TV's Bad Boys and Violence

TV is more violent than ever before. Violent deaths, assaults, and other brutality fill the screen. At a time when TV has never been more oriented towards the female viewer? What gives? The answer of course lies in the type of violence. Women viewers in general don't like the masculine violence, seen in movies like "the Wild Bunch" or any realistic combat movie and series (such as HBO's "Band of Brothers.") Women DO like violence that establishes the main male character as dominant and therefore sexy. And it seems that Hollywood is happy to oblige, almost to the point where it has become an exercise in picking middle aged, not particularly sexy character actors and making them hot-damn! sexy symbols on TV. Call it TV producers inside joke.


Cue the Sopranos James Gandolfini. Not exactly a Brad Pitt look-a-like, his characters brutal and violent behavior, including the on-screen murder of a pleading woman (the secret informant girlfriend of his protégé) made him more not less sexy. As did later murders of his protégé, and numerous other characters. Bryan Cranston ("Walter White") of Breaking Bad is not exactly the stuff dreams are made of either. But the characters arc from nebbishy suburban husband to super-bad nascent drug kingpin and killer took him from chump to champ, in sex appeal. You see the same thing with Rescue Me's Dennis Leary, playing a "bad" firefighter who does awful things (like rape his ex-wife onscreen) and becomes even sexier. Showtime's "Dexter" about a "good" serial killer (who only kills other serial killers, sadistically) is par for the course. The whole point is that the characters brutal violence makes him more sexy not less, to the female audience (which is who watches Dexter, mostly). Michael Chicklis in "the Shield" is another such character. Boardwalk Empire's Steve Buscemi who portrays a character that is on-screen violently brutal and murderous, is probably the outer boundary of physical unattractiveness combined with physical dominance to see how "sexy" and physically unattractive a character can be and still play among the female audience.

Quite clearly, producers and writers are well aware of the female audience's desire for brutal and unrestrained violence among "sexy" and "bad" male characters. And they are giving the audience what it wants, full throttle. Sexy bad boys not limited by anything, not conscience, mercy, ties of family, patriotism, anything. Damien Lewis in "Life" played a guy who could be brutal but had definite self-imposed limits when it came to revenge, and a bit of compassion. No doubt those character qualities made the show a failure with the female audience. Playing a variation of the same character (one long and unjustly imprisoned) but with no patriotism, conscience, remorse, or even independence (he is dominated by a stronger, more charismatic jihadi) … the character has gone over like gangbusters.

Why is this? Well like the demand under Prohibition for ever more of the hard stuff, because casual drinking legally was impossible, the demand for "sexiness" in brutal dominance including the ultimate taboo, murder, being violated left and right, is nothing more than a reflection of the lack of sexiness in men around them. If most men were "sexy" then women would not want this hard-stuff.

Ultra-machismo Mexico and Columbia produce telenovela after telenovela that feature hard-working, often "ugly" women who become beautiful, powerful, and successful and snag that Alpha male. Who is the traditional "Fabio" type of character, strong and successful, but not violent. Ugly Betty is well within the range for that type of entertainment, wildly popular throughout Latin America. Men in those countries are plenty violent, women there don't need a fantasy of violence to get their thrills. They can see decapitated bodies, others hung mutilated off bridges, to what the real violence is. Instead their fantasies run towards being rich, famous, powerful, and with a devoted but hot/desirable husband who is "sophisticated" (think Fernando Lamas, not Lorenzo Lamas).

You can see this at work in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" where gee, give Apes the power of human intellect and speech, and they are "superior" and rule because modern (White) men are just too wimpy to fight back. Yeah, right.

Ordinary White women in sheltered, suburban America, have no idea of what any man is capable of, and tend to judge off superficial posturing. Equal and status-quo feminism in the workplace, in schools, in larger society, leave most women judging wrongly that only a few men are sexy, because they posture overtly as dominant, violent, or both. Hence the hunger for fantasy dominance through ultra-violence. Not impersonal violence showing people blown apart, but personal violence showing the male character is one without any limits and able to dominate other people and make it stick.

If we ever hit sustained, violent hard times (which is likely, to my horror, I am a comfortable middle class American, with much to lose) then obviously the female audience won't demand fantasy violence. They'll have real ones at their doorstep, or more, every day. Even if America degrades, slowly, as the "best option" then things will soon sort themselves out. Women who face being hassled every day by gangs of illegal aliens congregating on street corners for day labor, do not find fantasy violence arousing. Nor do women who live in real fear of being assaulted, robbed, and killed, at home or going to and from work. Nor indeed do women who must deal paying the rent or buying food or buying gasoline to get to work.

The desire for fantasy violence comes from the illusion of control, safety, security, and stability. Seen on First World Problems:

“Exurban growth has led to people I used to think of as hillbillies being socially promoted to mere hicks.”

[Yes elites HATE HATE HATE the "hillbillies."]

Not enough "sexy men" in the cubicle next to you? Too much deferential "niceness" and boring behavior? Not enough dominance and control in the men around you? THAT is a First World problem, soon to go away with the First World itself.

Look for this sexy bad boy killer trend on TV and movies to go away. Soon.
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Pinker's Violence Fantasy: the Truth About War and Violence in the Post Cold War Age

The WSJ's article by Steven Pinker Why Violence is Vanishing illustrates the desperate nature of Liberals and the Modern Western Society (which is profoundly Liberal in the modern, PC sense). Wanting desperately to believe that there is no more reason to fight, sacrifice, and empower nasty and dangerous men to protect us, and build nasty and dangerous weapons, the hope is that by clapping real hard for fairies, ala Peter Pan, we can believe and make it so.


Pinker notes, accurately enough, that the growth of agricultural states and enforcement technology (swords, spears, arrows, etc.) allowed centralizing monarchs to cut down hunter-gatherer personal violence which was horrendous and daily. Enlightenment Monarchs in Europe further cut down violence that was constant and grinding by eradicating banditry, enforcing laws, and promoting safety. This is why native European martial arts and weaponry, including staff fighting, knife fighting, bludgeon fighting, and unarmed combat disappeared save Savate in Marseilles, an ultra-violent port that kept that art alive until the Twentieth Century turned it into a sport. All of this is true.

But what Pinker does not contemplate, is how violence particularly in Europe and China was compressed. True Renaissance peoples did not slaughter each other personally as Dark Ages people did, let along hunter gatherers … most of the time. But a third of German speakers were killed in the Thirty Years War 1618-1648 and the terms Magdeburg Quarter entered the terminology of Europe. In China, the Taiping Rebellion wiped out 20 million people between 1850 and 1864.

Technology and new social orders tended to suppress day to day violence. Neighbor did not stick a spear into neighbor, because he had run off with a daughter or wife. Disputes were adjudicated by the state, even in Aztec Mexico. Bernal Diaz Del Castillo in his "Conquest of Mexico" first-hand account notes how Montezuma spent hours every day listening to people who came before him to judge disputes, this from a people who practiced ritual human sacrifice and cannibalism (as did, notes Diaz del Castillo, all their neighbors and the allies of the Spanish).

BUT … when the state loses control, or warfare becomes "total" with new weaponry that makes old orders obsolete, as in the 1600's, or again in the 1940's, horror emerges. Ordinary Japanese men, often under strict orders from high commanders NOT to engage in rape, pillage and murder, and facing an advancing enemy, spent all their time doing so. The destruction of Manila as American forces advanced in contravention of the commanding officer's orders is one example. Done by men who would not have dreamed of ever doing that in Japan. The violence exacerbated by a civilian population accustomed to obeying orders and unable to offer any real resistance anyway.

Violence, by being so rare, becomes almost viral when it does break out, infecting people with horrific results. There is a scene in the otherwise tedious and boring movie "the Debt," where the villainous Nazi doctor says he knew they would succeed when Jews handed over their children. Von Wallenstein and Tilly were hardly nice men. But they would have found it inconceivable to boast of such a thing, because for them, violence was a path to glory. The idea, of killing children as a means to become a famous and accomplished man would have seemed like … madness. One only became famous by fighting a powerful foe that could certainly destroy you. There was nothing to be found of glory in killing children, old men, women, and defenseless men. Though certainly they did that, on attacks on towns, their views of violence was that their glory came in open battle against a foe well able to defeat them.

Now we come to the heart of Pinker's argument. Like the "War Nerd" Gary Brecher, Pinker believes that somehow humans have stopped becoming violent, and that war will no longer break out because, well dammit human nature changed. He hand-waves the wars and civil wars that have broken out since the end of the Cold War and nuclear duopoly, including the Iran-Iraq War in the twilight of the Cold War, the Central African Wars of 1998-Present (about ten million dead or so), the Sri Lankan Civil War, the constant wars in Sudan, Somalia, and Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Afghan War, 9/11 and the prospect for non-state violence not seen since the Treaty of Westphalia (growth of non-state militias). Pinker points to globalization and trade, ignoring that some societies are permanent losers in that unless they …

USE WAR TO CONQUER OTHER PEOPLES.

Look at Egypt. It cannot as Spengler/David P. Goldman notes, feed its people, manufacture anything worth buying, or produce literate people let alone engineers and other college graduates who are employable. All it has is War. The hope of conquering Israel, taking the Mediterranean gas fields, and then going on to conquer perhaps weak Italy, rich in resources, slaves, food, land, and without any meaningful defenses or even the will to defend itself.

Egypt, in order to survive without war, would have to deep six all of Islam, spend its time studying math and science not heaving their butts into the air five times a day, use the scientific method not something written in the Koran to figure out the world, teach their women to read and write, outlaw polygamy, give women equal rights, allow religious freedom and intellectual freedom, and promote a national concept of hard work and studying. Egypt would have to copy … China. And they cannot even be China, much less South Korea, Japan, or Finland. All that would destroy nearly everything that makes Egyptian society. The same goes for nearly all of the Muslim world, which would have to cease being Muslim if it is to eat, unless it makes war.

What Pinker does not realize, is that the AK-47, easy GPS, nuclear weapons from Pakistan, Iran, China, and so on, allow a vast equalization. Pakistan can cow the US, attacking our embassy in Kabul according to Admiral Mike Mullen in sworn Congressional Testimony, because they have nukes and we are afraid of them. The same is true for all those North African regimes. Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya cannot feed their people. But they can cross the Med in boats, come ashore in Italy, France, and Spain, and simply take over. Killing any who object. That's violence, and violent enslavement. Which awaits Europeans who have a toy/pretend military and no will to use even that.

An example of Pinker's blinkered, utopian views are below:

Another pacifying force has been commerce, a game in which everybody can win. As technological progress allows the exchange of goods and ideas over longer distances and among larger groups of trading partners, other people become more valuable alive than dead. They switch from being targets of demonization and dehumanization to potential partners in reciprocal altruism.
For example, though the relationship today between America and China is far from warm, we are unlikely to declare war on them or vice versa. Morality aside, they make too much of our stuff, and we owe them too much money.
A third peacemaker has been cosmopolitanism—the expansion of people's parochial little worlds through literacy, mobility, education, science, history, journalism and mass media. These forms of virtual reality can prompt people to take the perspective of people unlike themselves and to expand their circle of sympathy to embrace them.

The War Nerd has said the same thing, and much the same was said in … 1913. Britain and Germany simply traded too much with each other to go to War. This was also said in 1938, and of the US and Japan in 1940, which had considerable trade.

What neither the War Nerd nor Pinker really understand is how much of a loser globalization makes a lot of societies and people. Now Egypt, as Spengler notes, has to compete with China for food. As does, note, the US. The US can compete, because it is a richer society. Egypt cannot. So it is starve or war. Egypt will choose … war. Because the cost of War has gone down.

Most "loser societies" do not believe that they will pay any real price for War, and discount their enemies ability to match their "fighting spirit" and willingness to win. Advantages in jet planes or nukes are discounted, and perhaps not too unrealistically. Israel in 1973 had nukes, and Egypt still attacked it. Israel at one point faced annihilation by Egypt, and did not face nukes. If Israel did not use them, in its then greatest hour of need, would it ever? [Likely, not.]

Western societies are often, for the most part, unable to offer violence in any meaningful way. Save fantasy violence in movies, and the idea expressed in recent TV shows and movies that the public wants violence done on its behalf to be safe, no more 9/11's, but does not want to know how it was done or who did it. The violence is kept secret. No bodies in Afghanistan show, nor in Iraq now, though there are plenty. Still even less coverage of people killed by drone attacks in Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, tribal Pakistan, and rumored, Kenya, Tanzania, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.

Meanwhile "loser societies" remain immersed in violence. Violence in unimaginable and unreported ways permeate every inch of daily life, particularly in Muslim society and Latin American society. Santa Muerte or a thinly Catholicized Aztec Death-God, demanding human sacrifice, is rising, with people being tortured and killed over Twitter comments. Often the mass violence has no purpose save the satiating of the killers desires for murder and death. Given the widespread prevalence of human sacrifice and cannibalism that the Conquistadors found in Mexico (not just the Aztecs, EVERY TRIBE DID IT), you might argue that Mexico is reverting to pre-Columbian violent type.

