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About the AG Barr Ricochet Podcast
The most recent Ricochet podcast featured Attorney General Bill Barr. I was looking forward to it, because I’ve generally thought highly of AG Barr, considering him a stable and thoughtful presence in an often tumultuous administration. I haven’t read his book — and probably won’t — but I did listen to the show.
I didn’t hear anything from Mr. Barr with which I’d take exception. I think his comments about the challenges ahead were spot-on: it’s going to take significant and sustained Republican majorities to bring about lasting change, and we have an opportunity right now to knock the Democratic Party back on its heels.
I appreciated that Barr acknowledged the successes of the Trump presidency, and that he agreed with Peter that Trump, for all his sometimes problematic behavior, was more the recipient of poor treatment than its author.
I think Bill Barr is a man who understands both the challenges and the opportunities ahead, and I appreciate his candor.
I think the world of James, think him a thoroughly sensible and decent man and a wizard with words — all very good things. I rarely find myself disagreeing with him, and it’s always an occasion to check my own thoughts on a subject when we don’t see eye to eye. (Unless the topic is Star Trek, a television series that began and ended, utterly, in the 1960s.)
Nonetheless, I’m going to put in a word in defense of the term “groomer” as it’s being used to describe opponents of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill. I do object to what I think are pointless and ugly monikers like “Rethuglicans” and “Libtards,” two that James mentioned as examples. They are, in my opinion, vulgar and overly broad and stupid, not defensible because they’re so sweeping and vague, and generally counter-productive.
“Groomer,” on the other hand, is not (yet) overly broad, and it’s quite defensible. A very plausible argument can be made that those who feel an urge or duty to introduce other people’s young children to abnormal sexual practices are, whatever their intentions, engaging in something very much like grooming both in practice and outcome.
So long as the phrase is reserved for those who advocate the indoctrination (and that’s what it is) of other people’s young children with sexual ideas parents are likely to find objectionable, and especially if there’s a general understanding that parents do find it objectionable, I think the term is both appropriate and effective.
Incidentally, has anyone, anywhere, heard any proponent of such classroom sexual indoctrination say anything to the effect of “Goodness, I didn’t know how much parents objected to this, but now that I do I’ll certainly be careful not to bring up these subjects with their children?” I haven’t. Let me know if you ever do.
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This may seem odd, but I agree with you. I think what I said wasn’t an unequivocal rejection of the term. I understand why it’s accurate in some instances, and a handy rhetorical tool for weapons-free discussions. If everyone used the term precisely as you’ve described, yes: go ahead. But we both know it’s going to spill out of that cup and into the saucer and get all over the nice linen, which I suppose is inevitable.
That said, he said, undercutting his previous paragraph, there is a difference between Rotherman-style grooming and someone consciously attempting to unravel and replace what the parents have instructed their kids to believe. The former is literal manipulation to get sexual access to the victims; the objective of the latter is ideological acceptance, not sexual access. (Mostly.) The end result of popularizing the term doesn’t elevate the latter to the evil of the former, and one could say it dilutes the evil of the former.
Sez me, anyway. I wish we had a better term. “Sex-pests,” maybe.
I really object to calling people Herbert.
Yes, it’s a risk, and yes, there’s a potential of dilution, desensitization.
I don’t actually expect the term to get legs beyond this context. It’s too specific, and requires too much explanation to most people. But it might happen, in which case I’ll oppose its further use.
But I’m often accused, and not without some justification, of being too polite. (In my defense, I’ve been less so since I stopped being a contributor here, though I’m going to blame it on age.) I like the “groomer” term, and think it’s worth using.
Now Let’s Go, Brandon.
PS We’re going to get to Eden, brother.
I would add that one place Trump received bad behavior from, was Barr.
Could be, but I’d have to see some examples.
There are others, including in the recent Barr/Election posts from others, but I could easily fall back on Barr declaring right after the election, before he could possibly have had any real reason to do so, that the election did not suffer from fraud.
I’ve been thinking about the new usage of the verb to “groom” and the new usage as a noun “groomer” which is actually apparently to distinguish it from an actual groom.
To groom and grooming is a part of animal care that means to perform a specific type of animal hygiene. A groom is traditionally one who fills this function or position.
To groom also means to prepare for an elevation in position, such as for a manager, an actor, or an advanced, specialized or executive position.
A groom is also one who anticipates imminent marriage, a prospective husband.
