Progressives and Babies

My wife and I recently had a baby. The experience has given me some insight into how progressives see basic life and biological issues.

Being responsible people, we took all the classes. The baby classes you will get at a modern hospital all seem to be based on the philosophy of “attachment parenting”. You always pick up the baby when he cries. You only breastfeed him. You meet all his needs all the time, and if you try really hard, all this will work out fine.

The first problem we had with this was breastfeeding. It takes some time for the milk to come in, you are told. You will have little milk at first, but he’s very little, so he only needs a little milk.

But he’s screaming his head off in the hospital, and we can’t figure out why. A super-nice nurse tells us he’s hungry. But, we say, we are following the instructions. She tells us she has three kids and she gave them all formula as well as breast milk. (I got the impression for various reasons she was a Mormon, but don’t know this for sure.) So we start giving him formula too, and for a few days he wolfs it down like a starving man, or a starving baby, which he was.

If you read the baby forums a lot of people follow this advice though, and the baby is hungry for a long time, and sometimes doesn’t gain weight. This is child abuse, in my book, but it’s formal medical advice. I thank God for that nurse.

Then you go to the “lactation consultant”, a nurse deeply committed to the ideology of breastfeeding. If you’re using some formula, that’s ok, we will get you using only breast milk with some coaching. If you are breast pumping, that’s ok, or using a nipple shield, that’s ok, we will soon get you feeding only directly. They are very understanding that you may need these crutches, but they want to help you, they really do want you to be a good mother.

The problem is breastfeeding is difficult and time-consuming. I can see why so many babies died in the old days, just getting enough food was very hard. I remember reading articles years ago about the evil of Nestle promoting formula in the Third World. How dare the evil corporation keep mothers from breastfeeding! But a lot of women can’t produce enough milk, and if they can feeding the baby is sometimes very difficult. I’m sure formula has saved a lot of babies’ lives.

So, we finally ditched these sandal-wearing granola ladies and did it our own way. My wife breastfeeds the baby once a day, in the morning, and breast pumps and bottle feeds him other times. He gets mostly breast milk now, up from about 50% before, but gets formula as he needs it. Formula is more persistent in the system, so he gets it around when we go to sleep so he sleeps longer.

The other thing is crying. The classes limit the advice to pick him up whenever he cries, so he will feel secure, and then he will cry less and sleep more. My wife objected to this as her niece came to be very dependent on being held a lot; we asked the nurse giving the class about this and she said, no, it is not possible to spoil the baby, always pick him up.

Reality is babies cry a lot, for a long time, whether you pick him up or not. Our baby had colic, which is a fancy word the baby cries a lot and nobody is sure why. We went to the first pediatrician mention, an old Crocs-wearing granola lady, and she was all like “babies cry a lot, suck it up you wimps.” On the second visit she said we should try a different formula, and probiotics, but we didn’t want to go back again. Another one recommended gas drops.

Finally my wife had enough and insisted we go to a pediatric gastroenterologist. By some miracle I got an appointment and got off work, and he prescribed a medication for acid reflux. That helped some, and some changes to my wife’s diet helped some, and his getting a little older helped some.

So why don’t the baby classes talk about crying, or colic, or different formulas, or acid reflux? Because in the beautiful world of progressive baby care, all the baby needs is good parents, really good committed parents, and if there is some problem the parents probably aren’t just committed enough to the program.

Most of the advice we got was worthless or harmful. The only thing that prevented serious problems was the nurses in the hospital, who were more pragmatic than the “education” nurses.

Wishing doesn’t make anything so. But progressives, even when it comes to care of delicate and vulnerable humans, would rather fit the person to the “Procrustean bed of theory” as Milton Erickson phrased it.

Shut Up, She Explained

Megan McArdle says her bit on Trump. She is fairly intellectually honest, for a mouthpiece of the business wing of the system. I’m sure she would like to avoid addressing the concerns of the unwashed, but Trump is too big to ignore.

Immigrants are good for the economy, and no politician can do anything anyway, so shut up, she says in summary. She’s a little more polite, and less theatrically exasperated than most journalists addressing this subject, but the message is the same.

Trump is a populist eruption of the kind we see in times of social stress, like George Wallace or Ross Perot. Nothing will come of it, but it is a sign things are not going well, and there is some risk of losing control.

Joseph Atwill Explains “Weaponizing Anthropology.”

thrasymachus33308:

Rebellion and non-conformity have been the hottest-selling consumer products of the last sixty years.

Originally posted on Hipster Racist:

http://www.amazon.com/Weaponizing-Anthropology-Science-Militarized-Counterpunch/dp/1849350639

Weaponizing Anthropology documents how anthropological knowledge and ethnographic methods are harnessed by military and intelligence agencies in post-9/11 America to placate hostile foreign populations. … Price’s inquiry into past relationships between anthropologists and the CIA, FBI, and Pentagon provides the historical base for this expose of the current abuses of anthropology by military and intelligence agencies. … Price examines the specific uses of anthropological knowledge in military doctrine that have appeared in a new generation of counterinsurgency manuals and paramilitary social science units like the Human Terrain Teams.

TLDR; In the 1950s USA looked at the tactics of the USSR in dealing with “inferior tribes.” The USSR encouraged various non-Russian tribes/ethnos in the Empire to embrace earlier folk customs. The Russians took a “spectator” role and the inferior tribe took a “performance” role.

Instead of integration into the Russian tribe, or technological and social advancement leading to competition with…

View original 331 more words

Aaron Rodgers Applauds Bruce Jenner

I turned on the TV the other night and flipped a few channels, and there she was, Miss America, Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner. I was horrified, but I couldn’t look away…….

The surprising thing to me was how totally and completely not feminine and not female he appeared. His voice hadn’t changed at all, but more obviously all his mannerisms and demeanor were of a charismatic, hard-charging, dominant alpha male. It was Bruce Jenner, Olympic decathlon gold medalist, Wheaties box guy, and perennial celebrity.

The funny thing is he seems to be more masculine now. The few times I have flipped past the Kardashian shows and seen him, he seemed pretty hen-pecked. Putting on a dress, getting implants and growing his hair long seems to have lit the fire in his loins.

OK, we know the world is crazy, but we still have some places of refuge, right? Like NFL football- that’s all man! Especially a few all-American heroes like, for example, Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

But wait- who’s that in the front row? Applauding, and not briefly? It’s a quick shot, but it’s definitely Aaron Rodgers. He has a solemn look on his face, though- is he really happy to be seeing this? Or does he have some reservations? Let’s be charitable and say his solemn face is because he is awed and humbled to be witnessing such and important and historic occasion, and not because he has to be there endorsing insane and wicked debauchery. We can’t be completely sure, though, so he will need to be a regular at these things…… Perhaps give a speech himself, next time………

Yes, if you are high-profile, they will come after you, even in the NFL, even in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Aaron Rodgers is by some measure a far superior man than me. I’m old, broke, not in real good shape, and I always threw like a girl. But I have been spared the ritual humiliation of applauding Bruce Jenner and his courage. Would I do it for the money and the fame? I might, but being able to laugh at the football hero is a little reward too.

Christians and “Race Realists”- In the Same Boat Now?

You have probably been reading a little about Christians freaking out about gay marriage now being legal and their beliefs now being essentially illegal. Rod Dreher has spurred some discussion with his articles on the “Benedict Option”, in which Christians will withdraw partially from the mainstream culture to protect their own culture and beliefs.

The thing is the system has had the same way of dealing with dissenters for 60 years or so, and most Christians have been perfectly fine with it. I think Rod would applaud if someone was fired from their job for expressing doubts or disagreement with the ideas of racial equality or gender equality.

Of course- of course– we have free speech in the US. It’s the First Amendment! Enshrined in the Constitution! The government cannot penalize you for expressing yourself in speech or writing! However, we also have civil rights laws, and any person not expressing full belief in racial or gender equality- or, over the last few years, gay equality- can’t be in any kind of decision-making position in supervising employees, renting or selling housing, or loaning money, because he may violate these laws. Since his presence may create a “hostile workplace” he can’t even be employed, strictly speaking.

