Our government seeks more and more control.

Our government is not competent.

These two statements are both true, and together, amount to a nightmare for institutional credibility. A government that seeks more control must at the very least demonstrate credibility in implementing its goals; a government that is incompetent can only regain legitimacy by limiting its authority. And yet we have a government that presents the worst of both worlds: incapacity to perform its most basic functions, combined with an ever-expanding encroachment into daily life.

Thus, this week, the Federal Aviation Administration was forced to ground virtually all flights in the United States after an outage in the so-called Notice to Air Missions systems, designed to warn pilots of weather problems, runway issues, or other obstacles. The NOTAM system relies on a reportedly outmoded computer system that has not been updated for years. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is most famous for taking a two month paternity leave and then bragging about it repeatedly on national television, helpfully commented, “There was a systems issue overnight that led to a ground stop because of the way safety information was moving through the system.” He then reported this problem to President Biden, who helpfully commented that Buttigieg ought to “restore the system quickly and safely, and to determine causes.”

Job well done, gentlemen.

The air traffic control nightmare is but the latest example of a government well over its skis. Whether we are talking about the nation’s scattershot but brutal covid lockdown and mandate policies, its utter incapacity to handle a historically unprecedented flood of illegal immigration across our Southern border, railroad strikes barely averted by Congressional force, or the signal inability to recruit members of our military, our government seems to be failing repeatedly at issues that implicate core competency.

And yet at the same time our government proves itself shockingly unable to perform its most basic functions, it continues to expand its ambitions. Thus, this week, we found out that the Consumer Product Safety Commission may consider banning gas stoves in the home, supposedly thanks to the risk of childhood asthma caused. There are approximately 40 million households in the United States currently using gas stoves.

When governments promise much but deliver little – and when they seek to control much, but only succeed in controlling the most minute and irritating aspects of daily life – they lose their legitimacy. And that is precisely what has been occurring over the course of the last century in the United States. The growth of the regulatory state means that government now reaches into the nooks and crannies of the lives of its citizens – and yet government cannot actually do the most basic things required of it. The response of citizens, unsurprisingly, is distrust in government itself.

But that distrust does not manifest, unfortunately, in widespread calls by citizens to restrict the size, scope and intrusion of government. Instead, it manifests as a hue and cry to “elect the right people.” This is a category error. The problem with our government is not one of staffing, but one of incentives – and all the incentives are on the side of inefficiency, blundering, and encroachment. That is not likely to stop until the American people recognize that they can have competent government or intensely involved government, but not both. In a representative republic, the problems of government are, in the end, problems of the people who vote for them.

Andrew Tate was recently arrested on charges including rape and human trafficking in Romania, but is he really an alleged rapist? Or were the girls involved just willing to sell their bodies in exchange for money and a life of luxury?

Before we answer that question, let’s look at another story where women allegedly agree to trade debased sexual favors in exchange for a life of glam.

There is a website out there called TagTheSponsor.com. Essentially, what the people behind this site do is claim to trap these young, promiscuous girls on Instagram who pretend to be successful “models” by throwing out outlandish sexual offers — all entirely lewd, crude, and crass that go far beyond conventional norms — in exchange for luxury travel, gifts, and more. That happens in real life and the site nicknames the men who support these “models” as “Sponsors.”

Shockingly, these Instagram “models” go along with mortifying propositions. The folks at TagTheSponsor post the conversations online and show how fraudulent their lifestyle really is. It’s disgusting stuff, but this is the price “models” are willing to pay so they can travel to foreign lands and get high-end jewelry supported by “sponsors.”

The point behind the site is to prove that these “sponsorettes” —  as TagTheSponsor calls them — are essentially participating in the world’s oldest profession, though they hide it from their followers.

To secure a life of fame, material, wealth, and fortune, these women readily agree to the most ridiculous, provocative made-up fetishes from TagTheSponsor.com. They’re not models — far from it. That’s just a euphemism for something I don’t need to spell out anymore.

Why does any of this matter? Well, as noted, internet personality Tate has been accused of some very bad crimes against women.

The question again is: Is Tate actually guilty, or did these girls who got involved with him know what they were getting into — similar to the sponsorettes and other “models” around the world?

Now, I’ve actually met Tate. I met him during a group dinner at the Ritz in London. He was the friend of a friend of my then-budding love interest and now-husband. Tate was very nice to me, and for that dinner, I have nothing bad to say about how he treated me. I didn’t speak to him that much — I was literally too busy falling in love with my husband.

Interestingly, at the time I had an assistant who happened to be Romanian. This girl was not the brightest, to put it bluntly, and was also obsessed with Instagram. She would post a lot of seductive photos online and spout dumb comments in real life. She wasn’t a very good assistant.

Needless to say, she isn’t working for me anymore, but she did spend a lot of time talking to Tate that night in England.

At the end of dinner, my former assistant told me that she thought Tate was a pimp in Romania. This seemed crazy because he wasn’t from Romania and I didn’t take her seriously at the time. Then the arrest happened and Tate was accused of being just that and more.

So what do I think now?

Well, based on the evidence I have seen, I don’t think Tate is a rapist. He is exactly what he tells us he is.

Tate openly admits that he expects women to submit to his demands — sexual and otherwise. He has never hidden who he is. In private and public communication, Tate states explicitly what he does to these women and what can be expected if they enter into a relationship, professional or not, with him.

In short, he is really a modern Hugh Hefner of sorts.

To be clear, I do not support Tate’s lifestyle at all. As a Christian, I could never support it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t look at it objectively.

I believe that Tate was always upfront with these women in the same way the Playboy Mansion is upfront with Playboy models as to what is expected of them: Wearing scantily clad clothing and bunny ears for Hugh Hefner.

Unlike Hefner’s smut in America, the risk of doing something like in Romania is that it is a notoriously corrupt country. It has been for quite some time. Perhaps Tate did whatever he was doing there for legal reasons while taking the risk Romania could trump up charges against him.

It isn’t a stretch to wonder whether or not the Romanian government simply brought charges against Tate so they could seize his assets.

Legacy Media, for its part, has done everything in its power to condemn Tate as guilty.

They hate him. Why? Well, he’s an outspoken anti-feminist. He may not exactly have the right idea about true masculinity, but the internet and media hate anybody who speaks out against feminism or goes against it for whatever reason.

Now, the media keeps revealing private convos that he has had with women — presumably in order to provide evidentiary support behind the claims against him. 

For example, in one conversation he demanded that a woman get a tattoo with his name. Allegedly all the girls in Tate’s posse have to get a tattoo. To paraphrase, Tate is saying those are the rules if they want to work for him or be connected to him.

Again, that does not mean he is a rapist necessarily. In other conversations, he speaks very degradingly and assertively and dominates these women. 

Yet we know that there are many women who are into this kind of BDSM fetish. For some people, this sort of talk is a sexual kink. Most people don’t want to believe that there are women who are into this, but there are.

Now, anybody who has listened to Tate for more than a minute knows that he has been honest about his views of women. There is no mystery that he believes women should submit to him and that they should not expect his loyalty. 

It isn’t outlandish to suspect that the women who were engaging in conversations with him knew what they were getting into when they DMed him. 

That raises another point. It makes me sick that we have to pretend that in every situation the woman is the victim. Society wants you to believe that women never have any power.

The “Metoo movement” disempowered women, but the truth is that women take advantage of men, too, in order to get what they want.

How so? Well, women around the globe know that the easiest way to get what they want — especially from rich men who are well-connected — is to sell sex. This isn’t anything new. 

Sex is a power that women have and they tend to wield it heavily. They use it for greedy purposes — as evidenced by the sponsorette page.

All that being said, I want to emphasize that I do not agree with the way Tate lives his life, but two things can be true at once. 

You can condemn Tate and his business and personal life, while also entertaining the idea that the women who involved themselves with him knew what they were getting into. Perhaps they did it for money, perhaps it was for fame — it likely was for a certain lifestyle that he provided.

But that is what you call an exchange.

There is going to be a lot more to this story, and so far, I have not been surprised by anything that I have seen.