Liars And Activists And Bears, Oh My!

The “Bear vs. Man” debate is just that - an emotional outburst, with the data part of a retroactive attempt to rationalize a nonsense argument.

Seriously: How many of you would take your chances being alone with this… thing?

There’s been an IQ-draining debate going on across social media. I’m not sure how it started and I honestly don’t want to know, but it involves mostly women stating they’d rather bet their lives being in the woods with a bear than they would with a random man. Search #BearOrMan on social media if you want to see what the fuss is all about.

At first, I didn’t want to wade into this debate because, as you’ve hopefully gathered by now, it’s stupid. Not a single woman, not even a fanatical feminist, genuinely thinks they’d be safer with a bear than they’d be with any random man, no matter how dangerous men can be to women. The whole thing is an attempt by feminists to stick it to men, reinforced by a culture exceedingly hostile to males, and the doubling down you see is a cynical attempt by women to “win” the argument, whatever it takes. You can’t argue with stupid, after all.

They’ve attempted to rationalize stupidity with data:

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On it’s face, this is completely nonsensical. Of course, the likelihood of any of us dying at the hands of a bear is low because we don’t encounter bears on a regular enough basis. Meanwhile, we encounter people all the time. With all types out there, it’s only a matter of time before we run into a truly problematic individual. But most people we encounter will not cause us any problems.

A bear, on the other hand? All it takes is one run-in and you’re in for a world of hurt, if not death. I’m not sure what she means when she says most human-bear encounters are non-violent, but even if that were the case, a bear is still more dangerous because it’s an apex predator and it also cannot be reasoned with. Certainly, there are predatorial humans who also cannot be reasoned with, but we’re talking about whether you can trust a random bear with your safety or a random human. Anyone who genuinely believes they’d be safer with a bear should go live with them. Why not? You’d be safer. Isn’t that what’s most important?

Here’s a “mansplainer” defending women choosing the bear, though I don’t recommend you watch this one due to the utterly insufferable condescending nature of it:

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X account “wanyeburkett” had a good response to this:

This goofball is just confusing himself.

First of all, you can’t just take the number of female hikers and divide it by the number of bear attacks. That’s absurd. The question isn’t, “would you feel safe going for a hike.” It’s whether you’d want to actually encounter a bear. Encounter. Be near. Engage with. You have to at the very least deal in encounters.

Second, his snarky aside about bear recidivism might have been a clue, because what you also can’t do is just take the number of men and divide it by the number of attacks on women because of — are you ahead of me? — recidivism. (Abused women often find themselves in an ongoing cycle of violence with a single man who racks up many offenses.)

Finally, he tries to wrap up with a little PSA about lack of reporting, but he should be more curious about why that happens. Domestic violence isn’t when a man hits a random woman in the grocery store. People are in relationships. They live with and encounter each other every day. They have disputes. If you’re comparing a random man to a random bear you obviously want to look at stranger violence, not repeat domestic violence. Again, he hasn’t thought at all about what the numbers he’s citing even mean or whether they can be compared.

All of which is to say, Jesus Christ these amateur data nerds are exhausting. They have no idea how to actually think about anything and, since they’re starting with a conclusion in mind, anyway, it’s all just a huge circlejerk of motivated reasoning to get them right back there they always wanted to be.

And they’re always — always — so smug and condescending about it. At this point that posture is really a tell that something dumb is coming.

Data is important to the discussion, even one as stupid as this. However, nobody lives on the basis of data alone. How many of you make daily life decisions based on statistical realities? Not many of you, if any, I’d imagine. If you did, we’d all quit driving, since, on average, we have a 1-in-93 chance of dying in a car wreck. Those are some pretty risky odds, far higher than that of a pedestrian or biker. I often remark that driving is the most dangerous activity any of us will ever regularly partake in, yet we hop into that car every day to go take care of business.

Nor does the data really mean a whole lot to us on a personal level. If something bad happens to you, the odds of it happening or not happening to you are no longer relevant. We have a 1-in-54,516 chance of dying due to hornet, wasp, or bee sting, but like being attacked by a bear, it only needs to happen once to be fatal. None of us are going to look at a hornet flying around or a bee hive and think, “I’ve got a 1-in-54,516 chance of dying here, so I’m not going to worry about it.” No, you should worry about it, because the danger is clear and present here and now.

Preparedness involves good risk assessment skills. Humans are generally poor at assessing risk, in large part because we allow our emotions to get wrapped up in it The “Bear vs. Man” debate is just that - an emotional outburst, with the data part of a retroactive attempt to rationalize a nonsense argument. Nor is risk strictly a numbers game.

