Tag: Donald Trump

Julia Ioffe

A few hours ago, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert aired two short segments with guest Julia Ioffe, a writer, reporter and feminist born in Moscow, now an American citizen.

I had never heard of her before, and I missed an infamous episode of Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC show. In it, she said, he kept cutting her off, not allowing her to answer his questions, and she took to social media to reprimand him for “mansplaining” to her.

I love her.

She’s been known to get caught making mistakes, but who hasn’t? And the fact that she charges at full boil on occasion shows humanity, but her willingness to own up and apologize makes her honest and in these times, that’s refreshing.

She even grew up in Columbia, MD, my own adopted hometown.

I have nothing to say about her that you can’t read on Wikipedia, except for what I think.

For one thing, she once said that the East Wing was, in Trump’s first term, going to be Ivanka’s domain. Ioffe wrote, hilariously, that “Either Donald Trump is fucking his daughter” or he’s ignoring the nepotism laws.

The East Wing is the First Lady’s domain.

For my money, she was right on both of those, but wrong about the East Wing, which no longer exists.

Ioffe has a history of making waves, and that one got her fired from Politico, something I don’t think I’ve ever heard of happening before.

Yet despite its error, I immediately wondered if the wing was destroyed, in part, at least, because he holds deep grudges and remembers accusations against him, right or wrong. That would be sick, but it would also be hysterical. Like talking to the press from the White House roof. Who else has ever done that?

Besides, he’s a sick man and nothing surprises me anymore.

Ioffe said that Trump had promised to get into Venezuela, Greenland and more, but I missed or forgot the Venezuela part. That shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did. Now I’m shock-proof. Ioffe was asked if she thought Venezuela was a quid pro quo with Putin, in which he would withdraw support from Ukraine if Putin left Venezuela alone. That’s nuts, right?

Wrong. Nothing is nuts anymore. It is a distinct possibility. I have seen a video in which some man, I don’t recall his name, posited that Venezuela had made a deal to stop accepting the US dollar as its trade standard. If that happened, we would have lost our economy. Everyone would drop the dollar overnight. That’s a certain catastrophe. The US has lots of oil, but it’s what the guy called “sweet crude,” which our refineries cannot handle. Those are set up for heavy crude, requiring import. Venezuela has the largest known deposits of heavy crude in the world.

Now unless this man was lying through his teeth, it is true. If true, everything makes sense. Maduro is motivation, the excuse. Oil was always the real target. And while I despise all acts of human rights violators, and Maduro being gone may be a good thing, this operation was wrong, immoral and a stupid move.

I’ve seen the footage of the attacks and one doesn’t need to be of particularly high intelligence to know that those fireballs on the horizon that night killed people. And that is all I need to call it evil.

What’s next?

Ioffe said that Trump made good on his word: he wanted Venezuela and so he took it.

He said the same about Greenland and Cuba. And recently, Colombia. Ioffe said that we shouldn’t be surprised if he makes good on those plans as well.

Ioffe is a remarkable woman, and maybe her remark about Trump’s possible relationship with his daughter was out of line even if it was true, but not grievously so, because most people were saying that same thing.

But she is a keen analyst and writer, and I like her. Feminists have often been my heroes, even if one once accused me of mansplaining. She wasn’t heroic, just angry and hostile. Nobody listens to the hostiles on any account.

Like so many women before her, Ioffe is a fighter. And in the Trump era, which saw the overturn of Roe v. Wade, we need her. We all do. When the balance of any given thing is removed, everything is in danger.

DON’T Call Me Incel!

Someone in a YouTube comment used “incel” to describe me and reason out my response to a terrible comment on some video I can’t even remember. I didn’t know what it meant so I googled it.

I’m not one of those guys by any stretch of the effort or imagination of what was probably the real thing or a Karen.

That was bad enough, but it wasn’t quite on. Today I found the real definition.

I’m also not a “Ken” or a “Chad”.

“Incel” refers to any male who can’t have sex, for whatever reason, is bitter about it, and basically tries to censor nude art or who does the opposite (the opposite would be, in my experience, a very dangerous man–he’d be a predator in the making).

Holy crap was that a long sentence. Still, not as long as the years Trump deserves to serve at some country club prison. Cause you know no ex-president is going to no supermax. Nor should he; it would be a disaster, and no matter what he’s done, his acolytes can not be handed a martyr. Not if this country is to survive.

Trump himself may be an incel. Look at how he treats women. His diet alone justifies the guess that his veins and arteries are fit for an entire circulatory system replacement. I’d bet real money that he can’t have an erection. For him, screwing the American people is a substitute for sex: he’s a control freak, a liar and a cheater, traitorous and treacherous to the last cell in his body.

Aside from that, “incel,” or “involuntary celibate”, has its internet tentacles everywhere.

There’s another group, “volcels”, men who are “voluntarily celibate”. Why anyone would blame others for their own decision to abstain is a red flag question. These guys are fucked-up in the head, and one must question whether they truly abstain by choice. That would be repression and I believe it makes them a threat. Perhaps I exaggerate, or overstate the danger. But if one man harms a woman or child because of it, then my point would be valid.

It has happened. History is full of monsters who tried to suppress sexual drives and ended up as predators. And worse: they tend to be the torturing variety. If not, they’re likely to feel incomplete after a sexual assault and murder their victim.

Sure, I’m overthinking, but someone has to do it. You have to be able to spot these groups and individuals and by whatever means, overprotect yourself and your family. I say this because it’s a matter of life and death. Don’t take chances.

Someone with internet porn activity isn’t nearly the threat you are told. Their search histories mean little compared to who they are.

But men who identify as incel or volcel are a potential, and probably imminent, danger.

The reason is, most have feelings of sexual or other inadequacies, and I get that. All my life, I never measured up to anything anyone thought I should be. Add the guilt I felt from sexual abuse and you have a boy who grew up hating himself inside and out. Exposed to porn and voyeurism, taught exhibitionism and that my body wasn’t mine to keep private and protect, I was doomed to have PTSD and I didn’t even know about autism or dyslexia, and everything about me became dysfunctional. Especially romantic relationships.

I’ve written about that. I did so because I thought I could help others. And looking back, I hope that spouses and family members got some insight. As a writer, you never get to know these things. All you can do is open up the wounds and let others see them in all their grotesque horror.

In the spring of 2001, after leaving a trail of awful relationships behind me, I quit the game. Sex was secondary to everything else as I grew ever more sick.

The PTSD and everything else had taken their toll. I didn’t want to just have sex. It was good, don’t get me wrong here. But I wanted most just to be loved, and I wasn’t. I could never be valued by anyone in matters of the heart. At least I finally saw it. After being stalked and somehow always choosing women who were wrong for me almost as much as I was for them, I’d had enough. And shouldn’t that be enough for anyone?

Because I’ve known beautiful women I could have been treated better by. They either lived contentedly alone or they already had someone.

I always got along best with the single women who had given up on men. And while they generalized and stereotyped, I didn’t think they were unjustified in doing so.

But it goes that way for men, too. Sometimes you have to realize that the old saying “there’s someone for everyone” is a lofty lie with a filling of bullshit. No, there isn’t. And for the walking wounded like me, this is especially true.

I am not bitter about making a life choice that has been good for me. Why would I be? That makes no sense at all. I quit the sex game because I was not capable of that kind of relationship anymore. I was never one for one night stands which my generation is infamous for. I always wanted the whole deal or nothing.

After being divorced, I kind of figured that one of those should be enough for anyone. I’ve never understood how little regard people have for what I hold as something very special and sacred. People who have been married more than twice are a genuine puzzle to me. I just don’t get it.

So there’s another reason for my decision: I no longer wanted sex without marriage and I wasn’t going to be marrying anyone.

When you see incel groups, volcel groups or others, stay the hell away. And you can’t win a battle with a Becky, a Karen, a Chad or Ken. Ken is Karen’s male counterpart, pushy, loud, obnoxious and prejudiced, probably narcissistic. Chad is Becky’s male counterpart; unaware, privileged, prejudices flowing out of them. Chads and Beckys are wildly promiscuous and full of themselves and not bashful about texting selfies, clothed, in swimsuits or nude. They are uncaring that these selfies will wind up all over the world. They don’t give a shit.

Until one potential Karen saw her picture on a porn site and sued. And apparently won. Every mainstream website immediately scrapped almost every photograph in their archives. Videos were slower to be gutted, but with billion-dollar industries, you know it won’t last. When the heat’s gone, it’ll all bounce back. They just need to find and expoit loopholes or lobby for new laws. And they can do it. And they will.

Why take selfies then? Don’t care what happens to them? Oh, but you will. You will.

Don’t call me “incel”. I’m mot bitter about not having sex. I may admire the beauty of the female, but I also admire her.

And one last thing.

If the United States ever gets to survive, it will be because women of integrity lead us out of the darkness. Marjorie Taylor Green is a Karen and probably more. It will be women who kick her out of office who will get the job done. But do they have their own slang name too?

It turns out that yes, they do. And we have known so many.

They’re called heroes.