May 28, 2015

What Bernie Sanders wrote about rape fantasies in an alternative newspaper in 1972.

This is the feeblest controversy of all time, but it's worth noting that some people think it's worth noting and it probably needs to be said that if a GOP candidate had ever written anything like this, it would be considered significant:



I've read the whole thing, and it's mostly a call to all humanity to avoid "slavishness" and "pigness." Don't be oppressed and don't be the oppressor.
Many women seem to be walking a tightrope now. Their qualities of love, openness, and gentleness were too deeply enmeshed with qualities of dependency, subservience, and masochism.
There's a little blaming of the victim there, but it's an insight that was common in the feminism of the time. And he's endearingly sincere about bringing men and women together:
How do you love — without being dependent? How do you be gentle — without being subservient? How do you maintain a relationship without giving up your identity and without getting strung out? How do you reach out and give your heart to your lover, but maintain the soul which is you?

And Men. Men are in pain too. They are thinking, wondering. What is it they want from a woman? Are they at fault? Are they perpetrating this man-woman situation? Are they oppressors?
ADDED: I see hypocrisy at the Washington Examiner. On the one hand, there's "Bernie Sanders: Woman 'fantasizes being raped'":
Democratic presidential candidate Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders once penned an essay claiming that men fantasize about abusing women and women fantasize about being raped. Not exactly what you'd expect from the far left candidate whose campaign runs on the idea of equality for all Americans....
And on the other hand, there's "Scott Walker attacked over abortion quote that he didn't actually say":
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker believes forced ultrasounds are "just a cool thing for women," a handful of online news sites reported Wednesday. Problem is: That's not exactly what the Republican governor and likely 2016 presidential candidate said.
By the way, what Scott Walker did with his official power 2 years ago is a hell of lot more important than what Bernie Sanders said as a private citizen 43 years ago.

61 comments:

Curious George said...

Worse are his socialist fantasies. That's rape too.

tim in vermont said...

Bernie is a nice man. He is just misguided.

Deirdre Mundy said...

I wonder what sort of people DON'T think ultrasounds are pretty cool....

I mean, heck, with the new 3D ones, you can even see whose nose the baby has pre-birth! Not to mention the whole "How to decorate the nursery thing...."

Sebastian said...

"This is the feeblest controversy of all time, but it's worth noting that some people think it's worth noting and it probably needs to be said that if a GOP candidate had ever written anything like this, it would be considered significant"

Right. The "feeblest controversy" would be just "significant" enough to take down any GOP candidate.

"And Men. Men are in pain too. They are thinking, wondering. What is it they want from a woman? Are they at fault? Are they perpetrating this man-woman situation? Are they oppressors?"

Shoulda given me a trigger warning. Jeez.

Quite a bit of heteronormativity here, by the way

Has Bernie evolved enough to be Pres?

Now I'll go contemplate my role in "perpetrating this man-woman situation."

fivewheels said...

That's taking him out of context. Why not take his sincere love of Soviet-style government authority in context instead?

My first job was in Vermont. It's a small state, and you can run into your representatives way more often than any other place I've been. I had multiple interactions with Sanders, Pat Leahy and Jim Jeffords. Leahy and Jeffords seemed disciplined and uninteresting. Sanders was a freaking crackpot loon.

Birches said...

This is the feeblest controversy of all time, but it's worth noting that some people think it's worth noting and it probably needs to be said that if a GOP candidate had ever written anything like this, it would be considered significant

While true, I think everyone's just enjoying a bit of schadenfreude. Let's not forget how many news articles were written about Romney's dog!

Fabi said...

Completely unimportant. But Mitt once said something mean to another student in high school!

Ann Althouse said...

"I wonder what sort of people DON'T think ultrasounds are pretty cool...."

Government-forced ultrasounds...

Thorley Winston said...

One of the nice things about Scott Walker is that so many of his opponents are so unhinged they can’t seem to help but lie about things he said or did or mindlessly repeat false charges even after they’ve been debunked. Should Walker be the nominee and his opponents continue true to form, he’s going to be supported by an army of David ready to debunk these smears as they’ve been doing ably the last few years. Any Republican nominee is going to have to be ready to run not only against the Democratic nominee but also a legacy media that will be carrying their water. Walker may be better situated to wage a war on two fronts than we’ve seen in most Republican candidates and that’s something those of us who want to elect a Republican president need to consider.

JSD said...

He’s moved on to more important matters. Like too many brands of deodorants and sneakers.

garage mahal said...

Government-forced ultrasounds...

In fairness, Walker probably doesn't even know the details of the law he signed.

pcrh said...

I usually check the comments on salacious posts in the hopes of seeing Laslo. Alas.

Anonymous said...

It's not a Government forced ultrasound.

You don't have to kill your child, you know.

Oh mercy, not an ultrasound so I have to see what I'm killing, when Roe v. Wade specifically said that it was up to the mother to decide on the 'mystery of life'!

Even though that was the court decision, let's not actually require any KNOWLEDGE to be imparted to the women who have the sole authority to weigh in on the mystery of life!

What a joke.

Gusty Winds said...

Sanders' first paragraph is way off, making me wonder if he's ever even masturbated. A typical fantasy is NOT a woman tied up or abused.

The #1 male masturbation fantasy is about women you've slept with or messed around with in the past, that you wish you would have slept with more, instead of blowing them off so quickly. Or, you wish you could go back and do it again.

Keeps it all closer to reality. He's full of it

Birches said...

Don't most doctors require an ultrasound anyway? To see how far along you are before you get the abortion? That's first thing the doctor did with any of my pregnancies to see how far along I was.

I would assume ultrasounds are now mandatory with Obamacare too. But I suppose that's a different objection, since that ultrasound is mandatory at 20 weeks instead of nine...

Sammy Finkelman said...

Bernie Sanders once penned an essay claiming that men fantasize about abusing women and women fantasize about being raped.

That's not the main part of the essay. People who wrote this kind of thing don't read very much of what they are writing about.

He's not arguing that. That is the set-up - the premise. And it's true. Not for all men or women, of course, but it is something that's known. He used men's magazines to prove that about men, and he doesn't have such a good example for women - he used newspapers. If he had been more familiar with romance novels he might have use that. I'm sure people could cite some literature to prove it, and Bernie Sanders probably had personal experoence with some persons who told him this.

The whole theme of his essay is that there's something wrong with instinct, and it hurts people. He also seems to think there are some women who really hate men.

The whole essay is actually unclear, and it probably requires additional reading - maybe there was a follow-up - to make sense of it. Perhaps this essay is itself a follow-up to something written by somebody else.

Sammy Finkelman said...

Of course scott walker said that in general people - not just women - like ultrasounds. And that's true.

He was saying it wa snot really such an imposition.

Of course that's true with pregnancies that they don't object to.

TrespassersW said...

"You wanna play it soft. We'll play it soft. You wanna play it hard. Let's play it hard."

YoungHegelian said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
YoungHegelian said...

There's a deeper problem at work here than simply what nonsense (or not) about sexuality Bernie Sanders wrote about in the 70's.

The deeper problem is that the post-Marxist Left simply airbrushes the history of the Left until there's nothing left other than "sugar & spice & everything nice...". If the old Left disagrees with the party line of the modern Left ---- poof! It's gone, and the media are either too conniving or too stupid to look any further.

The 60's & 70's Left was all big into sexual liberation, and in "exploring their sexuality" a lot of topics were broached that modern conversation shies away from. Child sexuality (including pedophilia), S&M where people got hurt, predatory male sexuality as a Nietzschean right, & the assumption (a la Camille Paglia) that if a woman got involved in this stuff, she was a big girl & could take care of herself.

The root of all this was Freud. Freud, however, pisses off the gays & the feminists, so Freud got banished from Lefty discourse. Unfortunately, if you don't know Freud, you can't understand the Frankfurt School, and if you don't understand the Frankfurt School, you don't understand the genesis of the post-war American New Left, and all it wrought on American society.

Do you know what the Marxists thought of homosexuality & feminism? That they were problems caused by the capitalist deformation of societal relations. Under true socialism ---shazzam! --- no more exploited women & no gays or lesbians at all!

