A Quick Rant

     There’s plenty of news these days, and plenty of folks who are willing to bring it to you. I have no problem with that; I consider it a positive thing and a good sign for the future, even when the news is bad. We need to know what’s going on, and even if some of the reporting is fallacious – which it surely is, given the multiplicity of sources – over time the facts will be repeatedly confirmed, whereas the deceits will not.

     However, I dislike “reporters” whose principal interest is in listening to themselves talk. Too many of our “new journalists” are in love with the sound of their own voices. Accordingly, they’ll take 30 seconds worth of newsworthy facts and string it out into a ten-minute video – and when I say “string it out,” I mean it in the most pejorative sense. Here’s a “good” example. If you can endure the whole thing, you’re a stouter heart than I.

     The essence of good reporting is getting the facts out, clearly and concisely. Nothing else matters to the genuine newsman. He doesn’t indulge in verbal arabesques. He doesn’t pound you about how “you’re hearing this nowhere else.” And he doesn’t put commentary (sometimes fan-danced as “analysis”) ahead of the facts; that’s the sin called “burying the lede.”

     Forgive me, Gentle Reader. I had to vent. You may now return to your previously scheduled Sunday morning 5:00 AM activities.

New Depths In “Journalism”

     The incredible absurdities that so-called reporters will commit for the ghost of a change to defame or discredit President Trump have reached a new depth:

     Yet people have been writing to ask me why I’ve been posting so much less frequently on political topics.

     I propose that the press secretary of the president of the United States be granted a limited immunity to the laws against assault with a deadly weapon, to be implemented thus:

• The press secretary shall be licensed to carry a firearm during all press conferences. The firearm shall be limited to 9 mm caliber or below.
• The press secretary shall be provided with a full magazine for that firearm, one only.
• The press secretary may fire his firearm at any reporter who asks him what he deems a completely stupid question. The press secretary may continue to fire until he has inflicted a visible wound upon the selected reporter. The press secretary is indemnified against any and all consequences of doing so.
• However, the press secretary shall not deliberately cause the death of the reporter. Should a reporter die as a result of any exercise of this privilege, the determination as to whether his death was deliberate shall rest with the president.
• This privilege shall not be exercised more than three times during any given press conference. Upon the third exercise of this privilege, the press conference shall immediately be terminated.

     Pour encourager les autres, don’t y’know.

Quickies: Concerning Experts, Authorities, And Journalists

     There’s a reason why journalists should always keep their distance from priesthoods in any field. It’s particularly in the nature of insular communities of subject matter experts to coalesce around orthodoxies that blind the very people in the loop who should be the most knowledgeable.

     “Experts” get things wrong for reasons that are innocent (they’ve all been taught the same incorrect thing in school) and less so (they have a financial or professional interest in denying the truth)….

     “Authorities” by their nature are untrustworthy. Sometimes they have an interest in denying truths, and sometimes they actually try to define truth as being whatever they say it is. “Elevating authoritative content” over independent or less well-known sources is an algorithmic take on the journalistic obsession with credentialing that has been slowly destroying our business for decades.

     [Matt Taibbi]

     Have I bruised your ears sufficiently about “Anything Authorities?” Good. Because “One Thing Authorities” can be just as bad – and often are. Remember the immortal words of Robert A. Heinlein:

     Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.

     Verbum sat sapienti.

A Hopeful Look Forward

     Now and then, the young do learn from the errors of their elders. Consider this example:

     (Courtesy of the incomparable Charles Hill.)

     Hilde Lysiak, if you’ve never before encountered her name, is quite an accomplished young woman. She’s a heroine of mine, despite her youth, for the reason set out so clearly in the tweet above: She maintains that a reporter is one who reports the news, nothing else.

     There aren’t many genuine reporters these days. They all seem to want to be something more – call ‘em “influencers” – but to maintain the facade of “objectivity” that once went with the occupational title of “reporter.”

     As others have said in their own idioms, one Hilde Lysiak is enough to renew the spirit of hope crushed by a thousand headphone-wearing, smartphone-addicted teen layabouts and whiners. But this is mostly prefatory.

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     I’ve cited this valuable article more than once. Its author was a colleague of mine, back when. A fine, courteous, Christian gentleman was he. More to the point, he was virtually alone in noting that “journalism” in the age of the national broadcast network – today we must include the many cable networks as well – had morphed into something untrustworthy. Upon first encountering his opinion, I resolved to investigate the genesis of the thing.

