Diversity: It's What's For Dinner!

Or lunch, in this case.

Where I work, we have a regular event where they set up lunchtime booths for people to bring in dishes from different cultures in order to celebrate diversity. I got an email recently asking if I wanted to furnish such a booth. I'm thinking of doing one called, "Taste of the Aztecs." It would feature nothing but organ meat.

Did I mention it would be very fresh?

Twigging off: That image came from this frightfully evil web page, designed to show children that the Aztecs were brave and kind and the Spanish were evil and violent. I swear, Hitler in Mein Kampf had more facts and better logic than this rubbish. Here are some quotes.

• "The Spaniards’ use of animals and technology made them no less barbaric than the Aztecs, just dramatically different."
• "The eating of human flesh by the Aztecs was an act of great religious solemnity and compassion."
• "Large animals were not indigenous to Ancient Mexico. Tapirs and deer were among the largest types. For this reason, animal drawn carts were not invented and the wheel was not used technologically (though children’s toys were made with wheels). Though the Aztecs did lack European knowledge of metallurgy, they were keen merchants and patrons of the arts. Their capital city was probably the biggest, cleanest and most beautiful in the world."

It's the work of pampered children who live cocooned in a world of luxury created by the Christian Europe they've learned to despise as a part of a chic, hipster culture that confuses shallow ignorance with deep thought. I think the easiest and clearest rebuttal is this: You would never in a million years deliberately choose to live in a world derived from the Aztec civilization.

I'm open for other suggestions for responses to this sophomoric idiocy.

Brexit And Global Warming

...err, Climate Change.

The "experts" all said Brexit was going to cause huge financial problems. Other "experts" told us Global Warming Climate Change was going to increase the frequency and strength of hurricanes.

Wrong on both counts.

British stocks have completely recovered from the Brexit panic.

It's almost like those "experts" are trying to scare us into giving them more money and more power.

The Divide Between Robots And Men

... is more of a divide between the robot makers and the working poor.

The northeast of England is a heavily Labour region. Labour was supposed to be against Brexit, but that's not how the northeast voted. Sunderland, for example, voted about 60-40 to leave the EU. It turns out the working man and his "thought leaders" in the Labour Party aren't exactly seeing eye-to-eye these days. It might have something to do with working-class, white girls being gang-raped by Muslim men by the thousands while the progressive elite preached multiculturalism.

That same growing divergence is playing out here as well. Dig the "Fight for 15" movement which wants to increase the minimum wage to $15. This is going to be great for the Internet elites in the progressive movement as they'll rake in huge bucks building robots to replace overly-expensive unskilled labor. For the working poor, it's going to go very badly. There aren't many unskilled people worth $15 an hour when there are automated check out stands, fast food ordering kiosks and suchlike available.

As working class jobs get priced out of existence and the ultra-wealthy Internet Set get richer and richer, the divide between the traditionally progressive working poor and the snobby liberal intellectuals is going to grow into a chasm.

Tired of waiting for children to mature into workers he can replace, this robot is preparing to prove his dominance over Man by beating this child senseless.

Sleep Deprivation

... is about the weirdest thing I've ever had.

I pulled the sleep apnea card in the game of Life about a year ago and since then I've been struggling with trying to get enough sleep. I've tried various remedies, but the one that works best for me is 12-hour Sudafed right before bed. If I take one of those, I'm golden. Unfortunately, Sudafed has side effects that I really don't like, so I avoid it as much as I can.

When I stay off the 'fed for any length of time, I find myself fuzzy-headed and disorganized during the day. That's not the weird part.

I get so muddled from sleep deprivation that I can't figure out why I'm muddled.

We recently remodeled our master bath and re-carpeted and repainted the adjoining rooms. It's the equivalent of moving out of half of your house and then moving back in. That was months ago and we still haven't fully moved back, thanks to yours truly being so disorganized. I would find myself at the end of a weekend, not having accomplished much of anything, having no plan for finishing off the project and wondering what had happened. It wasn't until this weekend that it dawned on me that these were side effects of sleep deprivation. Dig these effects of long-term sleep deprivation.

• Decreased Performance and Alertness: Sleep deprivation induces significant reductions in performance and alertness. Reducing your nighttime sleep by as little as one and a half hours for just one night could result in a reduction of daytime alertness by as much as 32%.
• Memory and Cognitive Impairment: Decreased alertness and excessive daytime sleepiness impair your memory and your cognitive ability -- your ability to think and process information.

