Donald Trump's undeniable narcissism is a bit of a worry

Interesting that many people who were originally wary of Trump -- or even a bit frightened of him -- are starting to warm to him.

My own feeling is that he's a real breath -- or maybe a gust, even a storm! -- of fresh air. He embodies the frustrations millions of people across America -- not to mention the entire western world -- have with political correctness. He's mad as hell and he's not gonna take this anymore!

Still, there's something that I (and clearly a lot of other people!) are worried about and that's his psychological make-up. Several high profile experts in psychology, including Sam Vaknin, have said he exhibits classic symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. In this interview he expresses some serious concerns about the front-runner for the Republican nomination. He's pretty convincing.

That said, it's not like Trump is the only narcissist in politics. That particular field is chockas with 'em! Vaknin himself says Obama appears to be a narcissist. And here in Oz we have Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd, both of whom have been labeled as such.

It's hardly surprising, of course. Narcissists by definition see themselves as exceptional, and are therefore more likely than most to seek out positions of power.

That doesn't mean all pollies are afflicted with this disorder, though. Some are drawn to the occupation more out of a balanced and sincere desire to do good. I'd say Tony Abbott is one such person -- though I'm sure leftie luvvies wouldn't see it that way at all ... But then they suffer what I would call a kind of political narcissism, and project this onto their hate figures.

Twits triggered on Twitter by #thetriggering

Things are getting very weird and even a tad sinister over at Twitter. There clearly is a push to censor righties on the network using various techniques like "shadowbanning".

An example from last night: #Thetriggering was hugely popular among people sick of the toxic antics of social justice warriors. (I had a lot of fun with it, I gotta say.)

Any hashtag that took off like that would usually appear in the trending list without a doubt. But it didn't. Also, it didn't autocomplete. Now, it's not paranoid to say these are not accidents. Twitter has form on this kind of subtle but clear censorship.

Twitter is suppressing #TheTriggering in case it triggers people! This is simultaneously joyous, yet ridiculous pic.twitter.com/9srsbpYGNW

— Martin Daubney (@MartinDaubney) March 9, 2016

And just as the right-on algorithms created by crybully coders did their best to block out politically incorrect opinions, so too did their human counterparts. Take Australia's prime promoter of commie cant and misandrous malice Clementine Ford.

I recommend doing as I will be and muting the hashtag for #TheTriggering so you don't have to face being bored to death by dingleberries.

— Clementine Ford (@clementine_ford) March 9, 2016

Of course she was feigning insousiance, as she so often does. But we all know the real reason for her exhortation: didn't wanna be triggered.

Which is a strange (cyber)space to be in, when you think about it. May feel safe, but it's also very sad.

Why Alan Jones and Michaelia Cash are, and are not, feminists

On Monday night's episode of Q and A one of the Left's favourite hate figures Alan Jones appeared on the show (and for the second time in a few months -- can you believe it!) and actually said he was happy to be called a feminist.

I feel sorry for the poor pinko poppets watching at the time. They must've been going through an emotional roller-coaster! If he genuinely believed what he was saying, as he certainly seemed to, then they would have had to question their loathing of him. And they deeply resent having to do that. They'd much rather be shouting, shrieking and sneering. So much easier, and more satisfying, you see.

Thankfully for them they did find a reason to do that when another hate figure, Michaelia Cash, chimed in on the same issue. She said she was not happy to call herself a feminist. The PC Left see this is a sin, of course -- even more so given that she is a woman, and a high profile one at that.

The fact that calling yourself a feminist (or not) can trigger such intense emotions in so many people is pretty silly when you think about it. Surely it should be up to each individual whether she (or he) chooses to do so.

In the end it all depends on what the "f word" actually means to you:

Are you a Feminist? Helen Pluckrose nails the answer here in one simple chart. @HPluckrose pic.twitter.com/klzJmyOjUw

— Christina H. Sommers (@CHSommers) February 22, 2016

Seems to me that Jones was using the first definition of the word. I think Cash, on the other hand, was wary of being associated with the whiny, divisive victimhood inherent in the second definition. If their interpretations had been reversed, so would their answers to the question, I suspect.

Really, it's a non-issue, as most sane adults can see quite clearly. Lefties, as a rule, don't belong to that group, so they have to go and get all het up about it.

American politics trumps the crap out of Australia

Like many bloggers, I'm a political news junkie. Just have to know every major development the moment it breaks. The ongoing drama of it is certainly addictive.

And while there is a lot happening in Australia at the moment, recent events here pale in comparison to the intensity of the lead up to the American elections. Donald Trump is just such an amazingly OTT character. He's sending people all over the joint completely batty. And not just on the other side. The Republican nominees he's leading are actually joining forces to try and beat him down. In this desperate act of collective bullying, they're starting to resemble the Left. Some high profile conservative commentators are losing their shit big time, too. Take Glenn Beck, who said he wants to knife the guy and is now under investigation by the Secret Service!

In the Democrats it does seem likely that the sinister Hillary Clinton will end up leading the party she and her creepy mates have dominated for so long into the election. But the ongoing saga of her e-mail server and the very, er, problematic issue of her horndog hubbie Bill's past do add some doubt to this outcome -- as does the baffling rise of the eccentric codger Bernie Sanders, whose main support base seems to be people young enough to be his grandchildren.

It's crazy as all get out! And nothing that we do down here is anywhere near as intense and entertaining.

FFS #Auspol, lift yer game!

Tasmanian frightbats dance Swan Lake to subvert patriarchal duck hunting

One thing I have long found fascinating about lefties is how keen they are to amass in a pack and get shouty. Of course they would say this is because they care so deeply about issues. But I think that's bollocks, basically. Their main motivation always seems to be "look at moi!".