These three traditional meanings have POSITIVE connotations. Being a bridegroom is a matter of celebration; taking your dog to be groomed results in a good and pleasant condition; and being prepared and instructed for the next step in a career is a very good thing.
To sexually groom is a new word with a NEGATIVE connotation. The term is related to the second meaning, that is to prepare someone for a specific sexual hierarchical position.
This is a new and evolving word that is far from concrete. A quick on-line query shows standard dictionaries as referring to the first three uses, and modern slang or urban dictionaries highlight grooming for its sexual connotation. So sexual grooming is largely what common usage continues to make of it and build upon it.
It has been around for a decade now, and as far as I can tell was coined by the British police and media to describe those who prepare people, particularly of the young, the innocent, and the psychologically vulnerable, for the position to be objectified and used as sexual slaves. It is my suspicion — especially when taking into account the strong disinclination of British police to identify or stigmatize let alone arrest pedophiles, pimps and sex slavers — that it was intended as a euphemism for the whole process of abusing, breaking the spirit, or brainwashing, or even imprisoning people to bring them to compliance and an acceptance of their fate as a sex slave.
It also has the connation of being conducted hidden from public view, hidden from law enforcement, and of engaging in illegal, immoral or even dangerous activity. Also, the purpose of grooming is not necessarily for the personal sexual benefit of the groomer, any more than the breaking the will of and the indoctrination and training of a prostitute is for the purpose of the personal sexual benefit of the pimp.
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It seems to me that guiding and training children whether in the sexual latency stage of development or the adolescent sexual development stage of growth, to look at themselves as sexual objects, and to be aware of and active in sexual acts with others — while hiding this behavior from parents and guardians — constitutes what has come to be referred to as grooming.
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Personally, I would rather use an existing word to describe this process, such as, say, perverting: that is, indoctrinating and perverting someone from the normal, natural and culturally-accepted sexual role (which in pre-pubescents is none at all), and encouraging the abuse of the sexuality and of the sexual behavior of minors, as well as instilling the acceptance of these roles on the part of the victims.
Not arguing, just clarifying: So proper English ( or American…) is to say ” Take Fido to the dog groom”?
That a dog groom is an honorable profession, but a dog groomer is someone you want to stay way far away from and someone who undoubtably votes Democrat?
Absolutely. I don’t know much about dog grooms, other than from people who show dogs. But I was really thinking about horse grooms, which seems like a pretty cool and important job.
This is (more or less) the term that is being applied to the “grooming” of potential victims of sexual abuse. More than one motive is discernible in the movement toward the sexualization of children.
There are, to begin with, the sexually-different who are often deeply unhappy. Sometimes this is because, being different, they are singled out by bullies and rejected by their peers, and since this also happens to the deaf, the autistic, the unattractive, developmentally disabled…any humane person will sympathize. But they may also be unhappy because the condition itself imposes unhappiness. The obvious example is that of the gender-dysphoric; by their own account, their condition is excruciating. Naturally, they are driven to seek relief from their pain and, again, any humane person will sympathize.
At the individual level, the “different” can indeed be met with both sympathy and tolerance. In real life, they generally (and increasingly) are.
That isn’t what is happening in the public schools, although that is the impression they would like to convey. Nice-normal people, preoccupied with their own lives and work, have simply assumed that public schools are teaching their kids more or less what they need to know, and more or less what they were taught when they were young, with perhaps a bit more (and then a bit more…and then a bit more…) emphasis on condoms, and sympathy and tolerance for the different.
In amongst the nice-normals are the “peaceful angry people,” also known as useful idiots, who have been persuaded in some vague, dewey-eyed (Dewey-fied) way that all discomfort, shame and pain associated with human sexuality can be eliminated given sufficient “education.” This is the same goofiness that drives efforts to achieve peace and harmony by banning competitive games, disarming or defunding the police. The best that can be said of them is that they really do want to reduce pain and suffering. Their ranks are swelled by the parents of odd children who latch onto the trendy explanation for their own, as much as their children’s, discomfort.
But then there are the predators.
They will seldom think of themselves as predators—more often these conceited souls will count themselves as liberators. On the local scale, there is the pedophile who shows up to twerk for the tots at Drag Queen Story Hour; he is both enjoying himself and freeing the youngsters from the rigid conventions preventing them from expressing what he is sure must be their real desires, namely to have sex with (or at least be twerked at by) him. This, by the way, has always been the opinion of the pedophile: the kids want it. Freud was not, to put it mildly, helpful on this score.
