How To Be Right: The Art of Being Persuasively Correct (2015)

11

CO-OPT THEIR GRIEVANCES

I’ve got nothing against feminists—in fact, I like to think I’m one. If feminism means a belief in equality, then I’m for that. If feminism means “girl power,” then I’m for that, too. It’s why I want every “girl” to own a “gun,” and to “pistol-whip” me on occasion while I’m in my crushed velvet manatee onesie.

The one funny part of feminism—or at least modern feminism reflected by victims who continue to play loose with the truth and use hilarious terms like “heteronormative”—is the way in which feminists try to deny the biological reality of obvious gender differences. There’s nothing more sexist than assuming one gender cannot accept scientific fact. I call this “hetero-abnormative.” Or simply “silly.”

✵Women are more valuable because they give birth (ew!).

✵Women are more valuable because they’re mothers.

✵Female breasts are the perfect combination of form and function.

✵Moms give better advice than your drunkest best friend.

✵Grandmoms are from magical planets while granddads fart.

✵Women remember to write thank-you notes.

✵Women never destroy a bathroom.

✵Women smell amazing; men smell.

The common complaint by feminists is objectification. Treating women as sex objects, solely, is pretty narrow-minded, I agree. They’re great resources for making a good life, together.

But grievance must never be used as a truncheon on men. For many reasons. One: both men and women treat women like sex objects. See any cover of Cosmopolitan, a Victoria’s Secret catalog, or a locker-room calendar (I have a collection of them, still in their original packaging). And from a biological standpoint, treating each other as sex objects was kind of the point, at least when it comes to species survival.

We’ve moved way beyond the savagery caused by primi tive urges, but the urges still exist, and will exist forever (or until the robots take over and kill us, in around 2018 or so). Men exist, and women exist, to keep this civilization going. They pedal the procreation bike. The answer to species survival is not more senior vice presidents. If you deny that, you deny science, which feminists seem to want to do on a daily basis, because it’s so “heteronormative.” Apparently, a few of those heteronormals are pretty sharp, or else we wouldn’t be here.

How do you combat the accusation that men treat women as mere sex objects? Heartily agree, and bemoan that the objectification does not end there. Because as men surely treat women as sex objects, women treat men as status objects. As P. J. O’Rourke once observed, no woman daydreams about being swept off her feet by a liberal. Bearded mixologists in Williamsburg quicken the pulse of no one, unless you’re a fedora salesman.

It is a challenge—a struggle, you might say—to be a man…to be subjected constantly to the leering looks from women eager to see your nest-building prowess. It’s true—I’m talking birds here. The attraction of status is true in birds, bees, and humans. While the male seeks markers reflective of reproductive ability, the female seeks markers of provisional prowess—the ability to protect and provide. This isn’t some men’s rights boilerplate shit—this is evolutionary biology accepted as fact by both scientists and drunk loud-mouths like me.

Think about how many men, young boys even, have died because of this anti-male practice. The first acrobat really was a guy trying to impress a girl. He stood on his hands and tried to walk. He fell, hit his head, and died—a casualty of female oppression through status demand. As women were objectified, men were “riskified,” driven to ridiculous, idiotic deaths—causing actions in order to gain attention from women. In fact, as the old saying goes, “Men go to war so their women will watch them.” So war itself is a war on men! Confused yet? So am I. But that’s what happens when you take this heteronormative horsepoop to its logical conclusion.

Is it any wonder men live shorter lives than women? In order to express superior status, above and beyond our male competitors, we take risks—some noble, some idiotic. Show me a beautiful woman and it may be the last thing I see. We pull wheelies, drag race, and climb water towers. We fall off our cycles, crash our cars, and tumble to our untimely deaths. All to show females that we are made of superior stuff.

That’s the real sexism. It’s biological, and if you disagree with me, you must be antiscience. Probably a homophobe. Who eats left-handed, redheaded babies. Science proves that far and away the number-one cause of distress and depression in men is rejection by women. Especially hot ones. They’re totally insensitive to masculine suffering. Scarlett Johansson needs to end her senseless jihad on me. I’m giving her one more year.

