some links regarding the last post

now, most of what i say here is not original thought, which would be much more obvious if i provided hyperlinks to where i actually get my ideas from, usually on other websites, but sometimes not from the internet. anyway, i thought it might be instructive to try to come up with some links that back up what i said in my last post, either things that i read prior to posting it, or things that i have found online since then which reinforce the points i was trying to make.

in the last post i did a bit of attacking of the record of the clinton administration that was in office from 1993 to 2001, you know, the one with bill clinton as president and hillary clinton as first lady. my point was, the clinton administration managed to get itself elected in 1992 and re-elected by a much wider margin in 1996, and also managed to avoid having the president removed from office after his impeachment, but other than this, their record is fairly lackluster. this is not entirely their fault, of course, since after republicans were elected to congress in 1994 and took over in 1995, they had no control over legislation. but the clintons did a horrible job in getting fellow democrats elected to office, both to congress and to governorships, as well as passing on the presidency to a fellow democrat, former vice president al gore. they screwed things up for the democratic party big time. and as for leadership on the issues, they certainly provided some, but not the right way, not a liberal or progressive way. the clintons were centrists and have always been closely associated with a centrist organization known as the democratic leadership council, whose goal it is to put an end to liberalism and turn democrats into republican-lite, into centrists. anyway, here is an article about all that.

now, a few days ago, a leading feminist, an old white lady named gloria steinem, wrote a very sexist op-ed for the new york times. how is it sexist? well, she urges people to vote for hillary clinton, just because hillary clinton is a woman, and talks about how we need a female as president. what if i wrote an article about how important it is to keep electing males as president? that would be sexist, right? we should not judge candidates based on their gender, or race, or anything else of that nature. the article is also racist because she makes light of the struggles of african-americans and claims that women have it much worse when it comes to discrimination. we should not have any sort of discrimination olympics where different groups claim they are the worst oppressed. what about homosexuals, or native americans, or people whose religious beliefs or lack thereof are unpopular with the society of their era? look, the way i see it is this: there are plenty of very wealthy women out there, and women usually inherit what the husband owned, and women live longer than men, plus wives are usually younger than husbands, so most wealthy men will leave behind wealthy widows, and wealth equals power, and there are plenty of influential female celebrities in hollywood, and women are increasingly elected to political offices, and economically speaking, women have it much better than african-americans in the united states, if you look at the average woman compared to the average african-american. and african-american women are doing better than african-american men economically. a lot less women end up in jail than men, so do people go around calling the criminal justice system sexist and accuse it of discriminating against men all the time? in recent years, the percentage of people in jail who are female has been increasing, and i think this is a good sign because it shows people are no longer stuck in traditional gender roles as much as before. anyway, i think it is absolutely ludicrous to claim women have it worse in the united states than african-americans... women make up more than half the population, and are not even a minority, so if they really wanted to run this country, they could do so, with the power of the vote, and elect one of their own, which could very well occur with hillary clinton. now of course i do not advocate electing her solely on the basis of her gender, or otherwise ann coulter would also be equally qualified to be president of the united states. you have to look at the whole picture of a presidential candidate, holistically. i think a lot of feminists like gloria steinem simply have a vested interest in the success of their gender, at the expense of the other gender, in what amounts to a zero sum game, and they are unable to see that perhaps the best way to advance their cause would be cooperation rather than competition between the genders. maybe if we work together instead of fighting, things would work out better. i do not believe in fighting on behalf of one group of people against another group of people just because you happen to belong to the first group of people instead of the second one. the majority of people graduating from college nowadays are women, so in a few decades, if we have not already destroyed humanity through nuclear war or some other madness, and society continues its progress, the majority of highly-paid professionals will be women, since they were the ones who got all the advanced college degrees and worked harder while guys were slacking off and having fun instead of getting any real work done. now of course that is a stereotype too, and i am sure there are also lazy women and hard-working men in my generation, but the majority of people graduating from college are women, and i have read stories about how in many urban areas, the majority of high-paying entry-level jobs for people right out of college are held by women. so i think the idea that women get paid less for doing the same work as men might have been true in the past and might still be true today in the macroeconomy as a whole, but it seems like a problem that will eventually correct itself, although it may take a few decades... but when it does correct itself, i think women will end up earning a lot more money than men, because the trend of increasing female wages and decreasing male wages will not suddenly stop once wages become equal. i think feminists of the gloria steinem variety are dinosaurs, relics of the past, just like racial advocates like jesse jackson and al sharpton, just like people who advocate white supremacy or male dominance over women, neoconservatives, communists, and religious fundamentalists from every religion. all those groups will eventually fade away into obscurity, although the religious fundamentalists might last the longest, because they are so effective at spreading their message to new people and indoctrinating children from an early age with their mind-killing propaganda. i do not believe in any absolutist ideology such as those listed above, since ideologies are imperfect creations of the finite human mind trying to understand complex phenomena in an infinite universe, and they always oversimplify things and always get some things wrong, and unless an ideology is adaptable and able to change with the times, it is headed for the rubbish heap of history. most ideologies classify some things as good and others as evil, on a fairly arbitrary basis that is completely different from one ideology to the next, and there are ideologies that are almost the exact opposite of other ideologies, where what is good in one is evil in another and vice versa, and ideologies of this sort are what most people use to distinguish between the subjective categories of good and evil. so, as i do not subscribe to the ideology of feminism, the whole idea that women are all victims and this victim mentality is quite foreign to me, not being a woman myself, and i am not sure i can sympathize, given the resources at the disposal of many women in the united states and all the equal rights they have, most notably, the fact that they make up a majority of registered voters. now there may be discrimination against women, but as i see it, this is behavior done by individuals against other individuals, and they ought to be held personally accountable for their actions if they discriminate, but we need not accuse everyone in the entire society of being sexist if there is not adequate evidence to prove such an explosive charge. and the same thing goes for racism... racism is merely a pattern in the behavior of certain individuals in society, and does not include all members of society, and those individuals whose behavior is racist ought to be held personally accountable for their actions. slavery used to be legal in the south, but not everyone owned slaves. you cannot blame slavery on people who did not own slaves, unless they advocated slavery or participated in the slave trade or otherwise helped advance the cause of slavery. when nazi war criminals were put on trial, saying that they were only following orders was not a viable defense. people are responsible for their own actions, and so the nazi war criminals were treated as individuals, rather than as mindless cogs in a machine. so if women are unable to unite behind a female presidential candidate just because she is a woman, that is a good sign, because it shows they are operating as individuals and thinking for themselves, rather than mindlessly engaging in groupthink. men certainly do not unite behind a single candidate either, which is good. anyway, there are some critiques of gloria steinem’s narrow-minded op-ed here and here.

