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Home » Why should we care how how the Capitol Police or members of Congress felt on January 6th?

Why should we care how how the Capitol Police or members of Congress felt on January 6th?

The New Neo Posted on by

Their therapists should care. Their families and friends should care. But I can’t figure out why the rest of us should – at least, not in the legal, investigative sense of trying to find out what really happened on January 6th and why.

And yet that was certainly one of the major elements of yesterday’s testimony in the Congressional hearings on the matter. Of course, we know that the hearings aren’t really to investigate; they are political theater produced and directed by the Democrats, and the reviews are from their friends in the MSM. But I’m speaking on behalf of the public, and I even mean the Democrat-voting public: why should we care how they felt? It’s irrelevant, although obviously it’s a deliberate way to appeal to people’s emotions and empathy rather than to their logic and judgment.

A person can be part of an event and have a lot of feelings. It doesn’t mean that, in retrospect, those feelings are valid in terms of being an accurate reflection of what was happening that day in the objective sense. But we care less and less and less these days about the objective sense, and when I say “these days” I mean the phenomenon began at least thirty years ago and probably closer to fifty.

I’ve previously described an incident in my life when I recognized this. It happened in the early 90s, when I had gone back to school and was taking one undergraduate course in addition to my graduate courses. I was twenty years or so older than the other students, and we were discussing an incident at the school in which some female students had been offended by something a professor had said, and accused him of sexual inappropriateness. He had been suspended and the case was awaiting adjudication, but I was stunned to learn that all the people in the class who spoke on the matter believed that the students’ perceptions of harassment were all that mattered. No objective standard needed to be applied. It was enough that something he said made them uncomfortable.

His words, however, were not anything that most human beings would find the least bit objectionable. I thought he was being railroaded, and I thought the women who had objected needed professional help to get them to understand that the world didn’t revolve around their perceptions and their needs. When I stood up to say my piece in class I didn’t say it that harshly, but I pointed out that just because a person has a feeling about an incident doesn’t make that feeling objectively true, and that legal matters need to proceed using objective standards that are reasonable.

My words were met with silence and a shrug or two. That was it. Then the class moved on to the next person, who continued in the original vein as though I hadn’t even spoken. It was at that point, thirty years ago, that I realized something had gone very very wrong. I hadn’t been among college-age students for twenty years, but there had been some sort of vast sea change that I didn’t understand at the time.

I think I’ve come to understand it in more recent years, and we’re seeing it bear fruit now in so many ways.

Such as:

Comments

Why should we care how how the Capitol Police or members of Congress <i>felt</i> on January 6th? — 89 Comments

  2. Until they release all the video/audio footage of everything on Jan. 6th and all of us can look through it, crowd source it, it to see what happened, who did what, who said what, everything testi-lied to is just garbage propaganda from a garbage criminal organization.

  3. Their therapists should care. Their families and friends should care.

    Phil McGraw began his life as a conventional office practitioner in partnership with his father. He said he discovered he wasn’t cut out for it because he got so impatient with his clients: “I could usually tell what was up with them in the first few sessions, but you’d spend six months getting nowhere”. He found himself wanting to yell, “Look, here’s your problem: You’re a Jerk!”. So, he left the practice and founded a jury consulting business. It was in the course of that he met Oprah Winfrey.

    I suppose it’s jejune to point out that your friends and family – especially your father – aren’t doing their jobs if they’re not reflecting reality back at you. They should care if they see that your emotions are getting in the way of you fulfilling your inherent and contracted responsibilities. I suspect AOC’s problem has been a deficit of people whose opinion mattered to her who were also willing to say “Stop that, shut up, pull yourself together”.

  4. I’ve previously described an incident in my life when I recognized this.

    All your children are sons, no?

  5. Accidentally saw ABC news segment last week. Donald Trump voice over talking about peaceful, loving crowd Jan 6, while vid of the rioters played. Pretty blatant and disgusting. Too many people are influenced by this type of propaganda.

  6. A long time ago I wrote about what I saw as to how this change happened. I’ll not bore with my rant but just say that what the educational and entertainment establishments have done, over the years, to children’s-young people’s emotional reactions to things in the world is now coming to a head.

  7. I’m sick of the prima donnas. The celebs, sports celebs, politicians and on and on now to the regular people. They are everywhere now.

