Elsewhere (161)
Via Thomas Pauli, Brendan O’Neill on post-election bewilderment:
The Twitterati — the time-rich, mostly left-leaning set, consisting of cultural entrepreneurs, commentators and other people who don’t work with their hands and can therefore tweet all day — were especially dumbfounded by the results. Boiled down, their pained cry was: “But everyone I know voted Labour.” […] The real Two Britains… is, on one side, the Britain of the moral clerisy, which is pro-EU, multicultural, anti-tabloid, politically correct and devoted to welfarism and paternalism… and, on the other side, the Britain of the rest of the us, of the masses, of those people increasingly viewed by the cultural elite as inscrutable, incomprehensible, and in need of nudging, social re-engineering and behaviour modification. […]
The more Labour comes to be occupied by influential but unrepresentative middle-class professionals, the more contemptuous it becomes of the Other Britain, the lesser Britain, the stupid Britain that won’t obediently vote Labour… We have seen this already in the few hours since the results started coming in: Neil Kinnock musing over the “self-delusion” of the electorate; Polly Toynbee, grand dame of knackered Labourism, speaking of the “mind-blowing ignorance” of some of the electorate, who are “weak readers” and don’t know what is in their best interests (which is Labour, obviously).
Ace of Spades takes a big lens to “microaggressions”:
Now I know it’s the Worst Thing Ever to try to find out if the person you’re speaking to is of Korean or Chinese, or Korean or Japanese, extraction, because, like, You Should Just Know Or Something. These questions are said to be “microaggressing” or “othering” or “exoticizing.” One could also call them a stranger taking an interest in you and your culture… Like most SJW microkvetches, this one is a bit incoherent, insisting, as it does, that Anglos should simultaneously take no interest in Asians’ heritage and also have perfect native-level fluency in cultural differences between Asian cohorts.
And Franklin Einspruch on the virtues of “cultural appropriation”:
Akira Kurosawa studied American pulp novels, and George Lucas studied Kurosawa. Elvis is unimaginable without black-gospel music, and Jimi Hendrix is unimaginable without Elvis. I could go on. Forever. Where does new culture come from? It is copied, with alterations, from existing culture. The process is reproductive. Sexy, even. So of course, the outrage-as-a-lifestyle wing of the progressive Left wants to dictate rules for its proper enjoyment.
Demanding constraints on such an ancient and universal process is like trying to turn the tides by yelling at them, but these particular scolds seem unaware of the folly. They have complained about straight women appropriating lesbian fashion, art students appropriating Native American dwellings, couture houses appropriating Native American garb and Latina hairstyles, a Canadian post-punk band appropriating the name “Viet Cong,” non-Asian pop singers looking too Japanese or too Hindu, and white models looking too black. […] As is the case in all examples of political correctness, it is an attempt at control masquerading as an appeal for justice.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.
Re the Brendan O’Neill piece, this seems relevant, copied from yesterday’s ephemera thread:
In the Independent, the socialist comedian and 80s hangover Mark Steel is doing the usual self-flattering contortions. He describes himself as “numb” and “dumbfounded,” as “consumed with horror but entirely mystified,” as if the election result were on a par with a reversal of gravity or the Moon turning purple.
Mr Steel believes that Miliband lost so catastrophically because of those every-ready bogeymen – “Rupert Murdoch and the wealthy.” You see, it’s all about “the power of Murdoch.” It’s telling that Steel simply dismisses the agency of the electorate, who, in his mind, are strangely peripheral, barely conscious, mere dupes of dark forces. For him, it’s inconceivable that lots of people could have made up their own minds, found Labour and its leader wanting or simply ludicrous, and voted accordingly. Because how could anyone possibly find a leftist agenda unattractive?
It’s telling that Steel simply dismisses the agency of the electorate, who, in his mind, are strangely peripheral, barely conscious, mere dupes of dark forces.
“Hilariously, the very same people who accuse the Murdoch papers of brainwashing their readers into voting for the Tories – such undiluted snobbery – believed that a celeb with a webcam and a lively Twitter presence could simply click his fingers and get the hordes voting Labour.”
