Preface

In a previous post Is “Emotional Intelligence” an Oxymoron? I began by reflecting on a pattern often seen in organizational settings.

Warning: This post will express sincere thoughts that are politically incorrect, for example accepting that males and females have differing predominant behaviors and traits.

The title refers to a notion that came up in the fields of management science and industrial psychology, coincidental with increasing numbers of women practicing in those disciplines. I am prompted to write about this upon realizing that our present social divide is more fundamental than many think. This century, we see increasing numbers of people choosing to operate from emotions rather than intelligence.

This pattern is in contradiction to the trajectory of Western civilization placing reason as primary and individual rights and freedoms as essential.

In a recent article thread a comment caught my attention. “It has been said men rank, women exclude, and that is very true IMO. All-female groups are very exclusionary to anyone who does not fit in.” That expression of Ranking vs. Excluding was new to me, and it may be changing this century, what with women competing with other women in sports, and with men as well in the workplace. Still, it points to our present social struggle whereby “diversity” is employed to divide a nation into identity groups to protest prejudice and claim reparations against grievances. The US as usual is the leading example of this culture war. Ironically, tribalism is rearing its ugly head in precisely the nation-state that so successfully created an American tribe that included any and all ethnic and religious groups.

Ranking vs. Excluding also explains such events as the Senate hearings on Judge Kavanaugh. Clearly his opponents sought to exclude him not only from the Judiciary, but to banish him from the human race. Their fierce and unrelenting animus to this day is frightening for the republic. Ironically, Kavanaugh prevailed in the process only by an emotional outburst, his outrage finally waking others up to the enormously evil beheading underway. This was out of character for a man by all accounts extremely reasonable and unprejudiced, and even in this testimony his intelligence was evident and in control.

It also shows up in the warfare between Trump and the leftist media. From the moment of Trump declaring candidacy, the left has been focused on excluding Trump from legitimacy, not only as President, but as an human being. Meanwhile, he is focused on the ranking: Winning is what matters, coming in first place. And despite the media’s attempts to paint him racist and sexist, I see no evidence that he excludes losers in a contest. On the contrary, he and Senator Rubio are on the same side pushing back against election fraud in Florida. The media can not recognize Trump is driven by intelligence despite his determined actions pursuing rational policy goals, and unbowed by social pressure and disapproval.

This modern tribalism emerged from the academic world and has now spread into the wider society as graduates gain employment in private and public sector institutions. However, many of them carry a virus along with whatever knowledge and skills they have been able to acquire in their studies.

Philip Pippin brings the issue up to date writing on the corrosive social effects from today’s male/female culture warfare in his America Greatness article Who’s Toxic Now?  Excerpts on in italics with my bolds and added images.

Is America suffering from toxic masculinity—or toxic femininity?

So far this year, events are rapidly unwinding in chaos both at home and abroad. Inflation is soaring; the nation’s southern border is effectively dissolving; violent crime is escalating in many cities, seemingly unchecked; radical indoctrination is replacing proper education in public schools; and Russia is emulating the Nazis’ savage blitzkrieg-cum-genocide strategy of conquest, with relative lassitude by America.

It is vital to reflect on what autocratic Democratic rule—yes, rule, not governance—in Washington, D.C. has produced since Joe Biden’s inauguration and the leftist seizure of near-total control of the national legislative agenda. Such reflection can emanate from a myriad of perspectives, both mundane and esoteric, but there is a cultural lens I’d like to peer through here in this critical election year.

Those who value fact-based realities over “social constructs” meant to facilitate and justify ideological imperatives like identity politics and tribalism accept that there are two—and only two—sexes. Social “innovations” such as “gender fluidity” and the heated efforts exerted by their proponents to normalize them are designed to confound, disrupt, and ultimately destroy the organic social order that has evolved over centuries of experimentation across many societies. These proponents euphemistically label this “fundamental transformation”; those well-acquainted with world history and the relentless delusions of social utopians, foreign or domestic, more accurately call this “social engineering.” Usually, decadence in all forms attends the drive towards “perfecting” society by “perfecting” all the people who live in it. Rampant amorality, the debasement of all civilized norms of behavior, and the successful elevation—even glorification—of perversions of all kinds become milestones on the way to “utopia.” The result? Narcissistic elites prosper, and everyone else slides into misery and poverty as mere tools for the elite’s aggrandizement of power and lucre.

One of the modern whipping boys to advance this savage menace has been “toxic masculinity,” embodied in and epitomized by white, hetero, generically (but not exclusively) Christian, middle- and working-class males. Traits of this supposed scourge include tendencies toward emotional aggression, physical intimidation and violence, attitudes of patriarchal disdain and supremacism, and the usual laundry list of demonic isms and phobias: racism, sexism, various LGBTQ-centric phobias, and Islamophobia.

In a word, men are the problem, and particularly white, heterosexual men who possess natural masculine attitudes, values, and predispositions.

This perspective deliberately ignores the positive traits of masculinity that have long been esteemed and celebrated in America and throughout all organized societies. These include the capacity to design and build structures and organizations; the ability to preserve and protect through exertion of physical strength; the ability to produce and amplify material wealth by the use of rational thought and physical labor; and the ability to produce food and water supplies. “Toxic masculinity” is really just a propaganda meme of the utopian Left created for the purpose of besmirching the strong individualism and independent mindset of society’s motivated producers, who, predominantly, happen to be male.

So, what of femininity? If in fact there is a tangible taint known as “toxic masculinity” beyond just being an inflammatory meme designed to divide and alienate people from one another for purposes of aggrandizing political power, is there something rightfully labeled “toxic femininity”? I assert there is, and it is likely even more menacing.

If “toxic men” can be overly aggressive and intimidating, then “toxic women” may be overly passive-aggressive and covertly conniving, working behind the scenes to get what they want by subterfuge. If “toxic males” can be too direct and “in your face” with their demands, needs, and wants, then “toxic females” can be intentionally indirect, coy, sly, and even deceitful to get whatever they want. If the former can be physically violent based on emotions gone awry, then the latter can be emotionally manipulative towards others, playing on their personal fears, vulnerabilities, and sensitivities.

If men and women share both masculine and feminine traits, in varying degrees, then this discourse can hardly be defamed as a diatribe aimed invidiously at women as women. Rather, these behaviors exist in the politics, ideological conflicts, and rivalries bedeviling our nation today—modes employed by both men and women.

Today, Democratic politicians at every level of government and their ideological cohorts in major media, academia, Hollywood, and Big Tech are increasingly being outed as serial liars, deceitful spin artists, subversives, and cynical manipulators of our people’s basest emotions and instincts. Their predations did not start with the 2020 elections, of course. However, in achieving greater normalization, they threaten to subvert and topple not only our own civil society and republican form of government, but the world order, which is predicated on unparalleled American military strength, economic power, and historical values.

If not checked decisively this year by the sane, the rational, the historically literate, and the spiritually conscious, historians of the future may well ascribe America’s devolution and ultimate collapse as a free, independent, and sovereign nation primarily to a pandemic of “toxic femininity.”

It is, to be emphatic, a fully inclusive, “pan-gender” affliction embodied in men and women of all “gender orientations.” That said, the biological men in power today acting as “toxic females” will be most to blame. There are many: Biden, Blinken, Austin, Garland, Kerry, Mayorkas, Buttigieg, Milley, Schumer, Schiff, and Nadler. So, the ladies will have to move over. They have once again been usurped.

See Also To Be a Man, Or Not to Be (Fight Degendering)

Bruce Pardy explains in his Epoch Times article Back to the Future: ‘Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve’ Was a Dangerous Mistake From the Beginning.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Editor’s note: COVID lockdowns and restrictions for “two weeks to flatten the curve” began two years ago in late March 2020. At the time, many pundits called it a dangerous mistake, one of whom was law professor Bruce Pardy. Two years later, as restrictions finally begin to ease, the federal government and many workplaces still maintain vaccination mandates. Below are prognostications (edited) from Pardy from April and May 2020.