    In my day you got a fair salary for fair days work. If you got a “good job compliment” it was a plus but the compliment didn’t pay the bills.

    If you felt bad … tuff … buck up!

  8. “Luke, trust your feelings.” I blame Star Wars. Two generations have grown up with Star Wars, have been influenced by Star Wars, and have a complete lack of knowledge of Classical education. A friend of mine, who was on the SW art crew and won an Oscar for the Ewok Movie, and I go round and round about the spiritual, cultural, and political influence of the SW movies. He is beginning to understand the responsibility of the dark side of the films for today’s self-centeredness and concentration on personal feelings just as Smokey Bear and Bambi are largely responsible for the public attitude for forest fire suppression at all costs.

  11. I asked the same question during Officer Chauvin’s trial. The only time I watched, the prosecution produced a string of eye witnesses who were asked how watching Mr. Floyd die made them feel. Imagine how NOT surprised I was when every single one said it was terrible. Do you think that question just a little prejudicial? Not once did I see or hear the defense object.

    I can see how Congress persons can get away with squeezing predjudicial emotions from witnesses, but Chauvin’s trial took place in a supposed court of law, not a congressional clown show.

  12. Inquiring minds want to know:

    Did Officer Dunn ever smoke crack with Hunter ?

  13. They certainly don’t care they stole the election, jailing citizens for peaceful protest, deny American rights to people just were in the capital area.
    The unlawful murder of a former US service veteran.

  14. What better way to control a mob, than to inculcate within its members, the belief that their feelings are the only legitimate determinant of the truth? Followed by incessant propaganda that manipulates members of the tribe’s feelings into certainty as to of what the ‘truth’ consists…

  17. A scientist, who was 70-plus years old, was attending a scientific meeting and entered an elevator. The woman who was already in it asked what floor he wanted. “Ladies lingerie”, he responded, harking back to an old and not all that funny joke dating from the days when department store elevators had actual human operators who knew what was on what floor.

    She reported him for sexual harassment, and the complaint was taken seriously.

  18. They have to talk about feelings. They can’t talk about law, logic, or morals.

  19. ‘I suspect AOC’s problem has been a deficit of people whose opinion mattered to her who were also willing to say “Stop that, shut up, pull yourself together”.’

    And whadaya know! (Right on cue in NYC, IOW is Eric Adams the person AOC has been searchin for all her life….):
    https://nypost.com/2021/07/27/eric-adams-declares-war-on-aocs-socialists/

    + 3 bonuses:
    https://pjmedia.com/columns/bryan-preston/2021/07/28/its-too-late-jenny-democrats-used-the-pandemic-crisis-to-deliberately-destroy-americas-cities-n1465191
    (…though I’d say, “…NOT JUST America’s cities…”)

    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/07/28/voters-are-worried-about-inflation-and-guess-who-theyre-blaming-n1465221

    https://news.yahoo.com/sen-kyrsten-sinema-doesnt-support-184117218.html /
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/bipartisan-coalition-reach-agreement-12-trillion-infrastructure-bill

    And so…has the big pushback begun? The “beginning of the end”? “The end of the beginning”?

  20. This is a typical comment from a lib person i know about the DC police testimony. It’s sickening.

    Men expressing emotions in the most heartfelt testimony. They should be rewarded in generous payments.

  21. AOC says that she thought she was going to be raped on January 6.

    Not even with Hunter Biden’s dick.

  22. AOC sounds just like Ms. Ford describing her ‘false’ encounter with Judge Kavanaugh. What has happen to liberal women in our society in the last 30 years?

  23. Art Deco:

    Yes re sons but I (a) am a woman (b) have many many female friends and acquaintances (c) have female relatives (d) went to school with plenty of women (f) had female clients galore.

    I am very well acquainted with the female mind.

    I understand what you’re getting at. The phenomenon is more common with women than with men. But it is by no means limited to women, and of course it’s not exhibited by all women, either. Now it is societal and especially generational.

  24. fighting soldiers from the sky
    Men who jump and men who die
    These are some of America’s best
    .. … ….
    Green Berets

  25. Art Deco:

    “Caring” and “reflecting reality back at you” are two separate and unrelated things that are not mutually exclusive. Therapists actually are supposed to both care AND to reflect reality back at you, for example. In fact, when I went to school, both things were supposed to be therapists’ prime functions.

