I was reading some Roman history the other day, specifically about the short reign of Elagabalus, the first truly foreign emperor. He showed up in Rome from Syria wearing eyeliner and silk robes. Before long he was dressed as a women and having people call him queen. As Gibbon put it, “Elagabalus abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures and ungoverned fury.”

Elagabalus was not the first queer emperor, but he was probably the most flamboyantly queer. Romans were indifferent to homosexuality as long as it remained private and the respectable public man was in the dominant position. The submissive role was for slaves and lower class boys used by the elite. Pillow biters had no place in the Roman elite. Elagabalus was assassinated, his corpse dragged naked through the streets and then thrown into the Tiber

The ancients were slightly more tolerant of homosexuality than modern Europeans, but not by a whole lot. That is, until the Homintern got control of the culture. We have suddenly lurched from mildly intolerant to, well, complete intolerant. Intolerant of traditional views of human sexuality. Everywhere you look, it seems that the gay mafia is waging the finger at us, warning that we are violating some taboo.

A friend sent this to me the other day.

The Turing test detects if a machine can truly think like a human. The Bechdel Test detects gender bias in fiction. If you were to mash the two together to create a particularly messy Venn diagram, the overlap shall henceforth be known as the Ex Machina Zone.

In writer/director Alex Garland’s thought-provoking new film—out Friday—we meet Ava (Alicia Vikander), an artificially-intelligent robot. Ava’s creator, genius tech billionaire Nathan (Oscar Isaac), has asked his employee Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) to determine whether Ava’s thinking is indistinguishable from a human’s. Until she meets Caleb, Ava has only ever met her maker and one other woman. (Hence the failing of the Bechdel Test, which stipulates that a movie must feature two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.) Her existence, and her ability to learn how to interact, is a fascinating study of what makes us human.

It’s also a compelling, if problematic, look at the interactions between men and women—or at least that’s what I thought.

The word “problematic” is always a clue that you are dealing with a lunatic. Fanatics love that word. It has that Torquemada vibe they like so much. On the one hand it is banal, but on the other is the threat that you better fall in line or else. A quick look up of the authoress conforms that she is, at the minimum, a minor figure in the Homintern.

This story from the NYTimes explains how homosexual pressure groups are gnawing through the fiber of the culture.

The stacks of Supreme Court briefs filed on both sides of the same-sex marriage cases to be heard this month are roughly the same height. But they are nonetheless lopsided: There are no major law firms urging the justices to rule against gay marriage.

Leading law firms are willing to represent tobacco companies accused of lying about their deadly products, factories that spew pollution, and corporations said to be complicit in torture and murder abroad. But standing up for traditional marriage has turned out to be too much for the elite bar. The arguments have been left to members of lower-profile firms.

In dozens of interviews, lawyers and law professors said the imbalance in legal firepower in the same-sex marriage cases resulted from a conviction among many lawyers that opposition to such unions is bigotry akin to racism. But there were economic calculations, too. Law firms that defend traditional marriage may lose clients and find themselves at a disadvantage in hiring new lawyers.

Now, the nuts at the Times think this is just swell, but it used to be called a culture of fear. The sort of thing that went on in Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Russia. People are altering their behavior, foregoing their rights and privileges as citizens, out of fear.

This is not a conspiracy, of course. I just like the analogy because it is useful. The fact is we are seeing a mass conversion, forced upon the people by their rulers. The people in charge want to stamp out traditional customs and beliefs. Unleashing mentally disturbed deviants to harass respectable people that fall afoul of the new ways is a time tested way of converting the people.

Elagabalus was not assassinated because he was a homosexual or even that he was a degenerate homosexual. In addition to his sexual peculiarities, he also thought he was a deity and was a devotee of the cult of Elagabal. He created a new god to rule over the pantheon of Roman gods and started turning all of the Roman temples into temple to Elegabal. How long before the Homintern starts forcing Christian churches to marry homosexuals?

This will not end well.

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times.

–Lincoln at Lyceum

In their ongoing obsession with destroying the Pale Penis People, the Left has been tub thumping about domestic violence. I keep seeing these bizarre commercials featuring athletes warning that at any minute, you could be a wife beater. Of course, every sports team and college now races to get ahead of the mob when they have an incident.

Like the proliferation of rape hoaxes, these mob frenzies encourage the worst behavior. Young women have been stalking famous men since Grog got famous for besting Trog in the poo flinging contest. In modern times, every hotel hosting a team is littered with girls trying to bag an athlete. Giving them the right to cry rape with impunity is just asking for trouble. Giving them the right to cry “domestic violence” is even worse.