The activist-predator’s goal is not just to groom the kids, but to groom the whole community, or maybe the whole of American culture. He or she may or may not be sexually deviant —that Q in LBGTQ is there to provide a gloss of belonging for the ordinary heterosexual man or woman who has her own reasons for wishing to lead the troops into battle. But the issue is not the issue. As usual, the underlying aim of the activist is power.
Whether activist or opportunist, the predator has the usual advantage: He knows that the fight is coming, because he is the one who initiates it. Action beats reaction, every time.
Everyone—the nice-normal people, the peaceful angry people, and the politicians and businesses who end up supporting an untenable cause—is being “groomed.” Most of the human beings involved, including those still-suffering transgendered persons, are just cannon fodder.
I agree completely with almost every word of what you have written here. I was really trying to deal with criticism of the common use of the new disingenuous word “groomer” with its sexualized meaning. It’s a new word that is still morphing while it forms, like “gender”, trans-man/woman, non-binary, and post-biological (okay, I made that one up).
Anyway, I thought that at first the Q stood for queer, and questioning was just added later, as a tout to heterosexuals, sort of like “Did God really say that you are a man (or woman)? It surely won’t kill you to find out.”
Forgive the unintended alliteration, but there is pervasive, pernicious, perverted program to redo human sexuality to the detriment of the individual and of society.
And, yes, there are various mindsets that contribute to this. As you say, the nice folk who do not know better, the disturbed folk who take it on as their identity, the predators who seek to watch and woo children (the Gay Clown Story Hour folks) and those corporate folks who are coerced or bribed into promoting sexual confusion from their executive offices. But there is coordination, all in the guise of relieving suffering for a small number of sadly confused people with gender dysphoria.
It’s going to take significant and sustained Republican majorities who are committed to reform to bring about lasting change. The history of Republican Congresses in the 21st Century is a history of Republicans reinforcing and institutionalizing Democrat policies; from the vast expansion of the Department of Education and EPA under George W. Bush, to the pitched resistance to repealing/replacing Obamacare or changing the open borders/mass immigration status quo under Trump.
And no reform will be sustainable unless the Deep State is pulled out by the roots. That means going through the Federal Bureaucracy with a wheat thresher and a wood chipper; vastly reducing both its manpower and the scope of its power. It means dismantling and decommissioning current Federal agencies.
Change is never going to happen in a senate full of Mitt Romneys and Lindsey Grahams.
America fought a revolution, because the English deep state was antithetical to American ideals. The state was oppressive and justice was corrupt and one-sided. It feels like D.C. has become as oppressive as King George. The best defense for the people are the ballot box and DOJ and AG Barr tolerated/denied/supported the corruption of both. By the only measure that matters (ending corruption) Barr was a failure–a grave failure. Would you have me listen to an interview with Jimmy Hoffa on his reflections on the trucking industry?
Excuse me, but Barr didn’t say that until December 1, 2020 which is not “right after the election.” Trump declared fraud the first time he addressed the public while the votes were being counted, however in 60+ lawsuits, failed miserably to prove fraud.
In Arizona after a full investigation, there were 9 cases of fraud uncovered, which were primarily felons voting or ballots turned in after the death of the voter before election day. Biden won Arizona by over 10,000 votes, which is a thousand-fold over the alleged “fraud.” (Note, some of the votes where the person had died were where the person voting was a registered Republican, an unlikely voter for Biden.)
This illustrates how someone who has completely supported Trump, the moment they disagree is hung out to dry by Trump.
Barr gave a great talk at Notre Dame in 2019- well worth listening to:
Maybe they would prefer “Childhood Sexuality Advocates.”
It (the use of the term “groomer” in the child abuse context) has been around for longer than a decade. It was in use in 1981 when I began my career as a prosecutor.
As I read today’s news — something I do more reliably on Sundays than on other days — I notice several stories about pedophilia, queer, and trans issues. I’m going to acknowledge, once again, James’ concern about “groomer” becoming a neutered term through overuse: it’s a real danger both for that word and even for the word “pedophilia.”
Then I see Steven Hayward’s short post over at Powerline: In Re: The Left’s Grooming Gangs.
Steven brings up an interesting point, one probably obvious yet one I hadn’t considered, that of people with traditionally bad intentions (i.e., plain old pedophiles) taking advantage of the supposedly high-minded indoctrination of young children to further their own nefarious ends.