Animal Rights

This grievance—that eating and/or wearing animals is cruel to the animals—is hard at first to dispute. And it’s important to clarify that people who are mean to animals are in general rotten people who deserve the very worst humans have to offer (a weekend with the HuffPo editorial staff, or at least to be locked in a trailer with Bill Nye). However, compassion for animals is almost always a luxury that comes with wealth and leisure. There are many groups who’d eat that poor creature Paris Hilton shoves in her armpit as she boards first class (and then pick their teeth with Paris Hilton).

The anthropomorphic tendency of elitist, educated folk to think their pets are just like them misses a simple fact: almost all reciprocal love is based on survival instinct. They lick your hand, so you feed them instead of beat them. You should love them for that. But if the paw were on the other foot—they’d eat the hell out of you. Alive. (See Marie Prevost.)

Watch-Dog Consumer List

Which One Is Your Best Friend? The One That Whines When He Hears a Siren? Or the One That Eats Rats?

What about plants? New research shows that plants know when they’re about to be victimized, and react by releasing oil-like yucky substances as a method of repelling you (I’m simplifying the science, but it pretty much sounds like what most humans do—when terrified, we crap ourselves). Everything has feelings, including that broccoli. So where does it stop? At some point we must remind everyone that the food chain is not horizontal, it’s vertical. We’re at the top.

That in no way means one must take advantage of such dominance. But eating an animal is not victimizing it. Since this is about grievances, one must bring up a very simple fact—that you are tired of being victimized by animals. When was the last time any member of the wild kingdom lifted a finger in preventing disease, in solving problems, in inventing machinery or devices that made our lives—or even theirs—easier? If you handed a monkey all the parts for a working transistor radio, he’d just eat them, and a day later poop them out from his pink ass. And the radio wouldn’t even work! By this logic, it should also be okay to eat millennials, actually. But even I don’t advocate that. Besides, they’re pretty tasteless. Even if you brine them (not that I’d know).

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Lastly, the biggest argument against animal rights will always be the argument for human rights. I cannot picket for a spotted owl while girls are kidnapped, raped, or disfigured by acid-flinging Islamists. I cannot fight for the plight of wild horses while wilder men plot the destruction of children. I cannot get worked up over Cecil the lion while Planned Parenthood sells baby livers to the highest bidder. So while I applaud the work you do for the voiceless, remember that others are doing more important work—fighting to protect your right to spend your time in such a luxurious, self-indulgent, attention-seeking manner. Nothing is more deadly than middle-class sanctimony. Because every second spent saving the smelt is a second not devoted to annihilating ISIS. Or at least stalking Andy Cohen.

Now, if you manage to produce a cauliflower that tastes like rib eye, get back to me.

Immigration

The pro-amnesty crowd has managed to do something simplistic but effective: paint their critics as racist. If you’re against a blanket amnesty (and who carries a grudge against blankets?) and prefer an orderly solution to immigration and border control (what I quaintly call “following the law” or “establishing a country”), you must hate dark-skinned people—especially babies. Their horrible, evil, probably satanic babies.

Hardly. In fact, the amnesty crowd brazenly ignores the grievances of an already besieged minority group—young blacks. Making millions of illegal immigrants suddenly legal would likely suck away jobs that might have gone to minorities already suffering double-digit unemployment.

But then again, others say a new massive group of workers would end up using goods and services that might create new jobs. As you can see, I’m unsure myself, and starting to sweat a little. But I wouldn’t mind a real debate without the accusations of bigotry.

I love immigration—and if people want to come here and work hard, God bless them. I’ve even come up with a Gutfeld Homestead Act, on The Five, suggesting that all these new immigrants should move to dead cities like Detroit and rebuild them. Give the Mexicans Buffalo. Maybe the Bills will finally win a Super Bowl.

To be persuasively right on this, co-opt grievance. The real group victimized by amnesty? Immigrants who actually stood in line and filled out the forms. God bless ’em.

Amnesty is largely a political ploy to get votes. It’s not simply harmful—it’s harmful to those people who played by the rules. More important, those people who played by the rules did so because they “get” it. Meaning they “get” America, which is different from feeling they “deserve” it. People who break the law never feel that way—and their violations make everyone else who did the right thing the real victims.

Finally, imagine if Disneyland had no fence—if it were free to crash. Value plummets and good things become disrespected. The teacups become the pee cups and the Matterhorn becomes the Doesn’t Matterhorn. You only appreciate what you earn—even Mickey Mouse knows that.