The bizarre thing to me is that the effects mask the source. If you can't think straight, it makes it pretty hard to find the cause.

Sometimes, it's been so bad that Philosoraptor has been able to stump me.

If You Wanted To Drive Up AR-15 Sales

... you could hardly do better than what the secular progressives are doing these days.

• Constantly talk about making new restrictions on gun purchases,
• Agitate for the elimination of the 5th Ammendment's due process protections,
• Argue in favor of Supreme Court justices who will alter the 2nd Ammendment's right to keep and bear arms, 
• Constantly suppress the 1st Ammendment's protections of freedom of speech through violent suppression of conservatives at colleges and on the campaign trail and
• Attack harmless religious groups like Little Sisters of the Poor in court and with aggressive regulations designed to do nothing more than make it impossible for them to live their faith.

It's enough to make you want to buy a whole bunch of AR-15s so you have them laying around as spares. That way, once the weapon is completely banned and your current one breaks down, you'll have a fallback AR-15.

As an aside, one of our sons has an AR-15. I went out to the range and shot it. I don't know what the fuss is all about. It's just a rifle. 

Britain Votes To Leave The EU, Naive Children Hardest Hit

I've seen this stat in various forms across the Internet after the Brexit vote.

Older people favored Brexit, younger people did not.

It's usually posted by someone angry about the vote and is accompanied by chatter about how old people have screwed the younger ones. Hardly. As Jonah Goldberg notes in his book, The Tyranny of Cliches, young people are stupid. Here's the proper way to read this chart.

The more experience and wisdom you have, the more likely you were to vote for Brexit. The more naive and childlike you are, the more likely you were to vote to stay.

Reading through the Twitter stream for #Brexit, I see all kinds of shrieking and moaning about certain doom, but I can't see why. It's as if the EU was Hogwarts, the only one of its kind and without them, Britain will have no way to ... to ... to what? What exactly do buildings full of self-important suits holding meetings in Brussels do for you? Trade deals? Why can't your representatives work those out for you? Dig this.

German business leaders handed a considerable boost to the Leave campaign by saying it would be “very, very foolish” to deny the UK a free trade deal after Brexit.

The Euros want to buy British goods. They want British customers. They're not going to shut off the flow of goods and services to and from Britain. There's nothing magical about the EU.

Unless you're in your 20s and you've been raised on collectivism fairy tales. Then there's something very magical indeed. You can't say what, but you know it's magic.

Britain Votes To Leave The EU, Japan Hardest Hit

You know you've got problems when there's an event on the other side of the planet that causes a financial "flight to quality" and your country's stock market gets annihilated.

The Nikkei Index is down almost 8% today, the worst drubbing of any major stock market, including the participants in Brexit.

Japanese Investments != Quality.

When Do Ideas Stop Having Objective Value?

1. It is a bad idea to swim off the coast of South Africa where the great white sharks hunt seals.
2. It is a good idea to get some exercise every day.
3. Islam may or may not be a good idea. We can't judge.
4. Christianity may or may not be a good idea. We can't judge.
5. Buddhism may or may not be a good idea. We can't judge.
6. Atheism may or may not be a good idea. We can't judge.
7. Nuclear families may or may not be a good idea. We can't judge.
8. Broken families may or may not be a good idea. We can't judge.
9. Sex outside of marriage may or may not be a good idea. We can't judge.

What characteristics must an idea have in order to be given a valuation relative to other ideas? The first two examples are individual acts that affect your health. However, that can't be it as #9 is as well. It can't be a matter of scale, because we know the following.

10. Nazism is a bad idea.
11. The Confederacy was a bad idea.
12. Racism is a bad idea.

Is it that we can only judge large-scale ideas if they belong to the past? No, because we have this.

13. North Korea's tyranny is a bad idea.
14. Al Qaeda is a bad idea.

Carrying this line of questioning out in my head, the only governing rule I can come up with is this.

An idea is bad if we say it is. We can judge an idea if we say we can.

How's that for objective, logical reasoning?

Note: I'd probably change #5. I doubt a poll of our elites from academia, the arts and politics would say anything but "Buddhism is a good idea," but that just makes my point again.

Goebbels' Speech In 2018

What a weird time to be alive. Dig the redacted version of the Orlando shooters' call to 911.

Note that they changed Allah to God so that it wouldn't sound so ... Islamic.

