So, I’m cheating a little bit by telling you this because I haven’t disclosed it elsewhere online, but I had hernia surgery on the 30th of last year. They gutted me like a fish. I have a 12-inch scar that goes from the bottom of my belly straight up and currently, it looks like Dr. Frankenstein sewed two dead men together to make me. Yes, I do have pictures and no, I’m not going to show them to you because it’s gross looking and you should feel a little bad for wanting to see them. Consider yourself chastened. The good news is my recovery is moving even better than expected, despite the fact (or perhaps because of the fact) I’m sleeping 12 hours per day.
What all of that means, is for the first time since my college days, I have 14 days blocked off with no real work or exercise to do. My columns for the start of the year were written in advance and now, me, a person who believes a big part of their purpose on earth is to write, has to just enjoy this little vacation. No work. No writing. Just relax. You’d think that would be easy, right?
Not so much.
I will try to restrain myself, but there are already several things I want to write about, one of them being Andrew Tate of all things. Andrew Tate has been in the news a lot lately because he was arrested for human trafficking and rape in Romania:
Former professional kickboxer and controversial Internet personality Andrew Tate was detained in Romania Thursday, along with his brother, the country's anti-organized crime unit confirmed to CBS News Friday. The unit has asked that what was to be a one-day detention be extended by 30 days.
...Romanian prosecutors said in a statement obtained by CBS News that search warrants were carried out in several homes Thursday due to suspicions of "an organized criminal group" involved in "human trafficking and rape."
The organized crime group was formed by four suspects in early 2021 with "a view to committing" human trafficking in Romania, the U.S., and U.K. in order to "obtain important financial benefits," prosecutors said.
Six women have been found who were sexually exploited by the organized crime group, according to prosecutors.
..."The four suspects ... appear to have created an organized crime group with the purpose of recruiting, housing and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content meant to be seen on specialized websites for a cost," prosecutors said in a statement to Reuters.
Andrew Tate is actually an interesting fellow and I have been aware of his existence for much longer than most conservatives because I dipped my toes in the “Red Pill” world for a while and he has been very well known in that sphere.
Want to know my initial impression of Andrew Tate, none of which I’d take back today? He’s a strong, smart, good-looking, highly intelligent, very charismatic, cool, wealthy, marketing genius who’s extraordinarily good with women. All those things were true then and as far as I can tell, they’re true now. This is why he built a following in the “Red Pill” world, and in social media and it’s why a lot of conservatives flocked to him when he finally started breaking through on the national scene and began saying things they agreed with about masculinity.
So, if all those things are true, why did I say this back in August when Tucker Carlson had him on his show?
Because despite that long list of complimentary things I said about him, once you learn a little more about him, Tate is a truly horrible human being – and I don’t mean like a run-of-the-mill jerk or liar. You know, the sort of person you’d typically find in Congress. I mean, he comes across as the sort of person who is a clinical sociopath or narcissist and therefore, may literally be incapable of feeling bad about anything he does to another human being. In other words, he might be an 8 or 9 out of 10 on a lot of the qualities that people care about, but he’s also probably pretty close to things like a zero out of 10 on things like character, human decency, honesty, kindness, morality, conscience, etc.
This is the most fascinating thing I read today because it's simultaneously utterly compelling and horrific. If you've never heard of Andrew Tate, he's a talented kickboxer who's legendarily good with women. On the other hand, he also seems to either be a sociopath or a narcissist. So, as you read this, you go, "This is amazing. This guy must have a 10/10 game to pull this off, but there's something horribly wrong with this guy." That's my reaction. Maybe you'll see it differently. Either way, the story is a can't-miss. (PS: The profile picture on his tweets is not him).
So, what happened here? Just going by Andrew Tate’s own description, he met a woman in London, seduced her, falsely made her think the two of them might have a future together, and convinced her to move back to Romania. When her mother smelled BS, Tate had a conversation with her and convinced her that he really, truly cared about her daughter. Then, after this woman QUIT HER JOB (!) and MOVED (!) for him, she finds out he’s already in a relationship and her only option is to be part of a threesome. After doing this for a while, she starts to suspect (finally) that Tate cares nothing about her and asks for some proof. Note the things Tate says she wanted… to get married or have a baby. Clearly, this is someone who, for unfathomable reasons given the circumstances, has actually been snookered into believing that Andrew Tate is someone who may very well want to spend the rest of his life with her. So, he tells this naïve woman that he’ll PROVE he’s serious if she tattoos his name on her.
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Incidentally, I don’t know how many women have these tattoos, but Tate has openly said there are more than 20 women with tats like this on their bodies. So apparently, it’s something he gets off on convincing women to do. In any case, she gets the tattoo and by his own admission, Tate did nothing to show he was serious about her because he’s not, he’s just leading her on. This comes to a head when he leaves town, she gets mad at him, disobeys him by going to a festival and Tate retaliates by never talking to her again.
Tate would tell you those were just “boundaries.” Maybe between a master and a slave or a serial killer and someone stuck in a hole in their basement, these are appropriate boundaries, but what he is talking about here is unhealthy to the point of being bizarre among human beings in a relationship. In fact, very few human beings would even treat their dog like this (“You peed on the rug after I said not to do it! Get outside and you’re never allowed back home!”), much less someone they’re allegedly in a serious relationship with.
Now again, Tate is being charged with convincing women that he cared about them and then isolating them, coercing them to perform as cam girls along with beating, threatening, and raping them when they got out of line. Did he do these things? It seems like that will be determined by a court in Romania unless he can bribe his way out of it. However, is he in a business where the accusations being made against him would fit right in? Is he pretty clearly CAPABLE of doing all those things and then probably eating a sandwich and sleeping like a rock? For sure. 100% absolutely. Without question.
Just this story, which is probably several orders of magnitude worse than it sounds since he undoubtedly colored it to make himself look better, tells you that. In fact, best guess? He was probably grooming her to be one of his sex cam girls, concluded he couldn’t make it happen, and he cut her loose. Don’t think that could be the case? What about after reading this? This was actually part of the public pitch Andrew Tate made to men who wanted to hire him as a dating coach:
I've been running a webcam studio for nearly a decade, I've had over 75 girls work for me, and my business model is different than 99% of webcam studio owners. Over 50% of my employees were actually my girlfriend at the time and, of all my girlfriends, NONE were in the adult entertainment industry before they met me.
Literally, that was my job. My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, test if she's quality, get her to fall in love with me to where she'd do anything I say, and then get her on webcam so we could become rich together. Whether you agree or disagree with what I did with their loyalty, submission, and love for me doesn't matter. You cannot reject the results, and the results are simple. My girlfriends would do more for me than 99.9% of men's wives would do for them.
In other words, for all the undeniable gifts Andrew Tate has developed and the skill he does apparently have with women, the other end of the scale is that he’s on the far end of the spectrum when it comes to being a morally stunted and grotesque human being. Now, the type of person he is has started to catch up with him.
That’s the problem with saying that character doesn’t matter. It may not seem to, at least for a while, but in the end, it often turns out to matter so much that it, more than any other factor, turns into destiny. The shortcut you take today to get the result you want ends up costing you far more down the line than if you’d done things the right way. That’s why character matters, but it’s also why you don’t just excuse bad character by people on “your side.” It’s because people with bad character don’t just make one-time mistakes. They make mistake after mistake because they’re terrible people. The further you go down the road of defending rotten people doing rotten things because they’re supposedly “on your side,” the worse of a person you become in the process and the harder it ultimately is to justify doing the right thing.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you character doesn’t matter. It does take time to play out, but it’s amazing how many times character ends up mattering more than anything else in the end.
Good article. On top of that as a Muslim I would like to add that he is using the religion to pretend he has values. And the worst part? Other "Muslims" eating it up.
The result: A pornographer and casino owner all of a sudden a quasi religious leader.
I hope Christians learn from this mistake and judge men by their actions and compare them directly and exactly to scripture and to God's words. Be very skeptical when clout chasing businessmen claim to follow or care about God.
I warn that Trump is very clearly a Christian version of this phenomenon.
Thank you for this! I like Andrew Tate but after reading this, I have to say I agree with you. The problem with Tat’s arrest is that it come on the heels of all of his Matrix comments. It does make it seem there is a vast conspiracy to silence him. However this does make the truth much more blurry.
Good article. On top of that as a Muslim I would like to add that he is using the religion to pretend he has values. And the worst part? Other "Muslims" eating it up.
The result: A pornographer and casino owner all of a sudden a quasi religious leader.
I hope Christians learn from this mistake and judge men by their actions and compare them directly and exactly to scripture and to God's words. Be very skeptical when clout chasing businessmen claim to follow or care about God.
I warn that Trump is very clearly a Christian version of this phenomenon.
Thank you for this! I like Andrew Tate but after reading this, I have to say I agree with you. The problem with Tat’s arrest is that it come on the heels of all of his Matrix comments. It does make it seem there is a vast conspiracy to silence him. However this does make the truth much more blurry.