Muslims have daily violence in their society on a deeply personal level, widespread, as well. Women are genitally mutilated, often honor killed, rape is done by judicial punishment, hanging and stoning to death for adultery is on the rise, child brides are increasing, and so is violence between Shia and Sunni, and against all non-Muslims unlucky enough to live in lands filled with Muslims in any number. This is the advantage, so Muslim thinkers and Mexican Drug cartel members alike, view versus the weak and soft West which is unable and unwilling to deal out violence except when it can massively pretend it is not.

Pinker and Brecher alike share in my view, a fundamental flaw by accepting the past as an absolute prediction of the future. They overestimate trade and cosmopolitanization. As Mark Steyn notes, the arrow of civilization does not go one way, women in Cairo in the graduating class of the University looked modern in 1959, and still fairly modern in dress in 1979. Today they are muffled in Burquas. Kabul in the 1950's had women in modern dress in record shops.

Most of the world's population lives in a place where people worship Santa Muerte, or the governments urge them to please on no account kill and eat Pygmies or Albinos for magic powers, or where women are honor killed because they talked to the wrong boy. These are places where commerce means only poverty, because now they must pay more for food and everything else, and they have nothing to sell. These are places where violence is a way of life, constant and casual, and where it is viewed as the best way to get ahead in life.

Globalization has hotwired these places right into Western civilization, and they are not being removed any time soon. Violence, and disturbing violence, are only going to increase. Why? Because the State is a joke, unable to stop violence any more (quick how many Flash Mobs have been crushed) and only able to send middle class people to jail for improperly filling their recycle trash bins. While all the while lacking any external measures to deal with violence except things done in secret and willingly ignored.

Pinker, and Brecher, are state of the art circa say, 1975. Today, they don't grasp that failing states all over the globe (particularly in the West where violence to suppress greater violence is not allowed against non-Whites, see the London riots) running hand in hand with moral pretensions, are easy pickings for failed societies that live in violence. For now, the great majority of Santa Muerte's violence stays South of the Border. That is unlikely to remain so, any more than Muslim violence will remain mostly outside of the West either.
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Vampire Sex and Violence: True Blood and the Bubble of Female Hypergamy

Recently, a writer for Pop Matters blogged his reaction to the extreme sex and violence of the HBO series "Tru Blood," a show watched apparently only by women and gays. The blogger even calls the combined sex and violence scene (where the vampire "hero" desired by the female audience does some pretty nasty things) misogynistic. Tellingly, the female audience didn't think so, and in the comments, women write about how "artistic" it was and construct various excuses about why the scene was OK. [Which boil down to female morality in the age of Hypergamy: the guy was Alpha, it was OK.] But just like the moment when as Steve Sailer noted, a 500 square foot home in Compton sold for $340,000, this stunning display of female value for male Alpha dominance, to the exclusion of everything else, may mark the height of the female market for men ruled by Hypergamy. This may not be the beginning of the bubble. But it may, as Roissy argued, mark the beginning of the end of Hypergamy above all else. In other words, the top of the market for Alphas.


Famously, Charlie Sheen held a knife to his wife's throat, on Christmas Day (because nothing says the holidays like "Honey I'm going to kill you!"), and was rewarded not by being fired, after feminists and female fans picketed "Two and Half Men," but a raise, to nearly $2 million per episode. Women (as a group, in general) forgive pretty much everything if a man is Alpha. The Petersons, Drew and Scott, one convicted, the other charged, in their wives murders, had no problem attracting female attention, while nerdy cubicle dwellers go back to their porn collections and X Boxes. Drew Peterson, aging, over 50, was the favorite of local college girls in bars. Scott Peterson not only drew Amber Frye, while married, but dozens of marriage proposals behind bars. Johan Van Der Sloot, in his travels through Asia, drew plenty of female admirers, both Western female expatriates and locals, in his fame of being accused of killing Natalie Holloway. Reputedly, the girl Van Der Sloot killed in Peru, was fascinated by his past, and willingly went to his hotel room alone, late at night, after flirting with him at the local Casino.

The market for men, set by women, is dominated by well, Alpha dominance. Nothing else matters, other than pure, violent potential and aggressiveness, adjusted for socio-economic status. Thus Mr. Big is an A-hole, but does not kill anyone. In fantasy, however, the big shot guys do indeed kill people, because it's sexy. You can see this reaction in novels like the Twilight series, or the Sookie Stackhouse novels upon which "Tru Blood" is based, the "Anita Blake" series by Laurel K. Hamilton, and of course, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and the spin-off Angel. Even "Dexter" with the sexy, rule-bound serial killer (he only gets off by killing other serial killers) follows the pattern. All the novels and TV series were popular with women, some exceedingly so, and all fall various rules.

First, the vampire protagonist must be much, much older, but look young. Second, he must dominate the female protagonist, and also protect her against his own violent desires (to hurt or kill her). Third, he must overtly humiliate nice-guy ordinary rivals who are the same age as the female protagonist, and make them look like pale imitations of his dominant masculine energy. Fourth, he must be "hot" and of course, hairless. Fifth, he has to kill a lot of people. Sixth, he must have a past of killing a lot of people, which the heroine must harness for her own ends to "change him." Finally, the vampire hero must dominate and often rape his female heroine, with sex so violent it leaves brutal marks.

This is particularly true in the climax of the best known vampire series, beloved by tween girls, teen girls, and their moms, the Twilight books. Where the vampire Edward Cullen takes his human teen bride and has sex with her, so violent that every bone in her body is broken, as she's transformed into a vampire. A teen girl, young and beautiful, forever! In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, vampire hero Spike rapes Buffy, which makes her love him even more. But she truly falls for him when he tells her of how many young girls, the age of her younger sister or younger, he raped and tortured before killing. In an earlier arc, Buffy finds her love for her other vampire boyfriend Angel unshakeable even while he's killing and harming friends, acquaintances, and teachers. Very tellingly, Buffy loses all interest in her human boyfriend Riley, when he loses the status of super-soldier and becomes just a decent guy without powers.

The Anita Blake series follows the same basic template (clearly Twilight author Stephanie Meyer ahem "borrowed" the structure of vampire-vs-werewolf, with the werewolf a doofus good guy), and the Sookie Stackhouse novels do as well, with the female protagonist rejecting the good guy suitor who is human, for the dangerous and much older (but young looking) vampire Bill.