It reminds me of a speech Goebbels gave in March 1945, which you can find on YouTube, where he told the audience that a really big offensive was coming and Germany would win the war. We're not at that point, of course, but the disconnect from reality is conceptually the same. The evidence of defeat was all around them, but Goebbels was still trotting out the same old lines.

Here in 2016, there are 10 countries that allow capital punishment for homosexuality. They're all Islamic. Islam is a political system, a legal system and a religion. When a nation becomes Islamic, it's not a perversion of Islam, but the perfection of it. A crazy Islamic dude walking into a gay nightclub and shooting it up isn't an aberration, it's a feature of the belief system. No, not every Muslim does it, but when whole nations practice it, you can't redact words and alter others for very long and fool the public. Imagine the redactions and contortions they'll have to go through in, say, 2018, to maintain their fictions.

Whether it's little girls being raped in England by Pakistani gangs or the German women assaulted on New  Year's Eve by immigrants or the gays in Orlando getting gunned down, how much longer will these speeches hold up against what we're seeing with our own eyes?

Aside: It's almost like we need admit we're fundamentally incompatible and divide the world up like we did with the Russians. If you don't think we're incompatible, then I suggest you picture what your life would be like living in, say, Iran.

A Leopard Doesn't Change Its Spots

... and Donald Trump is still as insane today as he was yesterday. Sadly, editorial writers still need to come up with column-inches, so there's this forlorn bit of prose.

(W)hether axing Corey Lewandowski is symbolic of a true maturation on behalf of the campaign or simply a glossing over of flaws remains to be seen.

Actually, not a lot remains to be seen. Donald Trump is a crazed narcissist and that's that. He has no appreciable organizational skills, his negotiating ability seems pedestrian at best and he's an intellectual lightweight.

To be honest, I feel bad for the people who have to follow the campaign for a living. Every word out of Hillary's mouth is a lie and Trump's just in it for the cheering. There aren't going to be any twists or turns in the narrative unless Hillary gets indicted. Meanwhile, those poor devils have to keep trying to come up with something that will get you to read their essays. In the case excerpted above, I made it 2 paragraphs, and that was only to find a decent quote to pull.

Pick out a spot on this leopard and watch it for a long, long time.
It won't change in any way.

Update: I should add - Gary Johnson for president!

Is There No Evil They Won't Perpetrate?

Don't be fooled! Don't go in to work today!

I have it on good authority that Iranian hackers have broken into the US Time Reference website and hacked the date. Today is not Monday! Today is still the weekend! We don't know which day it really is, but we're sure it's not a work day. Until we find out the day, it's best to stay home and dork around on the Internet.

You're welcome.

Mt. Laguna Meadow

A little nature photography for Father's Day. I think it's worth a click. Enjoy!

Why Do They Hate Us?

... is not a question being asked after Orlando the way it was after 9/11. In looking through the old articles from that time, here's an interesting one from Newsweek with the following bits.

Osama bin Laden has an answer--religion. For him and his followers, this is a holy war between Islam and the Western world. Most Muslims disagree...But bin Laden and his followers are not an isolated cult like Aum Shinrikyo or the Branch Davidians or demented loners like Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber. They come out of a culture that reinforces their hostility, distrust and hatred of the West--and of America in particular. This culture does not condone terrorism but fuels the fanaticism that is at its heart. To say that Al Qaeda is a fringe group may be reassuring, but it is false...This awkward reality has led some in the West to dust off old essays and older prejudices predicting a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam.

This is from a blandly mainstream publication that these days would never publish such an article.

Elsewhere, the folks who blamed 9/11 on American cultural imperialism aren't doing the same thing for Orlando. While they argued that Coca-Cola for sale in the Middle East was enough to drive jihadists to violence, jamming gay marriage down our throats here in the US apparently was not.

To clarify my thoughts: The killer was a nut, motivated by Islam. That he was "triggered" by seeing gays express affection in public wasn't the fault of the gays, but the byproduct of mixing somewhat-incompatible cultures together.

Is It Extremism If Whole Nations Do It?

In Iran, they hang gays. In Afghanistan, they crush them under collapsing walls. In both places, they do it in the name of Islam.

How many nations have to do it before we say it's normal for them? How many people have to participate in the events before we say it's not extremist, it's just who they are?

See also: Clitoridectomies, common Islamic practice of.

Practically Useless Book Title - Gold Medal Winner

Putting books on my new bookshelves, I came across this one. Seriously, guys, you couldn't work up a better title than this?

Arguing Politics And Religion In The Office

... is usually a bad thing, but a session yesterday taught me some important facts.