     I concluded that much of the disease of contemporary journalism can be traced to the Twentieth Century’s several wars, especially World Wars I and II. Those wars had the effect of eclipsing all other events in significance to the average news-consumer. (They also had the effect of centralizing virtually all political power in Washington, D.C., but you already knew that.) “The news” was war news, and damned little of anything else. Certainly local events such as Hilde Lysiak has reported them since 2014 didn’t pose much competition.

     Prior to the Spanish-American War, major news conglomerates were unknown. That war, the first of the “big” wars in which the United States was involved, was the horse the Hearst newspapers rode to national prominence – and dominance. As the years passed, “the news” steadily became less about local and more about things of national significance. The national audience became the audience to which the “journalist” directed his efforts.

     It’s been said with some justice that politics is Hollywood for ugly people. This is just as true for the news industry, with the proviso that he whose face is to appear on the television screen can’t afford to be too unsightly. As “the news” grew ever more national, the requirements laid upon the purveyor of “the news” approached those of the entertainer ever more closely.

     Add to the above that as “the news” became ever more about national developments, the news-makers became ever more the cadre of officeholders in the nation’s capital. For many reasons, such persons must limit the access others have to them. That added a critical skill to the “journalist’s” bag: he had to be able to find a way through the barriers between the common citizen and the federal official. Unfortunately, there’s a serious downside: access is nearly always accomplished through partisan sycophancy.

     In this year of Our Lord 2019, local news organs – more exactly, news media that concentrate on local and state-level developments – have all but died off completely. What remain of them are mainly shopping circulars such as Yankee Trader and Pennysaver News. Mind you, those organs perform a function of modest importance, but they’re not full-blooded replacements for the papers that once chronicled the events that directly affect one’s neighborhood, village, county, and state.

     But just as “Trees do not grow to the sky” (Baron Philippe de Rothschild), neither does any trend last forever. A counter-trend of citizen distrust in “the news” has been in progress for some years and seems to be rising close to a breakthrough level. The opportunity this presents for young, sincere reporters such as Hilde Lysiak “should” be “obvious.”

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     Whether we will see a renaissance in locally focused news media is as yet unclear. What is clear is that the national news media are losing credibility, and with it the loyalty of the private news-consumer. Whether the opportunities created by their gradual slide from grace will be exploited, and by whom, we have yet to see. But in these United States it’s a rare thing for a demand not to evoke a supply...and it seems to these old eyes that there’s a demand for actual reporting, of the sort to which Hilde Lysiak has committed herself. At any rate, we can hope.

The Polarization Of Journalism And Its Consequences

     This piece has a prerequisite: Read up on the assaults on Andy Ngo by Portland AntiFa. Read both the accounts of the assault and the comments of “journalists” that amount to “he expected it,” “he wanted it,” and “he deserved it.” Then return here.

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     Finished so soon? My, my.

     Attacks on journalists who dare to cover AntiFa’s violent antics have been going on for a while now. The recent assault on Andy Ngo of Quillette is entirely within that pattern. It’s distinguished (pardon the choice of words) from its predecessors mostly by its near-lethality.

     And yes: Ngo, an intelligent man, would have known that once he’d been seen and identified, the probability that AntiFa would attack him would be high. That doesn’t mean he wanted it to happen, Neither does it mean that he was there to be personally attacked rather than to document the Patriot Prayer assemblage and AntiFa’s assaults on it. But he surely had a sense of the risks involved in covering the episode.

     This is called devotion to one’s chosen trade. It’s also called courage. But when viewed dispassionately, the episode appears symptomatic rather than basic.

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     One of the worst aspects of our current political environment is the categorization of news organs and the people who work for them into political allegiances: “He’s for us” versus “He’s against us.” At this point I can’t think of a prominent organ or reporter who’s above such things. Indeed, I can’t imagine how any of them could stand apart from it, for a simple reason: Merely covering and reporting on actual events is enough to get one categorized.

     That follows from AntiFa’s use of violence and intimidation to silence the Right. AntiFa is a terrorist organization. By its choice of tactics, it has placed itself above the law. Therefore, anyone who documents its actions, even if baldly and objectively, is its enemy. As we mathematical types like to say, Quod erat demonstrandum.

     Ideology doesn’t enter into it. Only tactics matter. Keep that firmly in mind. Keep this in mind as well: Sooner or later, AntiFa will face adversaries as violent as itself, if not more so.

