Victory Soap v. 2.0

No you're not. (Via Instapundit.)

My opinion of the Cult of Diana has already been stated in this blog, so I won't go over it again. I could have been pithier -- "She made a lot of rubbish decisions in her life that caused her own problems" Andrew Ian Dodge says sensibly. The idea that many of my fellow females have made her some sort of heroine is dismaying to me, as are so many other things about contemporary women.

It's all part of a horrifying and disgusting trend that has infected society since... well, since the dawn of time, really. Sometimes the infection goes into partial or full remission (the Republic of Rome, France during the "Age of Reason," Britain during the War), but usually it holds all of humanity in its febrile grasp. The infection I am talking about is the "cheap sentimentality" that the writer of the first article I linked mentions; the glorification of the lowest and easiest feelings (kitties are cute! awww, widdle babies! dead pretty princesses, waaah!) about trivial situations. It's a truism, maybe, to say that while we fiddle about with the soft pleasures of mourning dead celebrities (by definition, people who are famous for stirring our shallower impulses) our infrastructure is burning, but every now and then a crumbled levee or a collapsed bridge jars us out of our pink and gold dreams.

And on a related note, one of those things we're not supposed to talk about is the fact that wherever women get the vote, governments get larger and more -- well, more mother-like. As in, mumsie will take care of everything, kiss every boo-boo with federal dollars and strict regulations, will make sure nobody goes outdoors without being bundled up and protected. The fact that we aren't supposed to talk about this is evident in the way even Kim Du Toit feels compelled to state (I paraphrase) "no one is talking about taking the vote away from women." I'll just go out on a limb here and say "why not?" What are women going to do, riot? Oooh, scary, the ladies will run through the streets hitting men with their purses. I really don't see that happening. Women just don't form torch-bearing mobs -- they don't have the natural ability to organized mayhem that men have. (Women organize, but they organize differently -- instinctively towards gathering in and and sorting.)

Anyway -- if by some unlikely chance we came to our collective senses and repealed the 19th amendment, women wouldn't riot -- but the whining and screaming and crying that they would do would probably be worse than any riot. Men have nothing on us when it comes to being Outraged! and Upset! So it won't happen.

What should happen is women should pull themselves out of the pink-goo-lined pit we have been wallowing in and harden and discipline ourselves so the votes we cast won't keep pushing our society further into the nursery room. In short, we need to grow up -- but as long as we continue to make people like the Peoples' Princess into our icons we won't.