Chateau Heartiste

Poon Commandment VIII:

VIII. Say you’re sorry only when absolutely necessary

Do not say you’re sorry for every wrong thing you do. It is a posture of submission that no man should reflexively adopt, no matter how alpha he is. Apologizing increases the demand for more apologies. She will come to expect your contrition, like a cat expects its meal at a set time each day. And then your value will lower in her eyes. Instead, if you have done something wrong, you should acknowledge your guilt in a glancing way without resorting to the actual words “I’m sorry.” Pull the Bill Clinton maneuver and say “Mistakes were made” or tell her you “feel bad” about what you did. You are granted two freebie “I’m sorry”s for the life of your relationship; use them wisely.

Via Anatoly Karlin,

Politicians and other public figures often apologize after making controversial statements. While it is assumed that they are wise to do so, this proposition has yet to be tested empirically. There are reasons to believe that apologizing makes public figures appear weak and risk averse, which may make them less attractive as people and lead members of the public to want to punish them. This paper presents the results of an experiment where respondents were given two versions of two real-life controversies involving comments made by public figures. Approximately half of the participants read a story that made it appear as if the person had apologized, while the rest were led to believe that the individual stood firm. In the first experiment, involving Rand Paul and his comments on the Civil Rights Act, hearing that he was apologetic did not change whether respondents were less likely to vote for him. When presented with two versions of the controversy surrounding Larry Summers and his comments about women scientists and engineers, however, liberals and females were much more likely to say that he definitely or probably should have faced negative consequences for his statement when presented with his apology.

Mercy is a man thing.

The effects on other groups were smaller or neutral. Overall, the evidence suggests that when a prominent figure apologizes for a controversial statement, the public is either unaffected or becomes more likely to desire that the individual be punished.

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Basically there is no reason to apologize regardless of the situation.

While the scandal may wreck your reputation or not as the case may be, you might as well avoid the self-abasement. Since it’s not going to do you any good anyway.

Not to mention that apologizing when you did nothing wrong is the action of a contemptible worm.

Never apologize to your enemies, and apologize to your woman (a reproductive enemy) only when absolutely necessary. Apologies demoralize your allies and embolden your enemies to slake their thirst for vengeance.

Repeal the 19th.

Women and liberals – by nature – favor the strong horse.

As Western White men are becoming weaker and the source of ridicule and demonization by a culture that has turned against them, their women are abandoning them for the (perceived) strong horse, even if that means the women have to invite the strong horse in through asylum and refugees rackets.

The evidence presented here suggests that seeing a public figure apologize either increases the desire to punish him or her, or has no effect at all. If this is the case, we may wonder why politicians do in fact so often ask for forgiveness in the face of controversy. It is possible that politicians apologize in order to receive better coverage from the media or even make a story go away. Political punditry can apparently affect voters’ preferences. In one experiment, individuals judging performances in a presidential debate were influenced by the nature of commentary they watched after the fact, when compared to a control group not exposed to the opinions of pundits (Fridkin et al. 2007). Likewise, if an individual apologizes for a comment that the media finds offensive, future coverage of that individual may be better than it otherwise would be. Such an argument requires the assumption that while members of the public are hostile or indifferent to those who apologize, members of the media will provide better coverage of an individual who shows repentance. Yet there is no reason to assume that this is the case, especially since most of the media leans to the left (Groseclose 2011: Groseclose and Milyo 2005), and liberals in this study appear to be those most likely to want to punish individuals for apologizing.

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Nor does it seem that apologizing buys sympathy from the media.

Take a cue from Donald Trump, who at least has this down pat. Go on the attack. Flip the script. Agree and amplify. Basically do anything but apologize, because apologizing signals weakness, and weakness invites further attack.

Game can make American White men the strong horse again.

Why are liberals and women more likely to want to punish individuals for apologizing?

One, women are more liberal than are men, so there’s some overlap between the “liberal” and “women” categories.

Two, cruelty is a specialty of the effete. The weaker sex — and among liberals, both the men and women qualify as the weaker sex — run riot whenever they get the upper hand, because those moments of power don’t come every day for them. An enemy who has apologized is therefore a target to strip of all dignity and torture in the public square, because his apology vindicates the liberal’s moral self-regard and provides a rationale for the liberal to indulge virtue signaling status contests.

If the masculine is concerned with achievement, then the feminine is concerned with social status (i.e., credentialism), and apologies from enemies can be exploited to gain more social status for oneself among one’s shitlib peers.

And this is why it’s a mistake to turn over the governance and stewardship of a nation to women and soyboys.

Related, this study also supports Poon Commandment XI.

XI.  Be irrationally self-confident

No matter what your station in life, stride through the world without apology or excuse. It does not matter if objectively you are not the best man a woman can get; what matters is that you think and act like you are. Women have a dog’s instinct for uncovering weakness in men; don’t make it easy for them. Self-confidence, warranted or not, triggers submissive emotional responses in women. Irrational self-confidence will get you more pussy than rational defeatism.