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Aug. 2, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
29:32
This Week in Stupid (02⧸08⧸2015)
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Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 2nd of August 2015.
Now I know from the comments that a lot of you are watching this series just because you're thinking, okay well, one week, that has to be a slow week for stupid.
One week we have to have very little that actually happens.
But that week isn't this week.
This week a three-year-old was placed on a government anti-extremist program.
Yes, he can barely walk, yes, he's only just learned how to talk and he can't read or write yet, but we are worried about this kid being extremist.
Now, I just want to stress that I do think that the government's heart is in the right place here.
But I also think that placing thousands of children on extremist watch lists is going to create more self-fulfilling prophecies than it solves.
Now, this three-year-old obviously wasn't placed on this list through anything the three-year-old themselves had done.
They were placed on it because there was concerns about their family being, well, radical Muslims.
You know, the sort of radical Muslims that say things like, oh, the British government's disgraceful and imperialist and oppressive to the Muslims in Britain by placing them on anti-terror watch lists when they're only three years old.
Or perhaps going through family courts in cases involving these children and measures including taking away children's passports to make it harder for them to leave the country.
This is a really bizarre way to approach this problem.
I mean, we have a large Muslim minority in this country.
We know that there are Muslim colonies where the sort of more extremist ideology can breed without any real interaction with normal British folks to provide a counterpoint to the propaganda they're being fed.
And we also know that there are quite a few very extremist madrasas and mosques in Britain who teach easily influenced young men that it's okay to be misogynist to women.
It's okay to kill British soldiers.
It's okay to fight against the state you live in because it's not a Muslim state and you are a Muslim.
And instead of going after these people, they're making the focus of their efforts on children.
And it's not like these hate preachers in their mosques are operating within the bounds of British law anyway, because I mean we're living in a country where people can get arrested for hate speech on Facebook.
But instead of dealing with those people, instead the high numbers of young people being referred to the scheme is due to the increasing number of British fighters flowing to fight with ISIS terrorists in the Middle East.
I'm all for free speech, but I don't think inciting violence is actually covered under the concept.
And anyway, being an extremist is hardly the kid's fault.
I mean, he probably was raised by a misogynist father.
How do I know that?
Well, new research suggests that fatherhood turns men into misogynists.
Seriously, new research suggests that men adopt traditional attitudes towards gender roles after the birth of their first child, and that is an amazing statement.
Combined with the headline, does fatherhood turn men into misogynists?
Because that is directly stating that traditional gender roles equal hatred of women.
This is how the feminist mind can justify saying to women who want to be stay-at-home mothers that they have internalized misogyny, no matter how much they enjoy their lives or how much they appreciate that they don't have to work in a fucking office.
So social scientists have discovered that fatherhood brings about a sexist shift in many men who take the opinion that women should fulfill the brunt of the housework and care duties.
But the thing is, so do women.
Women adopt a more conservative attitude after the birth of their first child as well, but their attitude shift is less severe.
I mean it still happens.
They still adopt a more quote conservative attitude.
This was done by a survey where people were asked to express how strongly they agreed with various statements, using the scale of 1 to 7, on statements such as breadwinning, social barriers, and maternity leave.
And the thing is, there's already a problem with this.
The reasons for these statements are going to be classified as conservative or not based on the presumed motivations of the people.
And they're presumed because they never ask them for what their actual reasoning is.
They just say, do you agree with this or not?
You could agree with it for any number of reasons, many of which might not be conservative.
But we're going to assume it's a conservative attitude.
Because it's not the intention, it's the outcome that's important.
When asked if women alone should undertake the stereotypically female roles of housekeeping and infant care, a significant number of both sexes strongly agreed, due to their internalized misogyny.
However, men were notably more supportive of this statement, believing that the household burden should not be equally shared across the sexes.
Interestingly, new parents appear to be more likely to endorse women as full-time carers.
For example, when asked before the birth of their children, most women and men agreed that the idea that housework and care should be shared equally.
However, after the birth, the mean level of disagreement with that statement rose among both genders.
Oh yeah, like that's some sort of fucking revelation that needed a study.
So the study's author Janine Baxter says, when the first child is born, men and women grow more traditional in their gender attitudes towards mothering, as well as towards who does the housework and caregiving.
