As IF Times

Source: Germany now has North Africas sex crime troubles – Chicago Tribune

Those that have been following the news may have noticed that men from non western cultures do not have quite the same respect for acceptable protocols concerning women as they do in the west.  Of course, that’s kind of like saying Kim Kardashian is a flirt but this realization is dawning upon those that have created policies welcoming new cultures with expectations of easy assimilation.

It shows a naivete that is borne from lack of experience, or much worse, an inability to accept reality.  Outside the PC borders of western societies, men are treated as disposable commodities, much less women.   Imagine coming from a culture in which the exposure of a woman’s ankle is considered unacceptably lurid to being plopped into one in which women frequently dress like Taylor Swift.  What could go wrong?

The naive premise that everyone’s the same and worships the same set of values is as wrongheaded as expecting dogfish to fetch sticks.   There is and always has been a great divide in the view of women’s roles in society between the Judeo Christian/Secular and the Muslim based cultures.  In the 21st century, you’d like to think that death is a bit of an extreme penalty for showing an elbow, or that a display of calf is the same as an open for business signal.  But in some extreme Muslim societies, those views do exist.

In the extreme case of the ISIS group, women are explicitly held to be chattel and in fact, there are codified instruction manuals on rape protocols.  “Well, you can do the mother but not the daughter” or  “Only after prayers, but not before lunch”.  In the news today is an item which claims that an ISIS member executed his own mother for the crime of trying to talk him into leaving ISIS.

It’s no wonder the ISIS men are so savage; they can’t find women of free will to date them. What would be the sales pitch? “Well you can’t come out in the daytime unless covered completely in a designer sackcloth; you can’t speak unless spoken to, you need to do whatever, whenever; you get beaten when the mood strikes and are eligible to be stoned to death if you glance at the plumber…what’s a good wedding date?”.  How do they stop women from flooding in to hook such manly men?

If such behavior were exhibited in western cultures, the man would be in jail as fast as shrimp disappears from the buffet table, or at least be the subject of much squawking on The View.  Apologists are brushing off this behavior as if it was simply a function of religious differences.   What is needed is an end to the appeasement attitude and an acknowledgement that this kind of stuff has little to do with religion.  It is not only illegal in our culture, it’s inhumane and as the Brits say, it’s frowned upon.  Anybody who fears offending ISIS or apologizing for any anti-social behavior in the name of religious sensibilities should be made to live among them.

Source: Students at Lena Dunham’s college offended by lack of fried chicken | New York Post

The great gulf between what is depicted in the movies and what you observe in real life is laughingly wide to those that pay attention to these things.  Whomever said that life imitates art hasn’t been paying attention.  The majority of movie trailers today tease filmgoers with chaotic scenes of violence and action: well coiffed heroes with guns ablaze performing superhuman acts of courage and daring while cavalierly dispatching bad guys.

There is no angst expressed during  the decimation of faceless thugs and evil despots; nor in the property destruction that is typically a horror show for insurance adjusters.  All of this visceral action and mayhem is undertaken ostensibly to benefit the greater good of mankind.

Movie depictions are truly created out of the most improbable adolescent fantasies.  Given today’s cultural zeitgeist, there is zero chance that such alpha personas exist other than as portrayed in cinema.  Kids on college campuses can barely withstand the horrors of name calling much less take a roundhouse to the temple.

It’s comical to imagine that 20-somethings today could possibly handle a multi round automatic weapon when the mere image of one sends them scurrying away to their self declared safe zones.  If they can’t handle the odd verbal slur, they aren’t going to like their nether regions being slammed by bolo balls while tied naked to a chair like 007 in a recent Bond movie.

While film has always been about creating idealized escapism, they may want to make movies that can more identify with today’s real world.  Conflicts between despotic villains can be resolved by earnest discussions without resort to violence or name calling.  Climactic scenes will include the peaceful surrender of evil doers by the marshaling of opposing protesters holding placards instead of the generic gun battles with infinite bullets.  Instead of stylized mano-a-mano kung-fu fights, they can instead be filmed as intense rock, paper, scissors scenes.  There will always be lawyers accompanying covert operators as they parachute into enemy territories on missions.  Perhaps in a delectable bit of rapturous fantasy, they can all be sacrificed for the good of the rest of society.  Meh, that’s probably too much of a stretch.

If you think about it, Star Wars as a concept couldn’t exist.  Societies would never be allowed to continue shooting and slashing in their struggles.  More likely, the conflicts would be determined by bands of lawyers huddling over canapés and scotch while the fearful masses sit huddled nearby anxiously awaiting the results like waifs in a Dickens novel.

Yep, the entertainment of today is mislabeled.  It’s not action/adventure; it’s all fantasy.