Political Landscape - Redux

I will now re-post an article which I wrote almost exactly four years ago, in which I describe the Orwellian future I see lurking on the horizon. Keep in mind that this was four years ago, and I was making predictions. Well, it looks like the world is indeed slouching along the lines which are sketched here. And the non-feminist revolutionaries are saying similar things everywhere you look, as if in confirmation of my own insight.

Something I feel rather bad about, is that I never wrote the part two which I had projected. That means that the following does not fully deliver on what it sets out to explain. I am thinking especially of the part early on, where I mention that perpetual revolution might be extended through artificial means. Although I hope that I will write part two, and that re-posting this will inspire me to the task, I will give a quick summary of that subject here.

Very well. In brief, the overclass will be cemented by a combination of fear, vanity and greed, and in this manner keep the feminist-dominated power structure solidly in place. We can expect nothing revolutionary from that quarter, and everything reactionary. The only possibility for revolution will reside in the underclass, but the extension of feminist power into that realm (in a kind of 'column' formation) will keep underclass men and women at war with each other so that they will never unite against the overclass or the elite. Feminism will be a false friend to underclass women, who may embrace feminism in a deluded notion of "sisterhood". But their feminist "sisters" in the overclass will only inflict upon them classism in its timeless form. At the same time, the underclass will be kept in a "dumbed down" condition, stupified by drugs, popular culture and other soul toxins, socially atomized, economically impoverished, and deprived of effective historical memory. This will render them unable to organize around their collective interests and even unable to comprehend those interests. Among such muddled masses, feminism's perpetual revolution may churn forever -- or at any rate, for a more extended time.

But now, here is my original article:


The Political Landscape Which Lies Ahead -- A Road Map for the Future

Everybody should have a crystal ball. It is good to look into the future, don't you think?

Today, if it won't impose on you too much, I would like to gaze into my own crystal ball, and describe what I see there—or at any rate, what I think I see there. You never know, it might prove useful. And don't forget that "prediction" a pivotal part of counter-feminism. So let's get busy with some predictions, shall we?

In the treatise that follows, I will cover some rather new ground. And although I am discussing the future, I am also talking about many things that are current in the world this very minute, so that quite a few of these "predictions" are in fact nothing of the kind. They are already old and familiar. However, we all know that the present is the seed-bed of the future - what is presently "so" may in time become "more so". Bearing this is mind, and bearing in mind likewise certain algorithms of historical occurrence which play and re-play perennially in every drama that involves the human animal, we may venture in all confidence to compose our canvas in broad strokes that won't go far amiss.

I have elsewhere spoken of feminism as a perpetual revolution, and have made it clear that the end of perpetual revolution would entail the end of feminism as well. Moreover, I have implied, without fully addressing the subject, that perpetual revolution carries the seeds of its own demise. However, although I still believe this is the case, I am able to envision certain conditions under which the dynamic of perpetual revolution, hence feminism as a whole, may be artificially fueled and extended - and longer, perhaps, than people like us might wish to endure! Let us not underestimate the evil intelligence of our enemy - which in many ways resembles that of a highly adaptable virus. Let us rather anticipate that they might have covered the bases more thoroughly than we wish to think, and prepare for the possibility that they have done so in fact.

The extension of perpetual revolution would occur, as I project, in the context of a three-tiered social power hierarchy. This three-tiered hierarchy would consist, from top down, of 1.) A primary ruling class called the (male) Elite, 2.) A secondary ruling class called the Overclass, and 3.) A more-or-less immobilized proletariat at the bottom of the heap, simply called the Underclass.

The Male Elite makes a tiny percentage of the total population, the Overclass a significantly large minority, while the Underclass is distinctly the largest human reservoir of the three. In the midst of the three-tiered system, feminism plays a complex, catalytic role which our talk will enlarge upon.

The transitional zones between these power layers will appear fuzzy when viewed at close quarters, but distinctly sharper from a distance. While there is a limited degree of permeability—or "upward mobility" to use a classic term—it is significant for our purposes, that mobility between zones is growing markedly more difficult. Something very like a caste system seems to be developing.

The Elite

It should first be understood that the purpose of this entire system is to secure the overlordship of the male Elite.

For if in truth there be any such thing as that "patriarchy " which feminist theory postulates, the male Elite could well indeed merit the title. Thus considered, the irony is quickly apparent in the feminist application of this word to thoughtlessly tar multitudes of men whose veritable power amounts to very little.

The most important thing to understand about the male Elite—or more simply the Elite, since many of them have mothers, wives and daughters after all!—is that they do not think or view the world in anything like the same terms as most of the human race. This is particularly striking in the case of political or ideological categories.

Labels such as Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, left, right, Marxist, fascist, socialist and so on, barely exist at all for members of the Elite. They view the world from a different optic entirely—wired to different emotive triggers and bound by loyalties we needn't hope to unriddle. Consequently, the Elite are able to play all sides of all fences, with equal pragmatic indifference, in the variable service of their instrumental needs. This in practice makes them inscrutable puppet-masters and, from our point of view, even solipsistic: they are distinctly not us, therefore we cannot read them as ourselves. Such aloofness, such catlike alterity, comes naturally to them and is really no mystery at all: it is the consequence of being SO powerful that you can afford to live in your own world and remain oblivious to more generally held sources of meaning.

Simply stated, the Elite are the high alpha males of the world. The tip-top layer of the pyramid. Through their vast and densely networked lock-down on banking and politics, they control the foundational conditions which determine how our lives will go. Lesser powers cascade from their greater power. Yes, they are a boy's club. And they are getting better and better at their game!

I'll not spend much time talking about the Elite; they are in many ways the least interesting portion of my subject, given how they are so remote from the sphere of action that we know. Suffice to say that they are an intricate world unto themselves, by no means monolithic, and that all of this makes them proportionately more difficult to fathom from beneath.

The Overclass

The next level down, in the three-tiered system, is what we have termed the Overclass. In point of numbers this class far outweighs the Elite. In marked contrast to the Elite - who would rather keep a shadowy, elusive profile—the Overclass constitutes the everyday face of the ruling power structure.

The Overclass may be understood as the delegated contractual workforce of the elite, responsible for administrative tasks and various domains involving intellectual creativity. Globally considered, they are the upper managers and consultants.