I try to stay out of these discussions whenever they arise. For one thing, no matter how amiable the participants, the discussion can get heated and the emotions last long after the conversation. Your work suffers as a result. The other thing I really dislike about them is that they take me away from what I'm doing. I'm all for discussing local, organizational politics as it affects our marketing and sales, but national or global issues are of far less value. I've got this private blog for that.

For whatever reason, I got pulled into a conversation about how all religions are equal and they're the cause of conflicts. For anyone who has read this blog for any length of time, I'm sure you could figure out my side of the argument without me repeating it here. Instead, here are three points, two related to the Old Testament, that came out of the discussion.

Old Testament rules and regulations only apply to the Jews

The 613 laws given in the Old Testament were never intended to be applied to the Gentiles (non-Jews). The Ten Commandments were seen as universal, but restrictions against eating fish without scales and cheese with meat weren't to apply to, say, the Egyptians. Only the Jews. That means that if you want to use the Old Testament as an example of intolerance, it's not going to get you very far.

This is carried out in the New Testament as in Acts, the Disciples discuss whether the Gentiles who are converting to Christianity need to be following all of the Jewish laws. The conclusion is no with only a few, minor exceptions. Acts 15 has it in full detail.

Jesus came to fulfill Scripture, not carry on its minute laws

From a Christian point of view, the purpose of the Old Testament is to lead to Christ. He fulfills it and effectively draws a line under it. From there on out, the world is reborn with new rules and pretty simple ones at that. Christian theology, as it applies to behavior, isn't hard to understand or apply, particularly when it comes to violence.

Secularists are superior?

The other thing that came out of the conversation was the realization by the secular progressives that they were essentially suggesting evangelization themselves. That is, they wanted to convince others of the value of multiculturalism and non-judgmental acceptance of all lifestyles. That in itself was a philosophy and they felt it superior to all others. Strip away God from religion and you get the same thing - philosophies for life whose adherents feel are superior.

The argument from the secularists was not that religion caused problems, but that feelings of superiority did. Ergo, no one should think one religion better than another. When confronted with the fact that they were doing the very same thing in the process of making their argument, they were confounded. Further, when asked if they felt that the guiding philosophies of, say, the Confederacy were equally valid to all others, they really came to a dead stop. And then we got back to work.

WWNBFD?

The Shelves, Finished

These shelves, in case you were wondering.

My wife thinks my color choices were too bold. "They're practically neon!" she exclaimed. I don't know, I rather like them.

All We've Got Are Hammers

... so every problem, everywhere looks like a nail.

That jumped out at me as I read the reaction to the Orlando shootings on Twitter and the blogs. Like Pavlov's dogs drooling at the sound of a bell, we all trotted out our favorite talking points and recited them by rote, nodding our heads gravely. Here's the President on our need for gun control.

Say a prayer for them and say a prayer for their families — that God give them the strength to bear the unbearable. And that He give us all the strength to be there for them, and the strength and courage to change.

Makes sense to me. An Islamic crazy murders 50 gays in Florida, so the proper response is to send the police to take all the guns out of my neighbor's house here in San Diego.

On Twitter, there were those who yelled for more respect for gays and more acceptance of their lifestyle choices. Given that we've now been told to stand down as men dressed in prom gowns stomp into women's restrooms to do God-knows-what, I struggled to think of something I could do to further accept sexual deviancy. Hand out little jars of Vaseline on the street corner outside The Brass Rail, maybe?

The NRA came under fire, ha ha ha, for supporting gun rights. I wondered if the UAW would have been blamed if it had been a car bomb. Good things the Muslim crazies don't know how to make those, eh? Err...

Here, UAW members protest another shooting demanding more use of car bombs by Islamic crazies.

Then there were those mocking people whose "thoughts and prayers" were with the victims and their families. Really, they weren't sneering at empathy, they were making fun of anyone who didn't feel empathy and then take the political action they demanded. It wasn't about the shooting or the suffering, it was about their particular political ax, which has been ground down to a nub.

Update: I almost forgot one of my favorites - the all-religions-are-the-same crowd. Amanda Marcotte paraded her ignorance for all to see with something entitled, "Bigotry Is Bigotry, No Matter Which Religion You Follow." Thank you for that very strenuous effort, Amanda. Why don't you sit down and have a nice, cool glass of lemonade now? There's a good girl.

It all got to be so boring. It wasn't even worth retorting in snarkiness. It's strange to say, but the largest mass-murder in US history (not counting Kermit Gosnell, because, well, he was an abortionist butcher and so he is not discussed in Polite Company) turned into a yawneroo.