The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) Police Department announced Wednesday that the 24-year-old woman who told police she had been assaulted Saturday by now-former Alabama defensive tackle Jonathan Taylor has recanted her statements and subsequently been arrested herself.

The woman initially told police an argument with Taylor had become physical with officers observing “minor injuries” to her neck that the woman said were a result of the altercation. Taylor was arrested and charged with domestic violence third-degree assault and domestic violence third-degree criminal mischief. Nick Saban later announced that Taylor, who had already been dismissed from Georgia following still-pending domestic violence charges, was removed from the Alabama football program.

Per al.com, a TPD statement says the woman contacted police Monday to recant her earlier statements, telling officers Taylor had not harmed her. She was interviewed by officers Tuesday and again said she had lied about being injured by Taylor. The woman was arrested and charged with false reporting to law enforcement before posting bond and being released.

The TPD statement indicates the charges against Taylor will be reviewed. An Alabama spokesperson told al.com Wednesday he was “unsure” if the development might allow Taylor a chance to rejoin the Crimson Tide.

Look, we can’t know what happened here. What we do know is you should not be punishing people before you know if they are guilty. Mobs don’t accept that and that’s how you end up with the wrong guy swinging from the tree. It’s worse than that, of course. It threatens the very idea of civilization.

When men take it in their heads to day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so; the innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law in every shape, alike with the guilty, fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded. But all this even, is not the full extent of the evil.–By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained.–Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed–I mean the attachment of the People. Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this Government cannot last. By such things, the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it; and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak, to make their friendship effectual. At such a time and under such circumstances, men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric, which for the last half century, has been the fondest hope, of the lovers of freedom, throughout the world.

I’m not a huge fan of Lincoln, but he knew the risks of letting fanatics gain the upper hand.

David Brooks fills the William Safire chair at the Times. That means he fills the role of “good conservative”, as imaged by the Left. That means he will disagree with orthodoxy, but always avoiding anything that may vex his paymasters. His job is to put a little shine on their otherwise dreary conventional liberalism.

Since most of what’s important has been ruled off-limits, Brooks has to root around for something about which he can write in a non-liberal way. I don’t think you can call Brooks a conservative. He’s more of a faculty lounge elitist. He may think his coevals are nuts, but he’ll take them over this guy any day.

Last week he had this up and for some reason people were discussing it. Here is the opening graph:

Several years ago, Doug Lemov began studying videos of excellent teachers. He focused not on their big strategies but on their microgestures: How long they waited before calling on students to answer a question (to give the less confident students time to get their hands up); when they paced about the classroom and when they stood still (while issuing instructions, to emphasize the importance of what’s being said); how they moved around the room toward a student whose mind might be wandering.

This is classic Brooks. He starts with a reference to some obscure guy tickling the feet of managerial class types. Then he touches on the high points so you believe he has spent a lot of time on the subject and then it is off to the usual stuff about the usual stuff. That means lots of catch phrases and new age word combinations.

The managerial class is adopting their own meta-language. I blame the MBA schools for most of it, but it has an internal momentum now. For example, later in the piece he writes:

Since it is easier to think deductively, most people try to turn cloud problems into clock problems, but a few people are able to look at a complex situation, grasp the gist and clarify it by naming what is going on.

Such people tend to possess negative capacity, the ability to live with ambiguity and not leap to premature conclusions. They can absorb a stream of disparate data and rest in it until they can synthesize it into one trend, pattern or generalization.

I have a 1% IQ and I have no idea what he is getting at, at least with any certainty. Maybe he means that some people are big idea guys and others are “make the big ideas work” guys. The phrase “negative capacity” is a phrase without meaning, at least in English.

We can all think of many other skills that are especially valuable right now:

Making nonhuman things intuitive to humans. This is what Steve Jobs did.

This is classic signalling. We’re suppose to believe that before Steve Jobs, we were all staggering around like zombies, banging into one another.

Purpose provision. Many people go through life overwhelmed by options, afraid of closing off opportunities. But a few have fully cultivated moral passions and can help others choose the one thing they should dedicate themselves to.

I’m at a loss as to what this is supposed to mean.

Opposability. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” For some reason I am continually running across people who believe this is the ability their employees and bosses need right now.

I doubt Brooks knows many plumbers or computer programmers. In fields where there is a tangible work product, holding the right answer in mind is what the boss needs right now.

