Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my share of “men are stupid/pigs” thoughts. But the fact of the matter is that men don’t have a monopoly on being assholes; women are doing a bang-up job of portraying themselves as complete bitches.

Try to remember the last time you saw a popular media product that showed a proud male character that may have been flawed, but wasn’t a complete idiot that needed to be saved by his drop-dead gorgeous wife – who will often spend time with friends who question her choice in men without putting up any defense for the man she supposedly loves. Having a hard time thinking of one? I’m not surprised.

One of my least favorite portrayals of a man bending to a woman’s will is the commercial for a Windows phone:

I LOATHE everything about this commercial (which inspired this post). One of the biggest things about this commercial that gets under my skin and irritates the hell out of me is how the woman tries to make the guy more feminine – which, for reasons known only to batshit insane women and their male apologists, apparently adds to the appeal of the man (ugh). The other huge thing that annoys me is how the man JUST TAKES IT! WTF!?!?!? You’re a dude! There’s no reason to take that crap! It’s one thing to take some style advice; it’s a completely different thing to let your girlfriend/wife humiliate you in public. Do you think any guy in his right mind would have put on that outfit if his buddy had told him to? Hell no! He would have told his friend to go screw himself. But men nowadays have been so cowed by the whole feminist movement that if he refuses an insane request from a female he’s the douchebag. Conversely, if the woman were to refuse an insane request from a man she’s hailed as a liberated woman standing up for herself.

This may just be an opinion, but I really think much of this attitude is a direct result of how children are currently being raised. Girls are told they are special and that they’re “daddy’s little princess” while boys are told to never hit a girl, even if she hits him first, and that they essentially can’t be boys (rough housing and in general just doing what boys do are no-no’s now). Boys are constantly being told to have respect for the girls while the girls are taught no such equivalent. Boys are there to make the girls feel special, and the girls are there to make sure the boys stay in line and act civilized (though, of course, the girls get the message that you can never really expect boys to be civilized on their own, you have to nag them into it). What a bunch of crap.

You can call me a “gender traitor” or whatever else makes you feel better about yourself, but I think the whole neo-feminist movement is complete bullshit. Men have their issues, but women also have issues of their own and for an entire movement – which is sadly ( but not surprisingly) supported by weak beta-males – to advance the idea that women are superior to men just based on the location of their plumbing and a perceived lack of ability to think with anything but their “equipment” is disgusting and I for one am sick of seeing them portrayed in such a way. I’ve known a lot of douchebag guys, but I’ve known a lot more stone-cold bitches who treat men they supposedly love like little more than slaves.

This post is by no means an exhaustive treatise on the horrible treatment men must endure while women are given a pass. It’s just something I feel strongly about and felt the need to rant about. If you want some really good stuff to read on the subject, I’d recommend Dr. Helen’s writings on men’s issues. (Dr Helen is the wife of the Blogfather, Glenn Reynolds, of Instapundit fame.)

Growing up I didn’t have much interest in politics. I did read the newspaper, but I usually skipped anything about politics because it seemed boring. Every once in a while something that had some connection to politics would catch my eye and I’d read it but by and large I didn’t really care. And I believed just about anything that was written in the paper – which explains why for the longest time I thought Rush Limbaugh was just a giant asshole picking on Howard Stern (yes, I really did think that based solely on an article I read). At one point I remember thinking it was possible to make the Palestinians and Israelis like each other if we could just get them to dialogue. Or if somebody would just passionately speak to them about the wonders of unity. (I was young and naive, don’t judge me!).

In high school I had a little bit of an identity crisis. I’d always been taught to be proud of who I am and to love my country. But all that newspaper reading – even though it was mostly non-political – had drained a lot of that out. I was far more interested in European cultures than my own. They seemed more refined, more worldly. To me, they seemed to “get it.” Where the USA had no history or culture in my young mind, Europe had gobs of it. They had hundreds of years of history, castles that had lasted centuries, and great, exotic foods, whereas the USA has a couple of hundred years of history marred by thousands of dead natives, slavery, and a rather embarrassing lack of sophistication. This is what I started to think based solely on what I had read in the paper. I was certainly not a conservative and my parents, God love ‘em, didn’t try to change my mind or bury me in evidence I was wrong. My dad in particular listened to my concerns and tried to answer my questions, but he never pushed a political agenda. Even into my senior year in high school I was convinced that Europe was somehow better – and even expressed that to my friend (who is European).

Despite all that I’ve always had a thing for the military. I’ve always liked the idea of carrying on a tradition, so even though what I really wanted to do was to go directly to college, it didn’t bother me at all when I realized I didn’t have the grades to get scholarships to pay, so the military would be the only way I was going to get a reliable job and make money for college. But even then my opinions about a lot of things never shifted. America was still the embarrassing little sibling with snot running down its nose and dirty clothes carrying around naive ideas about life and culture. So you can imagine how overjoyed I was to find I was getting stationed in Germany. When I found out where I was going I felt like I was finally going to get the culture I had been craving.