Nowadays, the cultural amnesia has put is back to the bad ol' days of high-Stalinism where the Party line changes from one morning to the next. "Comrade, we are on the right road!". But to where? At least under Stalinism, there was some Marxist theoretician in the Politburo who had some clue of what should be honored at least in the breach. Nowadays, it's a twitter mob that can't find its dialectical butt-cheeks with both hands.

Peter said...

Do violent sexual fantasies predict violent behavior? I'm not aware of any evidence that they do.

So? Bernie Sanders is an old, old man, old even beyond his years, full of old politics from the old, old Left, the leftover Left, the Left that even the Left left behind decades ago. (

Would he be more at home with Eugene Debs or with Gus Hall and, who cares? Why would this walking fossil have any credibility with anyone?

Bob R said...

I agree that forced, medically unnecessary ultrasounds are something that someone who claims to be a small-government conservative should be ashamed to back. However, the hacks in the media choose to highlight the issue by manufacturing a phony quote to make Walker seem unfeeling and glib in addition to being inconsistent.

But you can't beat the media for inconsistency when it comes to long forgotten writing. Col. Sanders should be questioned about his old writings as Bob McDonnell of Virginia was questioned about his. Yes, it's bullshit. But that never stopped, e.g., the Wapo from jumping on a Republican.

traditionalguy said...

Walker is walking the line and takes the hateful position that a picture of a foetus cell clump in also a

picture of your beautiful first born child that will produce grandchildren in your old age unless you execute him so you can party hearty.

Jason said...

I've cracked the code: Laslo is Sanders!

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Remember kids, things that happened during Hillary Clinton's term as SecState are ancient history (and things that happened during Bill Clinton's Presidency are too old to even contemplate), but accusations that Mitt Romney bullied some kid in middle school--now that's breaking news.

Henry said...

As someone who grew up in the 70s and studied art in the 80s that was largely a residue of the 70s, Sanders' essay is evidence of the times. For intellectuals, this was a time when Jean Genet was celebrated. In popular cultural, this was the time when Love Story and Star Wars bookended Klute, A Clockwork Orange, Taxi Driver, and Dirty Harry. The moral ethos was to admit the essential degradation of life and work from there.

As a lesson in reading comprehension, which Mr. Joseph intentionally fails, Sanders clearly references his sources. He writes, "Have you ever looked at the Stag, Man, Hero, Tough magazines in the local bookstore?" He continues from those examples of degradation to advance his thesis of personal growth.

I don't know how old Dan Joseph is, but he lists himself as a youth delegate to the Republican National up through 2006. Okay, Mr. Callow, maybe it's time to develop some journalistic ethics. Or if not that, imbibe some history.

averagejoe said...

By the way, what Scott Walker did with his official power 2 years ago is a hell of lot more important than what Bernie Sanders said as a private citizen 43 years ago.
posted by Ann Althouse at 3:55 PM on May 28, 2015

Yeah, we know. The reason that the conservative blogosphere is batting around the Sanders's quotes is to highlight the duplicitous and biased reporting of the democrat party propaganda arm universally recognized as the MainStreamMedia. Because Mitt Romney's high school hijinx were enough to disqualify him from the presidency, or at least lead to months of pearl-clutching denunciations from the MSM who judged him unfit to lead because of what he may have done or said when he was a teenager, but Bernie Sanders degenerate op-eds written while he was a candidate for United States senate are off-limits with the excuse that it happened "a long time ago", although not as long ago as Romney's teenage years. This is the second day in a row of the conservative bloggers highlighting evidence of the MSM/democrat party bias; the first was yesterday's response to the Matt Bai(Yahoo News) article declaring that Hillary's wealth not only doesn't make her unfit for office like Romney's did, but that it makes her uniquely qualified for the presidency. So the conservatives are trying to point out to the brain-dead LIV's of America that the news they generally get is full of hypocritical partisan horseshit written by democrat party members; they're not hoping to tank Sanders' candidacy with this info or equating it with the actions of sitting governors- but you are.

Deirdre Mundy said...

But Ann- Walker's quote wasn't that forced ultrasounds were cool-- it was that ultrasounds were common and people show him pictures of their grandkids' ultrasounds and he has pics of his kids from before they were born, and THAT'S pretty cool.

His point was more that ultrasounds are common now. So it's not like he was requiring a weird, outlandish thing before abortions.