In cultural terms, the Overclass has certain distinguishing features which mark them off from the Underclass. Most apparent to the eye, is that they are well-financed and well-heeled. They have, moreover, an unmistakeable air of ease and security about them. Their lives are not worm-eaten by debt to any great degree, and being well-connected and well networked, they have a host of fallback options when things go awry. On the whole, their lives operate smoothly—they are sheltered from the vicissitudes. They have greater access to the means of self-realization in many forms, along with better food, better health care, more aesthetically pleasing physical environments, and a lower degree of stress all around. Finally, they have the means to obtain postsecondary education; consequently, they are more likely to have done so—which makes them "better educated", at least along the lines that are apt to secure political advantage in various forms.


An interesting recent development is the rise of the so-called "bobo", or bourgeois bohemian, class. This has been a result of cultural tectonic shiftings in the earthquake decade of the 1960s. The bobos, being a vital element of the Overclass, are certainly a powerful sector in the presently emerging world order. This phenomenon would make an interesting study all unto itself.

However, as counter-feminist agents of change, what chiefly holds our interest is the relationship between the Overclass on the one side, and feminism both ideologically and politically, on the other.

The Overclass is heavily indoctrinated with the feminist world-view. This has been the case for some time now—it is so, and becoming more so. Infiltration of feminist ideations into the world of postsecondary education (and all education for that matter) has been one of the main vectors operating to convey this line of influence into the targeted region. Another, running in tandem with the first, is the steady, plodding encroachment of women into vocational areas which are either well-paid, politically influential, physically undemanding, or all three. This process is still underway; it is by no means complete or even nearing completion.

Along with the influx of politically naive women into the sectors mentioned, it is rational to anticipate the arrival of ideological feminists in certain numbers—or even feminist cadres. Hence, an ongoing replication of the feminist political machine by both formal and informal methods, gravitating always toward a theoretical point of saturation. The objective balance of probability in no way excludes such development—it is no less rational to anticipate such development, than to anticipate the contrary.

What is happening in the workforce is happening simultaneously, if in varied fashion, in other domains—many of which make their impact across the board, in both the Overclass and the Underclass. The propagation of the feminist world-view, along with the rapid extension of the femplex, is not easily contained within a particular demographic - nor would any such containment comport with feminist purposes. However, what IS easily contained, or at least regulated, is the mobility of male population from the Underclass into the Overclass.

Consider once again the infiltration of women (and consequently feminist women) into the generally desirable sectors of the working world. The upshot of this is to convert large and growing regions of the vocational landscape into effectively female-dominated, if not feminist-dominated, territory.

Next, consider the widespread propagation of anti-male bias in the realm of law, jurisprudence, criminal justice procedure, policies, regulations, and codes of various kinds. Such things have happened, and will continue happening. Such things have crept in the night, and will continue creeping in the night. Feminism's perpetual revolution does not stop rolling until somebody or something sabotages the track and derails it.

So, in large areas of life, males have undergone something very like the totalitarian process in which selected classes of people are listed as "objective enemies". Under feminism, men are objective enemies. Such is the psychic miasma that creeps slowly, slowly, invisibly, and never sleeps. If the miasma has not yet crept into every possible corner everywhere, this is not owing to any lack of ambition to eventually do so.

Such is the present condition of the Overclass. It is not feasible to exclude males from the Overclass. However, it is certainly possible to exclude males within subtle categories. The growing presence of the feminist political machine, along with a proliferation of naive acquiesence from the femplex, makes possible a system of cultural filters that can exclude men who are unable to walk an agonizingly fine line in their personal manifestations. The filters grow steadily more discerning, able to capture finer and finer nuances of personal style by turning the personal into the political in ways more and more microscopic, and setting a hostile assessment on whatever does not implicitly endorse the feminist world-view.

If you intend to prosper as a male in the Overclass, it helps immensely to have made a full psychic capitulation to the feminist world-view. To be a collaborationist, in other words. In Orwellian terms, you will find favor if you have won the victory over yourself and "learned to love Big Mother." If you have not so capitulated, or if you are not superhumanly clever at masking your true feelings, then the filters will catch you. If not today, then certainly in 10, 20 or 30 years, when detection algorithms have grown more sophisticated.

So, it is easy to see that large blocs of the male population can, for various reasons, be excluded from feminist or female-dominated ways of making a living. When you realize that these vocational sectors largely define Overclass membership at the level of economic prosperity, you will see that feminist or female domination of such sectors will operate as a gatekeeping mechanism governing precisely who, in terms of male demographic sub-groups, will or will not infiltrate the Overclass.

In the end, the feminist world-view shall effectively colonize the Overclass. Non-participation in this paradigm would, to males in particular, spell non-participation in the Overclass for all but a few hardy mavericks. The Overclass would then consist of "empowered" women, and "feminized" men. The real power would, in the final analysis, lie in the hands of women.

But the final power at the very highest level will continue to repose in the hands of the "patriarchal" male-dominated Elite, who will use women as tools to control the bulk of the male population with an effectiveness unprecedented in all of known human history.

The Political Landscape Which Lies Ahead

A Road Map for the Future

Everybody should have a crystal ball. It is good to look into the future, don't you think?

Today, if it won't impose on you too much, I would like to gaze into my own crystal ball, and describe what I see there—or at any rate, what I think I see there. You never know, it might prove useful. And don't forget that "prediction" a pivotal part of counter-feminism. So let's get busy with some predictions, shall we?

In the treatise that follows, I will cover some rather new ground. And although I am discussing the future, I am also talking about many things that are current in the world right this very minute, so that quite a few of these "predictions" are in fact nothing of the sort. They are already old and familiar. However, we all know that the present is the seed-bed of the future - what is presently "so" may in time become "more so". Bearing this is mind, and bearing in mind likewise certain algorithms of historical occurrence which play and re-play perennially in every drama that involves the human animal, we may venture in all confidence to compose our canvas in broad strokes that won't go far amiss.

I have elsewhere spoken of feminism as a perpetual revolution, and have made it clear that the end of perpetual revolution would entail the end of feminism as well. Moreover, I have implied, without fully addressing the subject, that perpetual revolution carries the seeds of its own demise. However, although I still believe this is the case, I am able to envision certain conditions under which the dynamic of perpetual revolution, hence feminism as a whole, may be artificially fueled and extended - and longer, perhaps, than people like us might wish to endure! Let us not underestimate the evil intelligence of our enemy - which in many ways resembles that of a highly adaptable virus. Let us rather anticipate that they might have covered the bases more thoroughly than we wish to think, and prepare for the possibility that they have done so in fact.