     With every person and organization in journalism preassigned to an Us or Them billet, there is no longer any safety for any of them. Their persons are at continuous hazard. Their organizations are equally at risk. Those deemed Left will be exposed to the vigilantes of the Right just as those deemed Right have been exposed to the violence of AntiFa.

     The inaction of the Portland police during the attack on Ngo is an equally important indicator. It now seems well established that they were under orders from On High not to intervene. Current trends continuing, we may expect that, should AntiFa confront armed, belligerent Rightists in a city under a Right-leaning administration, the police would be told not to intervene against the Right. It hasn’t happened yet, but it will.

     The news game no longer has rules in any meaningful sense. If the behavior of “the forces of order” will henceforward be determined by ideology rather than law, neither does American society.

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     I could go on at great length about this horror...that is, if I could go on at all. Our nation is breaking down. Indeed, there’s a strong case that the breakdown has already gone to completion and what we’ve been witnessing are merely the inevitable consequences: the opening skirmishes in a non-territorial civil war. Attacks on journalists – and I don’t mean President Trump slagging off the openly hostile Acostas and Ryans of the media – guarantee that from this moment until something resembling public order is restored, all news is war news.

     Americans old enough to remember the World War II “newsreels” can surely remember their patriotic gloss, their open celebrations of our victories and their grief over our setbacks and losses. There was Us and there was Them, and there was no equivocation about who were the Good Guys. The newsreels were propaganda as much as news: intended not only to inform but also to sustain domestic morale, that the men in the field might continue to receive the degree of support they would need to keep fighting.

     That’s the sort of reportage we might receive at best. At worst? Let your imagination run free; I’m sure you can conjure up a more vivid picture for yourself than any I could construct from mute pixels.

     It’s time to pray...for all of us.

Words Fail Me Dept.

     There are days when commentary itself seems unnecessary. The events of yesterday – big news on a Friday afternoon, whoda thunk it? – made January 18, 2019 one of them.

     BuzzFeed ran a wholly fabricated story that accused President Trump of instructing his former lawyer Michael Cohen to commit, if not an indictable criminal offense, at the very least an indictment of Trump’s character adequate to justify his impeachment and removal from office. From a site such as BuzzFeed, which gives new meaning to the phrases “yellow journalism” and “clickbait,” that’s just barely newsworthy. BuzzFeed’s “journalists” have demonstrated their lack of journalistic ethics on several occasions. But then Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller stepped forward and publicly refuted the story. Now that’s news!

     Now add this report on the testimony of former FBI General Counsel James Baker. It completely destroys the “Steele Dossier” accusations against President Trump, along with the credibility of essentially the whole of the FBI’s upper management. We’re going to remember yesterday for a long time, Gentle Readers.

     Apropos of which, here’s how BuzzFeed will be remembered:

     Have a nice day.

For Anyone Who Needs A Laugh

     And really, who doesn’t?

     I hope President Trump gets to see that video before someone it embarrasses contrives to have it taken down.

     Needless to say, the various “journalists” and “analysts” featured in that clip were expressing more than a little wishful thinking. But then, that’s what they do, right? That’s the core of their job descriptions, isn’t it? I mean, if it isn’t, what else are they supposed to be doing and why aren’t they doing it?

     I’d been having a down day, but that made me feel a whole lot better.

Call Them What They Are

     The “legacy media.” The organs that were once the only conduits through which “news” reached the general public. The institutions that viewed the pictures, decided which ones we should be shown, and consigned the rest to the ever-so-aptly named “morgue.” The gaggles of reporters, editors, and publishers who exercised the Olympian privilege of deciding what We the People “need to know,” and made sure we were deluged with it.

     They liked that perch. They particularly liked that no one could take it from them, owing to the high cost of operation and a shield for broadcast-media privilege called the Federal Communications Commission. Barriers to entry are nice that way, especially when buttressed by ample propaganda.

     The Left saw the value in the privilege of unchallenged one-way communications, so they infiltrated the news oligopoly and worked to ensure that only “their sort” were thereafter admitted to its halls. And like the Fabians, “their sort” moved slowly but steadily, taking ground a little at a time and never surrendering an inch. Neanderthals like Rowland Evans and Robert Novak were eased out; persistent voices such as Jack Kilpatrick were sidelined into farcical “features” where they would be outshouted by a strident, graceless Leftist.

     It was a good gig. It allowed the Left to tell the public what we “ought” to be told. Even more important, it allowed the Left to keep us from hearing “dangerous” ideas and voices that crosscut what they, in their unquestioned judgment, deemed “news.” And it worked very well for them, until the rise of the alternative media made possible by cablecasting, digital communications, and the partial deregulation of radio breached their protective wall.

     The new media’s stories came from reporters the Left could not disqualify. Its content went to the consumer completely unfiltered. The legacy media oligopoly could no longer rule on who could say what to whom, or with what substantiation. It could not pick and choose among stories or sources. Things got out of hand...that is, out of the Left’s hands. Something had to be done, but what?

     The answer they arrived at was to prattle about “reliability” and “journalistic ethics.” The legacy media operates by a code, you see. Its reporters are schooled in a tradition of sacred responsibility to the public. Its mechanisms ensure that only carefully verified facts are reported to the public. Layers and layers of fact-checkers and editors, all supremely protective of their publication’s good name and vigilant against anything that might tarnish it.

     I think all the chrome has been rubbed off that old jalopy, don’t you, Gentle Reader?

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     Apologies for the above. I had a lot of sarcasm built up and ready to spill over, so I chose this subject as a fitting receptacle. I’ve become very impatient with folks who say “Believe it because I’m telling you so, and ignore anyone who disagrees.” Or in the Firesign Theater’s formulation:

You can trust me,
Because I never lie,
And I’m always right.

     That’s the line the legacy media have been feeding us since their mid-Sixties campaign against “Pay TV” – i.e., cablecasting. And if I refuse to accept it from the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church, I’ll be damned if I’ll take it from a self-nominated flock of ideologues bitter about the emergence of competition.

     Monopolies and cartels of information dissemination are infinitely more dangerous than monopolies in other sorts of commerce. When such institutions preen themselves about their “ethics,” a smart American puts one hand on his wallet and the other on his gun. Especially when its agenda becomes impossible to conceal:

     But “fake news” is tame in light of the media’s misleading, destructive, and willfully ignorant reporting last week that was intended further to inflame a divided body politic.

     Some of the lowlights featured MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough, claiming Trump has done more damage to the country than the 9/11 terrorists; the editorial board of a major newspaper blaming Trump for Hurricane Florence; the wholesale acceptance of a highly flawed paper about hurricane deaths used to bash the president; and a despicable crusade not just to quash Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, but to destroy his reputation and damage his young family.

     And it wasn’t just the dependable lunatics on the Left pushing trash commentary. Bret Stephens, the NeverTrump “conservative” columnist for the New York Times, compared Trump to a drug addict. Washington Post “conservative” blogger Jennifer Rubin warned that if Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted to confirm Kavanaugh, their names would be, “as was the case with [Nazi-era traitor] Vidkun Quisling—synonymous with ‘sellouts,’ ‘collaborators,’ or, to use a Trumpism, ‘phonies.’”

     As the week came to a close, the New York Times was forced to append its misleading article that criticized U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley for buying pricey curtains to decorate her official residence. The window coverings, it turns out, actually were purchased by her predecessor in the Obama Administration. But it was too late. Social media had pounded Haley all morning for being extravagant and heartless.

     Disgraceful.

     This is why Americans, in a recent poll, cited inaccuracy and bias as the key reasons why they no longer trust the media.

     Indeed.

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     We are fortunate to live in a time when a news oligopoly, at least, is no longer sustainable. But there are other protected bastions of information dissemination at work. There’s one in your neighborhood. It gets a hefty share of your tax payments and over a thousand hours per year to indoctrinate your minor children, and it makes full use of both.

     Isn’t it about time we put an end to this crap? And I don’t mean cutting it back or limiting its “mandate.” That’s like excising half of a malignant tumor and leaving the rest in place.

     Outside of government, the Left has made almost all its gains through the exploitation of three institutions: the legacy media, the “public” schools, and the entertainment industry. All three have fought like wounded tigers to prevent the emergence of competition. But only one who knows himself to be vulnerable is unhappy about competition. Smart businessmen know that the competition is the greater part of what keeps them honest.

     Honesty! What a concept!

Quickies: Some Events In Israel

     Sometimes we get a concise report on important events: a report stripped of opinion and other nonessentials, that leaves us to form our own conclusions. This is the essence of honest reporting. The following graphic is a case for study:

     Before all else, we must decide whether to accept the reportage as honest – factual in its details, omitting none of importance. Confirmation from an independent source would help to assure this. In the usual case of exchanges of fire such as the graphic describes, such confirmation is available. At the moment, I don’t have any, so whether to accept the report as honest is up to the reader.

     What evaluations of the events described are possible?

1. That on July 20 of this year, Gazan Palestinians committed cross-border acts of violence against Israel, and Israel’s military performed reprisals upon HAMAS military posts in Gaza in the hope of deterring further such acts;
2. That the report is a fiction intended to justify violence against Gaza by Israel.

     I can’t come up with any others. Can you, Gentle Reader?

     In the usual case, the selection of one evaluation over the other will be a matter of already-held convictions about relations between Israel and the Palestinian irredentists of the Gaza Strip. He who is inclined to believe that the Israeli government is relatively moral will adopt position #1. He who sides with the Palestinians and believes that Israel is an oppressor will adopt position #2.

     Now let’s assume that we acquire confirmation of the above graphic, and can therefore be confident about its reportage. The reader who holds position #1 will smile. (He might say “I told you so.”) What about the reader who holds position #2? What might we expect from him?

     Were the second reader to say, “All right, it seems to be correct,” he would be displaying honesty and personal integrity. However, in the most common recent cases, that reader would either attempt to discredit the confirmation, or would try to change the subject.

     Ideology – a set of convictions founded on a postulated model of the world –can cause seemingly reasonable people to believe, say, and do some very unreasonable things. This is especially so when ideology is combined with the power of group affiliation, as Eric Hoffer has told us.

     The massive foofaurauw about “fake news” that’s been in the air is seldom about misstatements of fact. It’s nearly always about framing and phrasing: the construction of a story so that it will lead the reader to specific conclusions that a bald statement of the facts would not support. It’s far subtler than a blatant lie, and much harder to detect and bypass. Yet skill at framing and phrasing is what media barons value in the reporters they dispatch to cover events such as the ones discussed here. Editorial offices have habitually placed the advancement of their preferred ideology over honest journalism.

     Only the availability of diverse sources and perspectives can countervail the pernicious effects of “fake news.” Which is why it’s more important than ever that absolute freedom of expression, regardless of the specific medium, should be defended to the death.

Most People

     Have you ever been most people? They’re awfully authoritative. If only they had fewer opinions, especially opinions that simple observation can disprove.

     I was most people, for quite a few years. During those years you could tell me that “most people are in favor” of this or that, and I’d start to align with whatever the “this or that” might be. “Most people favor the war in Vietnam.” “Most people think Social Security is a good idea.” “Most people think John F. Kennedy is a hero.” Sheesh! Back when, if I were told that “most people think the sky is yellow,” I’d at least entertain the notion for a moment or two.

     It’s awfully hard to shake the tyranny of most people – even if you happen to know most people.

     The Most People Effect is closely related to the They Say Effect. Indeed, it’s hard to distinguish between the two. They have a certain untouchability about them: You can’t argue with most people. You certainly can’t argue with they. For one thing, it’s bad grammar.

     There are subjects on which most people are right. There are other subjects on which they’re almost guaranteed to be wrong – and not because most people are BLEEP!ing idiots.

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     The product reliability assessments most people make are themselves pretty reliable. The same goes for most people’s statements of taste in matters such as music and the performing arts. That’s because most people’s tastes are...well...shared by most people. It’s the factual assertions most people make that are likely to be wildly off base.

     We needn’t delve deeply into ancient history for examples. We have plenty before us today:

• Most people say that inflation is because greedy companies arbitrarily raise the prices of necessities.
• Most people say that Islam is just one more religion, nothing special or threatening about it.
• Most people say that Bill Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama are both really smart.

     All three of these assertions are provably incorrect. False-to-fact. Complete and utter nonsense. Yet most people are in thrall to all three. Daily I thank God that the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch are not most people.

     It’s easiest to escape the mental vise most people exert on you if you can test their claims personally and directly. Most people assured me that I’d never finish a novel. After all, most people never do. Once I’d finished my first book, most people told me it would never reach a readership. For a while it looked as if most people would turn out to be right about that...but the fly in the prognosticative ointment was that word never. Never is one hell of a long time. Print-on-demand and electronic publication came along well before never was over and done.

     I haven’t rubbed most people’s noses in that, though. I’m still waiting for my chance.