Cross-class expertise. In a world dividing along class, ethnic and economic grounds some people are culturally multilingual. They can operate in an insular social niche while seeing it from the vantage point of an outsider.

Is it possible for someone to be more insular than David Brooks and his coevals at the Times? Even monks in a monastery mix it up with the hoi polloi more than the trust fund babies at the Times.

When I started this post, I was going to riff on the general crackpottery about new ways of thinking, but the weird use of language got me side tracked. If you are ever in a room with these people, it is like being the one zebra without stripes. But, that’s the point. You’re not supposed to feel like you belong unless you belong.

We are in the consolidation phase now. The managerial class is closing ranks and blowing the bridges and tunnels connecting them with the rest of us. If you find yourself on the wrong side of the river when the bridge is blown, you’re left behind. That’s why the people who read David Brooks read David Brooks. They need to know which way the herd is going. Maybe the Canadians have the right idea.

Last week the queer website Gawker bagged another crime-thinker when they “outed” Razib Khan as he was about to take up a space on the NYTimes website. Apparently it was assisted by the in-house racist of the NYTimes, Jamelle Bouie. That’s not surprising. The dumbest employee of the NYTimes is probably the best person to be their ambassador to the Gawker-verse.

As an aside, I always wonder how guys like Bouie and TN Coates live with themselves. They have to know they are ornaments and not taken seriously by their owners. None of the trust fund types running the Times and the Atlantic have any interest in what these guys are saying or doing. I guess it beats working the drive through.

Anyway, as Derb pointed out, it was a bit shocking to see the Times hiring someone like Khan in the first place. The religion of anti-racism pretty much precludes any discussion of genetics beyond the sort of stuff that turns up in grammar school text books. It just shows that the people at the NYTimes are completely unaware of what goes on outside their bubble.

Let me just say that I have read Khan for years and I enjoy his work. I don’t know him, but I suspect he and I would not get along very well. Therefore, my appreciation of him is purely intellectual. He is simply one of the best genetics bloggers/writers on earth. You cannot have an interest in population genetics and not read Razib Khan.

The fact that Gawker now has a veto over hiring at the NYTimes is not entirely surprising. One of the things about these leftists is they always end up handing power to the worst elements in their cult. From The Reign of Terror forward the pattern has always been the same. The movement grows increasingly fanatical until control is in the hands of psychotic lunatics.

The reason for this is that utopian religions have no natural limit. There’s no line that reads, “This is enough.” Christianity has those lines. Judaism has those lines. Once you do certain things, show you believe certain things, you are pious enough. Built into the religion is an upper bound and a caution about trying to go beyond it. The Catholic Church burned more than a few heretics for trying to immanentize eschaton.

On the Left, no such limit exists. They are premised on the firm belief that there is a way to arrange things just the right way to create heaven on earth. They don’t call it that, but the echos are there in discussion of health care or poverty programs, for example. Obama spent three years talking about his plan to have more people on government health services while also lowering the cost, a mathematical impossibility.

The dynamic that evolves is one where adherents compete with one another over who is the most pious. Since there’s no objective way to measure piety and no defined limit to piety, a weird race to the bottom ensues.The only way to “prove” yourself is to be more fanatical than the next guy. The following guy has to do more.

During the Reign of Terror, fear of being branded a counter-revolutionary led moderate men to embrace violence against their fellows. The result was an escalation of violence. The Nazis and Bolsheviks went through similar period of fervor during which members were purged and alleged enemies murdered. The Kmer Rouge is probably the most grisly example of how this process can quickly spiral into madness.

I think we’re seeing something similar happen with Progressives. I’m old enough to remember when respectable liberals would not be caught dead in the same room with a guy like Al Sharpton, for example. The ranting lunatics of MSNBC would have been confined to public access cable, not given their own nationwide platform. The face of Progressive America has grown increasing gnarled and ugly over the last two decades.

Now here we are with Gawker running the HR department of the NYTimes. If there are humans more odious than those who work at Gawker, I am unaware of them. These are the lowest of the low. Yet, the trust fund babies at the NYTimes fear them. Entertainment liberals tremble at the mention of Gawker. They have become the Sturmabteilung of the Progressive movement.

Handing authority of any kind to sociopaths is a terrible idea and it never ends well. The Obama coalition has always been fragile because it is a coalition of anti-social misfits and cultural anarchists. Turning over party discipline to sadists and borderline psychotics like Nick Denton is throwing a gas on the fire. Whether or not the remaining sensible elements of the Progressive church can take back control of their thing is unknown.

I’m not optimistic.