Next time this sort of thing happens, I think I'll stay off the Internet for a day or two and just say a couple of Rosaries. It may not help, but at least it will be sincere.

Worst. Election. Ever.

The thing that always gets me about the Clintons is that they're just in it for the money and adulation. They're not trying to do anything grandiose as they strive to gather power about themselves. It's all so small.

Dig this.

Conclusion: Gary Johnson for president.

Slot Cat

... is in the groove!

No Good Guys

My wife's started watching the series, The White Queen. It's one of these typical modern series where every character is despicable, save for a few naive waifs who serve only as emotional fodder to be cut down by the hordes of nasty ones.

What gives? Why are all these series devoid of heroes and full of villains? Is it because Hollywood no longer believes that heroes exist? Is this all they know in their personal lives? Or is it that they think they're "keeping it real?" Maybe evil characters are more fun to write and act, so why shouldn't everyone join in the fun.

All I know is that I find them utterly unwatchable. In each case, all I want is an episode where they all die helplessly and the only dialog is them writhing and moaning about the pointless nihilism of their lives.

Shot-Chaser-Hangover

From today's WSJ, here's the headlines as they lined up in the left-hand column.

1. George Soros, huge socialist / Democrat donor and all-around heartless, limousine liberal, is betting real money that rocky times are ahead.
2. Other investment money is chasing the security of bonds.
3. Hillary Clinton, embracing the socialist / fascist economics of Obama, Sanders and the rest of her Party, economics that has led up to #1 and #2 above, is telling everyone what a dope Donald Trump is.

I'm not arguing that last point, but there's a possibility that she's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, either.

Cheezburger of the Day

In Ancient Rome, They Spoke With

... an upper-class British accent. We know this from movie after movie.

Last night, hockey preempted Jeopardy, so we fell back on watching Gladiator on the History Channel. Here's a clip.

Going back a bit farther in time, here's a clip from Quo Vadis.

From ancient times to this, the Romans have spoken with an English accent. It simply had to be this way. How else could the Romans have maintained control over the Empire? Imagine them with a different accent. They never would have been taken seriously.

---

Redneck

"Shoo-eee! Thar's a whole mess of barbarians coming over the hills yonder! We'd better get the legions out so we can give 'em a whuppin!"

Japanese

"Oooo-aahhhh (Toshiro Mifune grunt) You have no honor! You have betrayed the regions. You no pay them! Sordiers will no fight if not paid!"

New York Italian

"Yo! Caesar! Rule over this!" (Makes crude arm gesture.)

---

See what I mean? Who would ever have allowed people that talked like that to crush them in battle?

Finally! A Chance To Vote Based On Race!

... whatever race that might be,

Watching the violence in San Jose where mostly Hispanic progressives beat up mostly white Trump supporters was breathtaking. It's taken me a couple of days for me to process it.

I went onto Twitter and perused the #altright hashtag where the worst of the Trumpkins live and found lots of antisemitism*  and plenty more. One fellow posted a video about the San Jose attacks and asked the logical question, "What would be happening if the races were reversed and whites had attacked Hispanics?" He said, correctly, that this would be an internationally-covered incident and would have been front and center for weeks. Instead, since the victims were white, the whole thing was quickly shoved under the rug.

His diagnosis was right, but his remedy was wrong - a white homeland. That's what's also wrong with the bigots in La Raza and the racists in the Black Lives Matter movement. It's always more and more race talk and more and more repayment for injustices. It can never end because all sides weigh the values of the injustices differently and they always see themselves as getting the short end of the stick.

This is only going to end when we stop talking about race, when we see each other as fellow children of God. This is why Christ preached forgiveness. Without forgiveness, the cycle will go on forever.

This is my race.

* -  Why the antisemitism? What do the Jews have to do with anything?)

Lessons Learned From A Built-In Shelving Project

I just finished a set of built-in shelves in a closet off of our study. I've never done that kind of project before, so I knew it was going to be a learning experience and end up somewhat less than perfect. Which it did. I also knew the closet has a door, so the whole thing could be kept away from the eyes of guests. That's a good thing.

The completed project, before painting. I used 5/8" particle board as the shelving and 2x3s as the supports. It wasn't what I had planned, but when I went to Home Depot, it was the best I could find The hardest part of the design was figuring out how to do the L-shape. The shelves in the back are fully supported by the 2x3s and are as sturdy as a battleship. The shelving along the side required angle brackets.