In other words, if you present it as a virtue to talk to young children about sex, those who were already tempted to talk to young children about sex will be particularly eager to do so, under the protective cover of that supposed virtue.
What. Could. Possibly. Go. Wrong?
Yes. Aside from the 2016 Republican congress evaporating on 0bamacare, the whole Republican line since 0-care was adopted, is and has been, Well, what are we going to replace it with? And at base, the questionable cry of, Protection for preexisting conditions! being used as a Republican excuse to demand essentially revamping all of US health insurance industry (which was along with the US government, greatly responsible for the increase in medical care prices –above the rate of inflation).
If it covers pre-existing conditions, it’s not insurance. Might be good to at least be clear about that point.
Predator/Groomer/Activist Delenda Est.
A technical detail there, what if you developed a condition under insurance company A, so it wasn’t “pre-existing” for THEM, and then for whatever reason – change of job, company A goes under, move to a different state where company A doesn’t do business, whatever – you have to switch to company B? Does company B automatically get to exclude anything that came up while you were covered by previous insurance?
Yes, that’s why I said around a decade. I could have said a decade or two. But this is interesting. Did grooming have a specific legal definition? If so, what was it? I just looked it up in Black’s (don’t know how good the on-line site is) and there was nothing sexual.
My 1971 OED defines groom as a male, a (bride) groom, a male servant, or the activities of a male servant, without any reference to anything sexual.
I’d never heard the term until it came into the public usage with Rotherham in the last twenty years. And this was what I was implying that there are in common usage clearer words to talk about the conditioning, forcing, and trafficking of people for sexual purposes. And otherwise, grooming has a rather tame connotation.
But also I was arguing that in public discourse especially, groomer is a relatively new usage, and commonly, the term is still undergoing change.
James, I rarely disagree with you, but I must in this case. Groomer is only in danger of being over-used in the sense that there’s a lot of it going on. Little by little it has seeped in at the edges and preyed on decent people want to be “not-uptight”, “nice”, “enlightened”, etc. Let’s not define deviancy down. This is of a kind of the horrors of Rotherham. It seeks to prey on the vulnerable and confused. Many of whom are going through the normal stages of life that bring out periodic questioning. Worse in that it’s been normalized in the Education bureaucracy.
I’ve been a Boy Scouts adult volunteer in various roles for 15 years. Every year we have to take YPT – Youth Protection Training. Over the years it’s expanded and gotten more serious, particularly with the recent social developments and lawsuit settlements. This program seeks to help you identify grooming by others — both kids and adults — and those who are be groomed. The behaviors shown are of a kind of what these Trans- “educator”-activists are seeking to do. Their immediate objective may be less explicit, but it’s a difference of kind, not type.
Yes, but that depends. And exacerbation requiring hospitalization is a separate occurrence and a separate expense. Your rates would be higher, but the hospitalization and subsequent medicines should be covered.
To my knowledge, “Grooming” does not have a legal definition.
Well then, that leaves no definition. All I know about grooming are anecdotal Press comments about what this or that guy did, or what happened to these or those girls. So mostly, I rely on the definitions of the word itself and how it may correspond to sexual predation, sexual perversion, or organized sex slavery.
I don’t mean to be obtuse (I was just born this way) but when you used grooming in a brief or a consultation or any communication, what understanding did it communicate? If there is even an unofficial definition it would help clear up the disagreement alluded to in Henry R.’s post, and I could use the word with some sort of confidence and specificity.
I’m not talking about what should be covered by a medical plan. I’m talking about whether or not it should be called insurance.
Insurance, say, purchased on an annual basis, is a for-profit enterprise in which you pay more for the insurance than the company expects to pay out for you with your risks. That’s insurance whether you have asthma, COPD, latent coronary artery disease, or don’t wear a seat belt. I mean, you can insure stunt men and race car drivers. You factor the risk in.
And even if they believe they’ll lose money on you, if you’re a member of a group plan, they can expect to make money on the group as a whole. Not everyone is equal when it comes to health or driving an automobile or life expectancy and either pricing or grouping (or pooling) or both determine that insurer’s risk.
And say you’re a diabetic, no one can be certain that you will have a heart attack this year. But they know you’ve most likely need to stay on your medicines for the whole year. So they can adjust the price upwards for your medicines, negotiate for low prices, and still cover you for unexpected but possible illnesses.