A recent demo against duck shooting is a case in point:

Animal activists in Tasmania have staged an unusual protest on the first day of the duck hunting season, donning pink tutus in the middle of a lake.

When you hear about such a performance you immediately assume that they're doing it to stop da poor wittle ducky-wuckies being killed by da big bad men! But this seems not to be their main concern.

Organiser Yvette Watt said this year's action was a way of countering the masculine stereotype of duck hunting.

Eh? If they wanted to do that most of all, why didn't they get some eagle-eyed female snipers out there to start blasting away at the water-birds?

In the end I don't even think they were driven by feminism. Looks more like they just wanted to don pink tutus and be the centre of attention. Just glad they didn't nude up, like so many other activists do these days...

Helen Garner's prize win reminds me of The First Stone

Australian writer Helen Garner is in the news again. See, she won a prestigious and lucrative literary prize for her recent book This House of Grief. Oddly, most of today's reports seem primarily focused on the fun fact that the notification she'd won ended up in her junk e-mail folder and she initially thought it was a hoax. Perhaps it's because this approach works better as clickbait than making the book's content and merits the meat of the story?

In any case I'm sure she's a deserving winner. She's an excellent, fearless and very thoughtful writer. I know this from reading The First Stone way back in the nineties. I was living in Melbourne at the time, doing comedy in a scene dominated by lefties.

The book documented a campus scandal in that city in which an old white male prof had his career pretty much destroyed by vengeful feminists because of what appeared to be a coupla episodes of pathetic lechery towards two female students. Garner was intrigued by the overly punitive way in which the transgressions were handled and set out to get to the truth of the matter. But for various reasons she never got to interview the two young women at the centre of the drama.

I remember having some interesting discussions with leftie feminist chicks I knew at the time. Being Melbournians themselves, I suspect they knew the identities of the two mystery women whose experiences were detailed --albeit incompletely -- in the book. Some were very angry with Garner. Because the writer was so even handed as well as compassionate towards the old bloke -- whose identity everyone knew -- they felt she was somehow "letting the side down".

I was shocked at their tribal bloody-mindedness. They had a very neatly divided universe, that's for sure! Old white males were guilty, full stop. If  feminists managed to destroy one's reputation for a minor transgression (or even none at all), well, that was a win for feminism.

I remember thinking how toxic this mentality was even then. There was some resistance to it -- Garner herself being a notable example -- and I hoped that this would finally hold sway. Sadly, it didn't. The victim feminists gained even more territory in ensuing years. And not just in the halls of quackademe! Depressingly, frightbats have been running amok for ages all over the joint.

The two mystery students whose complaints sparked the whole sorry saga off are middle-aged now. It would be fascinating to know who they are and how the book (and of course the events it detailed) affected them... The fact that neither has come forward to set the record straight in all this time seems almost as telling as the controversy The First Stone provoked in the first place.

Then, as now, there was only one interpretation deemed acceptable by the thought police: Man as oppressor; woman as victim. What an ugly, stupid, divisive world-view. And what concentrated poison it is to any and all relationships between men and women.

As "Sandy Beaches" Aussie Mark Ancucic fools the feminist frightbats

One of the most fascinating aspects of the ongoing war between the forces of political correctness and free speech advocates is how big a part online gaming has played in it. The social justice warriors have been extremely active and influential in this realm and dominate many of the major gaming publications. Through these they've routinely portrayed gamers as knuckle dragging misogynists.

Many of these mostly young people are actually liberals who have had a gutful of such malicious, er, ms-representation. They have joined forces with conservatives and others to form a kind of online consumer resistance movement loosely known as GamerGate. (I know that's only part of it. But to try and describe it fully would take too long. So I won't even try... In any case this book has some great info on it, along with heaps of other useful stuff.)

Most of the news related to this rise in cultural libertarianism comes from the USA, of course. But every now and then a locally oriented development gets a lot of attention. Take the story of "Sandy Beaches" for example.

This is the creation of Aussie writer Mark Ancucic. He used it to illustrate the right-on stupidity of editors and readers of some big SJW-dominated sites:

I’m Mark Ankucic, former Aussie games writer and that guy that got fired over Gamergate. Sandy Beaches is an alter ego I set up to submit feminist critiques to publishers, managing to land myself two articles with The Mary Sue (one concerning combatting sexism in the Final Fantasy Remake, the other about the inherent sexism in the tabletop game Warmachine) and interest from editors on submissions I might like to make.

That blog post is well worth a read. It shows just how entrenched the politically correct narrative is in the minds of so many. And it's not just the editors who were so easily duped by his fictional persona. Countless readers were too!

This is both funny and depressing. There are just so many young women (and men) out there who think that crazy feminist frightbats have some kinda searing insight into the workings of society. They accept their gargles as gospel!

To any sane adult it seems unbelievable that things have reached such a stage. But they have, unfortunately. And it proves the effectiveness of the politically correct Left's brainwashing technques. They keep brazenly telling lies and ruthlessly demonizing their political enemies because it gets them what they want: power over the minds of millions.

The gaming industry may seem like an odd target for such a campaign. But it's been a major focus of the social justice movement because it's a very new industry catering to young people and is therefore ripe for exploitation. Also, it's massive and growing -- already bigger than Hollywood if current reports are accurate. So the stake are very high.

The battle is now at fever pitch with no signs of abating. Hearteningly, it seems that the cultural libertarians (Gamergaters) are starting to gain the upper hand.

If you're interested in the culture wars but have no knowledge of this particular aspect of them then I recommend you start looking into it. It's riveting! This Reddit thread is a good place to start.