You know, it's statements like that that make people mock social scientists.
Baxter herself is the one who coined the term the sexist shift, as if the very nature of what they're doing is sexist and not the reasons for them doing it.
And I say this because sexism is prejudice, stereotyping or discrimination typically against women on the basis of sex, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
So if women are choosing, if they are making the decision that they think it's best to be the stay-at-home mother while their husband goes out to work for whatever reasons, they are not prejudicing or stereotyping or discriminating against themselves.
But I think what Baxter is saying is that the world makes people sexist.
It's designed to make people sexist.
Or if not designed that way, that is a direct consequence of doing things this way.
She says, the way we organise work, parental leave arrangements, public services for children's schools and social networks creates structural barriers.
Which might well be true from a feminist perspective.
It is a structural barrier to the father going off from work instead of the mother, if the father earns twice her wage.
And we know still that men are the primary breadwinners in relationships, so is it any wonder that women would say, you know what, I should be the one who becomes the full-time mother?
It would be silly not to do that.
And this is what she calls society shoehorning individuals into particular gender-assigned roles that can also be seen to affect men.
Despite strongly agreeing with the idea of the househusband, many men simply do not believe the role to be a socially acceptable pursuit, mirroring the challenges of work negotiated by new mothers.
you don't actually know they mean socially acceptable and either way they're looking at the end results they're saying well pragmatically i can't because society is set up in such a way that the person who earns the most money is the person most suited to be the one sole breadwinner of the house and the other person who doesn't is by default then suited to raising the children But these real-world pragmatic concerns are clearly nothing to do with what's going on here.
The birth of a new child is thought to affect the way the parents define themselves, wanting to pursue a traditional family unit rather than adopting transgressive and less socially acceptable roles within the relationship.
No, no, it's nothing to fucking do with that.
It's about doing what must be done.
The tone and tenor of this is as if there is no new burden placed on the relationship.
And this as well.
Baxter summarises the social conundrum.
Yeah, it's a social conundrum.
By observing that this shift means reluctant mothers have less opportunity to renegotiate intensive roles that may not fit them and make it more difficult for enthusiastic fathers to be as involved with their children as might benefit everyone.
Well, look, it's not a law.
It's not ironclad, it's just people have the tendency towards doing this because, and I spoil it for you, no study needed, it's what those people are best at.
And I know this because I have a five-month-old son, and not a day goes by that I receive a full night of sleep or don't get puked on.
My time is in such short supply and my energy levels are generally quite low that everything that happens between me and my wife happens by the person who is most efficient at doing it.
So if you think you can include some ideological speed bumps because it would be less transgressive to feminism for this to be the case, you can think again.
It's not going to happen.
And I'm not talking from my perspective, I'm talking in general.
And speaking of things that are not going to happen, I will never accept the premise that some words are, quote, problematic.
Unlike the University of New Hampshire.
So when students arrive on campus at the University of New Hampshire in the new term, they'll be welcomed with a bias-free language guide to help them in their conversations.
Courtesy of the thought police.
Double plus good, comrade.
Luckily, we've got some doublethink to help that make sense.
The university website encourages readers to understand that the guide is not a means to censor, but rather to create dialogues of inclusion where all of us feel comfortable and welcomed by fucking excluding words.
That's not censoring, and that's not exclusion, that's actually inclusion.
So some of the problematic words are American.
Fucking hell, starting your best foot forward.
American, you're very, you know, the colloquial term for your nationality is problematic.
Brilliant.
Mothering and fathering.
Well, we did see how they were sexist already.
Illegal, alien, and Caucasian.
I love how we've covered all this as well.
Yeah, because for some reason that might be putting up distinctions between peoples of different areas of the world and nationalities.
And God forbid we have that.
Which I suppose covers Orientals.
But then we've got homeless and poor person, as if we're supposed to say something like domestically challenged or wealth disadvantaged.
And then next we've got obese, overweight and healthy, as if these are moral judgments or something.
You know, someone not having anything wrong with them, you'd say they were healthy.
But that's somehow a judgment against people who have something wrong with them, like those people who are obese or overweight.
My problem with these is that the replacements are all dehumanizing.