The extension of perpetual revolution would occur, as I project, in the context of a three-tiered social power hierarchy. This three-tiered hierarchy would consist, from top down, of 1.) A primary ruling class called the (male) Elite, 2.) A secondary ruling class called the Overclass, and 3.) A more-or-less immobilized proletariat at the bottom of the heap, simply called the Underclass.

The Male Elite makes a tiny percentage of the total population, the Overclass a significantly large minority, while the Underclass is distinctly the largest human reservoir of the three. In the midst of the three-tiered system, feminism plays a complex, catalytic role which our talk will enlarge upon.

The transitional zones between these power layers will appear fuzzy when viewed at close quarters, but distinctly sharper from a distance. While there is a limited degree of permeability—or "upward mobility" to use a classic term—it is significant for our purposes, that mobility between zones is growing markedly more difficult. Something almost like a caste system appears to be under development.

The Elite

It should first be known that the purpose of this entire system is to secure the overlordship of the male Elite.

For if in truth there be any such thing as that "patriarchy " which feminist theory postulates, the male Elite could well indeed merit the title. Thus considered, the irony is quickly apparent in the feminist application of this word to thoughtlessly tar multitudes of men whose veritable power amounts to very little.

The most important thing to understand about the male Elite—or more simply the Elite, since many of them have mothers, wives and daughters after all!—is that they do not think or view the world in anything like the same terms as most of the human race. This is particularly striking in the case of political or ideological categories.

Labels such as Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, left, right, Marxist, fascist, socialist and so on, barely exist at all for members of the Elite. They view the world from a different optic entirely—wired to different emotive triggers and bound by loyalties we needn't hope to unriddle. Consequently, the Elite are able to play all sides of all fences, with equal pragmatic indifference, in the variable service of their instrumental needs. This in practice makes them inscrutable puppet-masters and, from our point of view, even solipsistic: they are distinctly not us, therefore we cannot read them as ourselves. Such aloofness, such catlike alterity, comes naturally to them and is really no mystery at all: it is the consequence of being SO powerful that you can afford to live in your own world and remain oblivious to more generally held sources of meaning.

Simply stated, the Elite are the high alpha males of the world. The tip-top layer of the pyramid. Through their vast and densely networked lock-down on banking and politics, they control the foundational conditions which determine how our lives will go. Lesser powers cascade from their greater power. Yes, they are a boy's club. And they are getting better and better at their game!

I'll not spend much time talking about the Elite; they are in many ways the least interesting portion of my subject, given how they are so remote from the sphere of action that we know. Suffice to say that they are an intricate world unto themselves, by no means monolithic, and that all of this makes them proportionately more difficult to fathom from beneath.

The Overclass

The next level down, in the three-tiered system, is what we have termed the Overclass. In point of numbers this class far outweighs the Elite. In marked contrast to the Elite - who would rather keep a shadowy, elusive profile—the Overclass constitutes the everyday face of the ruling power structure.

The Overclass may be understood as the delegated contractual workforce of the elite, responsible for administrative tasks and various domains involving intellectual creativity. Globally considered, they are the upper managers and consultants.

In cultural terms, the Overclass has certain distinguishing features which mark them off from the Underclass. Most apparent to the eye, is that they are well-financed and well-heeled. They have, moreover, an unmistakeable air of ease and security about them. Their lives are not worm-eaten by debt to any great degree, and being well-connected and well networked, they have a host of fallback options when things go awry. On the whole, their lives operate smoothly—they are sheltered from the vicissitudes. They have greater access to the means of self-realization in many forms, along with better food, better health care, more aesthetically pleasing physical environments, and a lower degree of stress all around. Finally, they have the means to obtain postsecondary education; consequently, they are more likely to have done so—which makes them "better educated", at least along the lines that are apt to secure political advantage in various forms.


An interesting recent development is the rise of the so-called "bobo", or bourgeois bohemian, class. This has been a result of cultural tectonic shiftings in the earthquake decade of the 1960s. The bobos, being a vital element of the Overclass, are certainly a powerful sector in the presently emerging world order. This phenomenon would make an interesting study all unto itself.

However, as counter-feminist agents of change, what chiefly holds our interest is the relationship between the Overclass on the one side, and feminism both ideologically and politically, on the other.

The Overclass is heavily indoctrinated with the feminist world-view. This has been the case for some time now—it is so, and becoming more so. Infiltration of feminist ideations into the world of postsecondary education (and all education for that matter) has been one of the main vectors operating to convey this line of influence into the targeted region. Another, running in tandem with the first, is the steady, plodding encroachment of women into vocational areas which are either well-paid, politically influential, physically undemanding, or all three. This process is still underway; it is by no means complete or even nearing completion.

Along with the influx of politically naive women into the sectors mentioned, it is rational to anticipate the arrival of ideological feminists in certain numbers—or even feminist cadres. Hence, an ongoing replication of the feminist political machine by both formal and informal methods, gravitating always toward a theoretical point of saturation. The objective balance of probability in no way excludes such development—it is no less rational to anticipate such development, than to anticipate the contrary.

What is happening in the workforce is happening simultaneously, if in varied fashion, in other domains—many of which make their impact across the board, in both the Overclass and the Underclass. The propagation of the feminist world-view, along with the rapid extension of the femplex, is not easily contained within a particular demographic - nor would any such containment comport with feminist purposes. However, what IS easily contained, or at least regulated, is the mobility of male population from the Underclass into the Overclass.

Consider once again the infiltration of women (and consequently feminist women) into the generally desirable sectors of the working world. The upshot of this is to convert large and growing regions of the vocational landscape into effectively female-dominated, if not feminist-dominated, territory.

Next, consider the widespread propagation of anti-male bias in the realm of law, jurisprudence, criminal justice procedure, policies, regulations, and codes of various kinds. Such things have happened, and will continue happening. Such things have crept in the night, and will continue creeping in the night. Feminism's perpetual revolution does not stop rolling until somebody or something sabotages the track and derails it.

So, in large areas of life, males have undergone something very like the totalitarian process in which selected classes of people are listed as "objective enemies". Under feminism, men are objective enemies. Such is the psychic miasma that creeps slowly, slowly, invisibly, and never sleeps. If the miasma has not yet crept into every possible corner everywhere, this is not owing to any lack of ambition to eventually do so.

Such is the present condition of the Overclass. It is not feasible to exclude males from the Overclass. However, it is certainly possible to exclude males within subtle categories. The growing presence of the feminist political machine, along with a proliferation of naive acquiesence from the femplex, makes possible a system of cultural filters that can exclude men who are unable to walk an agonizingly fine line in their personal manifestations. The filters grow steadily more discerning, able to capture finer and finer nuances of personal style by turning the personal into the political in ways more and more microscopic, and setting a hostile assessment on whatever does not implicitly endorse the feminist world-view.

If you intend to prosper as a male in the Overclass, it helps immensely to have made a full psychic capitulation to the feminist world-view. To be a collaborationist, in other words. In Orwellian terms, you will find favor if you have won the victory over yourself and "learned to love Big Mother." If you have not so capitulated, or if you are not superhumanly clever at masking your true feelings, then the filters will catch you. If not today, then certainly in 10, 20 or 30 years, when detection algorithms have grown more sophisticated.

So, it is easy to see that large blocs of the male population can, for various reasons, be excluded from feminist or female-dominated ways of making a living. When you realize that these vocational sectors largely define Overclass membership at the level of economic prosperity, you will see that feminist or female domination of such sectors will operate as a gatekeeping mechanism governing precisely who, in terms of male demographic sub-groups, will or will not infiltrate the Overclass.

In the end, the feminist world-view shall effectively colonize the Overclass. Non-participation in this paradigm would, to males in particular, spell non-participation in the Overclass for all but a few hardy mavericks. The Overclass would then consist of "empowered" women, and "feminized" men. The real power would, in the final analysis, lie in the hands of women.

But the final power at the very highest level will continue to repose in the hands of the "patriarchal" male-dominated Elite, who will use women as tools to control the bulk of the male population with an effectiveness unprecedented in all of known human history.
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(TO BE CONTINUED.....)

The Sector System Briefly Explained

The feminists have a weird idea that they are the world. They must be disabused of this notion -- slowly, pitilessly, painstakingly. For there is another world, a world beyond feminism which has a sovereign life of its own. But the feminists cannot acknowledge this. And that is what we mean when we say that feminism thinks it is the world.

So again, there is a world beyond feminism -- and we are that world.

The project of feminism, as we all know, is to increase the power of women with no proposed upper limit and no clearly stated plan to cease operations at any discernible time. In pursuit of this project, feminism has for many years conducted a war against men and maleness, on all fronts large and small. Men as a class have been targeted for hostile actions meant both to deprive them of the tangible and intangible goods of life, and to redistribute those goods to women.

And so it devolves in practice that the effect of feminism is to generate the ascendency of women, and to make the ruling power in most areas of life, both large and small, a female power. This project has taken great strides, and further progress is clearly projected. For that reason we conclude that feminism is a female supremacist project, and for all purposes indistinguishable from female supremacism.

Understand, that we do not say feminism is similar to female supremacism, or contains an element of female supremacism, or has a female supremacist aspect. No, we say that feminism and female supremacism are one and the same object; that the terms may be freely interchanged on whatever occasion you please. And frankly, if you could expel all of the female supremacism from feminism, then "feminism" would become a paltry, vanilla sort of thing that would melt back into the terrain of liberal humanism and cease to be salient.

Our decision, to make feminism and female supremacism interchangeable terms, is a LINGUISTIC FIAT. We, by our good sovereign pleasure, have ordained it so. A word by itself has no inherent meaning; rather, meaning is assigned to it, or mapped to it. And we have made our linguistic choice well knowing that we ride roughshod over the linguistic choices which others have made. Still, nothing prevents those others from speaking in their customary way within their own speech communities.

We understand that not every self-identified feminist identifies subjectively as a female supremacist. Nevertheless, we recognize feminism in toto to be a female supremacist project on an organic level -- and that every human participant in the feminist project is a contributor to this; a supporter of this; an enabler of this. Thus, we may name any self-identified feminist (of either sex) as an objective or de facto female supremacist.

The project of feminism, again, is to increase the power of women with no proposed upper limit. The effect of this will be to drive a wedge between men and women by generating a disequilibrium of power between them. So it is accurate to say that the purpose of feminism (read: female supremacism) is to make men and women "unequal".

Now, the project of counter-feminism is, to isolate feminism in order to make it available as a target of social and political operations. And the first stage in this project is the rough cut. To isolate feminism, is to recognize it as recognizable, and we make it at least roughly so when we recognize that feminism is one thing, while the rest of the world is something else. At any rate, we have taken the critical first step in so doing, and further steps may follow by way of refinement. The rough cut establishes the sector system, meaning the division of the world into a feminist sector, and a non-feminist sector. This foundational binary composes the bedrock for an entire way of working and thinking. Little wonder then, that we call it the bedrock binary.

So, the non-feminist sector is a sovereign zone of existence, inhabited by a range of entities, communities, and forces. What all of these have in common is that they do not partake of feminism. The sector is not merely "not feminist" in a statistical-demographic way, but in a primordial way; it represents everything in the universe which lies beyond the explanatory competence of feminist theory -- in sum, all the forces and principles of that realm. Viewed in this context, feminism is very small and non-feminism is very large. Indeed, feminism is like a transient pattern of ripples upon a timeless river.

Female supremacism is nothing if not a war against men. However, in waging war against men, one bites off a far bigger chunk of the universe than just maleness. I mean, that politically organized anti-male aggression has a collateral effect upon the world at large because it generates fallout; because it transmits ripples from one end to the other of the social ecology. This is consequential for men and women both. And a lot of women will not want those consequences, because you might say that feminism hurts women too. Such women will know very well how to maximize their advantage when the time comes.

So it works out that the feminist war against men generates consequences for more than just men. This means that feminist anti-male aggression is, in the long run, aggression against the non-feminist world as a whole -- meaning anybody or anything which might, directly or indirectly, pose an obstacle to feminist plans.

Feminism then, is pernicious to the rest of the world. So again, our master strategy is to ISOLATE FEMINISM. And having once done this, to commence operations that will dismember its effective power on earth. Our establishment of the sector system sets the process in motion. For it is an elemental power gesture of surpassing importance, to affirm that feminism is a definite thing, and that WE are a sovereign thing apart from it and in no way subservient to it. This, at least, begins to isolate feminism.

And the question "what is a non-feminist?" will naturally arise. This will trigger the question "what is a feminist?". In other words, it will establish the necessary frame. For we know that not every self-declared non-feminist would give the same answer. No -- not every non-feminist would agree on what feminism is!

Or at any rate, not yet.

But as non-feminists, we may concur that feminism is not the best plan. That is why we are not feminists. And so whatever we severally understand feminism to be, we can at least agree that the word feminism itself cannot mean anything good. So we can agree that the word itself is contaminated, and that we ought to place a social stigma upon it. And we can agree that to be not a feminist is a thing of decisive consequence, and that whosoever repudiates feminism must do so with adamantine resolution.

Under the feminist system, an imperfect set of worldly conditions will obtain. Call this situation F. Under the non-feminist system, an imperfect set of worldly conditions will likewise obtain. Call this situation N. As non-feminist partisans, we claim that situation N is preferable to situation F, because it will generate less human misery in the long term. Our view is not utopian; we aspire not to a perfect world, but to a less imperfect one.

Having concurred that the word feminism signifies something not-good, we may likewise concur that feminism itself must be targeted for corrective operations. But in order for that to happen, we must concur upon a target -- which brings back the problem that we have not concurred upon a definition. So it looks like we must, eventually, somehow, concur upon a definition of feminism. And having done so, we may at last reach target consensus, so as to know precisely where we should direct our operations.

Target consensus, accordingly, reminds us that feminism equals female supremacism. Counter-feminist analysis concludes this, and we assert that no other analysis will generate effective political traction. You may agree, or not, that feminism equals female supremacism -- yet female supremacism as a datum is not to be doubted. It is out there. It is real. And if you are serious in opposing feminism you cannot avoid asking how feminism relates to female supremacism. How would the absence of one affect the other, and what is their precise chemistry of co-existence? Are those two things at odds with each other? Are they symbiotic with each other? Are they part- and- parcel of each other? Or do they run on separate rails oblivious to each other? If you oppose feminism, and yet believe that female supremacism is a separate object all by itself, then how precisely does female supremacism factor into your political calculations? Do you even think about this at all? How can you not entertain such questions?

I have met certain people who avow that they are not feminist, yet voice no objection to feminism as such. In fact, some of their friends are feminists -- wouldn't you know it? These gentry are practicing, as it seems to me, a misguided liberality or open-mindedness -- as if they are merely Quakers and the feminists are merely Amish, and naught of greater import hangs in the balance. I cannot, by any trial of intellectual pressure, make them agree that feminism and female supremacism are the same thing. And when I enquire to know what they think feminism is, they respond with platitudes.

Yes. There is a sizeable centrist party, a tribe of fence-sitters who harbor the illusion of middle ground between pro and anti. These folk are nearly always stuffed with clichés and marked by the shallowness of their political understanding, and their understanding is often saturated by the conventions of feminist discourse. They fail to comprehend that their middle ground is only a transitory condition, that the growth of polarization will finally shrink that ground to nothing. In the end they will be forced off their fence and compelled to take a stand -- either to the side of female supremacism, or to the side opposing it.

So target consensus is the goal of shared understanding to which we, as non-feminist partisans, direct our efforts. And the process of reaching this goal is called clarificatory discourse. In practice, clarificatory discourse amounts to intellectual crystallization through broadening circles of discussion. This generates social mass, or if you will, "gravity" -- which, in the end, establishes non-feminism as a factor in the equations of power.

Target consensus makes female supremacism the point of conjunction for all non-feminist understandings of what feminism is. This permits us to differ at least somewhat, and to benefit from the creative flexibility such difference affords, while sharing a foundational understanding upon points where misunderstanding would compromise our work.

So once again, our master strategy is to isolate feminism. And in order to do that, we must clarify the basis of a distinction between feminist and non-feminist -- both in order to know what feminism is, and to know what we ourselves are by knowing what we are not. Having reached that point, we are finally in a position to go forward with any project of a political nature that might occur to us.

Feminism thrives on fuzzy categories. It is a fuzzy category itself, and embraces many fuzzy categories, and fuzzy ideas, within itself. To put that another way, feminism has fuzzy borders because it merges so gradually with the non-feminist world that it is not clear where feminism ends and non-feminism begins. This state of things has arrived by a series of steps, and shall be reversed by a series of steps. So our first order of business is to make the fuzziness into something solid, or as we say, to collapse feminism's fuzzy borders. That is what it means, in practice, to isolate feminism. By creating a clear border, you create a clear target that you can operate upon.

We have already spoken of the rough cut, which establishes feminism and non-feminism as the bedrock binary from which our subsequent understanding grows.

Next, we reject any method of studying feminism which commences by adopting the feminist worldview, recognizing that any feminist definition of feminism can only be a product of the feminist worldview -- a worldview we do not share! As non-feminists, we understand that you cannot begin within feminism and then argue your way out of it by using feminist vocabulary and discourse to pave your road. No. You must declare yourself alien to feminism as a necessary first step; you must occupy the Archimedian standpoint, and proceed from there. As the feminist Audre Lorde famously remarked, "you cannot dismantle the master's house with the master's tools." As non-feminists, we understand feminism on independent terms, and we do not reach our conclusion by any feminist chain of reasoning. So our strategy is to reframe the entire discussion, forcing them to engage our issues on our terms while roadblocking their customary avenues of evasion.

You don't need to read every feminist book ever written, and refute it line by line. You have NO legal, moral or intellectual duty to do any such thing. They'll just write more books anyway, and then what will you do? The point is to stop arguing with them on their own terms. Instead, locate their intellectual weak spots and drill, drill, drill! Pick your battles wisely; many are not worth fighting. And don't fight your way out of quicksand in which you are not standing! Stand clear, and force them to come out and engage you on ground which you have chosen. We don't owe them any answers, but they owe us plenty.

We "study" feminism only as one might study a machine or a complex system, with the intention of wrecking it. The classic advice to "know your enemy" means knowing him the better to wreck him.

You might think that the best way to learn what feminism is, is to ask a feminist, right? WRONG. That is one of the worst ways imaginable, and if you follow that road you will be led hopelessly astray. In fact, feminism is a system of obfuscatory rhetoric, intended to camouflage the advancement of female supremacism. There is a perennial tension between what we are told that feminism is, and what we can SEE that it is. So we map the term "feminism" to a certain objective pattern of things that we see in the world. That is our path of knowledge. And we are aware that it overwrites much of the feminist narrative.