    I have a different take on AOC. A lot of people think she’s sincere. I have my doubts that she actually felt anything she describes. I think she’s intensely manipulative and probably lying or certainly exaggerating her feelings for strategic purposes.

  26. Does all the crying and pearl-clutching play to voters?

    I confess I don’t have the fortitude to watch the videos. The photographs plus text are horrible enough.

    Doesn’t look any more authentic than woke college students going on about how they are triggered and feel unsafe.

    But these are LEOs and congressional leaders.

  27. The press wants to sell emotional stories, not what happened but how did your feel when the event happened. In the late 1970’s a friend of mine was a corporate jet pilot who had to land a Lear Jet when the gear would not come down. It was a slow news day and they had to burn off fuel for an hour and a half while the runway was being foamed so it gave the TV folks plenty of time to get set up. My friend slipped his plane in on the foam, everything worked right and they were safe with minimal plane damage. I was talking to him the next day and he was still mad about the microphones shoved in his face and reporters hollering at him how did you “Feel”. The first time he answered he said it felt good to make a safe emergency landing and he was through talking about his part and wanted to thank the fire rescue trucks and the tower for helping him do his job but they kept at him, how do you feel? He told me the next day when we were having coffee that the wanted to use a lot of F-words and tell them where to go because he really did not have time to have a lot of feelings doing his job putting the plane on the ground and then he felt good when they were safe and that was enough for him. Not all the ‘feelings’ stuff.

  28. Yes re sons but I (a) am a woman

    Yes, but you’re not personally implicated in how any fragment of the younger generation of women has turned out. Gives you a more detached perspective. In re young men, both the Official Idea and regnant peer cultures inhibit the development of certain personal short-comings. They don’t do this in re young women.

    I think she’s intensely manipulative and probably lying or certainly exaggerating her feelings for strategic purposes.

    Which suggests she’s been getting away with that for…about 25 years. People fail in educating their daughters, often not realizing it as girls are risk-averse and don’t end up on the police blotter.

  31. I believe that I heard on NPR this morning (when half-asleep) that the 1/6 hearings “may continue next month”! I have been unable to locate those words again, but if real, they are a sure tip-off as to what is going on.

    They are a strong indication to me that today’s kangaroo court had zero purpose beyond evaluating public reaction to a number of cherry-picked sob stories. This answers the question posed even among some leftists – what is the purpose of the hearings and who are the beneficiaries of them, given that the DOJ is conducting a “real” investigation!

    This says to me that the DOJ has told the administration and the Democrats in Congress that there will be few if any serious crimes chargeable to the prisoners, a fact that will be embarrassing when measured against the harsh conditions of their incarcerations. Pelosi, and her primarily, is trying to craft a message of terror and angst based on weak sauce, in order to sustain the fiction of an insurrection… as Neo says above based on feelings!

    I will be attending a social gathering in a few days where I expect to be asked my reaction to these heart-wrenching stories from the four police officers. I will say candidly that I paid little attention to what were obviously practiced dramatics ala Christine Blasey-Ford. Then I will ask in turn for their reaction to the tales told in the hearing by the protesters…

  33. Artfldgr:

    I know plenty of men who are dominated by feelings rather than logic.

    And I know plenty of women who are very logic-based in their reasoning.

    However – as I wrote in an earlier comment – the first mode (feelings predominant) is more common in women than in men.

  34. Art Deco:

    You were writing about whether I had sons or daughters, and I was pointing out that that was irrelevant to whether I understand the feelings-dominant phenomenon.

    And it wouldn’t matter to me if it affected my generation or not – I happen to have noticed it a lot in my generation, too, although more in the younger generation. In the younger generation, men are hardly immune. It’s much more common among young men than older men, in my observation.

  35. “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell”

    ? Carl Sandburg

  36. I know plenty of men who are dominated by feelings rather than logic.
    And I know plenty of women who are very logic-based in their reasoning.

    I don’t.

  38. Yep, the policemen might want to share their feelings with a therapist.

    We all know they probably had a lot of emotions as the incursion was in progress, but how about the way they did their jobs? Were they professional? Did they follow their training? Was the leadership adequate? Was the pre-planning good? Were the tactics of the attackers new and different or something they had trained for? What went wrong? What did they need that they didn’t have? How did they eventually gain control of the situation? What went bright? These and many other questions should have been the object of the inquiry. That the policemen allowed themselves to be used as emotional tools of the Democrats reflects very badly on their professionalism.

    When we investigate an accident in aviation, we know the emotions of the pilots may be high. Their mental state is material, but that is not what primarily needs to be investigated. The investigation is to find weak spots in in the training, preparation, and execution of the machine and pilots. Facts about what went wrong and why need to be determined. Only then can corrections be made.

    Until the investigative committee starts looking for facts that will lead them to avoiding such a debacle in the future, the committee is a waste of time and money.

  39. I don’t think there is any question that Feelings-based “arguments” have become more common–even dominant–in our society. For example, I saw a billboard for some financial institution: “Feel more secure about your retirement plan”….not BE more secure, just FEEL more secure.

  41. “She was not in the Capitol building. She never encountered any rioters.” Absolutely true.

    Any “journalist” who does not hold public officials for lying like this is simply trying to accelerate the narrative spread.

    When the show-tears began at the show-trial someone with real cojones should have asked for a recess while the weepies got themselves under control.

    Just start calling BS BS & then fight it tooth & nail because sure enough a real fight won’t be long in coming…and while I doubt AOC is ever in danger of being raped, she might well face other threats & Eric Adams is putting his hand up in NYC as being one of them. Good for him.

  42. My local paper has a picture of Dunn wiping a tear from his eye and captioned with “I thought I was going to die”. Horsepucky.
    My best friend, a friend of 50 something years, a moderate Conservative, hated Trump but voted for him twice, still believes that the officer was hit by a protester, that there was a lot of violence. He won’t change.

  43. I’d like to hear all about how the Capitol Policeperson, whose name we still don’t officially know, felt when he shot Ashlii Babbit in the back of the neck without warning or provocation.

    Any tears? Did he fear he was going to die or be raped?

    No?

  44. @Barry Meislin:

    “Or she could “just” be a psychopath. (A “sincere” psychopath(?)….).
    Wouldn’t be the first one, certainly.”

    That’s my cue!

    In the case of AOC we’re probably just seeing unconstrained Machiavellianism. The female of the species excels at this. It was long a polite social convention to pretend that this was not so and to pedestalise the Unfairer Sex whilst ensuring that they had to be Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice regardless of their true inclinations. Nowadays we don’t police them at all, but Denial is still doing well and is undeniably a River in Africa.

    The wider Feelings Stuff is part of this. Obviously a good chunk of it is Women Run Amok… Some smaller fraction is two generations of Soy Men raised by Single Mothers. But really what it gets down to is… IT WORKS.

    In a world ruled more by women than men today, putting on the waterworks wins. And given that anyone involved in successful manipulation of Power must by definition be Machiavellian and Manipulative (naive Clown Cuckservatives Excepted maybe) then why, golly gee… they’re going to use the levers available to them. And this will remain true until the next person who tries the ‘Muh Feelings’ approach gets his or her face publicly slapped followed by a dispassionate verbal dismantling. So who will go first?

    Manners and Decorum will be the Death of the Right.

  45. Zaphod:

    Perhaps you haven’t heard of Dave Sim, a Canadian comic book artist, who single-handedly sparked the indie comic boom in the 80s and by 2004 finished the longest self-contained run of a comic — 300 issues, 6000 pages — in history.

    In the process of remaining true to his convictions and being an outspoken cuss, he said many impolitic things about women and got himself ostracized by most of the comic book community as a misogynist. Here’s a sample:
    ___________________________________________

    Emotion, whatever the Female Void would have you believe, is not a more Exalted State than is Thought. In point of fact, I think Emotion is animalistic, serpent-brain stuff. Animals do not Think, but I am reasonably certain that they have Emotions. ‘Eating this makes me Happy.’ ‘When my fur is all wet and I am cold, it makes me Sad.” “Ooo! Puppies!’ ‘It makes me Excited to Chase the Ball!’ Reason, as any husband can tell you, doesn’t stand a chance in an argument with Emotion… this was the fundamental reason, I believe, that women were denied the vote for so long.

    –Dave Sim
    http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/sim.html
    ___________________________________________

    He’s still in ill favor, but has cast such a long and illustrious shadow on the medium since the 70s that he can’t be totally ignored. He took writing and drawing to a whole ‘nother level. He is also a bit crazy.

  46. My perception is that Feelings expression by men is highly culture-dependent.

    There’s a distinction between expressing feelings and having feelings regulate your actions or your thinking. I have an in law who is a great deal more expressive than I could ever be. He’s also a retired engineer. At the end of the day, his judgment is sensible and he accomplishes more than I can in a week.

  48. @art+deco:

    “There’s a distinction between expressing feelings and having feelings regulate your actions or your thinking. I have an in law who is a great deal more expressive than I could ever be.”

    A classical education had a purpose, after all: Mastery of Self and the various tools of Reasoning and Expression.

    We all Feel. Any Psychopaths present excepted. No child should win a prize for Raw Feeling.

  49. I started writing this and got very delayed, and then saw Zaphod’s (8:19pm) post. I think we’re on the same page though I don’t see the need to select out women.
    ______

    I think she’s [AOC] intensely manipulative and probably lying or certainly exaggerating her feelings for strategic purposes. — Neo

    I see some of this filtering down to average citizens, though it is tough to know who, when, and where. So us nice respectful folks must respond with deference. I sense a game theory there.
    ______

    Neo’s primary point was about objective fact seeking in the public sphere (here, here!) and the secondary point was about the emotionalizing of our discourse. The latter struck a chord here, me included. Her anecdote about her university prof. then connects the emotional gambit to one of offense. “Student X was offended by his presentation.”

    I want to say unequivocally, that at least with respect to political discourse, this attitude is completely absurd. If there is meaningful political discourse with contention, then it is highly likely that someone will be offended. To suggest that anyone self-censor because of some possible offense, is to gut the process. (Which is the point perhaps?)

    It is a bit different when the only purpose of a particular element of speech is to offend. Although, Democrats do this, All–The–Time. They do it from their perch of moral superiority, so it’s OK. But if a person is making a point of principle or principled politics, then we have a right to demand adult responses instead of childish foot stomping.

  50. @huxley:

    Reading some Sims quotes. He’s my kind of misogynist… but doesn’t let himself be limited by One Big Thing. No Siree. I get the feeling that he wakes up every bright and cloudless morning, downs an espresso and thinks to himself “Time to fly a bit closer to that Sun”, glues on the wings, and launches himself off the back deck. Excelsior!

    “What was the essence of Jesus’ philosophy but the reformation of Judaism as constituted in his time? “You consume an elephant and excrete a gnat,” he scolded. In regarding the centuries-long work that Merged Voids had committed upon the Word of God, layers of interpretation on layers of interpretation, the Word itself so obscured that little remained but the Profession of Interpretation itself, he had attempted to inject a note of sanity into the proceedings. “You know, if you just say do unto others as you would have them do unto you, you could probably knock a good four hundred pages out of the rule book right there.” What he failed to recognise was that the Letter of the Law is the province of the Merged Void. It is only the Male Light that is concerned with its Spirit.

    Too sensible.

    Too much Light.

    Bang Bang Bang”

    Now if you want to read for purposes of ‘Balance’ some highly-literate male femcuckery with serious pedigree, I recommend Robert Graves’ The Case for Xanthippe:

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/4334072

    Might or might not be available online without paywall. Think I first saw it in the Oxford Anthology of English Essays (ed. Gross) but not sure. Made a (wrong) impression on my youngish cucked brain at the time.

  51. We all Feel. Any Psychopaths present excepted. — Zaphod

    I’m no expert, but I’ve heard that psychopaths have plenty of feelings. They just don’t have any cares about other people’s feelings.

  52. Maybe the white visigothic Conquistadora/ Inquisitora has rape fantasies because her ancestors committed it on their victims

  54. “Nice? It’s the only thing,” said the Water Rat solemnly as he leant forward for his stroke. “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,” he went on dreamily: “messing—about—in—boats; messing—”

    Wronggggg!!!!!! Steering threads OT kicks the crap out of messing around in boats.

  55. @avi:

    “Maybe the white visigothic Conquistadora/ Inquisitora has rape fantasies because her ancestors committed it on their victims”

    Now you’ve really Gone and Done It.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR7hp0613QY

    Look on the Bright Side of Life.

    PS: A Woman with Rape Fantasies… Mister say it ain’t so!

  56. Zaphod:

    Seems like you’ve taken duck-to-water with Sim! He’s worth it, though he is a bit crazy, probably more than.

    One might say he can by it honestly. He may be the world’s most accomplished acid casualty. His whole quest to create a 300 issue run of comics was inspired by a period of doing enough LSD to win a vacation in a mental hospital.

    However, like Joan of Arc, he emerged from his voyage stronger and well-equipped to take the world on his own terms. He largely succeeded.

  57. Because the hysteria of the political world is bleeding over into the legal world, and pretty soon we will have a substitute for legal process, that is emotion-based and decided by public sentiment. That’s my take.

    The Jan 6th hearings are a good example. All this teary-eyed pageantry and after-testimony bonhomie. There might have been a very slight chance that a 1/6 trial defendant could get a fair decision. Now? Not gonna happen, if the trial is in DC. And moving venue to a more sympathetic one? What judge is going to say that DC can’t provide jurors for a fair trial? What DC judge is going to allow a fair trial in the first place, after all this drama?

    Wait for all the vaccine lawsuits when the mandates start getting traction within both private companies and government agencies. Of course they’re illegal. But: Who cares! 20 gazillion lawsuits later you’ll still be getting stuck, Jack, and liking it. Because the legal system can be swamped into gridlock, but the program is still going to get pushed, good and hard. I’ve got your injunction right here, Pal.

  58. These are not real police officers. They are security guards. If you know any real police officers, check with them. Those I know aren’t quotable in polite company when it comes to these guys. I can’t imagine how any of these Nancys would stand up to a car-full of ruffians, a domestic disturbance with blood flowing, a post-Rodney King riot/celebration, or a shooting in a nightclub…. These guys wouldn’t make a pimple on a real cop’s…. you know how that finishes.

  59. Aggie said:
    “Because the hysteria of the political world is bleeding over into the legal world, and pretty soon we will have a substitute for legal process, that is emotion-based and decided by public sentiment. That’s my take.”

    I’ve been reading “The Washing of the Spears” lately. The history of the rise and fall of the Zulu nation in the 1800s. What Aggie spoke of and both cancel culture and CRT bring up echos of the Zulu practice called “smelling out.” People were said to be unknowingly inhabited by evil spirits and only the chief or a witchdoctor could “smell out” the evil in them and then they would be killed to save the tribe.

  61. @Zaphod:

    I’ve just reached the part where Cetshwayo became the head of the Zulu and the book takes a detour into things in the Boer and British areas then. The book came to my attention in a sentence in a piece by Sarah Hoyt at her blog. That nowadays is how I find out about many interesting books, someone mentions it and I look it up.

  62. @geoffb:

    Earliest history I learned as a small child was Dingaan’s Kraal and Blood River. And I don’t have a drop of Afrikaner blood. Necessary knowledge if you lived there though. And never leaves you, for better or worse.

    As the Lying Lyricist said, “You Have to be Carefully Taught”… Indeed you do, if you fancy keeping on breathing and having grandchildren.

    “That nowadays is how I find out about many interesting books, someone mentions it and I look it up.”

    Likewise. Have gotten some great author recommendations from this here blog. Most recent being Loren Eiseley.

    I’ve shilled for Deneys Reitz before. A well-bred and literate man who wrote of his experiences as a Boer Commando and later in politics with General Smuts.

  63. @Zaphod:

    Thanks, I’ll check him out. Not that I lack for reading material as I married a librarian. Books-R-Us.

  65. Emotions…
    No doubt O’Brien felt Oh-So-Sad when he realized that he had to send Winston Smith to Room 101.

    (That it was Winston’s own fault, of course, no doubt made O’Brien feel quite a bit better.)

  66. AOC sounds just like Ms. Ford describing her ‘false’ encounter with Judge Kavanaugh

  67. These are not real police officers. They are security guards.

    One of them is a DC police officer. The other two are useful tools. Whether they’re police officers or security guards, they’re supposed to be trained and to know how to stand their ground. What these three are in the business of doing is injuring the reputation of the Capitol Police &c. fin service to a Democratic Party PR stunt. (I have a suspicion that the Capitol Police is an underperforming agency given the man-land ratio of their geographic jurisdiction and given that one of their number offed a member of the public for no discernable reason).

  68. AOC sounds just like Ms. Ford describing her ‘false’ encounter with Judge Kavanaugh

    What’s with the scare quotes? There’s no reason to believe Ford has ever met Brett Kavanaugh or Mark Judge. Every piece of information not emanating from her mouth undermined her account.