Such as American should be replaced with US citizen or resident of the US.
Or saying illegal alien should be undocumented immigrant or person is seeking asylum or a refugee, which at least sounds kind of humanized.
But even foreigners is problematic.
The preferred term is international people.
I mean, they just seem to be methods of depersonalizing them.
It's the sort of classification I'd have in a database.
But with the exception of refugee, it's not how people would identify themselves, is it?
But I can at least agree with one of their assertions.
The word homosexual is remarkably problematic.
And we should indeed use the substitute same-gender loving because as our friend Black Hitler taught us, same gender loving is an African construct.
Whereas the word homosexual is a European construct.
But more importantly, the word homosexual is made up of the Greek homos, meaning same, and the Latin sexus, meaning gender.
I don't see why these hybrid etymologies should be foisted on the rest of us.
If you weren't paying attention, there are some amusing current events happening this week as well.
British Lord resigns after cocaine and prostitute scandal.
How exciting.
A British peer who has been in charge of parliamentary ethics has quit the House of Lords after allegedly snorting cocaine off a prostitute's breasts.
So where's the scandal?
Oh, that is the scandal.
I see.
So Lord John Sewell69 apologised for the pain and embarrassment caused after the Rupert Murdoch-owned son.
How's that really relevant?
Okay.
Newspaper published pictures of him apparently taking drugs and wearing an orange bra and a studded leather jacket as he chatted to two sex workers.
I see.
And everyone judging him on this is very sex negative and don't like the fact that he was chatting to sex workers or employing them.
The images also showed him calling Prime Minister David Cameron facile and superficial and insulting several other senior politicians.
Well, I don't see any problems here.
Scotland Yard has launched an investigation into how facile and superficial David Cameron is.
Because that won't take long.
Call me blind here, but what's this guy actually done wrong?
I mean, yeah, what he's done is unseemly.
But, I mean, what have we ever expected politicians to be paragons of moral virtue?
Okay, he was doing some drugs, but is that that big a deal?
I mean, the guy's almost 70.
And the same with the sex workers.
So I don't think that sex workers are inherently immoral.
I mean, was he doing them in the House of Lords?
Because maybe that would change my opinion.
But if it's like in his hotel or in his flat, in his own time, and it's not anything to do with his work, why would I care?
Isn't the biggest scandal here that he is a peer at all?
Lord Sewell was ennobled in 1996 on the recommendation of then Leader of the Opposition Tony Blair.
He'd been a Labour councillor in Scotland, but his main qualification for elevation seems to have been that he was chummy with his party's elite and could be relied upon not to have a mind of his own.
Those indeed were the criteria for numerous people with no serious achievements to their name ending up in the Lords whether under Blair, Brown or Cameron.
Such patronage makes a mockery of this vital institution.
The fact that the House of Lords is packed by Labour and the Conservatives with yes men who are just going to go along with whatever the party policy is is not the issue.
The fact that it's not providing the function of the state that it's meant to be, the wise steering hand on the rudder, is much more worrying to me than whether one of them at nearly 70 fucked a few prostitutes and did some fucking drugs.
This is just a personal scandal.
As far as I can tell, the guy did nothing actually wrong in his job.
I suppose you could say, well, cocaine's illegal.
Well, okay, well, brilliant.
How many millions of people are going to now have to be fired for doing cocaine?
Where does this end?
Do we piss test the entire country?
And it's this kind of absurd faux moral outrage that leads us to the shooting of Cecil the Lion.
So this is a picture of this chap here after he's just shot and killed this lion.
People who live in North America and Europe saw this and decided, hey, we love animals, as we all do, let's be fair, and thought, well, this is terrible.
What we should do is dox this guy.
Dox this guy in the middle of an internet shitstorm.
That's a good idea.
And it turned out the guy who shot the lion was an American dentist.
A family man from Minnesota.
And he paid £35,000, which is about $50,000, to shoot and kill the lion with a bone arrow.
Now my personal opinion on this is that it's wrong.
I don't like shooting animals with anything at the best of times.
I don't really think it's necessary.
Which is why I don't do it.
But it's perfectly legal in Zimbabwe, where this guy had paid the money, got the proper permits, and conducted everything that, to his knowledge, was completely legal.