Clearly, feminism for them is a journey, and most of their talk is about the smaller points of scenery and navigation upon that journey. And by inviting us to partake in their talk, or expecting us to do so, they imply that we have consented to take the same journey ourselves. They have hauled us aboard their train, and permitted us to wander freely up and down the train as it hustles us along. And so, for example, if we agree to explore the merits of one brand of feminism against another, we are only exploring different locations aboard that train, possibly in search of the first-class car so we can travel more comfortably to a place we never wanted to go to. So, if we truly don't want to go where the train is taking us, we have two choices: either jump off, or seize control of the locomotive.

Yes, whenever a new philosophy or belief system gains ascendency in a society, it will fragment into a variety of sub-systems which are more-or-less at odds with each other. Accordingly, those who originally opposed the new system as a whole are obliged, willy-nilly, to "pick the lesser of two evils" by taking sides in the conversation that follows -- and this validates the conversation as a whole. So, regardless which side prevails, the broader frame of the new system cements itself. Very well: for nearly half a century, the feminist strategy has been to draw the rest of the world into a feminist conversation. We must now undertake slowly and patiently to reverse that, and undo that. We must sabotage the entire conversation, and do this radically. We must inaugurate a counter-narrative that will confront the feminist narrative along a broad front -- in its entirety! -- and systematically dissolve that narrative like an acid.

Non-feminism is not a ideology or a movement, but merely the rest of the world -- the part that wants to live unmolested by feminism. It is no duty of yours, as a non-feminist, to justify your lack of feminism. It is the duty of any feminist, however, to LEAVE YOU ALONE, and to leave the rest of the world alone. Failure by any feminist or feminist group to do so, will be considered an act of aggression -- as likewise, the entire history of feminism, especially since the 1960s, has been a cumulative and sustained war of aggression.

Non-feminism has existed for the entire history of the human race. Feminism is very, very recent -- even if the elements of it were always present in undeveloped form. Most recent of all, however, is the largely male political coterie known as the "MRAs" or Male Renaissance Agitators. They are a colorful lot, these MRA people, and they certainly harbor their share of foibles. Some of them are transcendental geniuses while others, it pains me to admit, are flat-out idiots. In fact, they represent the full gamut of humanity in all of its lights and shadows -- they are nothing if not human! In that respect, they mirror the world. But unlike the feminists, they do not pretend to "be" the world. Nor do they even pretend to "be" the non-feminist world, for indeed they are not. In fact, they are just one among a variety of working parts in a developing global organism called the non-feminist revolution. And yes, they play a pivotal, catalytic role.

But the MRA cohort of the non-feminist revolution has been hyped to a degree that is both unwarranted and politically counter-productive. The trouble with the word "MRA" is that it's ad hoc terminology; it is not based on a coherent set of ideas; it has no true epistemic pedigree, and no consistent political message built into it. And so it obscures more than it illuminates. Furthermore, the Feminist-versus-MRA script is an inefficient dichotomy or polarity which falsifies the objective state of things. Feminist-versus-non-feminist makes a far more stable platform. You can build on it.

And there is no "MRA movement". It exists only in the feminist imagination: they invented it as a trick to ghettoize anybody who speaks out loudly against feminism. For the rest of us, "MRA movement", (or even "men's movement") is merely a figure of speech, a shorthand for talking about something too large and complex for words. After all, we can hardly escape the necessity of talking. Let it be so, and let the other side chase shadows.

We understand "non-feminist" to mean "against female supremacism", and we set the burden upon any self-declared feminist to show that he or she is not a female supremacist. At the same time, we make clear to them that they can shrug off that burden by simply discarding "feminist" as a self-appellative. Yes, we make it easy for them. We do not ask them to give up their personal beliefs about anything whatever. We request only that they stop sticking the word "feminist" to themselves. And if they will not agree to this, then we mentally classify them as doubtful or suspect people -- "persons of interest", if you will.

We of the non-feminist sector claim the status of a sovereign power with respect to the feminist power on earth, and we demand the full measure of diplomatic courtesy due to such a position. A number of behaviors, on the part of any feminist or feminist group, will be considered acts of discourtesy or outright aggression -- and the codification of such behaviors will be an ongoing project in the course of clarificatory discourse. For the good of the entire world, we advise the feminists to seek non-feminist counsel upon all matters concerning law, culture, public policy, and the common welfare.

Under the feminist regime, the non-feminist sector has been nothing. Henceforth, the sector must assume its rightful place in the sun and become something.

This concludes the present treatise upon the sector system.

Non-Feminist Women are Welcome at the Counter-Feminist

Trent13, an extremely non-feminist woman, has left a weighty comment on the post immediately prior to this, and her words have furnished me with matter for reflection. But first, the comment:

"The better safe than sorry attitude is understandable, and on average most women needn't declare that they are feminist. For those who adamantly declare they are anti-feminist (and show themselves to be so), I think a differentiation should be made. It isn't as if being an anti-feminist woman is considered by female-dom as laudable - in a sense, it's considered worse than if a male were anti-feminist, traitor to the cause and all that.

"Continued antagonization of the small minority of women who are against feminism, using the safer than sorry argument, will simply slow down the eradication of feminism. As the commenter stated, feminism is culturally pervasive; it can only be eradicated by a cultural movement away from it - the speed with which that will happen partly depends on the reception anti-feminist men give to those men and women who are struggling to see the light.

"One can't expect everyone to have a sudden epiphany about the evils of society; it's a slow process, and patience with the removal of entrenched feminist ideology is absolutely necessary if this is going to be fixed."

You may want to read this in context, HERE.

So, in step with the growing tidal wave of social reaction against feminism and its manifold evils, a growing number of women are awakening and bestirring themselves, looking cautiously about, and beginning to ask serious questions. And many such women are finding their way to the blogs, websites and forums of the men's rights proto-movement. These women are seeking information, and in many cases wishing to be of help in some way -- if only they knew how! At any rate, they are driven by earnest curiosity, and they want to orient themselves. What they seek, finally, is a map with an x-mark next to the words "you are here."

But all too often, what they find is a formidable wall of hair-trigger hostility, bristling vulgarity and sour cynicism. Understandably, plenty of these women haven't got a tough enough hide to "tough it out" until they earn a place of trust, while others are cursed with a knack for saying the worst things in the worst ways in violation of local politesse. Hence, many of them drop out before long, while many more will never pass beyond the larval lurker stage.