Lenin once said that there are decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen. In this new era of the past few weeks, Canada has become less free. Lockdowns will eventually ease, but we have crossed a threshold. Canadians now want government to keep them safe—not just from foreign threats and violence, but from viruses and the vicissitudes of life. Authorities have enthusiastically seized the moment. Politicians have assumed unprecedented powers not subject to legislative oversight and have suspended civil liberties. For the first time ever, officials have confined citizens—with their approval—to their homes. Municipalities issue citations for walking through the park, police enforce rules that do not exist, and health authorities surveil the sick.

The situation that we are now in may be a shock, but it should not be a surprise. We have long been headed down this road. COVID restrictions may seem like an extreme change to daily life, but it is a difference of degree, not of kind. We were not a free country on March 22 that suddenly became unfree on March 23. We have an expansive administrative welfare state, which for a long time has driven the bus. It regulates everything. It subsidizes, taxes, supervises, and directs. The degree of infringement on civil liberties is more extreme now than it has even been for the general population in this country, but COVID rules are not differently intrusive, just more so. The lockdowns will ease, but the mandate that the government now has will remain. It will be difficult to put this genie back in the bottle.

It has worked like this: In Stage One, which we passed through a long time ago, the populace becomes convinced that it is the state’s role to keep them safe. In Stage 2, which began with the onset of the virus, they become fearful. Stage Three is necessity: if the virus is to be feared and the job of government is to keep us safe, then government must do whatever is necessary to protect us from the virus. Necessity provides the excuse for control, and control exacerbates dependence. What we have now is a dependent population, economically and psychologically.

There will not be rational debate about these policies. Governments do not adopt policies for logical and rational reasons. It is a mistake to believe that it is possible to engage in a civil conversation with the public and with government officials to figure out what works best. What has worked for governments in this circumstance is the promotion of fear. Concentrating on making rational policy recommendations based upon the premise that we are engaging in a good faith dialogue would be to miss the plot.

There will be court challenges, but the courts will not say that these policies are unconstitutional. The government can do what it is doing because the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not provide the lines in the sand that we think that it does. Courts like to pretend that they are immune from public opinion, but they follow the culture as much as anybody else.

The charter will not protect us from the culture, and the culture now is one that demands safety, provided by the state.

Governments will be allowed to do indirectly what they could not do directly. Take the vaccine for example. If a vaccine is developed, they will not make the vaccine mandatory. Instead, they will say, make your own choice but if you do not have a vaccine you cannot come inside the building. You cannot come and renew your driver’s licence unless you can show us you have been vaccinated. Technically that is not mandatory, but practically it is. Contact tracing means that they are imposing upon you a requirement without admitting that what they are doing is locking you down if you decide not to do it. Governments will use means by which to achieve their objective without being so authoritarian that you cannot move.

The most disturbing thing about the COVID regime is not that governments are putting it in place, but that citizens support it, and indeed demand it.

COVID madness will not stop until a critical mass of people say that they have had enough. The way to turn this around is to get the population to reject the authority of experts, health officials, and governments to tell them what to do. Until we get to that, efforts to reverse these policies may prove to be a waste of time. Until people perceive that the purpose of government is to protect liberty instead of safety, everything else is fiddling around the margins.

Crises are an ideal time for the state to advance into territory from which it will not wish to retreat. In time, controls will loosen but old expectations have been swept away. In this new era, we will discover that leaders of all political stripes have more than a little Lenin in them.

Ukrainian ambassador and flag waving at Biden State of the Union speech.

Lee Smith writes at Compact Ukraine Is the Ruling Class’s Latest Propaganda Ploy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The war in Ukraine has been dominating headlines for more than a month, but it is still hard for most Americans to grasp what is going on. In part, that’s because most of what is coming out of Kyiv and Moscow is war propaganda. But it’s also because the US ruling class is once more waging information war—against domestic critics and internal enemies.

You can hardly blame the Ukrainians for inventing stories about fighter pilots who single-handedly downed scores of Russian aircraft. The country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is trying to keep up morale on the home front while soliciting support from Western leaders to fend off Vladimir Putin’s onslaught. For those in power, lying is part of the logic of war.