But let's ignore that while we whip up some moral outrage.
What have we got?
Oh, we've got his remaining brother, Jericho, who's left to defend the pride, and now we're fearing for the safety of Cecil's cubs.
And if Jericho falls, infanticide is the most likely outcome.
Not the killing of children, sorry, the killing of lion cubs.
I know that technically isn't infanticide, but fuck it.
But oh no, Jericho's down as well.
His brother's been killed by poachers too.
This is- this is awful!
Okay, panic over it actually wasn't his brother Jericho.
It's not as bad as it sounds.
Information is coming in rather fast at this point, and nobody really knows what's going on.
Let's go to Peter for a very rational statement on the subject.
Hunting is a coward's pastime.
If, as been reported, the dentist and his guys lured Cecil out of the park with food so as to shoot him on private property because shooting him in the park would have been illegal, he needs to be extradited, charged, and preferably hanged.
I'd like to thank Peter for their reasonable addition to the conversation.
So in order to figure out the actual facts of the issue, I went to the most biased news source on this issue that I could find.
A website called LionAid.
Where have all the lions gone?
Their entire mission statement is to preserve lions.
So when they say it's not only completely legal, but standard practice to bait lions in Zimbabwe, I'm going to assume that the hunter didn't really do anything unusual.
Nor is it illegal to shoot outside a national park or to kill radio-collared lions.
I've also got no reason to disbelieve them when they say that Cecil was shot in an area not assigned a lion quota, but the bait was set for a leopard and then Cecil came along.
And then the professional hunter told his clients to shoot the lion, which is at the point where the hunts became illegal.
So in reality, people shouldn't be concerned with this guy as much as this guy.
But even then, they fucking shouldn't, because they're not complaining that the law was broken.
They're complaining that they don't like that this guy is allowed to hunt lions.
If you've got a problem with the law, okay, fine.
But why dox this guy?
Why send him harassment?
Why go to his Yelp page and start posting things about his business?
What's he really done?
And you're probably thinking, well, that sounds a lot like what people said about Zoe Quinn when the Five Guys Burgers and Fries thing was happening.
And you know, I completely agree.
Gaming Gate isn't about Zoe Quinn and it's not the Five Guys thing.
Like I said in my interview with the BBC, she's not a fucking journalist.
And in this case, this guy didn't actually do anything wrong as far as he was aware.
It's actually the guide that's in the wrong or the government for allowing lion hunting to be legal.
This has all come from emotion.
A bunch of hyperactive social justice warriors have got together on Twitter and decided, ooh, we need justice for Cecil.
This will make us feel good.
Because they sure as fuck didn't ask Zimbabweans what they thought of Cecil the lion and someone hunting him.
Because if they had, they'd know that by and large people from Zimbabwe don't care and they're feeling bemused by the attention the world is giving to the killing of a lion.
Everyone seems to have forgotten that Zimbabwe is ruled by Robert Muggabe, but at least being in his 90s kind of mitigates the worst excesses of this war criminal.
Life expectancy in Zimbabwe is about 36.
But nobody cares.
They don't care about that.
They don't care about high unemployment.
They don't care about food shortages.
They don't care about state persecution.
They don't care about lack of medicine, lack of money.
They care about a lion.
A lion named after Cecil Rhodes of all people.
But anyway, people really aren't that bothered because in Africa hunting is an industry.
It brings in $600 million into South Africa every year and it's permitted all year round in Zimbabwe.
The problem most people have with it is that it's elitist.
It's mostly rich white folks doing it.
This kind of seems to be a first world problem to people in Zimbabwe.
Are you saying that all this noise is about a dead lion?
Lions are killed all the time in this country, said Trifina Kasaki, a used clothes hawker on the streets of Hara.
What is so special about this one?
Why are the Americans more concerned than us, says Joseph Mabuwa?
We never hear them speak out when villagers are killed by lions and elephants in Hwange.
Well, there you go, that's the thing.
That doesn't make them uncomfortable.
But what makes them uncomfortable is seeing a dead lion.
That makes them very uncomfortable.
It's on their Facebook feed.
And that's something they can complain about.
Let's get on Twitter.