Yes. The lack of neophyte-friendly online venues for budding non-feminist revolutionary women is keenly felt, and ought to be remedied one way or another.

Very well. I would like the Counter-Feminist to be such a website. After all, the trend needs to begin somewhere . . . so why not here?

Therefore, I invite non-feminist women of all persuasions to log in as commenters and introduce themselves. Don't be a stranger. You will find a relaxed atmosphere hereabouts, and a complete absence of the scurrility which so often dominates the atmosphere of other men's rights websites. What you will also find is the art of rhetorical discipline skillfully practiced, as a model to others in the movement. But more on that subject later!

Meanwhile, do consider de-lurking. You have come to the right place, so step right up! And spread the word among womenfolk of your acquaintance -- whoever has a curiosity to learn about the non-feminist revolution, the MRM, and all such things. As Trent13 says, you can't expect everybody to have a sudden epiphany, but around here you may, if you wish, get a fine start along that road!

I will leave this post in the top position for several days, and then link to it in the sidebar.

The Bright Line

Hello. Fidelbogen here. To my fellow workers in the vineyard, worldwide . . . greetings!

The talk today has a very simple title. It is called "The Bright Line".

In this talk, I would like to explain the most damning and revealing thing it is possible to know about feminism. I say damning and revealing, and my choice of words is well considered. It damns feminism not only by revealing its fundamentally damnable nature, but by revealing a principle which infallibly isolates feminism from the rest of the moral universe, and makes it available as a target.

Let me tell you how it is. Feminism offers women a generous system of incentives to indulge their baser human proclivities, but offers little or no incentive in the opposite direction. For you see, If women were held morally accountable to any meaningful extent, especially in their dealings with men, it would set feminism on a slippery slope toward extinction. Call that the executive summary. Now let's dig into the fine points.

Feminism, as I have explained elsewhere, is built upon a system of manichean essentialism. This, like any kind of manicheism, holds that good and evil are a categorically absolute duality. And like any kind of essentialism, it holds that certain qualities are inherent to an object from the moment of its creation - factory-installed if you will.

Thus, the manichean essentialism of feminism holds that women are categorically good by nature, and men categorically evil. As a principle for daily application, this translates as: men in their essence are morally inferior to women; therefore men are the bad guys when any conflict with women arises.

Now, almost any self-declared feminist would deny that manichean essentialism is a feminist doctrine—and I doubt that you would find it flatly stated anywhere in the allegedly "official" corpus of feminist writings. After all, it's a nervy thing for even a radical feminist to say! Even Mary Daly doesn't quite say it unequivocally, and as for Valerie Solanas - well, you know the drill: she's "not really a feminist".

So in order to uncloak feminism's manichean essentialism, you must proceed by reverse investigation from other feminist ideas, or from commonplace feminist behaviors. The presence of such ideas or behaviors will logically signal the existence of a certain prior concept, on the principle that where there is smoke there is fire.

And what we find is, that real-life feminists persistently behave in a style that comports with manichean essentialism—as if this were a motivating subtext at the bottom of all their words and deeds. Listen closely and you will catch the sound of it, like a serpent hissing deep inside the woodpile: "Sssssss! Man bad! Woman good!"

How, for example, to explain the almost unfailing feminist habit of letting women off the hook for nearly any transgression large or small - especially if it gains wide exposure in the media? Such feminist behavior seems to operate with even greater force when the transgression involves a man.

Yes. Feminism, as an ideology and as a movement, must always put women in the right and men in the wrong. And why is this? Because: feminism equals female supremacism. Female supremacism is an objectively real force in the world, a culture virus borne by many people who reveal it in many ways, and whatever you might think feminism is, it can neither exist in moral isolation from the reality of female supremacism, or fail to adopt a consistent moral stance toward that reality.

Manichean essentialism is the metaphysical cornerstone for female supremacism: it is the tiger in the female supremacist tank, and without it, female supremacism wouldn't travel far at all. And the distillation of female supremacism in practice, is to give women the upper hand over men in every possible situation.

In order to rationalize female supremacism, feminist apologetics begins with a conspiracy theory of history, known as patriarchy theory. According to patriarchy theory, men have always held most of the power on earth, and have employed this power willfully to trap women in a state of subjugation. Patriarchy theory, you would say, is a macro-construct, and yet it purports to explain all of life—even daily life at the micro-level.

Feminism wouldn't survive long without patriarchy theory because it would need to treat both men and women as individuals with moral agency. If feminist analysis had to factor life in all of its moral complexity and shades of grey, it would never develop enough traction to either make political headway or justify feminism's existence in the first place.

Luckily, patriarchy theory rides to the rescue and makes life morally simple. Women, we are given to understand, lack equal power under the patriarchy system and so are constantly driven to "game" that system in order to level the playing field and "get their own back". Thus, according to feminism, every woman becomes a kind of moral Robin Hood on behalf of the sisterhood, robbing the rich (read: men) and giving to the poor (read: women).

So, if it appears that the woman in your life is "playing games" with you, you need to become more sensitive to your patriarchal privilege, and try to understand the subtle ways that you are violating her and making it necessary for her to act that way in the first place. That is how patriarchy theory explains your life! Men have all the power, therefore men are the problem.

The possibility that women might be wrongdoers on their own initiative, and actually do wrong (especially toward men), simply does not factor into feminism's moral calculus. Your average feminist will only grudgingly and with great reluctance allow that woman X might have been the guilty party in transaction Y—and only after every mitigating possibility has been hyper-analyzed to the last molecule. To extract any "judgmental" statement about a guilty woman from the average feminist, is like extracting teeth.

As a rule, a feminist hates to admit that women, or any particular woman, could be in the wrong about anything at all! Time and time again you see this. Feminist Robin Morgan (who once famously remarked that men should "possibly not exist") campaigned to get the would-be murderess Valerie Solanas out of jail; feminists everywhere were curiously untroubled when Lorena Bobbitt sliced off her husband's penis with a kitchen knife, and they even gloated about this; feminists everywhere will (on deeply flawed evidence) insist that "women are only violent in self-defense", or that "women never lie about rape", despite well-grounded probative evidence that neither of these statements is true. On it goes. . .

Keep your eyes open and you will see this pattern of feminist behavior replay itself time and time again.

Among other useful functions, patriarchy theory veils manichean essentialism, by offering a 'structural' explanation of male transgression. Men are "bad" only because patriarchy "makes them" that way. "I blame patriarchy" is the standard feminist cop-out: they may continually place men in the wrong (and on the defensive) without professing any belief in manichean essentialism—not even to themselves!

