Now that the horse has been beaten to a brown stain on the side of the highway, I figured I’d zoom out and make a few observations.
Bayly’s angst about “the manosphere” is largely a reflection of his feelings about his own evangelical movement. Bayly suspects, at an emotional level, that Christianity is a historical failure: a cul-de-sac, a dying project. The difference between Bayly and us is that we knows that Christianity is a corpse, and some of us are attempting to revive it (or at least to save the Christian men within its ranks). For this good deed, Bayly and his crew hates us.
Bayly is a very shallow thinker. Like most people, he feels that something is terribly wrong, yet, as so many of his Christian brothers, he doesn’t understand the underlying currents which lead to the blossoming forth of so many aesthetic horrors.
Bayly can not handle honest criticism, even on the very website he laughably labels as “the reformation,” in which he begs for “discussion.” He runs his web page like he runs his church, no doubt: permanently detached from everyday reality. He criticizes people for their anonymity, when it’s clear he has none of what Taleb calls skin in the game himself.
Dalrock has, at least in the past, gone to bat for Christianity against the feminist enemy. Bayly resents this because he’s the same type of real-world failure I have occasionally seen in my day-to-day life. We all know that one guy who seems to desperately need help, and who simultaneously lashes out at anyone who tries to help him.
An effort to help such a person is wasted. In the attempt, the good samaritan exposes the flaws and failings of the poor sap to the light of day, where his own ego must confront them. The confrontation illustrates to everyone (and most importantly, to the patient himself) his complicity in his own failure. It’s easier for such people to just keep failing, than to face the fact that what they’re doing isn’t working.
Bayly and his gaggle of losers prefer feminists to us, because this doesn’t threaten the illusion of Christian hegemony (not to mention the ego of each whiner). If Bayly and his crew of miscreants weren’t total losers, they’d ignore Dalrock (and us) and spend their energies mocking our common enemies.
One can listen to as many warhorn media podcasts as he likes, and I’ll bet he’ll never find these cretins lampooning single mothers or abortionists, the way they sneer at us. This is not a coincidence.
As men with a goal of a healthy, patriarchal society, our first instinct is to build bridges and form coalitions (even temporary ones) with disparate peoples and groups. Unfortunately, Christians are at best unreliable, and usually treacherous. People like these will never be part of anything healthy or useful. As Nietzsche might remind us, they’re masochists who are centered on death and negativity, who cling to a slave morality. Such creatures have nothing positive to offer.
If Bayly truly wants discussion, then he first needs to demonstrate it himself (unlike the example you show in your post), and then insist that the moderator(s) on their commenting system noticeably loosen their censorship.
The reality, however, is that I very much doubt he wants discussion. Actions speak louder than words.
Pastors like Bayly are much like any other prideful man. They place themselves and their own interests in front of the truth and the general message of Christ, and ultimately can not be humble. I will also note there’s a phenomena I call “living in ShudBe land”. They look at Scripture and say “this is how it is” and are incapable of looking at what’s actually going on around them. The podcasts (especially the second) illustrate this greatly. Ultimately all most pastors come off as is blind guides on navigating in the world, but savor the presentation of themselves as “the man of God” and “the one with the answers”. Much like I described of Dalrock, the cycle of pride comes to the forefront. Bayly presents himself as the one to be followed instead of deferring to Christ, hence anything he says and does gets polluted by such an attitude.