Daily Archives: 29 November 2016

Nonsense

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The Left never seems to run out of it.  This time their foolishness runs to their disapproval of the No Shave November campaign for calling attention to male health questions ranging from prostate cancer to men’s suicide rates.  They object because…well, just because.

Next they’ll be claiming that focusing on men’s health is heteronormative male chauvinism and exclusionary.

Oh, wait—they already are.  Seb Starcevic, of the Sydney Daily Telegraph:

It’s disappointing that what could’ve served as a much-needed dialogue about the many ways in which men, trans men included, can express their masculinity without resorting to chauvinist caricatures is in danger of devolving into at best a pissing contest between bros about who can grow the most facial hair to prove their manliness and at worst an implicit endorsement of 1950s-style gender norms, complete with transphobia.

And Jacob Brogan and Christina Cauterucci in Slate:

Above all else, Movember [No Shave November—yeah, I know] irritates me because it’s not so much about cancer awareness as it is about masculinity awareness. It starts from the assumption that men are somehow uniquely imperiled—threatened by all these horrible diseases….

Of course, there’s nothing at all unique about prostate cancer—women, too, are starting to be victimized by an epidemic of it….

Nah.  Charity, support for less fortunate, cannot be done in any way but that in which these Precious Ones personally approve.

All they’re capable of thinking about is themselves.

I Disagree, Mildly

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…with Walter Russell Mead, who wrote of Fidel Castro’s death in American Interest.

In some ways, Fidel has to be accounted a success.  …  He wanted to assert Cuban independence of the United States; Cuba not only sided with the USSR in the Cold War, but it intervened against US interests in wars in Angola, Ethiopia and the Middle East.

That’s not independence, though.  Castro tied Cuba irrevocably to the US by basing his actions on their relation to the US’ activities, as those examples illustrate.  Indeed, by being a “symbol of resistance to US power and to capitalist order,” he cemented Cuba’s dependency: he did not create Cuba as a symbol of anything related to Cuban independent behavior—a Cuban model of socialism, for instance, or a Cuban font of socialist revolution support, as Che Guevara made himself (not his own movement) into.

On the contrary, Castro demonstrated his long-term failure, as Mead showed in the rest of his article.  Castro’s only success was in his ability to impose and then maintain his rank and rancorous dictatorship for as long as he did.  And even in this he had American aid at critical moments, from Jack Kennedy’s waffling over invading Cuba during a nascent Castro…administration…to Barack Obama’s open support for the Castro regime in the latter stages of both administrations.