiding Hollywood gossip. It is the sin of calumny. And usually cruel and unfair to the celebrities involved, who have a right to their private lives, which right is consistently violated in modern America. Nevertheless, it has been hard to miss headlines saying 35 women have now made accusations of sexual impropriety against Weinstein.

Assuming it is all true, and even if it is not, but is not disproven, might this not have a serious effect on the Hollywood culture? Especially since it conforms to a longstanding popular suspicion about “show people”? A prejudice that stretches back at least to the Middle Ages?

Since the 1960s, Hollywood movies generally have been wildly immoral in any conventional sexual terms. Lots of sex scenes. A larger message, I think, that it is simply right and proper to drop your drawers and satisfy your urges at will. Hey, doesn’t everyone? I cannot speak authoritatively on this, because for the past sixteen years or so, I have been raising kids, and my movie-going has been pretty much limited to films with family ratings. But I have to say I did not feel I was missing anything. Hollywood lost me in the 60s. I think it was 1970, and M*A*S*H that did it. It was the ugly, unsympathetic portrayal of Major Frank Burns by Robert Duvall, as a religious nut, while “Hawkeye,” a callous womanizer, was the hero we were all supposed to identify with. Then and since then, any thought of sexual morality seems to have been treated by Hollywood with contempt. 

And that was a long time ago.

When I was single, I only went to foreign, indie, and art house films. Most of which, yeah, were awful, but if there were going to be any gems, they were going to be here.

There have been indications for years that the public is fed up with this. Note, for example, the unexpected success of The Passion of the Christ. Note the sagging movie attendance over the past year, that was already news when the Weinstein thing broke.

This bubble may be bursting before out eyes. Now people will now see a sex scene on screen, and think “Ick! I wonder who she had to perform some sex act with to get this role? And I wonder what sex act it was?” And when they look at the male partner, they will see I nthe back of their minds a corpulant, grizzled Harvey Weinstein in the nude.

It kind of tarnishes the tinsel. It makes the willing suspension of disbelief seem tawdry and itself a disgusting act.

It may no longer be possible, or profitable, for Hollywood to be so casual about sex in film.

This, after all, has happened before. Fatty Arbuckle. The specific charges were not true, Arbuckle was acquitted in a court of law, but the mental image of Fatty Arbuckle crushing some starlet with his naked bulk was too powerful in the public mind. That scandal ushered in the prudish Hays Code.

And this presents a similar image.

I, for one, certainly do not lament this. Regardless of any moral issues, and there certainly are moral issues, putting an explicit sex scene, or blood and gore, in a film is just cheap thrills. Far better if the scriptwriters and directors have to invest in putting together a better story.

This is also why I believe that writing for children is almost always the best writing. You cannot fake it. The story and the characters have to be worth it on their own.