To an extent, that was true; I loved my time in Germany and I wouldn’t take a minute of it back. I made great friends, traveled to some pretty cool places, and ate some delicious foods. But by the time I was out and on my way back to the good ole’ USA I had realized something: Europe is not all it’s cracked up to be. I think a big eye-opener was what happened after 9/11, when flowers were laid outside the base gate and “everyone was an American” only to be replaced just a couple months later with protesters dead set against our current policies. I dealt with troops who had run-ins with locals who attacked them when they found out they were American and I remember being told to be extra careful when out in the city at night because as military we were walking targets to any goons who wanted to mess with the Americans. Being military AND American was like a double whammy. When I went to a soccer game with some friends and we decided to hit a popular bar area afterwards, we had a bit of a friendly rivalry going on with some other guys who happened to have been rooting for the other team. Until they realized we were Americans (and very obviously military – you can’t disguise a military guy’s haircut), at which point friendly soccer banter turned to some pretty insensitive political hounding.

I know some people will say that’s just my personal experience in one area, what do I know? Let me contrast that with the time I spent in Japan. Not only were the Japanese thrilled that I was American, they were genuinely impressed with and incredibly interested in the fact that I was in the military. When I was out shopping with a friend we found some Navy BDU pants with the name still sewn on above the back pocket and I thought it was amusing. My friend told the shopkeeper that I was in the US military and he thought that was just the coolest thing ever. When I went to an elementary school as part of a class activity and a little girl came up to read my name tag (which also had my nationality on it) she was super excited to find out I was an American and expressed it by running back to her friends shouting “America-jin! America-jin desu!” (“American! She’s American!”)

At this point you’re probably wondering what my point is. Well, it’s this: in the time I spent overseas I learned a few lessons that were really hard to swallow at first, but over time have stopped being the bitter pills they initially started out as. I saw firsthand what it was like to live in a country where nobody had any pride in who they were, much less where they came from. I saw what it was really like to live in a country that is desperate to bury its past indiscretions instead of really owning up to them, admitting they happened, and then moving on. It was depressing, if you ask me. Nobody in Germany was proud to be German. All their amazing history, warts and all, and the only time any national pride would kick in was when a soccer game was going on. That was a real shock to me, because even though by the time I moved to Europe I had a pretty low opinion of a lot of the stuff my country had done, I was proud to be an American. Even though I thought we were uncouth hicks with a bit of a chip on our shoulder I realized we’d done some pretty darn amazing things and I’ve always been proud of the fact that we can own up to the mistakes we’ve made in the past.

Think about it: when was the last time you heard anybody talking about the European slave trade? The American slaves didn’t get here by chance, they were brought over by Europeans, who bought them from warring tribes in Africa. But if you mention slavery the US is the only one anybody ever talks about. And if you’ll notice, we’ve never tried to justify it or made fake mea culpas. We’ve acknowledged it and we’ve attempted to move on. The only reason it’s still an issue today is because certain entities need a victim class or they’ll lose their funding.

Another thing to ponder: how many “empires” have you ever known to give land back? Our military, stationed around the world, will pick up at the drop of a hat and move if our government is told the local people don’t want us there. We have graveyards in Europe. That is the only permanent land we’ve kept outside of the 50 states. Even our protectorates periodically vote as to whether or not they want to become states themselves or completely sovereign. And if they did want to leave we’d let them, because that’s how we roll.

I learned a lot about the US just from living outside of it. I’ve learned that vastly different cultures look at the world in a completely different way than we do from living in those cultures. And since 9/11 I’ve learned a lot about foreign policy because it directly affected my job at the time. None of my opinions on foreign matters from high school survived slamming into the real world. Not one. Domestic matters took a little longer, but given my experience with somebody I know who is currently wasting my tax dollars – and has been for a long time – my pie-in-the-sky opinions about “evil” rich people and “oppressed” poor people haven’t survived the Real Life Cluebat©, either.

To sum it all up, the opinions and positions I now hold are based on a lifetime of experience, not some “hard-coding” in my brain’s wiring because I spent a good deal of my life growing up in a conservative area. I know that will upset some people. I know that some people like to see me as being unable to change because it makes them feel better about the time they’ve spent talking to me; if it’s me that has the problem – if I’m the one who can’t change – then they don’t have to rethink any of their opinions or positions. Ultimately, I’m fine with that. I know who I am, I know what I stand for, and I know none of that came to me as easily as they’d like to think it was. I had to make a lot of mistakes and be willing to change A LOT of preconceived notions I had. Even now I’m still evolving in my opinions. Some might be set in stone, but that doesn’t mean the stone can’t be cracked. Heck, where I used to be a pretty hardcore conservative (following my bout with liberalism in high school) I’m now pretty hardcore libertarian politically.