What isn’t normal is the all-out effort to promote Ukraine’s cause in America—an effort grafted on to a long series of ongoing propaganda campaigns deployed by US institutions and industries against the same target: the American public. These campaigns have used the same methods, personnel, platforms, and even catchwords to deceive, harass, and punish working- and middle-class Americans to the benefit of the country’s increasingly powerful ruling oligarchy.

To help their chosen candidate, Joe Biden, unseat President Donald Trump, Silicon Valley giants blocked an October 2020 New York Post exposé about influence-peddling by Biden’s son Hunter. Fifty former top US intelligence officials characterized the Post’s reporting as Russian disinformation, a claim echoed unanimously and uncritically by prestige outlets. The New York Times repeatedly called the Hunter Files “unsubstantiated,” while National Public Radio’s managing editor for news, Terence Samuels, huffed that “we don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.”

Yet even as the Times acknowledged last week that the Hunter emails uncovered by the Post were indeed authentic, the same tech firms are banning videos and stories that contradict the US political establishment’s official Ukraine narrative for the same reason: American spies claim it’s Russian disinformation.

If you aren’t accused of serving Moscow, you are at least disloyal to the United States.

The media say that the Trump supporters who showed up to protest election irregularities at the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, were there to wage an insurrection. This, despite mounting evidence, including the confessions of New York Times reporters, suggesting that law enforcement played a significant role in staging the day’s violence. Yet video of the events selectively edited by local police and the US Department of Justice and then released to the media has already solidified the official narrative: Anyone who didn’t vote for Biden is likely a domestic terrorist.

Or you are said to be endangering American lives with conspiracy theories.

That’s how the ruling class framed opposition journalists and researchers who questioned the origins of Covid-19, as well as doctors who noted the obvious fact that the vaccines didn’t work as promised—otherwise there would have been no need for boosters. The accused were banished from social media, hectored by their professional colleagues and institutions, and received scores of death threats. Americans who failed to comply with government efforts to rig the stock market by mandating Pfizer and Moderna shots were fired from work, expelled from school, and ostracized from their communities.

Fast-forward a few months: If you say out loud that you think there is something strange about a campaign involving Democrats and Republicans, the media, Big Tech, corporate giants, and US intelligence services to promote one side in a foreign war that doesn’t obviously touch on the daily concerns of most Americans, you’re pro-Putin.

That accusation has haunted the American public sphere going on six years.

For this is where the long campaign started, with Russiagate, the most destructive information operation ever waged against the nation. And unlike, say, the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, its authors aren’t adversarial spy services, but fellow Americans, our own ruling class. Now the same journalists, foreign-policy experts, and retired US officials who lied in 2016 about Trump’s ties to Russia are front and center shaping public opinion about the war waged by Putin—the world leader our overclass put in the middle of an elite conspiracy theory designed to guarantee Hillary Clinton the presidency.

It would be useful to have insight into Putin’s thinking, especially now with a massive land war in the middle of Europe giving rise to a powerful anti-American bloc led by Russia and China. But don’t count on America’s national-security establishment to provide that insight. For they squandered their credibility with Russiagate. From former officials like ex-Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and retired spy chiefs like James Clapper and John Brennan to Biden deputies like National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and the Pentagon’s top strategist, Colin Kahl, and the entire Democratic Party and its media apparatus, the lies of America’s political class left the republic vulnerable to destructive forces.

Why did they lie? Policymakers, spy chiefs, and military officials rightly deceive foreign powers to protect and advance the US national interest. But these men and women lied to the American people about the president they elected. Then they lied about everything. Public US institutions and private industries have spent the last six years mustering their formidable powers to break the US working and middle classes. Why?

Because lying is part of the logic of war,
and America’s oligarchy is at war with the American people.

Grady Means writes at The Hill Ukraine crisis: Unexpected weapon against woke politics. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted his way into Ukraine, he thought he was simply reassembling the great Russian Empire. What he actually did was reverse the global tide toward authoritarianism under the banner of woke politics.

