Paul Ryan's Farewell

Paul Ryan is retiring*.  He is currently the Speaker of the House of Representatives, he is fairly young and he doesn't look ill**.  He states that he wants to spend more time with his family.   But that excuse is believed only of female politicians.

Why is he really retiring?  His party is in power everywhere, his party can do anything they wish, including ignoring democracy, and his party is now responsible for everything that happens.  Why wouldn't Ryan want to be one of the most powerful macho men in the universe?  Why wouldn't he want to create the kind of fundamentalist-capitalist paradise his people dream about, a mixture of the power of the almighty conservative god and the power of the almighty dollar?

Nobody is willing to say why he is really retiring, or at least taking a break,  at this point in time.  It could be that he needs to isolate himself from Donnie the Deranged for a year or two, before running again to take Donnie's throne.   He could watch from far the collapse of the Republican Party in the midterms and then get back in the saddle.

That explanation assumes something which may not be true:  That Trump is too deranged for a sufficient number of former Republicans who might therefore vote for a Democratic candidate even in safe red districts.

But the reverse explanation is equally possible:  He may have been told that he will not win another term because his voters have become so extremist that they are now holding arms or merging with the Alt Right.  Yes, perhaps the pretty extreme Paul Ryan is now not deranged enough for the new Trump Party.

The capitalist wing of the Republican Party and the fascist-religious wing of the Republican Party might be fighting for supremacy.  Ryan is the scion of the former, and other than as a source of all the funding,  the appeal of a party which works only for the one percent may be dying.  That appeal is replaced by something pretty frightening:  A party for Aryan men and the families they rule.

Okay.  That last paragraphs was courtesy of my own private nightmares.  But not knowing the exact reason why so many rats are leaving the sinking ship is worrisome.  Is it because the ship indeed is sinking?  Or is it because the current rat population is replaced by a more voracious and meaner population, driving away the old incumbents?

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*  This post is entirely based on my own amateurish but divine opinions.  It's fun, for a change, to write something which does not involve an eternity of tedious research first.

**  On the other hand, he does look like a cute Mickey Mouse:

Spring Is In The Air

In the Northern hemisphere. 

Christina Hoff Sommers And Closing The Gender Wage Gap

Christina Hoff Sommers, a famous anti-feminist,  is a good environmentalist.  To honor the Equal Pay day (which was yesterday) she recycled an argument she made four years ago:

I know that this is an old argument, because I answered her then, in a three-post series.  You should really read all three posts in that series (because they are not bad), but the proper answer to the above tweet is in the last post where I discuss why her proposal would do very little to close the overall wage gap.

On Arrogance

It's a fun topic to think about, arrogance.  I can spot several different kinds of arrogance, but not a single one is the kind of arrogance I would be allowed. 

To see why, let's define arrogance.  One dictionary defines it as "an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions."  Note the adjectives "overbearing" and "presumptuous."  Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren would be viewed in that light, even if their attitude of superiority was manifested because they, in fact, were superior in some specific field.

In general, the level at which women are regarded as arrogant is much, much lower than the level at which men are so regarded, and women are quickly viewed as presumptuous or overbearing, even if they are only giving information about their own actual qualifications*.  And that's why I'm not really allowed any arrogance.  That's also why I have to be Greek goddess to get the kind of adulation I deserve and need for survival (divines who are not worshipped evaporate).

So I'm not very experienced in successful arrogant utterances, but I can still spot when others are arrogant.  Our Dear Leader is extremely arrogant, the stable genius that he is, though the best approach to understanding him is to view his reactions as "narcissistic rage."  

Andrew Sullivan is an example of a writer whose arrogance exceeds the size of the Pacific Ocean.  Here's an example from one of his recent columns (on race and genetics!**) where he criticizes what he has decided to be the lefty/feminist view of evolution: