Magical Mystery Tour

OK, roll up.

• The short-lived experiment with women-only subway cars, via Ephemeral New York.
• Two from Shark-fu of Angry Black Bitch:
1. The Amish are coming! and why some Missourians are freaking (my take is that some parts of said Missourians' hindbrains recognize that that is their involuntary future.  I could be wrong, of course. [grin]);

   Most folks who speak of building a Christian society…and yes, the Amish are Christians…are really talking about building a society around their specific version of Christianity.
   
   Talk of bringing organized prayer to public schools is really a call to bring their kind of prayer to those classrooms. Trust that the same people ranting about that shit would get litigious as hell if their Baptist child came home and tossed up a prayer at bedtime for Mary to pray for them.

   (I've written bits to that effect myself.)
2. Thinking about exceptionalism...and striving.

   It is that lack of examination…that serf mentality crying out that we dare not annoy the rich lest they toss us off their lands…that lack of competitive spirit being applied to those areas that need work...it's that shit that makes claims of exceptionalism a joke.

• Daisy at Daisy's Dead Air on feminism's relationship with the State:

  Self-described feminists ran to the state, to the patriarchy itself, to local police forces and courts that had never given a shit about women, to punish other men. Without apology. In fact, quite proudly. No political equivocations or similar excuses were given, i.e. we need mean guys to police other mean guys. Battered-women's shelters became beneficent arms of the therapeutic culture; police were suddenly seen as the good guys, keeping an eye on those other dangerous, brutal men. (The most horrific suffering in these situations came from battered women married to police officers, since those particular men had easy access to locations of safe-houses.) Radical volunteers at these shelters, even women who had initially organized them (such as Sue Urbas, R.I.P.) were suddenly persona non grata in the places they had started themselves. The experts and the social workers, acting as arms of the state, stepped in. (You can almost hear John Wayne: We'll take over now, little lady.) And they did. By the end of the 80s, they were in the process of doing the same thing to Alcoholics Anonymous and various other self-help organizations. The state, massive apparatus that it is, does not take well to being left out. And men, in particular, were NOT going to be left out of the project, any project.

  Also musings on the wars, Mr. Assange, and the late Mrs. Hunt. I don't believe in conspiracy theories, but right now, Coincidence looks a lot like Atlas.