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/05/the-biggest-loser-of-the-night-russell-brand/
Heh. Owen Jones seemed quite convinced that Mr Brand would deliver an election victory for our socialist betters, after seducing us with his deep, deep wisdom and grasp of current events. As if everyone would be impressed by the sight of a Labour leader paying a desperate midnight visit to a mouthy, middle-aged “revolutionary” and millionaire hypocrite.
Alas, ‘twas not to be.
I wonder if it will ever occur to the contemporary Labour party – and the commentators who support them – that if you keep showing such contempt for people, they are unlikely to want to vote for you.
It doesn’t seem that difficult to work out.
The Wankerati seem entirely oblivious to the glaringly obvious reason why people turned on the vile labour party.
Do you not think that ordinary people turned on them for one simple reason. The Labour party looked the other way while hundreds, possibly thousands of mostly white schoolgirls were tortured and raped by muslim gangs. What did they think would happen? Nothing effective has been done about it. It’s almost certainly still happening and the Labour party and its allies are still trying to cover it up. People are not stupid and they have now realized the depth of the utter contempt in which they are held by the Labour party and most of the political class. The people have now acted on that realization.
if you keep showing such contempt for people, they are unlikely to want to vote for you.
Quite. So many Guardian columns expressed shock and disbelief that the left hadn’t wooed the electorate in sufficient numbers, while the very same paper, the foremost organ of the left, devotes so much space to articles disdaining the rest of us and our beastly, unsophisticated appetites – from barbecues and football to cupcakes and even our dinnertime habits. Every week, loftily telling us how we should live and what we should do without. If only we’d let them improve us from above. As if the rest of us were a problem, defective, something to be fixed.
Saw this linked to on Twitter It’s by Rebecca Roache, ‘Lecturer in philosophy, Royal Holloway, University of London’.
Scary stuff.
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/05/if-youre-a-conservative-im-not-your-friend/
Scary stuff.
I notice that Ms Roache, our lecturer in philosophy, dislikes “people who voted Conservative but kept quiet about it,” as if this were somehow duplicitous and unfair. And she says this while proudly telling us that she excommunicates any friends who express traces of sympathy for non-leftwing ideas. Even ‘likes’ on Facebook. Because, she says, voting Conservative is “as objectionable as expressing racist, sexist, or homophobic views.”
You’d think a lecturer in philosophy, a professional intellectual, might see those two things – quiet voters and her own hair-trigger intolerance – as possibly being related. If the post in question is representative of Ms Roache’s thinking abilities (to say nothing of her self-awareness and cheery disposition), the impressionable teenagers in her class have my sympathies.
Re Ms. Roache:
She states: “Life is too short, I thought, to hang out with people who hold abhorrent political views.”
And there you have it in a single sentence. There are no political opinions. There can be no mere disagreement about method goals. It is nothing less than good versus evil with these people. As Timbo states above, it’s scary stuff, because for these people “defriending” someone on Facebook can never be enough “punishment.”
One (thing) is that, in much of British culture, people are uncomfortable with debate about politics.
Usually because there’s a shouty and aggressive Leftie on the other side of the “debate” who will be straight in with the ad homs.
…to express one’s support for a political party that does these things is as objectionable as expressing racist, sexist, or homophobic views. Racism, sexism, and homophobia are not simply misguided views like any other; views that we can hope to change through reasoned debate (although we can try to do that). They are offensive views. They are views that lose you friends and respect—and the fact that they are socially unacceptable views helps discourage people from holding (or at least expressing) them, even where reasoned debate fails. Sometimes the stick is more effective than the carrot.
Sexism in action. Although, as usual, it’s not sexist, racist or ‘phobic when the Left do it.
That incoherent rant by Ms. Roache- it’s very much in line with what’s been happening on social media for quite some time. There is now another -ism which the Left deploy as a stick to beat non-believers with- my rather clumsy term for it is “otherviewsism”. The Left generally in Britain, and the Labour Party in particular, have always struck me as being a sort of weird secular Methodist sect; and meantime the Left are indeed winning the culture war. (A prime example of their so-far victorious strategy is of course “the bedroom tax”, known by the rest of us as “You know, if I want a bigger house or flat I’m going to have to pay a bit more for it”. It’s just one of a multitude of memes that have been allowed to dominate political discourse). What social media has allowed them to do is to erect a sort of social tripwire (naturally, I am thinking of this) and woe betide you if you step over it. The enlightened ones who “will murder you in 140 characters” or respond insultingly to a post with self-righteous bile and anger- they’re the guys in the watchtowers with the Spandaus.
They’re so blinkered by righteousness, they can’t recognise that, so “debate” has become pointless because nobody likes being shouted at and being called nasty names all the time, every time.
Back here in the States, I heard a liberal moan about how “tea partiers” didn’t know what was good for them, and how could they possibly contest their betters providing such well-being.
That, in a nation where
-Official debt has exceeded annual gross output;
-Real debt is somewhere around one hundred fifty trillion dollars, or ten years output;
-Forced public retirement savings accounts have been pilfered by govt and medicine has been wrecked by same;
-Economic progress had flat-lined in the Sixties under some federal Great Welfare crap or another and has yet to rebound, sinking urbanites into hell for three generations running, all the more so where labor had joined with socialism to wipe whole production centers and their cities off the map.
The parallels to O’Neill’s world could not be more striking, even in his understated tone.
That’s why I reject leftism – the intellectual repugnance and the inevitable, physical, documented history of the collective. But it bothers me to have to point either or both out as a daily function of my existence, as if living among thieves and liars.
As if living among thieves and liars.
It’s past time to recognize the collective as abhorrent, deviant, parasitic, active, and clinically disordered, needing force of/and reform. And it’s past time to remember that extortion, collusion, religious persecution, and theft are illegal, regardless.
Rebecca Roache in short:
1) You Conservatives are wrong, repugnant, and equivalent to racists.
2) I see you’re not interested in having a rational debate about this.
3) Unfriended.
Some interesting thoughts on the election result from two Guardian columnists:
https://twitter.com/daaronovitch/status/596992370702450689
Some interesting thoughts on the election result from two Guardian columnists
Heh. So the Guardian’s Michele Hanson is “baffled” by people voting Conservative and imagines they must “live in Mansions.” (And hey, what other reason for not voting Labour could there possibly be?) If you think her journalism must be better than these pouty, juvenile tweets, think again.
If you think her journalism must be better than these pouty, juvenile tweets, think again.
Wow. What a nasty cow.
Wow. What a nasty cow.
I doubt it’s occurred to Ms Hanson that some of us don’t vote Labour precisely to avoid giving coercive power to dim, spiteful people much like her.
Because how could anyone possibly find a leftist agenda unattractive?
Which is why the pervasive conceit among the American Left is that any opposition to Obama’s policies must be based on racism and racism alone.
Remember the talk a while back from Alex Salmond of the “Progressive Majority”?
It has been found.
Based on the popular vote, it’s Tory-UKIP-DUP :p
Poor Laurie isn’t taking it very well (as to be expected) judging by her column in the New Statesman……
…bourgeois lefty throwback…
She said it.
‘It’s telling that Steel simply dismisses the agency of the electorate, who, in his mind, are strangely peripheral, barely conscious, mere dupes of dark forces’.
He’s an ex-member of the Socialist Workers Party, and although long since left its ranks he still is tied to its ideology. ‘False consciousness’ offers a convenient explanation for repeated failure; and perhaps also a source of comfort to a ‘comedian’ whose brand of mirth is decidedly niche, and who has to rely on the patronage of the BBC and the Indy to make a living.
‘Ms Roache, our lecturer in philosophy, dislikes “people who voted Conservative but kept quiet about it’.
Let it be noted here that a supposed academic is unable to grasp one of the basic concepts of liberal democracy – namely, the secret ballot.
Which is why the pervasive conceit among the American Left is that any opposition to Obama’s policies must be based on racism and racism alone.
And why #WaronWomen will be the answer to any opposition to Hillary’s coronation.
He’s an ex-member of the Socialist Workers Party,
And a piss-poor comedian. You have to wonder how he gets any work.
Yesterday afternoon on 5Live, Tony Livesey was in Morley and Outwood interviewing some of Ed Balls’ ex-constituents. Livesey, incidentally, is to my knowledge the only moderator of a talk-show programme who has ever warned Laurie Penny to shut up and let the other panelists speak, and then to cut her mike off when she failed to comply.
With the vox-pops interviews from Morley and Outwood, there was a common theme, broadly summarised as ‘Yes I used to vote Labour, but I don’t trust them now. The party’s completely out of touch with the ordinary voter, and I voted Conservative because I thought they’d do a better job of running the country. We never saw Ed Balls. He took us all for granted. Andrea Jenkyns ran a good campaign and we thought we’d give her a chance’.
Livesey interviewed one Labour activist – ‘Laura’. She was shell-shocked about the national result, and clearly upset about Ed Miliband’s resignation. But even she agreed that Balls was a crap MP and his time was long overdue.
the only moderator of a talk-show programme who has ever warned Laurie Penny to shut up and let the other panellists speak, and then to cut her mike off when she failed to comply.
A glorious moment. Her squeaky indignation had me weeping with laughter. If anyone stumbles across a recording of it, do share.
‘You have to wonder how he gets any work’.
(1) The BBC.
(2) ‘The Independent’.
Well, that didn’t take long for the first CiF piece to come out decrying democracy:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2015/may/08/democracy-a-religion-that-has-failed-the-poor?CMP=fb_gu
Funny, don’t remember pieces like this with St. Tony winning 355 seats on 35.2% of the popular vote. Why might that be?
There’s a bit of a Laurie Penny-ism in her latest New Statesman piece:
Kindness is mandatory…And we don’t ever have to talk about Nick Clegg again now. So there’s that
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3074752/Voice-angry-angel-Charlotte-Church-protests-against-Conservative-party-s-general-election-triumph-says-ve-given-reins-bogey-men.html
She’s mad as hell and she won’t take it anymore. So there!
The article about straight womyn coopting “lesbian” “fashion”??? What, putting on pants and a shirt is stealing from the lesbian culture? The HELL? What a dumb broad. I’ll wear what I want, which ranges from silk pajamas to dresses to pants and a goddam shirt.
I tipped yerazz. Don’t say I never did nuthin’ for ya.
I tipped yerazz.
May your towels stay fragrant in humid times.
Perhaps the thing to do is go to these various Leftist sites and leave a one word comment: “Ceausescu” with a smiley emoticon.
Right now I feel ashamed to be English. Ashamed to belong to a country that has clearly identified itself as insular, self-absorbed and apparently caring so little for the most vulnerable people among us. Why did a million people visiting food banks make such a minimal difference? Did we just vote for our own narrow concerns and sod the rest? Maybe that’s why the pollsters got it so badly wrong: we are not so much a nation of shy voters as of ashamed voters, people who want to present to the nice polling man as socially inclusive, but who, in the privacy of the booth, tick the box of our own self-interest.
Yes, because nothing NOTHING says “caring about others” like voting for Big Government to take more of your neighbor’s earnings.
good lord I hate these people
@Darleen, it escapes them that they also vote in their own self-interest. They just apply such a large multiplier to voting in a – for them – “caring” way. “Social capital”, you might call it.
Anyway, it’s easy to vote to be generous with other people’s money. And then even easier to be a condescending cnut about it later.
Perhaps all those lefties struggling to understand the result might like to Check Their Prejudices.
Yes, because nothing NOTHING says “caring about others” like voting for Big Government to take more of your neighbor’s earnings.
It’s odd how voting for the state to confiscate even more of other people’s earnings is casually defined as altruistic. This idea that imposing your will on others, in order to feel a sense of altruism that hasn’t actually been earned, is what good people do.
Yes, because nothing NOTHING says “caring about others” like voting for Big Government to take more of your neighbor’s earnings.
I’ve often been confronted by those who smugly suggest that my Christianity necessitates wealth redistribution. I politely inform such people that Christ’s injunctions to “feed the poor,” etc. were directed to individuals. I’ve read the entirety of the Bible multiple times during my life and have yet to discover the beatitude, “Blessed is he who takes his neighbor’s stuff and gives it to someone else. He shall receive a laudatory profile in The New York Times.
And what is it about Russell Brand? I’ve only ever (barely) heard of him (outside of David’s site) as a failed actor/ex-husband of Katy Perry/sexual deviate who likes to pretend to be handicapped when having The Sex. How did this nothingburger become some sort of left-wing spokestwat?
I’ve often been confronted by those who smugly suggest that my Christianity necessitates wealth redistribution. I politely inform such people that Christ’s injunctions to “feed the poor,” etc. were directed to individuals.
As I’ve oft replied to those who have confronted me on the same thing:
@R. Sherman.
Did not Jesus exhort Caesar to feed the poor?
err…Bueller?…Bueller?…Bueller?
Ah, no. Unless you can provide a reference. “Render unto Ceasar…” And “whoever has food must share” address separate entities. I don’t know of a verse where Jesus directly asks anything of Ceasar. Do you have one?
‘How did this nothingburger become some sort of left-wing spokestwat?’
How was the Emperor able to convince his citizens that he was wearing the finest robes, whereas he was in fact stark bollock naked?
A combination of self-delusion, plus self-interest.
https://mobile.twitter.com/little_g2/status/597113821388513280
On democracy and Ms Penny’s love of abusive rebellion, it seems she has so little respect for the former that she endorses the latter, including the moronic act of defacing a monument to WW2 heroines.
I’ve found it interesting that amongst my Facebook friends, it was only the lefty ones that felt obliged to lecture us all about how awful the Tories/coalition were, how the NHS/schools/social work is being destroyed, tax avoidance, etc etc. Only one person posted something contradictory, which was to simply say that they had voted blue. Now they wish they hadn’t.
Anyway, I took a huge amount of enjoyment from looking at their caterwauling on Friday morning. A huge amount.
Revealed preferences eh? My favourite kind of preferences. Anyone think that the pinko social media sheep creating an atmosphere of intimidation regarding any views that aren’t lefty orthodox will learn anything from this? I hope so, but judging from the postings so far, they just can’t quite believe that the populace is so stupid: “What is wrong with this country?”. I’d rephrase that question for him, but I’d get unfriended, and I do so enjoy the bleating.
My FB friends – most of whom I know in real life – range from UKIP to Green, so the angst about the result comes from all corners.
I am however pleased to note that all were united in their sense of glee when Galloway was trounced in Bradford West.
she endorses… the moronic act of defacing a monument to WW2 heroines.
Laurie is all about caring and compassion. That’s why she’s endorsed the obstruction and physical coercion of random people, the smashing of random people’s windows and the destruction of their property, spitting on women she doesn’t know, and abusing polite security staff.
Original Posted by: witwoud | May 09, 2015 at 13:56
“Rebecca Roache in short:
1) You Conservatives are wrong, repugnant, and equivalent to racists. Rather than being a real racist, like you.
2) I see you’re not interested in having a rational debate about this. Rational? With you? (Mocking laughter)
3) Unfriended.” Too late. Beat you to it. (Single upraised digit)
Of course, all of this is why the pollsters get it wrong – a tiny minority of shriekers with nothing better to do (ie no job, or a job that doesn’t require them to actually be busy working), are so utterly aggressive and hostile to the tiniest bit of conservative sympathising, that such conservative sympathisers learn it’s less hassle to be silent and qietly save it for the ballot box.
And why would anyone with right-wing views disclose them to an official-sounding stranger anyway? After all, we live in a country where voting UKIP can get your foster children removed. The facebook group for today’s anti-austerity march has a list of unpleasant things it exhorts its followers to do to ‘any tory’, from vandalising their belongings, pissing in their food, to getting them sacked. Some people really do hate a/ freedom and b/ democracy!
Re Galloway: Yes, it was glorious seeing that twat trounced.
Splotchy – indeed, agree with everything you said. On top of that, it would seem that people with right-of-centre views are perhaps just a little bit more polite than your average SJW.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11595097/Police-officer-injured-as-anti-Tory-protesters-gather-outside-Downing-Street-and-Whitehall.html
Those fearless well-fed, fashionably-dressed protesters with their trusty iphones – protesting their poor lot by defacing a memorial to women who endured rationing, bombing, widowhood, their children evacuated, all in living memory. What’s betting the elderly survivors of that era are living their dignified lives out on modest pensions, in significant contrast to this spoiled mob?
just a little bit more polite than your average SJW.
Marxoid posturing is an ideal fig leaf for all kinds of vindictiveness and obnoxious behaviour. That’s why it attracts the people it does.