Also, given the scandals where clinics were willing to do abortions on women who weren't even pregnant, and given that other things besides a baby can cause a positive pregnancy test (like a tumor), and given that a standard abortion won't remove the baby in an ectopic pregnancy, thus setting the mother up for a major medical crisis down the road, perhaps an ultrasound before an abortion is just BASIC MEDICAL CARE.

Captain Ned said...

Life-long Vermonter here and no fan of Bernie. That said, stuff he said in an underground Burlington newspaper back in 1972 (when he was 30) is useless as "opposition research". His speech at his campaign opener down on the Burlington waterfront contains all the elements needed to derail his candidacy.

You see, Bernie is a walking quote-machine. There is no brain/mouth filter. He will say stupid things just like he's been saying stupid things in VT politics for the last 40 years (it's just that the transplanted flatlanders that now own this state like what they hear, and they let out-of-state UVM students vote in local elections without reporting their change in domicile to the IRS, whence they'd be lost as deductions). He's also the punch-drunk prize fighter in that he simply doesn't know when to quit. If (as I think likely) Shrillary cleans his clock in the early caucuses/primaries, he'll double down. It's the only thing he knows.

Gahrie said...

In fairness, Walker probably doesn't even know the details of the law he signed.

Has he ever stated that we need to pass a law in order to know what is in the law?

You moonbats really have no conception of hypocrisy, projection or shame do you?

Gahrie said...

Government-forced ultrasounds...

Only of you want to kill your baby. Given that the government is giving you permission to commit homicide, I don't think requiring an ultrasound is all that onerous.

CarlF said...

Rape fantasies. So we have one candidate who is married to Bill Clinton and another who wants to be Bill Clinton. Sigh.

Laslo Spatula said...

"Their qualities of love, openness, and gentleness were too deeply enmeshed with qualities of dependency, subservience, and masochism."

Are we now saying his take is inaccurate?

I am tired of half-rabbits.

I am Laslo.

narciso said...

well there's that annoying complication:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/scott-walker-attacked-over-abortion-quote-that-he-didnt-actually-say/article/2565129

John henry said...

LBJ once said that he didn't have to prove his opponent was a pig porker, just get him to deny it.

I don't know how serious the story is but it can lead to all sorts of interesting questions to Sanders:

Do you fantasize about domination and bondage when masturbating?

Did you and your wife ever have a threesome?

What is your take on The Story of O? Did Pauline Reage get it right?

Lazlo can take it from here.

How the Hell is Sanders running as a Democrat anyway? Unless he has joined the party in the last month or so, he has never been a Democrat his life. Can anyone run as a Dem regardless of party affiliation? Are the Dems so hard up for alternatives to Hilary that they are willing to let him run?

If he wins all the primaries, will they give him money? What will people who donated to the Democrat party think of that?

This whole thing is way bizarre.

John Henry

John henry said...

Sanders wants to know:

"Have you ever looked at the Stag, Man, Hero, Tough magazines in the local bookstore?"

Only one I remember is Stag but there were a whole slew of similar magazines and perhaps the other 3 existed. I not only looked at them, I bought them frequently at one point in my teenaged life.

the stories were pretty universally about fantasies of rescuing women from perverts, often National Socialists, ChiComs, NoKos, Castroite Cubans and the like. trujillo, of the Dominican Republic was a big villain for a while.

Playboy was much better for masturbating. I can't imagine using any of the men's mags for that. The pictures were very tame.

John Henry

damikesc said...

Professor, abortion providers would require ultrasounds as well...you don't think they root around blind do you?

John henry said...

I just searched and found a site called http://www.stagmags.com/ that has covers for a whole bunch of Mens mags from the 60s. Other than Stag, none of the other 3 Sanders mentioned are listed.

Nifty covers, though.

Check this one: http://www.stagmags.com/E-to-G/For-Men-Only/imagepages/image27.php

"Special book bonus: A bikini clad girl and a Hell raising yank marooned on Africa's skelaton coast."

Oh, yeah. That just gives me instant wood.

John Henry

gadfly said...

So we now have uncovered Bernie's campaign strategy. He will do a Jimmah-like interview with Playboy!!