We’ll agree that people can jump the border without going through the proper channels if I can walk into the back door of your house any time I want. I’m fully willing to acknowledge the plight of the illegal if I can raid your fridge for my food – keep it stocked with vegetables, some fruits, and milk; a LOT of milk. I’ll gladly help pay for their kids to go to school if I can boot one of your kids from their room – yeah, it’s mine now. And I’ll even help pay for their medical care if you agree to give me the equivalent of one social security check – to include the amount for 10 offspring – every month. While all this is going on you’re not allowed to call the police, nor are you allowed to kick me out, deny my access to food, or dispute my use of your health insurance plan (which you’ll immediately put me on, of course) as I wrack up huge medical bills by going to the E.R. whenever I get the sniffles or stub my toe.

Hey, it’s all about the compassion, isn’t it? I’ll be leaving my home and belongings behind so that I can mooch off of you like the illegals you are morally supporting live the American dream so why are you calling 911?

If you’ve ever wondered why carrying a gun is a good idea, take a look at the pictures below.

If those pictures aren’t enough to convince you that the use of a firearm is a perfectly reasonable response to being confronted with an edged weapon – and therefore preventing the type of damage you see below – you’re floating somewhere between brain dead and actually dead.

Pictures below the fold due to graphic nature.

Fast forward to today when I heard there was an earthquake in Virginia and I decided I just had to read about it and found out that there really wasn’t much to get all worked up over. Even the West Coast has been mercilessly mocking the East Coast for their inability to get even basic earthquake safety right by ordering everybody into the streets – presumably to cushion any falling objects – as opposed to telling them to get under something until the ground stopped moving (hooray for government intelligence and efficiency!) Nothing particularly interesting there. Then I ran across this link and I just knew I had to make some comments about it.

First off, just so we’re abundantly clear on where I stand, I believe in God. So from this moment forward I don’t want to hear one word about my belief in God after that article. Not one. Because nothing about my belief in God anywhere near approaches the sheer lunacy embraced by the people who wrote this “study”. I believe in a God of science, who is bound by – as well as rules by – the natural laws of the universe. And no, that’s not a ridiculous statement. Humanity is making new discoveries in science daily and at this point can only theorize about anything, much less declare absolute natural law since every time we turn around there’s some new contradiction to what we once thought was absolute. I find it ludicrous to assume that just because we don’t know shit about natural law – for the love of God we don’t even know shit about most of the planet because the water is too deep – nobody else in the universe could either. Unless it’s aliens of course. Because it’s so much more rational to believe in aliens that are concerned about global warming here of all places rather than to believe in a God that actually has a reason to be interested in a planet in some cosmic backwater.

Think about it. As a species we’ve know about gravity since Newton got bonked on the head with an apple and it’s still classified as a theory – not a law, a theory – because it is not a universal constant and we still can’t figure out the way it changes based on variables we haven’t even discovered or just flat out can’t prove. So at this point I think it’s pretty safe to say I have a much firmer grasp on reality than the loons who are thinking that some alien race will descend on the earth to kill us all in order to save a little ball of dirt flying around a third rate star in a far-flung section of an arm in the Milky Way Galaxy. Pardon me while at this moment I revel in the fact that people (some of whom work for NASA, mind you) who would call me bat-shit crazy for believing in some “invisible floating man” (which nowhere near approximates my belief, but whatever they have to believe to make them feel superior to God-believing whack-doodles) can in all seriousness call for us to “limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems” based on their belief that it’s possible that aliens might detect our greenhouse emissions and decide to invade as a preventative measure to protect a podunk planet in a completely normal spiral galaxy in an infinite universe. Well, I’m certainly sounding more sane by the minute.

What it’s sounding like is that not only are we supposed to kick an already downed economy because of global warming climate change whatever-the-hell-it’s-called-now (I can’t keep up with the constant goalpost shifting), we’re supposed to add insult to injury by kicking it in the balls on the off chance that some alien race of Greenpeace activists is scrutinizing the cosmos for any hint of abnormally high or low temperatures on balls of molten rock that constantly change temperature. Man, if there really are aliens out there watching they must have been spending most of Earth’s history baked out of their minds (what, I’m supposed to believe they’re all eco-conscious and not raging hippies?) to miss all the warming and cooling trends this planet has gone through; or hey, maybe that’s why the dinosaurs really died; they were warming up the world so much as they expanded the aliens decided they had to go. Hmmm.

I really have to wonder at this point if these people watched The Day the Earth Stood Still (the new one filled with the PC bullshit) or Knowing one too many times and decided – not for the first time – that Hollywood is a great place from which to get civilization-altering policy ideas. Because you can’t go wrong getting advice from people who can’t even run their own lives without slamming into the occasional tree while blitzed on a substance made to alter one’s sense of reality. /sarc

And I’m the nutball? Please.