  70. I do think there’s an interesting point here about sex differences. Rather than putting it in terms of reason vs. emotion, consider the different ways in which the sexes handle conflict. Men more or less naturally turn to physical violence, when or if the conflict is great enough. Women do not. Instead, they use words and non-violent behavior which is a sort of personality-wrestling. When a person of either sex goes bad, he or she is likely to use the available tools in a manner that others consider illegitimate. An unscrupulous belligerent man punches somebody. An unscrupulous belligerent woman attacks with words and manipulation. Either will continue unless or until stopped.

    One aspect of what’s going on today is the predominance of unscrupulous belligerent women, many or most, but not all, rather young. For various reasons, some mentioned above, they have not been made to stop what actually can accurately be called their emotional violence. And they keep doing it because it works.

  71. Let’s all raise a Bloody Mary to Margaret Thatcher?

    (Or maybe pray for the souls of certain Democratic Party mayoresses—oh, and mayors, too; mayors, too—of, um, certain American cities, who appear to enjoy immensely having proxies do the violence for them…unless, of course, I’ve missed something along the way…)

  72. I would like to see some testimony by Portland OR policemen about standing in front of an ANTIFA crowd while they scream and spit at you. It would be an interesting contrast. Maybe McCarthy’s hearing could invite a couple.

  73. It should go without saying, but in case it doesn’t: I’m generalizing, and obviously women can be violent and men manipulative.

    Also: lying is a tool readily used by the kind of unscrupulous belligerent woman I’ve described.

  74. Are feelings coming to the rarified top of the sports world, as well? First Naomi at the French Open Tennis, and now Simone at the Olympics.
    Self control / mental strength is what separates the very great athletes from run-of-the-mill great athletes (of which there are many). Now we’re supposed to feel sorry for those who cave under pressure.
    Maybe they can work that into the final score.

  75. “I know plenty of men who are dominated by feelings rather than logic.
    And I know plenty of women who are very logic-based in their reasoning.” – Neo

    “I don’t.” Art Deco

    That’s actually a rather remarkable characterization of AD’s personal social circle.
    I first began questioning the stereotypes (although not the statistics) about male and female personalities when I realized how many of my friends of both sexes (biological, not gender constructs) were counter-stereotype, that is, in the tails of the normal distributions.
    I also know plenty who are smack-dab in the middle of the curves.

    Acquiring friends and having working relationships is somewhat culturally dependent (as david said, although I agree with Art on expressing vs having feelings), so to some extent our circles are self-selective, but to be totally exclusive of the outliers is unusual.

    Sad to say, any discussion of Feelings Uber Alles conjures up this classic clip for me.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv2Jrtale1o

  76. @ JJ “When we investigate an accident in aviation, we know the emotions of the pilots may be high. Their mental state is material, but that is not what primarily needs to be investigated. The investigation is to find weak spots in in the training, preparation, and execution of the machine and pilots. Facts about what went wrong and why need to be determined. Only then can corrections be made.

    Until the investigative committee starts looking for facts that will lead them to avoiding such a debacle in the future, the committee is a waste of time and money.”

    The assumption that Democrats want to make any corrections to what happened so as to avoid future debacles is baseless and without evidence.

  77. @ Zaphod – thanks for the Graves’ Xanthippe citation. I could only read the preview, so will see if I have the entire essay in one of my books.
    His placing of intuition and reason (not rationality!) into the appropriate relationship for writing poetry is one reason he is among the few modern poets whose work I actually like.

  78. I’m puzzled by a lot of arguments over thinking vs. feeling. The stereotypical standoff is between one person who insists that feelings are the only things that matter, arguing with another who insists that feelings are useless and probably should be ignored. WTF? Don’t we all pretty much know that feelings are quite real and sometimes important and valuable, but not the same as thinking, and that for some purposes thinking should predominate?

    Obviously it’s easier to ignore or denigrate the sort of feelings we associate with other people while insisting that our own are important. It’s also obvious that, as a general rule, men are comfortable with angry and aggressive feelings while women are comfortable with sad or gentle feelings–so we see women putting feelings on a pedestal as long as they’re sad/gentle and men putting them on a pedestal as long as they’re angry/aggressive, and both ignoring the hard work of dispassionate thought when in the grip of strong feeling.