Associating with such a person is a strong indicator you hold such beliefs yourself, so you must not associate with him, and if he is shown to be a racist or sexist you must immediately disassociate yourself. Better yet to make a point of socially condemning and mocking him. And who wants to be associated with an unemployed, broke, weirdo loser anyway?

Again- Rod Dreher is probably perfectly fine with this. But now that he and his religious friends, who until a couple of years ago were safe, have become targets, he finds this treatment frightening and appalling.

And now we have Bruce Jenner in a dress, and the good people applaud…… There is no end of crazy. I don’t know how people survived in the Soviet Union. When it was bad all bets were off. After WWII and Stalin they calmed down a bit, because you can’t run a country throwing people in jail all the time.

I don’t feel sorry for Rod and mainstream conservative Christians, because they were happy to go along when it was easy for them. I guess we will see how much hair Rod has, and how committed he is to his beliefs.

A Note on WordPress Security

If you are commenting on WordPress, something you should know.

When you leave a comment, the blog owner can see your email address and IP address. If the blog owner is hostile to you, and may want to dox you, this is information you probably don’t want them to have.

If you use your email address for things other than politically incorrect blogging and commenting, you may have left a trail. I posted some harsh comments about a professional SJW on his YouTube channel with my YouTube ID, which was the same as my regular email address. Then I posted much the same thing under my secret identity. He made a big show of having hacked me, but when you google my Yahoo ID, one of the first things that comes up is my resume.

So have one secret identity and keep it carefully separate from you actual one. Have a separate email address and don’t say anything non-PC under your true identity. I’m pretty computer illiterate, so I don’t now know how to hide my IP address, but you should do that also.

The NSA knows who I am, I’m sure, and they know who you are. Just reading this blog is really not cool with them but there are way too many of us to deal with, so I am sure I’m in a very large file of harmless nut cases.

Internet anonymity is a big annoyance to the system. I think the pragmatic part of the power structure sees it as a way for people to relieve difficult feelings and beliefs in a way that is essentially harmless. The less pragmatic part, the vanguard, the leftists entrepreneurs, wants to crush all dissent to demonstrate power. The pragmatics are the ones really in power, but they let the vanguard destroy people from time to time to satisfy their bloodlust and to let the population know there are strict limits and they need to be careful.

Anyway, be careful.

The Confederate Battle Flag- The Banner of the White Nigger

The “new” Harper Lee novel, “Go Set A Watchman”, has the literati all atwitter (especially on Twitter, I suppose) about its reveal about Atticus Finch- that far from being a northern progressive on race, he was actually a southern moderate, which is to say a flaming racist.

This of course shows a complete lack of understanding of the southern organization of race and class. This might be stated as, from the viewpoint of an upper middle class southerner like Ms. Lee- good blacks (which is almost all, since blacks don’t trouble the powerful) good, bad whites (which is many, because in a democratic society people don’t need to conform to the views of their betters) bad.

The novel works by creating a new villain, a new fear, because every good story needs these. The villain- poor whites- wasn’t really new, because they had been viewed with contempt by elite southern whites all along. Northerners had never thought of this too much- to them poor southern whites seemed to be strange and primitive yet somehow lovable, like the hillbilly cartoon character Snuffy Smith.

I have written about this before. Bottom line is the story just shifts vilification for social problems from one group, blacks, to another, poor whites. How anyone thinks this is the most remotely plausible solution to anything is a mystery, but it’s how society is organized.

If you are a white person below a certain level, you just don’t count. You are the problem, and the solution is something done to you, not for you. You are tolerated for what you can do- drive a truck, fix something, make something- but the tolerance is thin and conditional.

Everybody knows this. Some have to live with it. The Confederate battle flag says, “Yeah, I know the deal- I know what you think of me, but f*** you, I have my own thing going.”

The equivalent in England is the English flag- the flag of football hooligans and working class folk. The Confederate flag has specific regional and ethnic associations that make it foreign to most of the US, but it is still seen far and wide.

If you are a lower class white person who is supposed to make himself useful to his betters, without too much compensation, keep his mouth shut, and show fawning respect for the powerful- if you are, in other words, a white nigger- the Confederate flag is your flag.