Whedon's Brown Coat Is, Um, Something Else Brown

   On the day I first conceived of this column, what should I see on the rear window of a pickup truck but a big decal of the Spaceship Serenity from the cult-favorite series "Firefly," which was the brainchild of Joss Whedon. All right, it's time. They can't stop  THIS  signal.

If a director of television and cinema has gone to great effort to convince his audience that prostitution is glamorous fun, and that prostitutes JUST LOVE being prostitutes...he has thoroughly disqualified himself to be taken seriously on any subject pertaining to oppression and enslavement.

Here on Earth, I have in my time been approached by prostitutes in the United States and Portugal. There was NOT A THING GLAMOROUS OR SOPHISTICATED about their exhausted faces, or their bleak resignation (when they weren't drunk) to their lot in life. They certainly didn't have the self-confidence of a vampire-slayer. They were turning tricks either because of desperate poverty, or because a pimp had them enslaved, or both. (Good grief, you just need to watch Les Miz to understand!)

Right at this point, the defenders both of prostitution and of smug Hollywood celebrities will try hard to believe that my distaste for prostitution must be motivated by the same hypocritical self-righteousness, the same haughty contempt for women, which "Firefly" depicted as being THE motivation for anyone who was so bigoted as to disapprove of the flesh trade. But I don't hate prostitutes; I grieve for them as Dostoevsky did. I don't wish to "punish" them, I wish I could liberate them from their servitude. Of  course, Joss Whedon's enablers will have a scripted comeback for this also: "You just have a savior complex!  You don't feel compassion for hookers, only sexist condescension!" Yeah, right; I'm sure that it's a great comfort to any prostitute to know that the pimp who beats her up and humiliates her DOESN'T have  a savior complex.

Here, then, we have storyteller Joss Whedon, who for his own part would probably argue that we just need to get rid of prudish puritanism and legalize prostitution everywere, then all would be well. But if he were to say this, he would be overlooking a fact of the real universe: the fact that, even where prostitution IS legal, women STILL need to be tricked or kidnaped into it, because (golly, what a surprise) most women don't relish having their abdomens treated like an airport terminal.

Here, I say, we have Joss Whedon, who has positively helped to desensitize his viewers to the realities of human trafficking; who has given a free pass to one of the most persistent forms of oppression ever to exist. This man has just had the chutzpah to declare, with fake solemnity, that confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the United  States Supreme Court would "cement" a dictatorship! Talk about straining out gnats and swallowing camels!

Dennis Prager, who has more intellect in his dandruff than Joss Whedon has inside his air-filled head, has transmitted his own signal to Joss Whedon. It's a question worthy to be remembered over the coming months. Mister Whedon: when Brett Kavanaugh joins the Supreme Court, and the United States DOESN'T suddenly turn into the standard-model racist neo-Nazi theocracy that Hollywood loves to depict, will you apologize for slandering the new Justice Kavanaugh?

Of course Whedon won't apologize. He'll cover his tracks by pretending that any slightest thing Kavanaugh does which ISN'T in favor of Marxism and sexual anarchy, IS the dictatorship.

Meanwhile, prostitutes in the real world will continue NOT being happy, sophisticated love-goddesses who delight in being  used.

Same Old Same Old Socialism

Over the weekend, I heard audio of the much-touted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proving herself to be a liar where her self-description is concerned. She has pretended to be a daring, innovative pioneer of "economic justice;" but there was NOT ONE THING in the speech I heard which was EVEN SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT from the uniform script which totalitarian leftists have been reciting for most of my lifetime. And I was around in the hippie era.

Ocasio-Cortez "daringly" stated that "a modern, moral country" should not have anyone "too poor to live." Absolutely standard rhetoric for Democrats. What, am I so heartless and greedy that I don't care about the poor? No, I am not heartless or greedy; I'm just honest, which is what the Democratic Party really hates. Because I know that their script, the script Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was reciting by rote, is designed TO LIE BY OMISSION.

By the over-simplification of their speeches about "equality" and "compassion," leftists count on producing AN UNEXAMINED EMOTIONAL RESPONSE in their audience. Piling on the drama about wanting to redistribute wealth, without explaining HOW TO CREATE the wealth which they propose to redistribute, hucksters like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez insulate theselves from all objective examination. If persons who live on Planet Earth raise questions of substance, like how America can maintain an industrial base if the most productive people are punished with confiscation for the crime of being successful. Ocasio-Cortez and her ilk don't have to reply with any facts. They can just wave their arms in the air and wail, "You want poor children to starve to death!"

They can't fool me, because I have helped poor children OUT OF MY OWN POCKET, not by demanding that someone else's money be stolen, But after decades of pop culture insisting that only emotion matters, a lot of other Americans HAVE been suckered.

No American citizen under the age of forty has ever lived in an America which WASN'T inundated with empty Marxist rhetoric to the effect of "Just give everything to everybody!" This atmosphere enables grifters like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to promise us a magic beanstalk, which will take us to the capitalistic giant's castle so we can plunder it. And they have gone for decades without being required to answer hard questions about why Marxism NEVER WORKS.

That's why Democrats are so foaming-at-the-mouth furious now: because now their emotion-manipulating lies ARE being challenged.

It's A Bad Time For Us To Be So Naive

  A well-meaning friend of mine shared a Wikipedia article about the system of Dhimmitude, in which Islamic nations "generously" permit non-Muslims to stay alive if they pay protection money ("Jizya") and accept being social inferiors. I replied to my friend thus:

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Thank you, __________ ; but note that this article does all it can to make Muslims look good.

One crucial fact is almost buried in the article. See this sentence: "Bernard Lewis remarks about Khomeini that one of his main grievances against the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was that his legislation allowed the theoretical possibility of non-Muslims exercising political or judicial authority over Muslims." It was Khomeini who was the true Koranic Muslim, wanting to preserve the status quo of Dhimmi being ABSOLUTELY POWERLESS.

Scimitarists are experts with euphemism. The Dhimmi being "protected" really means they are HELD DOWN. They are not allowed to testify in court against Muslims; and OF COURSE they can and will be put to death if they are heard saying anything which contradicts Islam.

To the extent that Dhimmi have actually been protected, it's been because they were useful underlings-- ALWAYS underlings. Because Muslims are not supposed to enslave other Muslims, it was very useful to the Turkish Empire to have a supply of Christians whom they WERE allowed to enslave. Many thousands of Christian boys were abducted and forced to become soldiers, known as Janissaries, in the service of the sultans.

If today's Islamists ever succeed in conquering America, no pretense of our being "protected" will be much consolation for our being gagged and censored, unable to hold any high office, forbidden to possess means of personal self-defense, and aware that our daughters might at any time be raped by Scimitarist men-- who then would pretend that our daughters "enticed" them.

I am perfectly capable of being friendly to Muslims; but this does not obligate me to pretend that I don't know what their leaders really mean when they say "Islam is peace." The actual AND ONLY definition of "peace," in the minds of imams and mullahs, is "Islamic regimes having complete life-and-death power over everyone."