An angle bracket at the end of a side shelf. I had intended to use 2x3s on this side, but there was only a stud at the corner, and nothing but drywall from there on out. I had nothing to anchor the 2x3 so I had to fall back to angle brackets. Trying to get the angle bracket tops level with the 2x3s was a real bear. I got close, but not perfect.

The biggest lesson of all. I didn't cut the shelves to fit. There's a gap between the shelves and a gap you can't see between the shelf and the wall. That's because I measured the length of the wall and then cut all the shelves at once. I should have cut one set as a throwaway template, measured the gaps and then added that much to the real shelves when I cut them. Instead, I figured my measurements were close enough. They weren't. This won't cause a big problem, the books will easily bridge these gaps, but it looks bad.

And there you have it. Our books will be stored and everything will work out, but next time I try something like this, I ought to do a better job.

Sadly, I've Heard Most Of These

... spoken seriously. The one I hate most of all is "World Class."

Why A Little Nastiness In A Cat Is A Good Thing

Our previous Maximum Leader, Katie, could be a mean, grumpy cat. When she got high on catnip, she was an angry drunk and you wanted to be far away. Having said that, for those she loved, which included the whole family, even the dogs, she was very sweet.

Her relationship with the dogs wasn't always friendly. When she first met them, they were cheerfully curious and wanted to sniff her. She immediately dialed the aggression up to 11 and ripped their noses to shreds when they came over to see her. In about 15 seconds, she set the tone for the rest of their relationship. They didn't bother her at all after that and she started to relax. After a time, they became friends, but she was always in control of the situation and they knew it.

Our new Maximum Leader, Maddi, is sweetness personified. All she wants to do is purr, head bump, roll around, get her tummy rubbed and have adventures in the yard. She almost never uses her claws. Because of that, her Catican Guards, particularly the little ones, are learning Cat Protocol very slowly. In fact, I'm having to be her claws by punishing them for getting too close and bugging her too much. We're getting there, but it's taking a lot longer than it would if Maddi had a little more cattitude.

I just want to love everyone!

Before You Get All Wound Up About The Inquisition

... again and use it as an example of Christian intolerance, you might want to look a little closer to home, temporally speaking. Dig this.

In the past year especially, it’s become increasingly clear to me that I cannot uphold the primary value of my profession, to do no harm, without also seriously jeopardizing my standing in the professional community. It’s a terrible and unfortunate conflict of interest. I’ve lost much sleep over the fact that, for a significant portion of my clients and their parents, I am unable to provide what they profess to come to me seeking: sound clinical judgment. Increasingly, providing such judgment puts me at risk of violating the emergent trans narrative which–seemingly overnight and without any explanation or push-back of which I am aware–has usurped the traditional mental health narrative.

Well, that's not too bad. They're just being exiled out of their profession, right? I mean it could be worse.

It is worse.

Last week in a team meeting, our medical director said he was meeting with a girl who identifies as FTM (Female Transitioning to Male) to discuss top surgery and testosterone treatment. Apparently, according to the director, the girl’s mom is slowing down the process of transition. Bad mom, right? The director added that the girl’s mom told her that 9 out of 9 of her daughter’s friends also identify as FTM.

Emphasis in the original. The odds against finding 9 FTMs in any closed population is staggeringly high. That ought to be obvious to anyone familiar with statistics as these professionals would be, were they not in the grip of a cult. It took this author to actually say something.

At this point I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer. I said, “Can we not be honest and see that we are dealing with a trend?” Of course, everyone else at the table was mute. Considering I’m leaving my post, I felt bold enough to say that I found it infuriating we couldn’t discuss this topic clinically. More silent colleagues (except their eyes were wide as if they wanted me to keep talking and taking the risk for them). I said that what we were doing as a medical community was potentially very harmful, and made mention of some of the videos I’d watched featuring transmen who decided to go off testosterone.

Note the implication. If the author had been planning on keeping their job, they would have stayed silent in the face of obvious nonsense for fear of an ... well, what else to call it? ... Inquisition.

Confess your sins of homophobia and transphobia! Confess!

Read the whole article. I'm just taking out one example of what the author calls a cult movement.

Why Donald Trump Will Never Have An Email Scandal Like Hillary Clinton

Hillary hid her email so she wouldn't get caught committing crimes. Trump doesn't care if he gets caught.

Advantage: Trump.

Disadvantage: The rest of us. No matter who wins.