Worrisome News for GOP, Jeb Bush

      The first poll is out and Trump has retained his lead at 23%, Carly Fiorina is up to 8%, Rubio is up but still just at 8%. Most worrisome of all for the GOP is that Jeb Bush fell to sixth at just 6%.

      Most admitted he hadn't had a great night-though some in the GOP establishment laughably claimed he won the debate. I see this post can't even bring itself to mention how poorly Jeb fared.

      http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/new-nbc-news-survey-monkey-poll-donald-trump-still-lead-n406766

      Jeb is surprised at Trump's surge.

      http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/jeb-bush-surprised-at-trumps-surge-495448643710

      I think Camille Paglia does a good job describing Jeb Bush:

      "Is there a blander, more boring personality in American politics? The guy looks like the runny yolk of a fried egg. He's trying to be assertive tonight because he's been told he needs to project "passion." But when his lips move, there's still a big blank. Why the heck the major media hails him as the GOP frontrunner is beyond comprehension — except that big money has been showering down on him like powdered sugar on a donut. Why do Jeb's smiles remind me of a dimply grandmother? He could and should have been a high school principal. I don't see him on the world stage, holding the line against ISIS."

     http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/camille-paglia-john-kasich-won-813657

     I don;t know that I love that last line of hers-talk like that would just make him feel he has to invade Iran to show he's tough enough. Overall, though I agree, Jeb has the soul of a high school prinicpal. 

     Paglia is a brilliant and original thinker though someone who on the day to day timely issues-timely in Nietzsche's sense-I often don't agree with. In her more larger and metaphysical sense, she is on target a lot.  For instance, I hate everything she says about Hillary Clinton but she is dead right about the modern war of the sexes. 

    "And it’s the same thing with Bill Clinton: to find the answer, you have to look at his relationship to his flamboyant mother.  He felt smothered by her in some way.  But let’s be clear–I’m not trying to blame the mother!   What I’m saying is that male sexuality is extremely complicated, and the formation of male identity is very tentative and sensitive–but feminist rhetoric doesn’t allow for it. This is why women are having so much trouble dealing with men in the feminist era.  They don’t understand men, and they demonize men. They accord to men far more power than men actually have in sex.  Women control the sexual world in ways that most feminists simply don’t understand."

   "My explanation is that second-wave feminism dispensed with motherhood. The ideal woman was the career woman–and I do support that. To me, the mission of feminism is to remove all barriers to women’s advancement in the social and political realm–to give women equal opportunities with men. However, what I kept saying in “Sexual Personae” is that equality in the workplace is not going to solve the problems between men and women which are occurring in the private, emotional realm, where every man is subordinate to women, because he emerged as a tiny helpless thing from a woman’s body. Professional women today don’t want to think about this or deal with it."

   "The erasure of motherhood from feminist rhetoric has led us to this current politicization of sex talk, which doesn’t allow women to recognize their immense power vis-à-vis men. When motherhood was more at the center of culture, you had mothers who understood the fragility of boys and the boy’s need for nurturance and for confidence to overcome his weaknesses. The old-style country women–the Italian matriarchs and Jewish mothers–they all understood the fragility of men. The mothers ruled their own world and didn’t take men that seriously.  They understood how to nurture men and encourage them to be strong–whereas current feminism simply doesn’t perceive the power of women vis-a-vis men.  But when you talk like this with most men, it really resonates with them, and they say “Yes, yes! That’s it!”

     http://www.salon.com/2015/07/28/camille_paglia_how_bill_clinton_is_like_bill_cosby/

     Again, it's complicated. I disagree entirely with what she says about the Clintons or that Bill Clinton is like Bill Cosby-I think with all Clinton's peccadilloes he nevertheless has something deeply redemptive about him. Paglia is also ignoring how odious Clinton's accusers were. Larry Flynt had shown that ever GOP accuser in Congress had a history of doing things just as bad as Clinton if not worse. In any case, clearly the country agreed with me not her. 

    I discount entirely her claim that women of today won't vote for Hillary out of outrage about Monica Lewinsky. I think 90s wars are best left there and probably a lot of young people of today scarcely remember them. 

   But I do agree that today's women are very frustrated when you meet them and it's because they feel their husband isn't emotionally available enough to them."

   "Currently, feminists lack sympathy and compassion for men and for the difficulties that men face in the formation of their identities. I’m not talking in terms of the men’s rights movement, which got infected by p.c.  The heterosexual professional woman, emerging with her shiny Ivy League degree, wants to communicate with her husband exactly the way she communicates with her friends–as in “Sex and the City.” That show really caught the animated way that women actually talk with each other.  But that’s not a style that straight men can do!  Gay men can do it, sure–but not straight men!  Guess what–women are different than men! When will feminism wake up to this basic reality? Women relate differently to each other than they do to men. And straight men do not have the same communication skills or values as women–their brains are different!"

    "Wherever I go to speak, whether it’s Brazil or Italy or Norway, I find that upper-middle-class professional women are very unhappy. This is a global problem! And it’s coming from the fact that women are expecting men to provide them with the same kind of emotional and conversational support and intimacy that they get from their women friends.  And when they don’t get it, they’re full of resentment and bitterness.  It’s tragic!"

   "Women are blaming men for a genuine problem that I say is systemic.  It has to do with the transition from the old, agrarian culture to this urban professional culture, where women don’t have that big support network that they had in the countryside.  All four of my grandparents and my mother were born in Italy.  In the small country towns they came from, the extended family was the rule, and the women were a force unto themselves.  Women had a chatty group solidarity as they did chores all day and took care of children and the elderly.  Men and women never had that much to do with each other over history!  There was the world of men and the world of women.  Now we’re working side-by-side in offices at the same job.  Women want to leave at the end of the day and have a happy marriage at home, but then they put all this pressure on men because they expect them to be exactly like their female friends.  If they feel restlessness or misery or malaise, they automatically blame it on men.  Men are not doing enough; men aren’t sharing enough.  But it’s not the fault of men that we have this crazy and rather neurotic system where women are now functioning like men in the workplace, with all its material rewards.  A huge problem here is that in America, we have identified ourselves totally with our work lives. In most parts of southern Europe, on the other hand, work is secondary to your real life. It’s often said that Americans live to work, as opposed to working to live."

     I do think we live in an age where women expect their husbands to basically act like women. I know many married men who seem to accept these new feminine rules and yet are actually serial cheaters behind their wife's back. These rules in no way prevent them from becoming physically or emotionally abusive either. 

     I was a bit jolted recently when my sister in law told me she will never let her son play football. As much as you know I love Obama that's the one thing I didn't love-when he said he wouldn't let his son play football today. 

     If I ever have a son-I don't know if I'm the marrying kind because no way could I play by these rules-I would certainly let him play football. I wouldn't require it. I might show it to him on tv or throw to him at the park but wouldn't force him if he weren't interested. I think you can't force or suppress your kids either way. If your son wants to play football he will or if he doesn't he won't. 

     We really are becoming a feminized culture that is simply allergic to even the idea of pain or discomfort. 

     Ok, so that was a nice little digression on Camille Paglia. She really is very brilliant. She's hard to argue with because even when you think she's way off base when you get more context you realize she's onto something. 

    What I find is I often disagree with her violently on the timely issues of the day-again timely in the Nietzschean sense. 

    http://genius.com/Friedrich-nietzsche-twilight-of-the-idols-chap-8-annotated

    But in the larger 'metaphysical' sense I usually find she's on to something. As she said to really get her you have to put in the time and check out her Sexual Personae. 

    http://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Personae-Decadence-Nefertiti-Dickinson/dp/0679735798/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439208429&sr=8-1&keywords=camille+paglia+sexual+personae

    P.S. Peggy Noonan also gives a good description of Jeb:

    "Jeb has a low pilot light. The other day in the Koch seminar he started his Q&A with Politico’s Mike Allen in a shrugging, sluggish way, as if he were surprised to be answering questions. He seems to me embarrassed by his ambition, as if for 40 years he’d understood himself to be the singular Bush but now here he is, running for president like everyone else. Mr. Cruz, who had spoken before Mr. Bush, stayed to listen. Have you ever seen the look a cat gets in the second before he moves on the mouse? That look of full, predatory concentration? That was the look Mr. Cruz had as he watched."

   http://www.wsj.com/articles/fireworks-at-the-republican-debate-1438921640

   Now that I think about it, Jeb always looks surprised to be answering questions.