Okay, I know I'm sounding like a dick, and yes, I supported GameGate, which was an online hashtag movement, but I never claimed it was more important than practically anything.
It's just important to me because I am involved with the games industry, even though it's peripherally.
Even though I'm just a customer more than anything, and I've never claimed it's more important than people living under the despotic rule of a fucking warlord.
So at least I am retaining perspective on what's going on here.
Unlike Vox.
From Gamergate to Cecil the Lion, internet's mob justice is out of control.
Fucking really, Vox!
Really?
Is that a fact?
Is that a fucking fact?
Is it Vox?
Wow.
Did anyone, just out of interest, happen to be wearing an unusual shirt?
The Vox article is so much longer than it actually needs to be.
I'm just going to go through the most important points.
We as a society deemed campaigns such as Gamergate unacceptable.
We as a society, who do you think you represent when you say that?
I mean, I don't know whether you've noticed, but the composer for Mountain Blade Warband came out in favour of GameGate publicly on Twitter the other day, as well as Dean Kane, the actor who played Superman in a TV series.
I mean, you appear to be in full apparatchnik mode, with just the raw denial of reality of what's going on.
And I'm not even mentioning the SPJ later on this month.
But you know what?
It's just a harassment campaign that crossed the line.
But we all agree because we dislike Palmer, the campaign against him so far has been deemed acceptable, funny, or laudable.
That's because everyone on earth outside of the social justice bloggersphere sees you for the colossal hypocrites that you are.
You are okay with this happening to a guy when you don't like him.
You're not okay with it happening to people and not even individuals.
Now, companies you like because they share your ideology.
That's the issue.
What Palmer did was wrong and he deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law.
Okay, well, I've covered this.
He actually didn't do anything wrong.
It was actually the guide he had hired who did something wrong.
So he isn't going to get any punishment, nor does he deserve any.
But it's easy to forget just how dangerous and unjust mob justice is when targeting someone you despise.
That's right.
Like when all the press outlets get together and target gamers because they despise them.
Like you've done in this article.
Hmm.
The campaign against Palmer has now crossed the line according to Vox.
At some point on Wednesday, someone taped a sign across the front door of his now closed dental practice saying rot in hell.
Sorry, I don't recall Gamergate doing anything like that.
At all.
I remember the lynch mob that almost formed around the Rolling Stone rape case.
But then it turned out that Jackie was full of shit and Rolling Stone had to apologise.
I mean, I remember that happening.
I remember, was it the UCLA one where they were banging drums outside of the front going, oh, it's time to confess, time to confess.
And then it turned out that was false as well.
Or about the time where a professor was being accused of rape and having this plastered all over his door of his office, and that turned out to be Bollocks 2.
I mean, I can think of lots of examples of social justice warriors doing this to other people, but I can't think of any examples of people from, say, Gamergates doing it, or anywhere else.
I mean, everyone is noticing a pattern, Vox.
Your denial of reality just serves to make you look unhinged.
Do you understand?
And on the subject of denying reality, I'll finish with a video that came out this week of a young lady being arrested by a policeman.
It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
It's what happens when Tumblr meets real life.
But we told you he's an Article 4 free inhabitant, so he does not have to have a license.
This is on recording.
Article 4, free inhabitant, pursuant to the Articles of Confederation.
You can look it up.
It's in the United States Book of Codes.
It is your laws you have to follow.
All right, I'll roll it out.
I want to walk you back here.
Article 4, Free Inhabitant, pursuant to the Articles of Confederation.
If it records, that's fine.
But I don't want you holding anything down.
No weapons, no weapons.
All right, no weapons.
Okay, so what I'm going to ask you to do is the same thing.
And get out of the car?
Yes.
No, I'm not getting out of the car.
You can go get your superior.
Well, I am going to tow this car, and you cannot be in the vehicle while I'm towing this vehicle.
Well, if you go get your superior, he'll clarify that he can be set free because he does not have to have authority.
That's what happened right now, young lady.
So either you're going to come out of the car on your own free will, or I'm going to assist you.
I'm going to get out of the car and walk down to that house.
No, you are not free to leave right now.
Are you saying you have authority over me?
Yes, I do.
You have proven authority over me.
Yes, I do.
How did you do that?