Without patriarchy theory serving as a prop, the feminist would need to address a complex world in which men and women share the blame equally, albeit in varied measure from place to place, and the business of liberating women would collapse into the all-but-unanswerable question of: "liberate women from what?"

From men? From other women? Or from the entire big, sprawling human mess?

Patriarchy theory would go to pieces like a bad suit if women were held morally accountable as individuals. And after that it would be impossible any longer to fudge the question of manichean essentialism, for it would soon become necessary to make a flat statement of belief or disbelief in this idea—at which point, the entire feminist enterprise would stand before a board of inquest. If you said, "yes, I think women are essentially good and men are essentially evil", you would look like a moral idiot. And if you said "no, I think men and women are morally equal", then you would render feminism pointless and toothless. Either way, you would condemn it to a long slide down the slippery slope to extinction.

But patriarchy theory keeps manichean essentialism forever at bay by means of an evasionary dither. It is no wonder that the average feminist hates to admit that women might upon occasion be in the wrong. Once you start down the road of allowing that women are even capable of wrongdoing (and then admitting more and more cases in practice), it ends in the collapse of feminism altogether, by rendering any theory of collective male transgression unworkable.

Patriarchy theory is manifestly flawed, and disingenuously employed by the feminists. It is a theory which pretends to explain all of life, and yet if it truly DID explain all of life, this would mean that no sector of reality could operate outside its reach. And if such were the case, nobody would have any moral agency, being trapped by the patriarchal "script" in a state of moral robot-hood.

Yes, feminism's inborn proclivity is to bestow moral robot-hood on everybody—but most especially on women. And the shimmering, razor-thin line which divides moral robot-hood from moral agency, is the very same line that divides the feminist zone of influence from the entire non-feminist sector. That bright line, precisely, is the boundary.

Connect the dots and you will discover that bright line readily enough. Consider the many, many ways that women are given a pass or given a waiver—the prevarications, rationalizations, strained extenuations, praisings by faint damnations. Trace them from one to the next until they join together in an all-embracing circuit, like a contour line on a topographical map which wraps clear around the base of a mountain. You could even run a yellow highlighting pen around that line on the map, to make it stand out brightly.

The feminist strategy of concealment is to shade by gradual degrees into the surrounding world, so that the boundary between feminism and the rest of the universe becomes impossible to fix with any precision. This renders feminism invulnerable to attack because it offers no well-defined target area. But we have seen that the issue of women's moral accountability marks off the feminist perimeter with all of the necessary exactitude. This makes feminism available as a target, as a zone of common understanding easily recognized and agreed upon by the rest of the world.

And that bright line around the mountain: you might picture it as a collar. Or possibly even a noose! And to call attention to that bright line—to PREACH that line, let us say—would be almost as if your were pulling the noose tighter. Need I say more?

So . . . when will the feminists hold women morally accountable?

In other words, when will feminism PREACH THAT BRIGHT LINE?

Fidelbogen . . . out!

---------------------------------------------

http://www.4shared.com/audio/ds4tULRw/CF14.html

Moderated Comment to 'Feminist Nation'

First, the back-story.

Note the previous post, titled Maxims for the Road. In the comment log for that post you will discover, first, a complimentary remark from a reader offered in a tone of ostensive good faith. Immediately following this, my own dry, sardonic, and yet pointedly meaningful response.

The original commenter has a blog, which I arrived at via her blogger profile. This blog is called Feminist Nation, a title which is aptly suggestive of the content to be found there.

I spent some time scanning through the material on Feminist Nation, and I came to a post which immediately caught my attention, titled 'Exposing the Terrorism of the MRA Movement'. Naturally, I was intrigued, so I gave it a careful once-over.

The item was interesting not merely for its title. Regular readers of The Counter-Feminist will recall a post called Stay Away From this CLOWN, in which I rudely spotlighted a certain disreputable 'anti-feminist' blogger, who goes by the name of 'Martha'. I wanted to generate an object lesson - clarifying my own stance and distancing counter-feminism from the turbulent jacquerie which undoubtedly lurks inside the broad spectrum of the so-called 'men's movement'.

Well, the article on Feminist Nation was all about, you guessed it, Martha. Simply stated, the blog author's purpose was to exhibit Martha as a poster-boy for the MRA movement. Following is a link to the blog post in question:

http://feministnation.blogspot.com/2006/12
/exposing-terrorism-of-mra-movement.html

I would direct your particular attention to the final, brief but oh-so-laden paragraph in this post: "That, my dear readers, is an MRA/anti-feminist."

I composed and dispatched a reader comment for this article. The blog, however, uses comment moderation, so my item did not appear immediately. It has not appeared yet, and I don't expect that it will. So be it. At any rate, I felt inspired to save my comment item to a text file, before I hit the send button. I would now like to share this with readers of The Counter-Feminist. Here, with only one tiny editing change, is what would have appeared on the web log Feminist Nation as comment number one for the post in question:

Yes, I have made the acquaintance of this 'Martha' creature, and taken a jab at him/her/it.

Another one you might want check out is 'mikeeusa'. Sorry, I can't be bothered to look up the URL, but it's on Blogger.

Anyway....(rolls shoulders and rubs hands together)..... as the men's movement grows and spreads, there will come a time when you will, albeit reluctantly, find it necessary to come to the table and open a dialogue.

On that day, I'm sure you don't want to be talking to people like Martha and Mikeeusa. It would be in the best interest of all concerned, to cut such moldy fruitcakes out of the loop and confine them to a region of existential space where they can't wreck anything, yes?

As the aggregate mass of male grievance grows, the power of the Marthas and Mikeeusas will swell proportionately, and demagogic voices such as theirs will gather more and more hearers - a chilling prospect, I'm sure you will agree.

At day's end, the men's movement is simply a cross-section of humanity, encompassing all that humanity itself encompasses, and that's quite a spectrum, eh? Now, you can choose which portion of this spectrum to talk to, just as you can choose your associates in general life. No difference. However, to make the wise choice requires wisdom. Such is life.

I have shared this item as a working model for a political engagement style which I soberly deem to be in the best interest of our movement. Consider it a kind of "seed-map". Also, you may note that I have given the feminists an opportunity to be "part of the solution", which as I make no doubt, they would have the sagacity to ponder.