For years, the would-be New Illuminati of global elites have trekked to the World Economic Forum (WEF) to be fed a diet of woke politics under the banner of “stakeholder rights” and “The Great Reset,” a rebranded version of Marxism designed to defeat neo-liberalism, i.e., capitalism, and its spiritual partner, individual freedom. For the most part, these pretentious “leaders” are what Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin would have called “dupes” and “useful idiots,” selling their own hangman the rope to hang them.

Four major fronts in this global war to destroy liberal democracies and free-market systems have been decarbonization, COVID response, baseless accusations of racism, and corrosion of the rule of law — all efforts to undermine key foundations of civil society.

As outlined by the leaders of the WEF, the COVID pandemic provided the opportunity to increase the authoritarian role of government, albeit unconstitutionally, and replace individual liberty with state mandate — the “great reset,” leading to the increased power of the state (and the elite) to control citizens. The WEF simulated this strategy well in advance of COVID, including the role of “authoritative spokesmen” and traditional and social media to promote the state view and suppress dissent and free speech as “disinformation.”

Also central to the strategy is rapid decarbonization — federal, state and local laws and mandates to shut down the use of fossil fuels and transition to solar and wind power — promoted as answers to the climate crisis. Most serious analyses suggest they will fail. Solar and wind are unreliable. They require a doubling of the grid, which itself has proven to be unreliable across the country with blackouts. They require battery backups to store and supply energy when solar and wind are down. Current battery backup capacity in America is less than 10 quads. To support American industrial and consumer usage at 2022 levels, it would require between 60 to 90 quads to sustain our economy and standard of living.

Expanding and strengthening the grid and installing the battery capacity will take decades. It will require bridge energy — i.e., natural gas and nuclear — to be used as the transition takes place. But government policies are shutting down fossil fuels and nuclear power as quickly as possible.

It will be a disaster. And, it is intentional. The point is to have skyrocketing energy prices and shortages. It enshrines government power. It is cynical to an Olympian degree.

Of course, it will have no effect on the climate at all. China will continue to build coal-fired generators (at least 1,000 are planned) and use the full range of fossil fuels. Russia, of course, is wedded to fossil fuels. The only result of decarbonization in the West is the destruction of our economies and democracies.

“Defunding the police” and not enforcing urban or border laws undercut civil society and weaken social cohesion. It creeps toward anarchy. Calling out these obvious attacks on social foundations is deemed to be “racism,” a strategy that has silenced many and intimidated our political and corporate “leadership.”

The speed and success that woke politics has had in redefining the political debate in America and Western democracies has been remarkable. The rapid shift toward authoritarianism has been alarming. The corrosion of the rule of law is depressing. The cowardice and opportunism among the political and corporate elite is expected, but sickening.

Putin should have just pulled up a comfortable chair, eaten popcorn, and watched the West self-destruct. But, he’s an impatient guy — a would-be “man of history.” Impulsively, he has, in a single stroke, managed to reverse the Western woke political tidal wave and set the stage for destroying his own energy-based economy.

Almost instantly, everyone in the West has become aware of the central importance of energy to national security and the overall economy.

It is obvious that America cannot be held hostage to foreign sources of oil and gas and must return to energy independence. It is obvious that Germany made a colossal error in precipitously shutting down its nuclear power generation and becoming dependent on Russian gas — not unlike California, which has done the same, only to be forced to import energy from other states. It is obvious that European energy prices are skyrocketing because of policy mistakes. It is obvious that America can best support NATO by producing and exporting oil and gas to Europe. But American energy prices — and the prices of everything else — are skyrocketing because of poor economic decisions, especially in regard to energy production.

And this brings us to Joe Biden. Will the president continue to allow the price of energy to soar to squeeze the American people into accepting his flawed, woke vision of rapid decarbonization? Or, will he understand that he has undercut our national security, NATO, and our economy and quickly move America back to energy independence?

If not, the midterm elections will present a stark choice between the woke and destructive authoritarian vision of the Democrats, or a strong economy, true freedom and strong democracy.

Thank you, Vlad, for the great reset — let’s hope you woke us all up.