Earlier this year, I said, in the context of air travel:

What I’m getting at is this: data alone should never be used as the only metric for assessing risk. Not only does context matter, but people more powerful than you and I are always trying to dictate when the data matters and when it doesn’t. We need to be discerning and use data not to draw broad conclusions, but to keep things in perspective, using them to guide our decision-making, not make them for us. There’s no such thing as a risk-free environment; at some point, we’ll need to roll the dice and take some chances.

My preferred risk-management model is the one proffered by Gordon Graham, a three-decade law enforcement professional who now does consulting. According to Graham, risk can be broken down into four categories:

Personally, I’d replace “risk” with “impact,” since risk is ultimately a combination of potential consequence plus likelihood. That said, the model is still a great way to visually organize all the threats to your well-being.

Immediately, you see a problem with using data as the sole guide when navigating risk: it only addresses half of the matter. For example, a bear attack is a high-impact, low-frequency event. It’s not likely to happen, but when it does, there’s very little you can do about it. A woman being assaulted by a man is a high-impact, higher-frequency risk, but not only are human males more frail than bears - it doesn’t take many bullets to put down a man, while as many bullets are unlikely to stop a hard-charging bear - you’d probably encounter hundreds of human males before you run into someone who possesses both the wherewithal and intent to harming you. Human males can also be subdued by other human males, whereas bears cannot be restrained at all.

We can analyze these variables all day, but the point is, none of us live our lives on the basis of statistical likelihoods, not alone. Someone who fears bears chooses not to go camping because they’re not going to survive such an attack. The chance of it happening bears (no pun intended) no relevance here. On the other hand, women who genuinely fear assault or harassment from random men still go out into the world and go about their business, despite the numbers rationalizing their concerns.

There’s an overarching story here, which is that we may not be in a civil war yet, but we’re definitely in a war for hearts and minds. People with influence, and that includes people on social media, are constantly dictating when the data matters and when it doesn’t. It matters when it comes to the bears-versus-man debate, but when it comes to Black men and criminality? The data suddenly doesn’t matter. Imagine asking those same women whether they’d take their chances with a bear or a random Black man? I think you’d get some interesting responses, or they’d opt not to answer the question at all. Silence would speak volumes.

The data suddenly matters again when it comes to guns. The Left argues we should ban guns because our lifetime risk of being shot and killed is 1-in-89. Those are definitely high risks, but consider: when broken down, the likelihood of being killed intentionally by a gun is 1-in-208. It’s not the most remote of odds, but you’re still far more likely to die in a car crash than be shot and killed. Obviously, your risk increases depending on where you live and who you associate with. For most of us, however, gun violence just isn’t something we’re going to encounter on a regular basis. Concern is warranted, but let’s not pretend like anyone really worries about any loss of life except their own.

Again, this is such a brain-dead debate, I feel ashamed I’m devoting this much mental bandwidth to addressing it. But I also think it says something quite profound about our culture today. There are millions among us who not only cannot properly assess risk, but view something as fundamental to the health of civilization like personal and public safety through an entirely ideological lens. The unfortunate fact is, women are often the driving force behind anarcho-tyranny. This is simply fact; there’s a growing political divide by gender, where men have remained right-leaning, but women, especially younger women, have shifted leftward, radically so. They may not realize it, but women are voting in favor of policies and policymakers that destabilize and make the country less safe, be it related to crime, immigration, etc.

Why this is occurring is beyond the scope of this blog. I will say, though, that this is a phenomena known as “Longhouse politics,” coined by a pseudonymous writer named “L0m3z,” explaining it as:

The emphasis on “feelings” is rooted in a deeper ideology of Safetyism. Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, in their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, define Safetyism as “a culture or belief system in which safety has become a sacred value, which means that people are unwilling to make trade-offs demanded by other practical and moral concerns.”

While Haidt and Lukianoff focus their analysis on proto-woke novelties like “trigger warnings” and “microaggressions,” the cult of Safetyism is best exemplified in our response to the pandemic. Think of the litany of violations of our basic rights to personal freedom and choice over the last two years that were justified on the basis of harm reduction. The economy, our dying loved ones, our faith practices, our children's education, all of it served up on the altar of Safetyism. Think of the Covid Karen: Triple-masked. Quad-boosted. Self-confined for months on end. Hyperventilating in panic as she ventures to the grocery store for the first time in a year. Then scolding the rest of us for wanting to send our kids back to school, and demanding instead that we all abide by her hypochondria, on pain of punishment by the bureaucratic state. This person—who is as often male as female—is the avatar of the Longhouse.

