Letters to the Editor
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The Great Helmsman a Cynical Opportunist? Shocking!
Even the Chinese Communist Party acknowledges that Mao was somewhat "misguided," to put it mildly. The man in reality was the most supremely cynical of 20th century dictators, and perhaps the greatest mass-murderer in modern history.
Carol Lloyd shows appalling naivete in describing Mao's China as "egalitarian." The Chairman was notoriously grandiose and allowed China's top leaders--most of all himself--to live lives of wasteful extravagance while millions starved to death during the Great Leap Forward. Lloyd's "gotcha" tone regarding Mao's cynical attitude toward women is utterly lacking in historical perspective.
When discussing the legacy of a man who doomed his people to lives of penury and starvation for 30 years, does it really matter that he cracked jokes about women? If this is what the feminist movement is reduced to debating, I wonder how it will ever regain relevance.
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This Is Like Being Surprised By Hearing That Hitler Made An Offensive Remark About Gays Once
My heading says it all.
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Oh boy
Let me preface this by saying I don't hold men as a gender responsible for any of the following. Nor is this a "girls are better than boys" manifesto, so don't tell me I think vaginas are magical. I'm simply rebutting the following statement:
"Typically men can cause some small scale trouble, but only women can eviscerate a nation from within."
Yes. "Small-scale trouble" like the Crusades, the 100 Years' War, the War of the Roses, the Reign of Terror, the American Civil War, the Crimean War, WWI, the Communist Revolution, WW II, the Cultural Revolution, the Korean War, the Vietnam Police Action, the Cambodian experiment, the Islamic Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, Somalia, Rwanda, the Bosnian War, the Taliban, the famine in North Korea, and our current chart topper, the War on Terror.
Some of my favorite leaders who "eviscerate a nation from within" include Henry VIII, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pott, Robespierre, and Bush Jr. (I suppose we could add Roxalena to that list, but it's hard to know for certain she corroded the Sultanate: the Sultans themselves could have been to blame.)
But Wars are flashy stuff. "Eviscerating from within" seems less about war and more about socio-political machination. Perhaps we should talk about the economic troubles, like the Gilded Age, the Teapot Dome Scandal, the Great Depression, the McCarthy Red Scare, Reaganomics, the S&L collapse, Halliburton, Enron, and today's lovely Mortgage Crisis.
(Granted, there are perhaps plenty of women involved in this mix, but one would be hard-pressed to view these debacles were on the feminist to-do list. Plus it's hard to pretend that "Reaganomics" refers to Nancy).
Then there are programs like China's "one child" policy, Jose Atienza's "natural family planning" agenda, Iraq's Morality Police, Hezbollah's (and others') "Martyrs' Brigade" (yup, women sometimes blow themselves up, but they are foot-soldiers, not generals or master minds in this effort), and the US policy of withholding foreign aid from groups that provide abortions to women who need them.
I could go on, but I'm getting bored.
Are Brittney's and Hilton's panties (or lack thereof) really comparable?
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"Where do you find these women who want the world to be rid of men, BS?"
Ah, this is the question that inevitably comes up, and the one to which BS has no response except to repeat the same line ad nauseam.
BS, you may be confusing "women who don't like men" with "women who don't like YOU."
Bingo.
Yes, this whole Mao story does bring up thoughts of Brightstar and his Chinese bride.
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You conflate and confuse a lot of things.
"Typically men can cause some small scale trouble, but only women can eviscerate a nation from within."
But I expected this.
Those rulers who attack other nations do not destroy their own nation typically but other nations. It is an asset grab.
Those that destroy within their nation often pick on the weakest, the stragglers, the ones despised by the nation's elites. Mao or Hitler or Stalin did not attack their allies in their respective countries, they picked on the rejects, those the nation had rejected. Women and men have arguably equal say as to who becomes the untouchable and thus who is exposed to this sort of abomination.
Men generally have an impact or influence on a nation as a whole when they are powerful. When they do do something, it is with the tacit acceptance of those who are with them, their fellow elites, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN, their wives, girlfriends, daughters, friends.
Men low in the power structure, the bubba on the corner standing outside the 7-11, have near ZERO influence comparatively speaking.
WOMEN, on the other hand, when in the company of power, (the Bush wives say), have a big say in what goes on, if only because they want to preserve their own status and power and lives.
Lower down, women, who seem to follow each other lemming fashion, emulate their alpha females. So, in America we have a wholesale breakdown of family, decency, culture thanks to the Britneys of this country.
Since women, not men, control the household, through their monopoly on procreation, sex, and love, and thus on household stability, it is the women who run nations into the ground.
The near nationwide marriage and childbearing strike women in Japan are engaging in today is CRIPPLING that society. If you want proof of women's collective power.
The ONLY comparable power men low on the totem pole have in a nation is if they unite and collectively engage in a grass roots rebellion using high powered weaponry. Do you see that happening in America today? Tell me if you do.
Otherwise men are pissed and isolated. Women, who seem to follow herd instinct, have much more sway over the course of a nation.
I know this is not politically correct, but it is the way it is.
Explain where I am wrong, please.
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Explain where I am wrong, please.
Well, in our most recent post, it starts in the subject line "You ..." and ends with "...the way it is."
You're pretty wrong on most of your other posts, too, but I don't have time to address each point.
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You're also very, very wrong on specifics
"Mao or Hitler or Stalin did not attack their allies in their respective countries, they picked on the rejects, those the nation had rejected."
I guess it depends on how you define "attacks." In 1934 Hitler, for example, executed his allies (the Sturmabteilung, or "Stormtroopers" or SA: the brown-shirted guys that helped him get elected Furher in 1933) to ensure his supremacy.
It might also depend on what you mean by "weak". Stalin executed the *strongest* threats to his power in the Great Terror purges of the 1930s. And, as Jung Chang lays out in "Mao: the Unknown Story", which has been referenced in these letters, Mao executed life-long allies as well as rivals (and some 3 million other "regular people") during his Cultural Revolution.
"Men generally have an impact or influence on a nation as a whole when they are powerful. When they do do something, it is with the tacit acceptance of those who are with them, their fellow elites, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN, their wives, girlfriends, daughters, friends."
You didn't mention Henry VIII in your list of leaders picking off the weak, but I'll mention him here. Not only did he execute (often on trumped-up charges of treason) life-long friends, advisors and political allies (Thomas More, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell), but he executed 2 wives, killed 2 more indirectly (on by a broken heart, one by infection after bearing Henry a son, and being forced on public display before being fully healed). The other 2 wives survived *in spite* of Hal, not *because* of him. Also, daughters Mary and Elizabeth were very poorly treated by their dad: they were often declared illegitimate, kept from court, kept out of the marriage market, and their income was never certain. They didn't flourish until after Hal died (and by then Mary was a complete screw-up. Thanks, Dad!) Let's see: he almost sent his own sister to the Tower for daring to marry without his permission; he went through girlfriends like Kleenex (lavished attention on him, then dropped the when he got bored, sometimes "traded" them to other men in card games); then there are all those nuns he disposessed, the Catholics he burned at the stake, and the wives and daughters of the dozens of "traitors" he stripped of land, title and income. No, I'd rather not be in Henry's inner circle, thanks.
Given that you are so wrong on simple facts that can be checked via Google, I think people new to your rants will conclude you are waaaaay wrong when you come up with your own theories. Your wrongness on basic male-female relationships has been addressed ad nauseum by other posters. I'm done playing with you now.