Clearly, what is at work given the extraordinary popularity of some of these (Twilight in particular) and the sheer breadth of their copiers, is the desire for most women to have the ability in fantasy to have the violent, dangerous bad boy Alpha, without consequence. Because the proxy-doll protagonist has powers herself (Buffy) or will get them (Twilight) or what have you. It is also true that this stuff is nearly exclusively the province of very feminist men, openly gay men, and women. No "manly" guy's guy would dream of reading or watching the stuff, let alone writing it. It takes a very womanly view to come up with this stuff. And it is clear, women in the main, love it. You might even say they love, love, love it!

Which brings us to the Pop Matters writer Benjamin Riley and his objections:

The final scene of “It Hurts Me Too”, the third episode of True Blood’s third season, depicts some of the most horrific violence I have ever seen on screen. In the scene, Bill, the vampire antihero played by Stephen Moyer, has been arguing with Lorena, played by Mariana Klaveno, who is his ‘sire’—the vampire who made him a vampire. Lorena has manipulated Bill in an attempt to rekindle their romantic relationship, in part by attempting to have Bill’s current girlfriend killed.

After Bill tells Lorena that he will never love her, the two kiss before Bill pushes Lorena down onto his bed and begins to penetrate her. Bill is on top, Lorena is on her back. The aggression and intensity of the sex builds until Bill grabs Lorena’s head, twisting it around 180 degrees. He does this slowly and deliberately, and accompanying a shot which visually leaves nothing to the imagination is the sound of the bones in Lorena’s neck snapping. Next, a long shot shows Bill continuing while Lorena’s head is twisted completely around, facing the floor. The next shot is from below her, of her face. Apparently still alive, blood bubbles up out of her mouth as she says: “I still love you.” Bill keeps at it until the credits roll.

Just check out the comments on the site. The female audience LOVED IT. First, they found it "hot." Second, they justified the action (Bill was Alpha, all is forgiven for an Alpha). Third, the girl who "got it" was the romantic rival and "ex" of the doll-like female protagonist, cunningly written to be almost any girl wanting a dominant, violent boyfriend in fantasy. Of course women found her come-uppance satisfying. Nor did they object to what amounts to cheating, after all if another woman has the guy, it just validates he's worth having. And besides, Vampire Bill is Alpha. Women forgive anything in a man who is Alpha. Alphas being so desired and rare.

Writer Riley is just shocked at the true nature of female desire. When you boil it down, violence is no turn off, indeed is arousing, to most women, particularly those most desirable. As anyone who has observed the amazingly hot and often intelligent women around even the most pathetic lowlife who has a streak of violence. Indeed, the easiest way to be successful with women is through successful violence, as the winner, which is one of the major reasons the Ghetto and Barrio are so ridden with crime and cannot get out of it. When some "senseless" amount of violence, a shooting of a good kid with no gang ties, or a grandmother, or an infant occurs, rest assured some gang member will be having sex that night. Its guaranteed! Increasingly as Theodore Dalrymple argues, White British Chavs echo this same behavior, and of course White British Chav women find the men that beat them irresistible. As Dalrymple puts it, they find ordinary, decent men who would treat them well, boring. Sexless. In Chav Britain, the Barrio, and the Ghetto, this is normal female preference. Its shocking when a woman does not choose a violent thug. Even more when an attractive woman does it. Women have always found killers arousing, Geronimo when imprisoned at Pensacola, reputedly cut a huge swath through his jailers wives. Even though at the time he was a wizened old man, his body count made him sexy.

Roissy argues (though he does not use the term bubble) that tough times are a bounty for betas, as women will trade off against sexual excitement to find security. I am not so sure this happens rapidly though I agree with it in general.

In my view, when survival and survival alone is paramount, then yes, a beta who will stay and protect a woman, is better than the fleeting attentions of an Alpha, who will always have other, prettier and younger women to occupy him. Even the most mild beta in normal circumstances can kill, and the presence of a man is better than his complete absence, against other marauding men. Often the least impressive of betas can make the most astonishing killers, witness Alvin C. York, who was initially a conscientious objector and temperance pacifist. York killed at least 8 men (likely more) and took 132 men prisoner.

But most of the time, survival in tough times is not paramount. A Depression is not the Siege of Leningrad. Or the Thirty Years War (let us be grateful for that). Thus, women don't need a man that much, as a provider. They can make do, without him, and rely on the sexy dominance of an Alpha, even if he's not around much. It will cost, but most women most of the time will happily make the trade-off of sex for security.

Furthermore, it takes time for the "sexual marketplace" as it were, to reach a clearing price for men. Female Hypergamy, the desire for the Alpha male (often to the exclusion of all else), requires either sustained and long-standing social pressure to avoid it, mostly by other women, through extensive shaming and shunning (which in turn implies stable social networks, little anonymity, or physical mobility), or sheer survival. Nothing much else seems to control it.

Even Jane Austen, in "Pride and Prejudice," tellingly has her heroine Lizzy fall for the "cad" but Alpha male Wickham, though the social conventions of her day will not allow her to consummate it, and Wickham is the market for a wealthy wife, or a simple mistress. Unlike Darcy, who has far more wealth, Wickham is by contrast, agile and well spoken, an excellent dancer (where Darcy is stiff), easy-spoken, charming, outgoing, and a very convincing liar. No wonder Lizzy and her sister both fall for the man (though Lizzie finally sees through him as Wickham's mercenary intent becomes clear). This from the most self-controlled female heroine in literary history, a character moreover written by an 18th Century woman.

Of course, today, marriage is for Kitchen Bitches, beta males so unmanly they take over household chores (women don't really want men to do this, they'd rather they just be sexy and dominating) to the point of making themselves so umasculine their wives lose all sexual desire for them. Today's Lizzie would rather live like Samantha from "Sex and the City," and when she can no longer turn heads, even with botox and plastic surgery and pilates, she can have a "fabulous" set of gay friends. And many memories.

The genie of what women really want, when times are good, and they can express it, is out of the bottle. A man needs only to look at Twilight, at Buffy, at Tru Blood, at the Anita Blake series, at Dexter, at any Rom-Com, where the heroine must avoid the attentions of the best friend (who is not manly enough to win her) and snag the commitment phobic, wanted (and had) by other women, Alpha male.

Couple that with most women now out-earning men, particularly in the largest mating/population/job markets, and the ability to be a beta provider is in question. In New York City, women outearn men by 17% in their twenties (ages 22-30). Indeed, women beat men in the same age group in 39 of the 50 biggest cities and match them in another eight:

Single, childless women in their twenties are finding success in the city: They're out-earning their male counterparts in the USA's biggest metropolitan areas.

Women ages 22 to 30 with no husband and no kids earn a median $27,000 a year, 8% more than comparable men in the top 366 metropolitan areas, according to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau data crunched by the New York research firm Reach Advisors and released Wednesday. The women out-earn men in 39 of the 50 biggest cities and match them in another eight. The disparity is greatest in Atlanta, where young, childless single women earn 21% more than male counterparts.

…

"They don't need marriage as much," says Stephanie Coontz, who teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. "They're likely to be pickier, and they're likely to delay marriage." Coontz dismisses the notion that successful single women intimidate men and can't find husbands. They just marry later in life, she says.

"One day, I'll get married and have kids. But I'm in no rush," says Rebecca Loveridge, 27, a Washington, D.C., magazine marketing director who also writes a restaurant blog. She likes dining out, attending concerts and checking out art galleries with her friends. "Now is the time to be single," she says.

And why wouldn't a woman want to delay or avoid marriage? What does a Kitchen Bitch Beta husband have to offer? Slightly more income to buy a second sofa from Ikea? Versus exciting, thrilling sex with a dominant, demanding Alpha that other women want and have (therefore marking him as desirable in the first place).

Even in a recession, the "market clearing price" for beta men has not reached its level where women would actually give up exciting sex, with dominant Alphas, that they know they cannot gain exclusivity over, for the entire devotion of a beta guy. Particularly not when they are young, fertile, and desirable. Able to form families.

And increasingly, beta men are becoming aware of this deep, nearly unstoppable preference. That at best, they can in their thirties, find a woman who will settle for them as a boring, near "gay best friend" to shop with while they dream of the man who really excited them. And express not so secret contempt for their Kitchen Bitch husband. The only women as a group seemingly exempt from this are Mormons, who have tellingly a massive and very stable family network, with overt mentoring by older women of younger ones, and intense pressure among Mormon girls to select a nice guy relatively early instead of pursuing many, many Alpha men in the anonymity of urban job centers. A young Mormon woman may often be married by age 25, while her non-Mormon SWPL female counterpart is reaching her twentieth or even thirtieth partner. Nearly all Alpha dominant males. This as much as the "affordable family formation" of Steve Sailer's writings, accounts for the low fertility of Whites (i.e. much delayed marriage and childbirth). Often, a woman who "settles" for a boring beta guy will find that he's not even worth having a kid with, which would require fertility treatments anyway by age 38 or so. Increasingly, sperm donors are the rage, as in the romantic comedies "Back Up Plan," and "the Switch." After all, if any woman wanted this guy in the first place, he'd have been married decades earlier. Much better to get a better genetic material from a dominant, masculine guy who is a sperm donor!

Increasingly, beta men are finding that women, in their late thirties, have too much baggage to visibly settle themselves for merely being the accessory in a big wedding party. Hence the annoyance of older women at men who having been sitting out the relationship game in their twenties, unwillingly, find no incentive to settle for their age peers (though they would for younger women).

But the key is women themselves. Who would seem to require, several generations of growing up impoverished and desperate, as times turn increasingly grim, and single-motherhood poverty outweighs the sexy desire and tingle of Alpha dominance, in favor of Beta dependability. After all, despite rising gas prices, and periodic price crunches, America's love of big vehicles has not gone away. Periodically, small cars like the Toyota Corolla in the early 1970's, and again in the late 1970's through mid 1980's, find favor. Only to be shoved aside by bigger, more roomy and more horsepower blessed vehicles that provide excitement not reliability and economy. The big muscle cars have staged a modest comeback, but the roomy and powerful cars of yesteryear have merely morphed into SUVs and Trucks as cars.

Female fantasy reveals what women really desire, in the scheme of things. Which at its ultimate, is a violent, dangerous man they can control through being sexier than other women. This is why Vampire Bill, breaking the neck of his lover as he has sex with her, is not shocking but arousing. The openly gay Alan Ball, creator of "American Beauty," and also "Six Feet Under," knows his female audience. There have been no outcries, no calls for cancellations. No feminists protesting. They were too aroused themselves. The silence by women and feminists to this scene, in a show watched almost exclusively by women, is telling. As are the many, many comments defending the scene and the character by female viewers.

While the deep-rooted preference for sexy, and violent men (the two are synonymous with most women) can never be erased, young women who grew up poor, and knew their mothers grew up poor, alone and abandoned, can rapidly prefer a reliable beta to a life of raising kids on poverty wages.

Because hidden in the sexual marketplace is the power of incentives. Men now are discovering, and indeed cannot avoid it, that being a beta provider is no longer possible, and that the quickest way to female desire is successful violence. This is a huge incentive to create a brutal, unmoderated competition for available women along the lines of British Chavs, the Black Ghetto, or Mexican Barrio. Close off beta provider status, by continually declining wages, and female advantages in wages where it matters most: the twenties when men and women find mates, or decide to play the market (basically until they age out of attractiveness) and see what happens. One can hardly be a beta provider and be the equal of a woman in earning power, much less her inferior. She might as well just work another part-time job, or improve her career, and have a really sexy man. The key to beta provider status is as much the man bringing much more money to the table than the woman, otherwise he's just a Kitchen Bitch, as unmanly as Rosa the part-time cook or maid.

But just as compelling, is the knowledge that women respond to violence. That as long as they don't suffer from it directly, themselves (and even that is negotiable, witness Rihanna and Chris Brown), violence if successful (getting away with it) is the path to a woman's desire, if not her heart. And if a man has her desire, her heart will soon follow anyway. This is the incentive at work:

Be violent and successful at violence. Get the girl. And another. And another.

Winner take all (literally). Loser ends up dead (or alone).

Enough of this, good and hard, in a sustained effort, and it might not even take two generations. Particularly if men become far more aggressive, in almost every aspect of life, to the point of frequent fights and killings, to gain status and women. Nothing more deliberate could be constructed to make all of America, into a version of South Central LA or East Los Angeles, or Westlake Village. THAT sudden transformation, as young men arive at young adulthood, unable to compete for women in any other way but through violence, could spark a massive shift in the market, as women seek to escape a cycle of violence and poverty through overt, self-knowing repression of their innate desire for violent and dangerous men.

Which might shift back again as with vehicles (from small and reliable to big and powerful), or might not, as in the housing market.

But in the interim, it would seem that it is Alan Ball's world. The only question that remains, is the hyper-explicit sex and violence in "Tru Blood" the excess that marks the top of the market for Alphas, the moment that valuation of men has gone so insane that it cannot go on, or are their higher peaks of insane valuation of violent dominance still to come?

My own feeling, admittedly as man not a woman, is that the current market in men set by women is not sustainable. That the value put on dangerous and sexy men, in fantasy and reality, is just not something that can go on much further. Something, if only men responding massively, in a sudden way, to these obvious incentives: "be violent and I'll have sex with you!" is likely to happen.

And when it does, women might well find that the line between fantasy and reality is blurred, as the Roman people, gorged on sadistic spectacles of death in gladiator games, public executions, and animal fights to the death, found at the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
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The Pittsburgh Shootings and the Question of Violence

The Pittsburgh area shootings at an LA Fitness center by gunman George Soldini has left 5 dead and 15 wounded. While getting a lot of attention, for a variety of reasons, including the killer's diary, his resentment towards women, loner behavior, and failed attempt to become a Pick-Up Artist (PUA), the killings and shootings by George Soldini are troubling for a number of reasons beyond the personal tragedy.

First, there were no warning signs that the individual was a danger to others. Unlike the Columbine killers, Klebold and Harris, who gave ample warning of impending danger, or the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, who was demonstrably a danger to himself and others, or the neo-Nazi James Van Brunn (the Holocaust museum shooter), George Soldini was a quiet, middle aged, middle class professional who never by all accounts, came to the attention of law enforcement or mental health authorities. Short of an unconstitutional psych screening dragnet for every male 15-65, there was no way to know of the danger posed by Soldini.

Second, while violence by various lone men or small groups of men is not uncommon in America, the recent trend towards targeting large groups of innocent people is very new, and disturbing.

Third, the actions of men during many of these shootings in the United States and in Canada, are troubling, and a big reversal of what was previously the case. Which in and of itself points to a troubling new reality.

Fourth, and finally, the danger posed by lone men or small groups of loner-type men like Soldini is far overshadowed by the larger danger: men simply abandoning any investment in society and failing to preserve and protect society.


Soldini left a detailed online diary which can be seen at Half Sigma in its entirety. His principal aim in the shootings seems to have been to kill an ex-girlfriend of many years (a goal oddly not mentioned in his diary) and humiliate and destroy his mother and brother, whom he hated. His brother, by all accounts, was a successful businessman and is married.

At no time was Soldini ever identified as a man who was likely to enter an LA Fitness aerobics class and shoot up the place, targeting mostly women in their thirties and forties. He was by all accounts a fit and trim man in his late forties. He survived rounds of layoffs at the law firm where he worked as an IT professional. His net worth was over $250,000. Neighbors did not know any odd behavior, and his lack of intimate friends allowed his growing mental illness (of which he was well aware of) to proceed to its deadly conclusion. By all accounts he was able to get dates (though they went nowhere) and was invited to at least one Christmas party. He was able to function socially and conceal his intentions enough that no one had any idea he was intending to kill people.

This is different than most of the other killers of his nature in modern America. When McVeigh was arrested for the Oklahoma City bombings, none who knew him were surprised, and Klebold, Harris, and Cho all left a trail of warnings and signs that clearly indicated they were dangerous. If there are other men like Soldini, planning the same type of thing, they will be impossible to stop, since no one will know their intentions until too late. It seems that Soldini's web diary, simply sat online, unread, until the shootings. His postings on YouTube of his video tour of his apartment was unremarkable.

Mental illness is not something new. Nor is the combination of mental illness and firearms. The Walker Colt dates back to the 1840's. The Henry Rifle from the late 1850's had a 16 round magazine. The Smith and Wesson Schofield revolver introduced in the 1870's had a top break action with metallic cartridge feed. Firearms had been put to use for killing, or trying to kill, political leaders in America, particularly the President, since 1835 when a deranged ex house painter named Richard Lawrence tried to shoot Andrew Jackson with two pistols (both single-shot pistols, which misfired). Legend has it that Jackson tried to kill his assailant with his cane, and aides had to restrain him, while Davy Crockett and others restrained Lawrence (who was later institutionalized). John Wilkes Booth, Charles Guiteau, Leon Czolgosz, Giuseppe Zangara, would all appear to be at least partly motivated in their killings by mental illness. Nor indeed is mass violence using bombs new either, considering the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Yet all of these are understandable in a way. The Gunpowder plot was a far-fetched but not totally implausible desire to install King James daughter, Princess Elizabeth as a Spanish pawn to restore Catholic England. Booth hoped killing Lincoln would inspire continued Southern guerrilla warfare. The others were mentally ill men who hoped by killing a prominent man, their mental troubles would cease, not unlike Mark David Chapman or John Hinckley Jr. Even before reliable, repeating firearms, men like Henry IV fell to assassin's blades. Henry's assassin, Ravaillac, being quite similar to Czolgosz or Zangara or Lawrence. Mental illness and violence have been part of the human condition since the beginning, though the combination is usually rare, in a big enough population it will make itself known.

What is disturbing, and new, is mentally ill people targeting large groups of innocent victims whose death can in no way achieve much of anything for the killer, not even the satisfaction of killing an important man. Disturbing though it is, the actions of a Chapman or a Hinckley or a Ravaillac or a Lawrence make a kind of sense — the lunatics wanted to be famous. What is new is the desire not for fame, but for killing people the killer does not even know. Tim McVeigh targeting the Murrah building including the ground floor day-care center, or the Columbine shootings, or the Virginia Tech shootings, or the Pittsburgh LA Fitness shootings, makes no sense in terms of killing an important man and thus achieving fame (at least part of the famous man's fame would now belong to the killer). Even crazy people can have a sense of belonging.

The conspiracists of the Gunpowder plot, did not plan to blow up average Londoners. Booth and company did not plan to massacre the theater goers at Ford's Theater. None of the lone gunmen above targeted innocent people they did not know. What's changed is the lack of belonging. Of investment so wide and deep in a society, even the Ravaillacs, the Zangaras, or the Czolgoszs, unknowingly, take part in it.

The inflection point, at which society stopped having such a deep, and wide investment that even lunatics intent on killing someone would confine their attentions to individual famous people, seems to have been the 1966 University of Texas Bell Tower shootings by Charles Whitman. Whitman, who may have been insane as a result of a brain tumor, shot and killed 14 people, most of them random targets, in addition to killing his wife and mother, at the University of Texas at Austin Bell Tower (and around it). What was reassuring in that case was that professors and students spontaneously grabbed their hunting rifles and shot back at Whitman in the Bell Tower.

These were not, as Mark Steyn put it, "men who ran away." Steyn, in his article in MacLean's Magazine, excoriates the new film "Polytechnique" (about the 1989 Montreal Polytechnique Massacre by Algerian immigrant Gamil Gharbi, aka Mark Lepine who shot and killed 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal) with these words:

“The defining image of contemporary Canadian maleness is not M Lépine/Gharbi but the professors and the men in that classroom, who, ordered to leave by the lone gunman, meekly did so, and abandoned their female classmates to their fate—an act of abdication that would have been unthinkable in almost any other culture throughout human history. The ‘men’ stood outside in the corridor and, even as they heard the first shots, they did nothing. And, when it was over and Gharbi walked out of the room and past them, they still did nothing. Whatever its other defects, Canadian manhood does not suffer from an excess of testosterone.”

