Swords Will Be Drawn

A case of The People vs The Popular Press down on the Pampas...

(Oath of the Horatii by Jacques-Louis David, 1784-1785. Source: Public Domain)

“Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face.”

~ G.K. Chesterton, Heretics 

Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World…

It’s a typical January day here in the Paris of the South. Helios in his golden chariot, traversing the cerulean vault... a whispering zephyr, sweeping through green summer leaves... couples canoodling along the nearby Paseo de Rosedal during our morning stroll. Peace, love and anarchy... 

As faithful (and unfaithful) readers well know, we’ve been enjoying our front row seat to the “anarcho-capitalist revolution” down here at the End of the World. And what a show it has been! 

Barely a day goes by when some novel or fatuous “story” doesn’t cross the newswires. Here, a smattering from today’s creepy crawlers...

Argentina's Milei seeks omnibus bill backing as opposition warns 'chainsaw' starting ~ Reuters

Argentines Protest Outside Congress Against President Milei's Hefty Reform Package ~ Bloomberg

‘I can’t face how much she suffered’: Argentina femicides at record high as Milei dilutes protections ~ The Guardian

Most of what passes for “news” is, of course, hardly worthy of the name. Bunk... baloney... balderdash... bellyache... bosh... bullsh!t. We can think of a half dozen alternative nouns right off the top of our dusty cranium, without even leaving the letter B. 

Just to take the above mentioned, in reverse order...

Anti-Female Feminizm

Predictably, The Guardian story is a rolling calamity on multiple fronts, ranging from humanitarian to journalistic. Obviously every murder – regardless of the victim’s melanin content or chromosomal composition or sexual proclivity etc. – is an individual tragedy. And yes, female lives matter... just as all lives matter. 

As Javier Milei’s own government (which boasts no shortage of strong, independent female voices, including his own Vice President, Foreign Minister, Security Minister and Human Capital Minister, among many others...) correctly recognizes, “violence has no gender.” 

And yet, when viewing the world through the deluded myopia of the intersectional victim matrix, social Marxists see little besides opportunities to exploit tragedy and sow deeper division. Thus are individual cases conscripted into the vast culture war against “entrenched patriarchal culture” and, ironically, “the persistence of gender stereotypes” (which they themselves insist on perpetrating). 

The article cites the National Ombudsmen’s Office – presumably by accident – which stated that (emphasis ours), “Femicides have experienced constant growth, despite the measures and policies for the protection of women that the Argentinian state has tried to implement [since 2012].”

The existing laws didn’t work, in other words, nor did the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity appear to make any appreciable difference in this “alarming” trend. (For the record, Argentina ranks 16th out of 32 Latin American countries for femicide... alarmingly average.)

And yet, when Sr. Milei diverted precious resources from the demonstrably failing Ministry of Women, noticing it had “yielded no results,” and folded it into the Ministry of Human Capital, to be run by a successful businesswoman, Sandra Pettovello, this was somehow seen as “anti-women.” Hmm...

By Their Fruits

And yet, to the great consternation of the twaddling mainstream presstitutes, most Argentine women actually support Sr. Milei’s government. Indeed, when it came to the general election, more señoras (y senoritas) voted for Milei overall... and across practically every demographic.

(NB: In the end, most of those gray “undecideds” fell to Milei, who swept the majority of (female) Patricia Bullrich’s votes and prevailed with ~56% of the popular vote.)

Who were all these self-loathing ladies, we wonder, those masochistic madams... and why would a supposedly progressive opposition wish to see their voices silenced? Were they, to paraphrase a particularly odious LA Times headline, The Female Face of Misogyny? 

But you know the answer already, dear reader. Immutable characteristics only matter to the woke brigade when they align with regressive, anachronistic stereotypes. Thus, females (by critical theorists’ definition “oppressed victims of the male patriarchy”) are not permitted to stray from the downy comfort of the collectivist narrative. Cool feminism you got there! We’ll have none of it, thank you very much. 

Then again, what were we to expect from an anti-woman movement that reduces half the population to “uterus havers,” “menstruators” and “people with vaginas.”

In the end, it’s the net positive produced by cooperative enterprise that matters... not adolescent, zero-sum power games that seek only to divide and conquer.  

Pressitution and Solicitation

Which brings us to Bloomberg’s hyperventilating “coverage” of the protests outside congress, where lawmakers are presently debating the passage of Milei’s monumental Omnibus Law. 

Needless to say that, in a capital city of 16 million people (roughly twice the population of New York City), a gathering of a few thousand jilted delinquents is hardly a reportable event. As many people pass by the congress building to buy a choripan in any given four-minute period of the afternoon. 

What is relevant is the public’s majority support for the bill, as evidenced both in the landslide victory of the president who brought it to the floor... and in poll after poll, which show that as many as two-thirds of the citizens are in favor of “all” or “the majority” of its contents.  

[Loose translation: “Do you support the reforms included in the Omnibus Law, due to be voted on in a few days?”

Greens, dark to light, are “in favor of all” and “in favor of the most” of the law, respectively (63.5%); red and orange are “against all” and “against most” of the law, respectively (34.5%); gray, not sure.]

In other words, those fighting against the Omnibus’s passage, both inside and outside of the Congreso, are fighting against the overwhelming will of the majority of Argentine citizens.

Predictably, this was mentioned precisely nowhere in the popular press. Which brings us to Reuters’ solemn – if tardy – foreboding, that a chainsaw is “starting”...

Well, yes... the man campaigned, rather conspicuously if memory serves, with an actual chainsaw in hand. You’d have to have been mentally defective, or a member of the mainstream media, to have missed it. And yet, here we are, being warned that la motosierra is just revving up. 

What are we to make of an elitist chattering class that can’t even come up with its own metaphors, never mind muster an original analysis or insight between their guffawing masses? 

For their collectivist edification, Sr. Milei’s chainsaw has already lopped off many a termite-ridden limb from the vast administrative state... including getting rid of government subsidies for state-sponsored news propaganda. And there’s plenty more timber due for the mill in the weeks and months to come. 

Yes, dear reader, fires are indeed being kindled. Swords are being drawn. Only, not in the way the media lapdogs and their political overlords would have you believe. 

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman