When Being “Woke” Is Bad For You
Putting security tags on items that are frequently stolen is now “openly racist,” apparently, and “quite evil.”
As with an earlier example, note how the pious, “woke” approach is to howl at the effect, in public, ostentatiously, while carefully ignoring the cause. And so the politically corrected line of thinking stops abruptly, prematurely, in order to avoid arriving at a more probable, but unthinkable, conclusion. It’s a pretty good illustration of how “social justice” posturing so often inhibits realism by pre-emptively disallowing certain, fairly obvious inferences and observations. The range of possibilities one is allowed to consider before rushing to Mount Umbrage is dogmatically reduced. Resulting in a person who’s learned, with some effort, to be quite stupid.
What’s the betting Mr Woke has never working in retail?
*worked*
What’s the betting Mr Woke has never worked in retail?
But avoiding the obvious is terribly sophisticated. And so the enlightened view is – and can only be – that a store’s management must be openly seething with racial animus and intent on insulting some of their customers, thereby driving them away to spend money elsewhere, rather than merely responding to patterns of thievery.
He’s a “technolgy director”, most likely for some sort of corporation . The sins he feels the need to attone for are beyond our comprehension.
The big bottles of gin in my local Sainsburys are tagged. Obviously sexist.
Of course, higher prices necessitated by increased costs associated with theft of merchandise will also be problematic. Then, when a product disappears from the market because social justice constraints mandate that its cost is more than the price, that too will be cause for outrage. Better to have an all-wise, all-powerful government entity deal with things like supply, demand, cost and price with absolute power. We could call the “Chavismo” or something.
Resulting in a person who’s learned, with some effort, to be quite stupid.
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Better still, try an expensive pseudo education that makes you stupid, gullible, judgmental, and loud.
an expensive pseudo education that makes you stupid, gullible, judgmental, and loud.
And which prioritises in-group posturing, and rote conformity, over whether what’s being asserted is true. A kind of cultivated bad faith.
Not entirely unrelated.
…stupid, gullible, judgmental, and loud…
Speaking of that, as well as political correctness and “social justice”, I give you the 5 Things Millennials Want Everyone To Know About Political Correctness (That Older Generations Don’t Understand), AKA, “The Snotflake Manifesto”.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, it is ageist from the getgo, but it is chockablock with lame unsupported assertions, conceits, and smug hypocrisy (not that anyone should be surprised).
A small sampling…
Sort of like how anyone older than you is an idiot ? The next is my favorite.
Right, except in those countries where there is actual discrimination and unequal right like FGM, or slavery, or giving gays flying lessons without the benefit of aircraft. By golly, though, we got us some smartphones and YouTube, and are going to put on some keffiyehs and march because someone used a wrong pronoun at the campus library.
Read the whole thing, as the kids say, for a guy who claims to preach inclusiveness, he appears awfully bigoted his own damn self.
for a guy who claims to preach inclusiveness, he appears awfully bigoted his own damn self.
I see that the woolly, evasive and self-flattering author is a student and “life coach,” one who “tweets about social justice.” Again, the term severely educated comes to mind.
…evasive and self-flattering author is a student and “life coach,”…
Indeed, it is also sort of amazing that someone between the age of 18 and 30 can consider himself to have gained enough experience in that short span to be a “life coach”.
Meanwhile, however, we have reached meta-wokeness, as we find that, you don’t have to be racist to be racist.
So if you deliberately disregard a POC, you are a rayciss, but if you merely consider a POC as a fellow human, you are a rayciss.
That is some catch, that Catch-22.
The screed was written by one Evin Zendejas, evidently a POC, but who has no bio. “Affinity”, the magazine in which this was found, also has this blockbuster, The Illegal Harvesting of Black Men’s Organs is Going Unnoticed, so I am not sure if it an SJW version of “The Weekly World News”
it is also sort of amazing that someone between the age of 18 and 30 can consider himself to have gained enough experience in that short span to be a “life coach”
And you’d think that someone who claims expertise in psychology might have some grasp of the temptations of self-flattery. But then again, if you pull at that thread, the whole thing might come unravelled.
So if you deliberately disregard a POC, you are a rayciss, but if you merely consider a POC as a fellow human, you are a rayciss.
Gosh, this is difficult! It’s almost enough to discourage people from acting on their own initiative at all and make them just wait to be told when, where, how and why to act by their—
Ohhhhh, wait…
Ohhhhh, wait…
[ Slides generous helping of blackcurrant cheesecake along bar. ]
Indeed, it is also sort of amazing that someone between the age of 18 and 30 can consider himself to have gained enough experience in that short span to be a …
It’s amazing the number of things which could follow that final indefinite article. And they all involve telling other people what to do in situations the authors have never faced themselves. Not to go all Luddite or anything, but I miss the days when the only people dishing out gratuitous advice were Abigale Van Buren and Ann Landers, although in fairness, people actually sought out their “wisdom.”
While Hollywood films & broadcast TV wallow in sequels, remakes, tired tropes and reboots, there’s series like this that has people staying at home and cutting the cable.
It’s amazing the number of things which could follow that final indefinite article.
It’s a common tendency among teenagers to assume that theirs are the first brains to ponder certain issues and arrive at certain conclusions, which they then announce quite passionately, intent on educating everyone else. If you’ve ever had a conversation with a teenager about, say, politics, economics, history or whatever, you may well have encountered an equally common resistance to the notion that years of additional experience, and witnessing the practical consequences of various passionately voiced ideas, may actually count for something.
In teenagers this can be forgiven, though it can also be quite aggravating. What’s odd, I think, is how often an expensive education encourages the persistence, well into adulthood, of this same adolescent attitude.