Steyn notes that nearly all the male passengers on the Titanic died, nearly all the female passengers were saved. To put it in more graphic terms, while only 31% of the people on board the Titanic survived, a full 72% of women survived, and only 19% of men survived. Women did go first. The men did not run away.

What disturbed me the most, about the accounts of the Virginia Tech shootings, was the total passivity of the young men, in protecting their female classmates. The only men who did anything at all, active, were Professor Liviu Librescu, an elderly Holocaust survivor, and and Professor Kevin Granata, a mid forties Army Reservist. None of the young men attempted to fight Cho, the shooter, particularly as he was reloading, wrestle the gun away from him, or do anything active in confronting and stopping the shooter. It was a passive response of men profoundly disinterested and uninvested in their society. One deeply at odds with the response at the sinking of the Titanic or the UT Bell Tower shootings.

Which leads to the most disturbing thing about our society today. Even with the rash of shootings, America is so big (303 million people and counting) that the shootings have only a minor affect on society, outside the tragedy for the victims and survivors. But the shootings point to a larger issue: the loss of investment of men in society. An investment that keeps even crazy people from targeting society itself, particularly innocent people, and makes men respond to a threat by risking or giving up their lives to save it's foundation: women and children.

The real risk is not mentally ill men like Soldini (it's usually, but not always, men who do the shooting). It is the massive under-investment in society, particularly civil society, that is the real risk. I am on the board of a local, Southern California charity. I am the youngest man there, all others being considerably older, in their late sixties or older. The only female member is also of that age. The North Santa Ana Kiwanis, in Orange County, dating back to the 1950's, has disbanded due to lack of members (most existing members were in their late sixties or seventies). In the Black community, it's even worse — Little Leagues and general volunteer coaching, still alive in suburban White America, (with Latino America somewhere in-between) are almost non-existent in Black America. The plague of single motherhood, and lack of investment and involvement of older, family men who form generally the backbone of volunteer coaching for Little League, Pop Warner Football, and other organized team sports activities that teach boys how to cooperate with each other and be aggressive within the rules, has destroyed Black baseball. Look at any Major League Baseball and notice what you don't see: the large presence of US Black players, who were a force in Major League Baseball since Jackie Robinson. In their place, Caribbean players from places where volunteer coaching still exists.

A general rule of thumb is that the health of a society is indicated by the existence of middle-class volunteer organizations that offer both fellowship and a sense of belonging to society, in the process of maintaining society. This can be volunteer run sports-leagues, that teach boys the importance of teamwork and aggression within strict rules (or in other words, sportsmanship) or charitable organizations like Kiwanis or Shriners or Lions Club that provide civic involvement in cooperation with local governments, and also an important alternative and check to overweening power by abusive local officials.

The generally poor state of traditional volunteer organizations, with many long-time Kiwanis, Lions, and Shriners chapters closing as their members age and no replacements are found, indicate that many younger men, particularly the generation that should be succeeding these older men, which is men in their fifties, forties, and thirties, have no interest or investment in society and traditional volunteering. Most other volunteer organizations, such as the Sierra Club, or Humane Society, or Habitat for Humanity, have long since changed into big, professional fundraising and political activist groups. Leaving little for the would-be volunteer to both socialize and contribute to society.

While gang-related murders are down, in Los Angeles, compared to times past, not very many involve an arrest, much less conviction (about 42% in 2007, according to the LA Times). From the LA Times blog:

Community attitudes and behaviors and prosecutors’ thresholds for filing homicide charges may have more to do with whether murderers end up behind bars than any particular law-enforcement model.

It's vital to have a wide and deep investment in society by men. Men being invested in society are husbands and fathers, who maintain ownership in society, provide critical community attitudes, particularly guidance and control of young boys, and create social attitudes that control and channel violence.

The Black community is America's canary in the coalmine. Being more fragile, with far greater propensity for single motherhood, Black America's fall into (at least as far as the urban core is concerned) chaotic gang violence characterized by a total absence of any adult male investment in society, is both rapid and chilling. As Barack Obama relates in "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," older residents in a Chicago housing project fondly recalled the days of Segregation, for the relative security that was found: children could play in the streets and doors were generally unlocked. This was not a society without it's problems, illegitimacy may have run as high as 24%. But it worked, to produce even under Segregation, a generation of mostly law-abiding, useful and productive citizens who maintained a sense of ownership in their society. Even a discriminated against Black man could and did marry, have his own family, and thus be invested in at least his own community. Segregated New Orleans, the center then of Black America, was famous for its many, many benevolent societies that offered everything from life insurance to health plans for dental and medical care. Theodore Dalrymple, in his "Life at the Bottom" noted much the same, how deprived, ration-impoverished East London in the 1950's was a place where children played unsupervised and doors were often left unlocked. Neither thinkable now.

Tellingly, both Britain and Black America suffered the decline of the nuclear family and traditional marriage worst and first, with single motherhood and consequent non-investment by men producing a Dante-esque hell.

The problem of violence is not men like George Soldini, who though they may occur more and more frequently, targeting innocents in a sexual rage, unable to find intimacy and a sense of belonging to society (and thus the need to protect it), are still not fundamental threats to society's well being. America being a very big nation.

No, the problem of violence is more akin to that of gang-ridden inner cities, and their stormy petrels of what is to come to other communities, including the White community. Gang violence is never "senseless." It makes perfect sense — gang members wish to be known as killers because it gives them prestige and power, and thus, women, who in the changed environment of single motherhood norms, prefer such men and boys. Average Bro has his own take on things, and like many other Black bloggers believes that women like actress Lauren London, who opined that she liked thugs, is not unrepresentative of at least some Black women. Any time a gang member engages in a "senseless" killing, it is wise to remember that the killing, from the gang member's perspective, makes perfect sense, it's designed to gain him sex.

This then, is the real danger of male uninvestment in society. Not only do men do the bare minimum to get by, but lacking families and a reproductive interest in society, they don't volunteer and engage in community "ownership" which prevents a thug-gangsta mentality from taking over. The experience of "chav" Britain suggests that this model can be rapidly reproduced. Few in Britain in 1948 would have predicted a 50% illegitimacy rate, and rampant crime. Yet in sixty years, that was precisely what happened to Britain. Instead, men compete to be the biggest gangsta and chav they can be, with varying degrees of violence. Or remain, passive and uninvolved in the face of danger to the community.