Feeling safe and being safe aren’t the same thing. None of us are truly safe unless both have been achieved. What Longhouse politics does, however, is emphasize feeling over being. Nothing is worth doing unless it’s 100 percent fair to all and doesn’t give one the feeling of perpetuating injustice. Since you can’t single any one person or group out for punishment, for example, you punish everyone or nobody. This is how crime ends up becoming the result of us not providing sufficient “opportunities” and free stuff to would-be criminals. This explains how women will complain about not being able to walk around alone at night without fearing for their lives, while denying any serious attempt to establish order out of concern it might harm the “wrong” people.

In the end, nothing is done to deal with the heart of the matter. Instead, men are indicted as a whole, since that’s much easier and allows for feelings of moral superiority. This is Longhouse politics in a nutshell - doing the thing that makes one feel better about oneself, while doing nothing about the real problem. Validation is ultimately the most important thing. Fixing the problem? That’s for other people, but make sure sensibilities aren’t offended in the process.

One last attempt at rationalization we’ll look at:

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This woman goes on to suggest she’s a victim of rape, which, if true, I’m sorry to hear. However, personal trauma is never an excuse to lash out at the world as she goes on to do. A non-White person who attends a majority-Black school and endures harassment and violence for years on end would never be allowed to project their anger on Blacks the way she does against men. Call me callous for saying so, but I don’t think this woman is as troubled by what happened to her than by the fact her feelings aren’t being unquestionably validated. Her most salient point is that a bear would be more merciful in killing her than a man might be, but this is an utterly nihilistic way of thinking, true only if she believes there’s ultimately no difference between men and bears, which makes this entire debate all the more irrational.

Any realist knows men are more dangerous than women. There’s no controversy there. The problem is that women know this, yet constantly demonstrate a lack of seriousness when it comes to confronting the problem. Women are constantly at risk of other men, but are still expecting men to somehow restrain themselves, while supporting policies reducing policing, placing restrictions on the use of violence for self-preservation, more rights for criminals, etc. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s not supposed to, because it’s not really about creating a safer society for all. It’s about creating a cost-free society, which is impossible to establish.

There’s also the possibility the sentiment is genuine - women will choose the bear precisely because the bear is dangerous. Women, being less capable of the violence necessary to establish and maintain civilization, rely on men, who possess that capacity. When faced with a more dangerous alternative, some women, not all, are drawn to it. I’m delving into the psychological realm, but think about why women frequently end up with dangerous, problematic men or are drawn to serial killers. Again, not all women are like this, but many are. Why this is, I can’t explain, but the proof is in the pudding. It’d explain why women are often calling for criminals to be let loose, Third World migrants let into the country en masse, along with all sorts of other destabilizing policies. Consider it preemptive surrender - by choosing the more dangerous party, they’re ensuring their future well-being, or so they believe.

Whatever the case may be, she clearly doesn’t choose death. She’s still here, with the rest of us horrible people who’ll always find a way to disappoint her. She still takes risks every day, engages with people who could do her great harm, still lives in a world maintained and guarded by men, whom she depends on daily for survival. Maybe that’s what really gets under her skin - that she’s living in someone else’s world. Guess what, miss? So am I. So are we all. That and the fact that if push came to shove, she’d never choose the bear. Nothing is more devastating to one’s sense of self is the realization they lack the conviction they profess to possess.

What gets under my skin is that I’ve spent this much time on this ridiculous debate. But our collective psychology is often molded by these seemingly mindless squabbles that still, nonetheless, reveal much about who we are as a people.

I’ll stop now.

Activists Will Decide Your Fate In Court

The case of George Alan Kelly has come to a conclusion. For those who may not be familiar, Kelly is a rancher from Arizona who was charged with murder after an illegal immigrant was found dead on his property near the U.S.-Mexico border.

From NewsNation:

Arizona rancher George Alan Kelly will not face charges again after a jury failed to reach a verdict in his murder case and the judge declared a mistrial.

Kelly, 75, was charged in connection to the fatal shooting of Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, an unarmed migrant, on his property near the U.S.-Mexico border. Kelly faced second-degree murder and aggravated assault charges related to the Jan. 30, 2023, killing.

A hearing will be set to decide if the case will be dismissed without prejudice.

Cuen-Buitimea, 48, lived just south of the border in Nogales, Mexico. Court records show Cuen-Buitimea had previously entered the U.S. illegally several times and was deported, most recently in 2016.

Cuen-Buitimea was in a group of men that Kelly encountered on his property. Prosecutor Mike Jette said Kelly recklessly fired an AK-47 rifle toward the group that was about 100 yards away.

Kelly said he fired warning shots in the air, but he didn’t shoot directly at anyone, explaining that he feared for his safety and that of his wife and property.

I suppose this is as good an outcome as could’ve been had. Given the Biden administration-led Regime’s commitment to mass illegal immigration and the Great Replacement, a guilty verdict against Kelly would’ve been a victory of some significance. It would’ve served as a loud-and-clear message that not only is there no stopping illegal immigration, there’s no defending your property, either.

That said, this really should’ve been a “not guilty” verdict. It almost was, if not for a single juror who refused to waver from their belief that Kelly was guilty as sin.

Another juror described what took place during deliberations:

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We can only guess who this juror was, but it’s not a guess to say this was a prejudiced juror who went into the case with the intent of finding Kelly guilty. We all have our biases, but as members of a jury, we are expected to set them aside and evaluate the case on the merits, not of its symbolism or broader implications. This obviously doesn’t occur, not always, but it’s at least how the system is supposed to work.

In the wake of O.J. Simpson’s passing last month, the following video went viral:

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You can watch the video to hear her explain why. It won’t come as a surprise. This happens far too often. We saw it happen in the case against former police officer Derek Chauvin, convicted of murder in the death of George Floyd in 2020, and there was a juror in the federal case against the four Los Angeles police officers involved in the beating of Rodney King in 1991 who approached the case harboring intentions similar to that of the woman above.

Regarding Simpson, I believe, as do most Americans, he was guilty of murdering Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ron Goldman. However, if I were on that jury, I would’ve found him not guilty, not because Simpson was Black and because of our history of racism, but because the prosecution’s case had so many holes in it. Even Mark Fuhrman, the disgraced detective whose history of racist remarks undermined the prosecution’s case against Simpson, would later say the defendant was over-charged and the defense had a convincing answer to nearly every aspect of the state’s case. Simpson may be a murderer, but you can only charge someone with crimes you can prove they committed.

Going back to the Kelly case, the part which stood out to me is this lone dissenting juror stating “we will never agree on the definition of a reasonable person.” It’s quite obvious they believe the only thing a reasonable person could do in any circumstance is the thing they personally believed they would do. But “reasonableness” constitutes an objective standard. What one person thinks they would’ve done in that same situation is entirely subjective. This distinction is easy to draw, but this juror either lacks the intelligence to make it or outright refused to do so.

Reasonableness is a legally-defined term, so it’s not entirely open-ended. For example, chasing after someone is often considered unreasonable behavior, since pursuit increases, not diminishes, risk to oneself. At the same time, what’s appropriate in a given situation ultimately depends on the totality of circumstances. There are many different courses of action which can be appropriate in any given scenario. In a chaotic situation, seldom is there one “right” answer. But the juror in question appeared to believe a single right answer exists.

George Kelly may or may not have handled the situation properly. But were his actions understandable? Did he do anything that placed himself and others at undue risk? Did he exceed his legal limits? These are the questions which are meant to decide the outcome, not whether a defendant did exactly what some stranger with a completely different life experience and perspective thought they should’ve done, given the scenario. The system does allow people to make mistakes. We’re not perfect, after all. The system also recognizes that what’s inappropriate in one context can very well be appropriate in another.

Whatever the case may be, if a jury cannot agree on what a reasonable person is, then that clearly calls for the dismissal of the case, which is more or less what happened here. The concern is that these cases are susceptible to the whims of the activist-juror, the person who uses their jury service to wage political warfare. My guess is that this holdout juror supports illegal immigration or at least sympathizes with illegal entrants, opposes gun ownership and the use of deadly force to defend life and property, and found in Kelly a target of opportunity to exact righteous justice.

Imagine your life being in the hands of such people. In the case of Kelly, seven other jurors spared him, but as we’ve seen in the past and will continue to see in the future, others will not be as fortunate. Miscarriages of justice occur in the good times, but in the bad times, they’ll become the norm. It’s just another aspect of reality we’ll need to prepare ourselves for.

“Do Not… F**K With Us”

Speaking of activists, look at this photograph of a protester at Columbia University being stopped by a custodian:

As they often are, these pro-Palestinian protests are hardly peaceful. Not only that, they’re hardly the downtrodden, oppressed people they like to portray themselves as.

From The Free Press:

Later, it emerged that the protester was a 40-year-old trust fund kid named James Carlson, who owns a townhouse in Brooklyn worth $2.3 million. The man who tried to hold him back was Mario Torres, 45, who has worked at Columbia—where the average janitor makes less than $19 an hour—for five years.

Where have we heard this story before? The university protester, who spends their days decrying the privilege of others and claiming to be fighting on behalf of the oppressed, is very much borne of privilege themselves and, by their own definition, a member of the oppressor class. Meanwhile, the people who are impacted by these protests or need to clean up after them are members of the real oppressed class. They’re the ones who do society’s dirty work, the ones who keep the show going.

More:

Now, in an exclusive interview with The Free Press, Mario Torres describes the experience of being on duty as protesters stormed the building in the early hours of the morning, breaking glass and barricading the entrances. “We don’t expect to go to work and get swarmed by an angry mob with rope and duct tape and masks and gloves,” he said.

“They came from both sides of the staircases. They came through the elevators and they were just rushing. It was just like, they had a plan.” Mario said protesters with zip ties, duct tape, and masks “just multiplied and multiplied.”

Fear and intimidation are absolutely components of these protests. By the way, remember January 6? The worst thing to ever happen to America, ever, according to the Left? Those right-wing protesters had zip ties, duct tape, and masks, too. How was that undeniably a violent protest in demanding the subsequent overreaction by the state, but these pro-Palestine protests are supposed to be legally protected behavior?

The custodian, Mario Torres, is fearing repercussions for getting physical with the protester. And why shouldn’t he? Left-wing protesters are agents of the Regime. He has every right to be concerned that the Regime will come down hard on him for obstructing “peaceful” protest. He’s started a GoFundMe in anticipation that there might be legal ramifications for the incident. Let’s hope he doesn’t need to get any lawyers involved.

The incident reminds me of the following scene from the 1999 cult classic film Fight Club. In this scene, Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden, along with his followers who are members of his eponymous fight club, are intimidating a politician who are going after his group for engaging in something of an insurgency.

Watch:

It’s one of the most significant moments in the film, I believe. Here’s Durden’s admonishment to the politician:

Look… the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals. We haul your trash. We connect your calls. We drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep.

Do not… f**k with us.

One of the reasons our society has such tolerance for the persistent, increasing disorder in the U.S. plus broader West is that we prefer to just clean up the mess protesters and other social terrorists create for others. Nobody’s doing anything about the disorder anyway and, for now, we can still afford to just clean up, spend money, and rebuild after every petulant outburst. Insisting upon accountability is a non-starter. That’s just how it goes in anarcho-tyranny.

To echo what someone told me recently, I believe the U.S., despite headed towards a civil war or revolution, won’t see either until an economic crisis occurs, making affordable, reliable access to food, fuel, and medical care. An SHTF, after all, is when there are more people than resources. When basic needs are met, it’s difficult to get people to put their lives, families, and well-being at stake by taking part in large-scale violence.

I also believe a civil war/revolution isn’t likely until people like Mario Torres become radicalized enough to take action. Or inaction. To quote Fight Club’s Tyler Durden, when the people we depend on for the continuance of civilization - those who build, fix, take out the garbage, put out fires, patrol the streets, deliver goods, defend the country - feel supremely threatened, we’re going to have a problem. The only reason society continues humming along is because millions of people continue to show up to work every day and do their jobs, keeping their discontent mostly to themselves.

Imagine the next time we have a massive wave of civil unrest, like we saw in summer 2020. Now imagine, afterwards, nobody cleans it up, nobody fixes anything. What then? I’m sure many will exploit the vacuum and step in and fill the void. But this will mostly be symbolic. It’s not a long-term solution. Society needs these people to keeping showing up daily to maintain civilization for the clean-up to matter. Without them, society will unravel, morphing into something dangerous and ugly. I recall a time a few years ago when the local waste management company servicing our city went on strike and our garbage wasn’t picked up for weeks. I can’t tell you how uncomfortable (and stinky) it got during that time. Now imagine that happening on a country-wide scale in a wide variety of ways. You see the problem?

For now, the Regime and their supporters within the general population revel in the fact there’s not much else to be done at the moment except continue to show up and do the job while the protected classes have their enjoyment at others’ expense. But when that day comes where resources become unaffordable or inaccessible, they may find that they’re not the only ones who’ve chosen to just not care anymore.

Bear Or The Man? Which Way, Western Man?

What are your thoughts on the ridiculous “Bear vs. Man” debate? Do you think there’s any part of it that should be taken seriously, or is it just a stupid argument for stupid people? What about the case of George Alan Kelly? Was justice served? Have you ever served on a jury and if so, did you ever encounter an activist-juror? What will it take to radicalize those who do the hard, dirty job of keeping civilization running?

I look forward to your thoughts.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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