The County of Imperial through the sheriff.
You do not have authority over a human being over a free inhabitant.
Do you want to argue the point?
You need to go look up your laws.
I can't look at anything right now.
What I need to do is get you out of the vehicle.
If you have identification, please hand the identification over to me.
No.
Identify yourself to me.
And I'm not going to step out of the vehicle.
All right.
Well, you know, you are impeding my investigation.
You are delaying me, which is a penal code violation in the state of California.
That law only applies to U.S. citizens.
Well, where are you a citizen of?
I am not a U.S. citizen.
Well, see, I am a free inhabitant.
I am of the earth.
I do not belong to any corporation.
I do not belong to any country.
As long as you're in the sovereign states of the United States, you will abide by the rules and laws.
See, a free inhabitant is they are allowed to, they are free people.
They have all of the rights of a U.S. citizen without following any of their laws.
Well, that would just be pure anarchy if that were the case.
No, no, because we're peaceful people.
We're peaceful people.
Go call them up and ask them, and they'll tell you exactly what I'm talking about.
I don't know who to call.
Your superior.
Well, I am a superior to a certain extent.
So call your superior.
Well, it's going to take a couple hours or so for somebody to come down.
But that's not going to happen right now.
Well, then we're going to have to solve it some other way.
We just need to, you need to call in, tell them I'm a free inhabitant and find out what that is.
I am going to tow this vehicle, young lady.
So you cannot be in this vehicle.
understand that so I'm to all right then I'm gonna get out of the vehicle and I'm going to walk down to that house because you do not have authority over me Well, then I'm not getting out of the vehicle.
No, you're not.
Why?
You're not free to leave.
Why?
As soon as I conclude the rest of my investigation, you will be free to leave.
As far as I know, you have not done anything wrong at this point.
But you are slowly at the end of 148 PC.
I'll get out of the vehicle for you.
I will get out of the vehicle.
I'm getting all right.
Well, you're not free to leave.
You're going to take the bag off.
No, no, I'm not.
Take the bag off.
No, I'm not.
They're not you.
Hey!
This is fuck.
You're raping me.
This is rape.
Relic.
Okay.
Relax your arms.
It's relaxed.
Stop fighting me.
It's relaxed.
Stop fighting with me.
Stop fighting.
All right.
I'm not fighting.
Center two, five, six.
I got a battle.
Here, I'm lifting my arm up.
I'm lifting my arm up.
It hurts.
Okay, I just, I told you what I was doing.
This is pain compliance, okay?
It's not meant to be comfortable.
This is.
Do I have your attention?
This is completely illegal.
No!
Please take my bag off!
I can't.
You're not putting me in the car.
You can wait till you get superior.
You are not taking my bag off.
You can handcuff me with my bag on.
You're right.
I will.
Relax.
I'm relaxed.
You cut my bag!
You're cutting my bag!
You're gonna get in so much trouble, you son of a bitch!
You're gonna get sued!
You don't even know what you're doing!
I'm telling you, I'm gonna fucking sue you!
Stop.
What's your name?
Our Godona.
Our fucking Godona, you're gonna get arrested.
You're gonna get fucking.
Oh my god, you don't know your own laws.
Relax, you don't know your own laws.
Relax, young lady.
I can't believe you just did this.
You need to calm down.
You're gonna get in trouble.
You don't know your own laws.
Calm down.
You're illegally doing this.
I told you I was a free inhabitant.
Calm down.
You are illegally doing this.
Young lady, calm down.
You are illegally doing this.
I told you this is against my will.
You did this illegally.
You cut my bag.
All right, you're under arrest.
No, I'm not.
No, I'm not.
Give me my stuff.
Relax.
No.
Leave me alone.
You can't have this big camera.
You can go get your superior.
I will get it.
Go get and I'm sweating right here.
Go get your fucking superior.
You son of a bitch!
Give me my fucking stop!
You fucking asshole!
You need to calm down.
You need to fucking learn your goddamn job because you don't know your fucking laws.
Go get your superior.
Go get your fucking laws.
Let's go.
No.
You son of a fucking bitch.
Stop you!
You stupid, son of a bitch.
You don't know what you're talking about doing.
You're gonna get stuck in yourself.
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