Either is a disaster, and that is the true horror of George Soldini.
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Russia's War on Georgia: It's Not the Cold War, It's Worse

Russia's war with Georgia would seem to return to the Cold War days. That's a fundamental misreading of the situation. While the Cold War featured the United States and the USSR facing off over world wide alliances and a divided Europe, it was an anomaly. An anomaly in that each "empire" was not really an Empire. But rather client states that required a good deal of military advisors, cash, discounted commodities, and all sorts of civilian assistance to keep compliant regimes in power. Think of it as a reverse Empire of sorts. Instead of money and resources flowing inward to Moscow and Washington, money and resources flowed out. To Cuba, or Greece, or Turkey, or Iran, or Egypt. Sometimes, as in the case of Egypt, or Greece, from both sides depending on who was ascendant locally.

The fall of the USSR coincided with the fall of oil prices. Gorbachev could literally not afford to pay for the secret police of the USSR's client states, and the rest was history. Regime after regime fell, as there just weren't enough secret police being paid (along with the military) to crush the revolts. This is not to discount the bravery or sacrifice of those protesters who toppled the regime, but explains why the USSR and the regimes themselves did not act the way they did in Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. There simply was not enough money.

Enter Vladimir Putin. Taking over from disgraced drunkard Boris Yeltsin, Putin was and is an able and ruthless man. You don't rise to the top of the KGB, then FSB hierarchy, without being both ruthless and producing results. Whether it's Alexander Litvinenko drinking Polonium-210 laced tea, or Anna Politkovskaya shot to death in an elevator, or Ivan Safronov falling to his death out a window, Putin is a man of action. His threats are not idle, and his enemies and critics mostly dead.

Putin is a man who understands, more than anyone else, the violence gap.

The West, today, is simply unable to cope with, and cannot respond to, extremely violent and well-organized men. Men like Osama bin Laden, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Or Vladimir Putin. Almost no Western leaders has any direct experience with men like these, men who kill. Not for passion, or insanity. But profit. Men who kill directly. By both taking up the pistol and firing into a prisoner's head, as alleged with Ahmadinejad, and by direct order. These men understand that there's no reason at all to do all the dreadfully boring and very difficult things that are required to generate and maintain wealth. Building infrastructure, educating the populace, having a fair and level economic playing field, keeping religion out of politics, a fair and transparent rule of law, suppressing cronyism, and more. All that is for the West, fat and comfortable and peaceable.

No, what these men each in their own way is exploiting is their own ability, through the people they command, to inflict lots of violence on fat Western targets to extort concessions. Extort them with no real consequences.

Osama hopes to extort concessions leading to the World Wide Caliphate. This is unrealistic, but he has taken advantage of the violence gap (he can inflict far more violence than Western Society, excepting the US post-9/11, can retaliate with). Denmark, or Sweden, or Norway, or Spain cannot retaliate with violence directed at Osama and his followers, much less his protectors in Pakistan's military and intelligence circles, even if a city block is blown apart. Even if those nations had the means they would lack the will to retaliate, and in any event lack both means and will. Osama takes advantage of that gap to conduct terror attacks, as do his followers around the globe.

Ahmadinejad hopes to use nuclear weapons to exploit that violence gap. Not only against the United States, but also in Europe where already Iran is positioning itself as Europe's Muslims protector. If Muslims in say, Denmark demanded the execution of Danish cartoonists for the Mohammed cartoons, and Iran backed that demand with nuclear threats, what could Denmark do? Nothing but submit. The United States certainly will not go to nuclear war with Iran to save Danes from nuclear destruction, much less save Danish cartoonists. Nor will France or Britain which have their own problems. Conveniently this makes Iran, and Ahmadinejad, the rival of Osama bin Laden for title of "Leader of the Muslims" in the struggle to establish the World Caliphate.

But Vladimir Putin is a man fully apart in exploiting the violence gap. He has no particular ideology. No world-domination goals. He merely exploits internally the desire among Russians for order, discipline, and leadership along with restoration of Russian power, with the gangster instinct of the KGB. Putin's aim in making war on Georgia is not "freedom" or "liberty" for the South Ossetians. Rather it is crushing Georgian independence, and particularly the non-Russian controlled oil pipeline, the Baku-Tibilsi-Ceyhan pipeline that bypasses Russian control. Crushing this independence makes nearly all oil and gas moving westwards to Europe, move through Russian controlled pipelines. Which can be turned off and on at a whim.

Putin understands the power of the gun. Which can be used to simply take from those lacking guns (or enough of them). Georgia is a useful example, just as the thugs who chase the head of BP's investment in Russia was an example to the West of how things run in Putin's Russia.

Europe is a very rich, old, and weak place. With a lean and hungry Russia on it's eastern doorstep. Lacking any ability or will to defend itself, and any meaningful desire to re-arm, only the United States keeps from simply annexing whatever it wants in Europe. Most Americans have a hard time comprehending that Europe has essentially no military at all. Almost all European spending goes to the Welfare state. This problem only got worse after the fall of the USSR. It's gap, in the ability to inflict violence, with it's neighbor to the east, invites Putin's strategy.

The United States is obviously not going to go to war to save Georgia. While it may be costly for Putin to roll up Georgian independence, he has no choice but to do so, otherwise his critics at home who matter, that is men just like him, will arrange something along the lines of Litvinenko's Polonium-210 tea. Having done so, and made an explicit example of Georgia (along with the failure of NATO, a hollow and make-believe force, to do anything meaningful about it), places like the Ukraine, or Romania, or Moldova, or Hungary, or Bulgaria, or Poland, or the Baltics will simply fall in line.

But they will not be the classic Cold War client states. Rather, they will be tributary nations sending money and resources to Russia. Which lacks the ability to gain wealth any other way.

That this war also halts the slide in oil prices that coincided with Bush's desire to drill in the US, is a bonus. Russia, like other failed states (Saddam and Iran come to mind) lives and dies by the commodity price of oil. On a daily basis. These nations cannot survive when oil is at a price that makes the West prosperous.

Suggesting strongly that sooner or later, the West and Russia (and it's ally, Iran) will go to war over the price of oil, globally. While Europe may be fading into old age, demographically, and exists as a permanently disarmed dependent of the United States, the US is a different case. Both younger demographically and unwilling to live lives of poverty sure to follow oil permanently at $150 a barrel or higher.

Sadly, Vladimir Putin may find that the violence gap is not permanent, and in the end "fighting spirit" as the Imperial Japanese, Wehrmacht, and Al Qaeda in Iraq suicide bombers found out, is no substitute for resources, will, and ability.
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