    Some people who claim to be logical are perfectly willing to deny the real, palpable presence of feeling in both themselves and companions in whom they are ostensibly interested in finding common ground for living and cooperating. That’s not logical, it’s just blind. On the flip side, it’s fashionable to claim that how we feel about the result of an arithmetical operation can somehow override the logical truth, which is idiotic.

    We both think and feel. Why don’t we just get a grip and deal with that reality?

  79. “The assumption that Democrats want to make any corrections to what happened so as to avoid future debacles is baseless and without evidence.”

    I’m not sure it’s a question of WANT as much of a question of CAN. I was reading a blog post somewhere else where the poster was bitching about having to wear a mask again and blaming the “jackasses” who don’t get vaccinated. All the commenters essentially joined in to echo him and it was clear that ALL of them only thought about the COVID/vaccine issue in terms of “CDC = good” and “Stupid Trump supporters won’t get the shot.”

    They’re sheep congratulating themselves on how smart and independent-minded they are.

    Mike

  81. Wendy Laubach:

    Of course we think and feel. I don’t think anyone here is denying that. But the feelings of people in Congress, or the Capitol Police, on January 6th are not a guide to decisions such as those connected with evaluating January 6th in the legal sense, or in deciding who perpetrated it, or what could be done in the future to prevent it. Even in a courtroom, feelings of the victims or the victims’ family members are only allowed to be aired in the sentencing phase, for example. In a therapy situation, however, feelings are very important – although they must also be challenged by objective reality.

  82. Maybe instead of questioning “feelings”, THE question (or at least A question) that should be asked is, why is someone—a purported LEO, no less—who supported the burning, trashing and destruction of Minneapolis in a position where he is purportedly “protecting” the Capitol?
    And another question: why are this officer’s feelings of any importance and relevance, given the fact that he is in favor of burning, trashing and destroying as long as this is done in “the right context” and by “the right people”?

    The only conclusion: that Officer Dunn is the face of Democratic Party law enforcement. Now and in the future. (Especially given that Pelosi has sent these purported LEOs—her special forces, her personal guard—to various places around the US to “maintain law and order”??)

    Which leads to another question: What gives the Democratic Party, which has been supporting and encouraging the extraordinary violence committed by BLM and antifa for over a year now, the right to investigate anything that has to do with law and order (or even just law)?

    (Looks like a good day for rhetorical questions….)

  83. That’s actually a rather remarkable characterization of AD’s personal social circle.

    I have a cousin in Alliance, Ohio who has hot-head tendencies. Don’t think he does crazy things anymore; just vents. He’s pretty singular in my family.

    If you’re talking about women in my social circle, they perform mundane tasks satisfactorily. They perform satisfactorily when there are discrete discernible goals with robust performance metrics. They understand, for example, when they are running low on cash. They perform satisfactorily when they are doing familiar tasks, complex or simple. What they don’t do is think through something when there is emotional freight attached, or when their personal self-understanding is at stake, or when reality is not hitting them over the head. My grandmother was prudent by default; she was also an introverted and phlegmatic woman. I’ve also known women who think quite clearly when they don’t have a script. They differed in their style and sensibility, but they were all battle-axes; not rude women, but women for whom being in charge, setting goals, and organizing their environment was their default setting. I don’t know ‘plenty’ of battle-axes or ‘plenty’ of introverted and phlegmatic women.

  84. There’s no reason to believe Ford has ever met Brett Kavanaugh or Mark Judge. Every piece of information not emanating from her mouth undermined her account.

    Agree 100%

    I am just amazed how easily the statement, ‘I thought I was going to get raped’ is taking seriously by the AOC and Ms. Ford’s of the world, and they suffer no consequences. It is a lie the minute it leaves their mouth.

  85. I generally like seeing or listening to Tucker Carlson but it always bothers me when he asks a guest, “How does that make you feel?” He does it all the time. But it does not much matter. I want to hear what the guest thinks about the situation, how it impacted their lives, not their state of emotions.

  87. “But the feelings of people in Congress, or the Capitol Police, on January 6th are not a guide to decisions”–Oh, I agree completely, and I agreed with your post. I suppose I was responding more to comments along the lines of Art Deco’s, and to conversations I run into in real life. Yes, the hearings in Congress were absurd and pitiful.

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