"Christ said, "I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery." I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do—and I have done it—and God forgives me for it. But that doesn't mean that I condemn someone who not only looks on a woman with lust but who leaves his wife and shacks up with somebody out of wedlock. Christ says, don't consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife. The guy who's loyal to his wife ought not to be condescending or proud because of the relative degree of sinfulness."

Moneyrunner said...

You don't understand. Ann is the female Bernie Sanders and fantasizes about being raped by at least three guys as she's getting off.

Moneyrunner said...

To quote Ace of spades:

"The right way to bring about a more open, permissive, and adult tone in civic culture is to treat the left according to its own obscene rules, while always making it clear: We are prepared to abandon these darkly stupid rules you've constructed the minute you agree to do the same, Genius."

And that goes double for aging hippy chicks.

Moneyrunner said...

Ann: "...if a GOP candidate had ever written anything like this, it would be considered significant:" You mean as bad as hazing a schoolmate while younger than the sexual pervert Sanders?

Moneyrunner said...

I wonder if Ol' Bernie's hand job fantasies are typical of his generation of hippy dippy socialists? Ann? any insight? That wasn't my bag. I always thought that these kinds of people were the offspring of a social stratus that didn't have to worry about finding a job once they "found"themselves. Poverty was not a possibility. The old folks at home would always have their backs.

madAsHell said...

I'm certain that Bernie was over-gratified during potty training, and seeks that same gratification today. He's even willing to describe such gratification.

Does he have children?? I hope he opted out.

Unknown said...

But do women fantasize about Rape Rape Rape?

Scratch a lefty reveal a sexual monster projecting his violent fantasies on women.

War on women!!!!1!!!

BTW, how does this rape fantasy interplay with his Wife’s fellonious tax issues when she was President of Burlington college?

Documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation indicate that the wife of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders may have been able to use her clout to get away with loan fraud, nearly bankrupting the small college she was president of and collecting a sizable severance package in the process.
Read more at http://patdollard.com/2015/03/report-bernie-sanders-wife-committed-loan-fraud-nearly-bankrupted-college/#sKHITSiDYs2EGmiv.99

Sound like she raped Burlington College.

Anonymous said...

Anyone remember when leftists embraced Sigmund Freud, his idea of neurosis, and the extensions of his ideas that blamed society and not bad parenting or other "trauma" on them?

Today he's forgotten.

Now, "society" explains craziness, and absolves individuals of self-determination and free will.

Today, nobody's "crazy" or fucked up ---it's "society" that's made them that way.

The cure: more government!


Wince said...

The standard for rape is consent.

The standard for medical battery is informed consent. Even abortion providers prefer these ultrasounds, among other reasons, to prove informed consent on the part of the patient.

Crying Rape
Pro-choice advocates should quit calling ultrasounds rape.

The reality is that most abortion patients do receive an ultrasound to date their pregnancies. Since most abortions take place in the first trimester of pregnancy, many of these ultrasounds are performed with a transvaginal probe, the most effective method for viewing early-stage pregnancies. In the end, whether an ultrasound is performed, and which method is used, reflects either the practice of the abortion provider, the patient’s medical history, or—for a relatively small number of women—an aversion to the transvaginal method. Most of the time, however, the transvaginal ultrasound is a useful and common tool that helps providers perform abortions safely and well.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Democratic presidential candidate Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders once penned an essay claiming that men fantasize about abusing women and women fantasize about being raped. Not exactly what you'd expect from the far left candidate whose campaign runs on the idea of equality for all Americans….

Why?

It's not like they're far-right-wingers, people whose denial/ignorance of reality is so indelible that they either entirely missed or forgot about the tremendous market forces pushing the written and filmed versions of the horrendous Fifty Shades of Gray franchise.

Yep. It was all in Bernie's head.

Sometimes I think American conservatives are so thick-headed that one of them could very well respond to this comment while denying the existence of the internet and computers.

Etienne said...

Dan Joseph is MRCTV's Man on the Street. He covers protest rallies, gets people to sign outrageous petitions, interviews newsmakers and tries to get a sense of what's on the minds of the American people when it comes to the big issues of the day.