there is also a pro-hillary post here that i found to be full of bullshit here. first it raises the issue of bill clinton’s comments about barack obama that included the bit about it being a “fairy tale”. the video no longer works there, but basically it was not actually a racist thing (as the pro-hillary post agrees), but rather says that barack obama’s unifying and uplifting rhetoric about bringing people together, as well as the media portrayal of him as someone who could actually do what he says in his speeches, is a complete fairy tale. and it also includes a vicious attack on barack obama for comments he made in 2004 in support of the kerry-edwards presidential ticket that were trying to give john kerry and john edwards political cover for the fact that they both voted in favor of war with iraq, like hillary clinton. and bill clinton claims he opposed the war in iraq from the beginning, which is a lie. if so, why did his wife hillary vote in favor of war? anyway, barack obama has always been a staunch opponent of the war in iraq from before it began and he still does oppose it; he just thinks he has to vote in favor of funding for the troops now that they are already there, which hillary clinton also agrees with. so, if the clintons are arguing barack obama is wrong, they are also arguing hillary clinton is wrong, since obama and clinton have the same position on funding the troops now that they are already in iraq. or are the clintons saying it was wrong for barack obama to try to help the kerry-edwards ticket in 2004 defeat george w. bush? hillary clinton recently made some comments about how martin luther king jr. gave some good speeches, but it took president lyndon johnson to pass the voting rights act (which was unimportant according to feminists like gloria steinem who claim blacks got the right to vote 100 years earlier in the 1860s in order to claim women have it worse than black people). it seems hillary clinton and gloria steinem are trying to trivialize the struggle of african-americans and the work of martin luther king jr., and say it takes a white politician like lyndon johnson to actually get anything done.

someone who actually has a sensible opinion of all this is bob herbert of the new york times. he points out how people in the clinton campaign have spread rumors on the internet that barack obama is a muslim, which is a complete and utter lie, since barack obama has always been a christian and is a member of the united church of christ (one of the few churches that is actually tolerant of homosexuals). he also points out that people as highly ranked in the clinton campaign as campaign manager mark penn have said that barack obama was a drug addict or even a drug dealer, doing cocaine. well george w. bush also did cocaine and he got elected, so they had better learn from history. and bill clinton smoked marijuana but “did not inhale”. what a liar! bill clinton has absolutely zero credibility as far as i am concerned. he does not even know what the meaning of the word “is” is, if you recall his testimony before the impeachment hearings. bill clinton may have been a better president than ronald reagan or either of the george bushes, but that is not a very high standard. the whole lot of them are a disgrace to this country! ronald reagan was president when i was born, and i have to say, every president i have ever lived under in my entire life has been a miserable failure, though none nearly as bad as george w. bush. and now it is rev. dr. martin luther king jr. day, and it is time for us to reflect on how hillary clinton has disparaged that man and trivialized his memory and his struggle for civil rights. i am not black or a woman, but i do empathize with both of those groups’ struggles, and i am saddened that the leaders of both of those movements today have lost their way. not only feminists like gloria steinem, but black leaders like jesse jackson and al sharpton, all of whom are people nobody elected to be their leaders. in the case of jesse jackson for instance, he had a sex scandal a while back, and he was one of the few liberals who campaigned to have the government try to keep brain-dead terri schiavo alive despite the fact that when terri schiavo was still a sentient human being, she had expressed to several people that she did not want to be kept alive if she were in a coma for a long time, and would rather have them pull the plug. the terri schiavo case was a symbol of how conservative republicans completely threw all their principles about a smaller government that does not interfere in people’s private lives under the bridge. all of those principles can only be found in libertarians such as ron paul, not in the vast majority of the republican party (except for those few republicans who are like ron paul). but i personally am a liberal democrat, not a libertarian, so i support barack obama. he is not a democratic leadership council triangulating pro-war centrist like hillary clinton. and unlike hillary clinton, he never tried to give political cover to president george w. bush and his war in iraq.