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     (Josh Duhamel as) Milt Chamberlain: In my experience, when you trust people, they... they trust you.
     (Dean Winters as) Russ Agnew: Have you actually met... people?

     [From the television show Battle Creek]

     Now, neither character in the above exchange said most people. That’s because both were talking about people they’d known. At least one of them generalized from an inadequate sample. Still, we’re supposed to assume that both characters believed, probably strongly, that what they’d said was true of most people. It was part of the premise of the show.

     I can’t say which statement is nearer to the truth. I don’t know most people. Given the endless reams of utter bilge they’ve foisted upon me over my sixty-five years, I don’t want to know most people. But that doesn’t matter. They’ll keep pouring their ersatz wisdom into my ear whenever I don’t leave two or three empty seats between me and the nearest other patrons at the tavern.

     Most people, you see, think that they know something that you need to know. Most people are like that. At least, that’s what they say.

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     “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

     I’m frequently spitted, roasted, and thinly sliced for:

1. My preference for my own company;
2. My off-axis opinions about just about everything.

     Most people, you see, disagree with me in both areas. They seldom stop to reflect on the relationship between them.

     You cannot have your own opinions if you’re most people. That’s the nature of the phenomenon. All observations about the utility of “crowdsourcing” to the side, most people are intolerant of opinions and habits that deviate from those held by most people. Sometimes their intolerance becomes lethal.

     He who elects a thinker’s life – properly tempered by experience, of course – must learn early on that such a life comes with survival necessities. He must learn to enjoy solitude. He must learn not to argue beyond the point of mild disagreement. He must learn to bear most people’s frowns of disapproval. He must cultivate an amiable grin and a quick step. And he must learn not to care about most people’s opinions of him.

     Friends are important. A sufficient number of friends might be a requirement of a long and healthy life; there’s some evidence for that contention. But the thinking man must find the sweet spot between having friends and submerging into most people. They have power one seldom appreciates adequately until it’s wielded on one’s own hide. And even friends can be a source of pressure to conform to some norm of conviction or conduct better resisted for the sake of one’s own integrity.

     You might wonder why I’m nattering about this on a Saturday morning, when there are so many important topics available about which to rant...but isn’t it possible that that’s because those other topics have been deemed important by most people?

     Limit your consumption of the “news.” Be skeptical of what you read and hear. Remember toward whom it’s being aimed. Do you want to be one of they? Most people do...but what about you?

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     Posting will be light for the coming week. Please bear with me while I spend some time with most people a distant friend, the refreshment from whom I find I need rather badly. I’ll be back, as intolerable as ever, soon enough.

Moo-oo! Don't you LOVE the sound of skewered feminist-sacred-cows in the morning!

As one of many supporters of "The Red Pill" (including the humble founder of Liberty’s Torch, whose name I spotted in the credits, but not mine, because I guess I was too much of a cheapskate to qualify for that perk), and now a recent pre-release viewer, I presumed (like I imagine director Cassie Jaye did) going on this documentary-adventure would hold no big surprises for me.

LOL

My arrogance came, I suppose, because I was "Red-Pilled" a while back. I thought I knew enough not to be surprised - or impressed. But turns out her film did both! I became aware of the Men’s Rights Movement (via avoiceformen.com) in late 2011 - participating actively there for several years: commenting often and writing a few pieces that Paul Elam published on the site. (The photo-collage within the collage, above, is of me with just a few of the amazing people I met at AVfM's 1st International Conference on Men's Issues, held outside Detroit, in 2014.)

A most remarkable thing about documentary creator, Cassie Jaye, is that she is a young woman who boldly went where most of her Feminist sisters will never go...to their ideological opposition. Even more radical, was HOW she went: NOT screaming, NOT blockading, and NOT making threats of violence, but rather, with a willingness to listen. To learn. And to reconsider, even jettison, intellectual inconsistencies, without regard for the personal paradigm-shifts such honesty can bring...

Based upon my experience, both in the world of the Men's Rights' Movement and in watching this film about it, I can guarantee 100% that you will learn something unique and valuable. And because I believe this so strongly, I’m very confident that if you watch it with an open mind (and heart) - intuitively grasping the significance - you will become a better person for having done so. I hope you will take the transformative Red-Pill journey made possible by this amazing young filmmaker, and then pass it on to others.

If you can bear the entirety of my 1900-word review/analysis, please visit my blog: housewife3-0.com.