He also blogs, is a published author and has his own personal YouTube Channel featuring political and social commentary.


I can't stop giggling over his resume.

Lewis Wetzel said...

"Hi! I am Bernie Sanders from the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party. Can I have your vote?"

Unknown said...

Romney bullied someone in high school!!!!1! - Media headlines

Hillary misreports tens of millions in donations from women hating countries -- Old news

Bernie Sanders rape fantasy -- Bill Clinton airborne lolita flights to sex island with convicted billion dollar sex offender. 'You’ll need to put some ice on that'

You have to be a seriously sick (*&& to believe in socialism anyway. Its quite a condemnation of his constituents that this walking whack job represents them in the Senate.

Just as PJ Orourke says, the Senate is a place where America collects the one hundred most dangerous imbeciles in America and puts them in a place where they can do the least harm.

Rusty said...

Is there anybody in the Democrat line up that wasn't born in the Truman administration?

Freder Frederson said...

but it's worth noting that some people think it's worth noting and it probably needs to be said that if a GOP candidate had ever written anything like this, it would be considered significant

Why is it worth noting that someone named Dan Joseph at some website called MRCTV (how do you find these obscure sites?) thinks that if a GOP candidate wrote this it would be significant?

deepelemblues said...

Well, why should anyone care that some commenter 'named' Freder Frederson at some blog called "Althouse" (how do you find these obscure sites?) is scoffing at some guy named Dan Joseph at some website called "MRCTV?"

See, it's easy to be an asshole and do nothing but scoff. No one wants to see your nostrils, put that nose down.

Leland said...

Government-forced ultrasounds

I see the professor finally decided to ditch her pretense of "cruel neutrality" and now makes false claims to attack a Republican and defend a Socialist. As many have noted, an ultrasound is not forced on anybody, but if you choose to have an abortion, the government has regulated medical treatment to include an ultrasound. If you think that is heinous, there are plenty of other medical regulations from various levels of government, and thanks to Obamacare, the federal executive branch can make such demands by simply forcing insurers to demand things prior to compensating the real (the hospital, doctors, and nurses rather than just the insurer) healthcare providers. No need to pass a law, Feds can just have insurers claim compensation requires an ultrasound to verify condition prior to treatment. If you don't like government control of your health, you shouldn't have voted for Obama.

Unknown said...

Sanders will say something ridiculous the next time he opens his mouth. No need to go back decades. It's a given that this would be a big deal if anyone but a commie had ever written such a thing. But that observation is a commonplace that could be repeated, is repeated, every day. Sanders is a stalking horse for Clinton anyway. He'll find and mark the left boundary line for her.

Gahrie said...

Is there anybody in the Democrat line up that wasn't born in the Truman administration?

Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, but she is an obvious lunatic. What has to be scaring the hell out of the Democratic insiders is that all the Dems are either geriatric or lunatic.

The only Dems left are the ones in Gerrymandered safe seats. This means that not only can they be loony...they compete against each other to see who can be the looniest. I mean seriously, has anyone taken a close look at the Dems left in the House?

Soprano said...

There is a difference between a trans-vaginal ultrasound, which is an invasive procedure, and the kind of ultrasound that examines a fetus later in a pregnancy, which can be performed externally and produces those fuzzy-but-recognizable prints. In order to detect a fetus before 12 weeks (which is when most abortions are performed), an instrument must be inserted in the pregnant woman's vagina and pushed upward until an image is detected. Very different procedures. One is invasive, uncomfortable and expensive, and the other is non-invasive, not uncomfortable (except for the chilly gel that gets spread over the abdomen), and much less expensive. It occurs to me that, unlike Bob McConnell, Scott Walker may not understand the difference between the two procedures. If he does understand the difference, then there is no excuse for his deflecting the question by making statements about the relatively pleasant, voluntary, and non-invasive kind of ultrasound when the issue at hand is something else altogether.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Oh, but so that's why it's necessary, because the decision must be made so early. Well, that's how the ball bounces. The actual abortion procedures are much more intrusive and uncomfortable, not to mention that they kill an unborn human being. It's not frivolous.

Bad Lieutenant said...

And while I don't think Sanders is unforgivably pervy for this, it does show muddled writing and thinking that is no reference in his favor.