If you’ve ever had a conversation with a teenager…
I have three kids, the youngest of whom is approaching 18. I’ve found a sweeping arm gesture to everything which causes his/her existence on this planet to be quite tolerable compared to, say, peers in the Central African Republic tends to win the field more often than not.
I should point out I was a particularly awful example of the thing I’ve just described.
although in fairness, people actually sought out their “wisdom.”
Well, it certainly made for some snort-worthy reading.
Nationalism, or the belief that your country and its laws, culture, and government is superior and beyond critique, is not appealing to Millennials.
What’s not appealing to older and/or saner people is Social Justice, or the belief that my country and its laws, culture, and government (of the past six months anyway) is uniquely awful and beyond repair.
It’s amazing the number of things which could follow that final indefinite article…
Yes, in many spheres. The five most dangerous things one can hear if you are in the US Army:
1) A private saying, “This is something I learned in basic.”
2) A sergeant saying, “Trust me on this, Sir.”
3) A Second Lieutenant saying, “In my experience.”
4) A Captain saying, “As I was thinking.”
5) A Warrant Officer One aviator saying, “Watch this shit.”
Meanwhile, back at Everyday Feminism and the Big Question of Our Time …
I needed space to explore all of these complications.
Mr Ziyad and his personal complications have entertained us before.
I needed space to explore all of these complications…I’m an artist first. But I decided long ago that my art would be in the service of fighting oppression.
The service of oppression. Right. Mr. Ziyad tells us, however, that he is, “…a Black, non-binary child of Muslim and Hindu parents from the streets of Cleveland…”, and was able to leave the mean streets of Cleveland and go to NYU to study TV, Film, and psychology.
Wow. Imagine you were so oppressed that you had to go to New York to study film. Heroic is the only word I can think of.
I bet most of us, out of those who read blogs like this, were. I know I was.
So we should show gentle tolerance for the children whose arrogance pisses us off. Even though childhood has, thanks to certain social engineering decisions, begun to extend into the early twenties. And save our ammunition for the older elites who indoctrinate children, delay maturity, and use them as foot soldiers in their cultural Marxist wars.
Imagine you were so oppressed that you had to go to New York to study film.
Heh. From the outside, from a safe distance, pathological self-fascination might seem fairly oppressive.
Meanwhile, over at Cosmo, one of their writers seems to have had an unfortunately bland love life as she lists 16 things “hotter than sex.”
Sad. Really sad.
They are the Editor in Chief of RaceBaitR, a space dedicated to imagining and working toward a world outside of the white supremacist cisheteropatriarchal capitalistic gaze
Ah! I thought I recognized Ziyad’s tortured prose.
Sad. Really sad.
Um…. o_O
I thought I recognized Ziyad’s tortured prose.
Presumably, he’s still “exploring” his seemingly endless “complications” and “queer complexities,” determined to discover ever more exquisite and statusful forms of oppression.
Strange way to spend a life, but there we are.
Off topic, but this caught my eye.
…because there’s not a silhouette this Princeton graduate can’t obliterate.
Yeah, I passed over that, because other than the fawning, I have no clue what it means, but “obliterating a silhouette” doesn’t seem exactly complimentary, but then I am not woke, or something.
…determined to discover ever more exquisite and statusful forms of oppression.
Well, counting up the points, he already has race, two religions, any number of sexes and/or genders, so about the only thing missing is a physical disability, but until he has one, he has to check his abelist privilege.
Off topic, but this caught my eye.
Wading through that there appears to be a few sneering atheists in attendance in that feed looking down their noses at theists and agnostics alike, so let me restate the Dawkins’ scale as the Muldoon Scale.
1. Theist – Cannot prove existence, so therefore has faith there is a supreme being.
2. Atheist – Cannot prove non-existence, so therefore has faith there is not a supreme being.
3. Agnostic – knows that as neither can be proven, it is uncertain which is correct.
4. Apathetic Agnostic – Don’t know, Don’t care.
So as both theism and atheism are faith based, and agnosticism reveals that there is an evidently unresolvable uncertainty, I am a 4.
I’m always amazed at how the DAILY Mail decides which WORDS are going to be put in all-caps.
My own thought is if the product says Jamaica some pot heads probably heard it contains pot orgoez well with pot or something and the thefts have little to do with race and a lot to with dumb.
While young people are examining their belly buttons for microaggressions, real evil still haunts the world, still inheres in human nature; and those who don’t know this are at risk of being ambushed and crushed by it.
–Myron Magnet in City Journal.
R Sherman,
That was masterful (ok, I’m lax on my Yeats, but Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a story that haunted me from first reading)
My experience with Atheism/Agnosticism is a bit different. While we could check the dictionary definitions (which would mean that most agnsotics are atheists, and vice versa), I’ll go with the in practice definitions I’ve found to apply. If someone calls themselves an agnostic, they’re most likely someone who has never thought much about religion. If someone calls themselves an atheist, they’ve probably put some time looking into religion, and actively rejected it.
This does not mean that the atheist is certain that god doesn’t exist. Rather, he has looked at the evidence and found it lacking. The agnostic hasn’t looked at the evidence, and either thinks he should sometime, or thinks that the likelihood of research turning up something useful is too low to bother.
The atheist is only more certain about his beliefs in that he knows what he thinks, having given theism a decent hearing. The agnostic is simply also agnostic about what his beliefs would be if he looked into things more.
This is mostly about self-identification, but I find the usage of the words in practice to match up strongly.
The one thing I never liked, however, was the assumption that atheists believe aboslutely that there is no god. I call myself an atheist, but I don’t believe anything absolutely. I’d say I’m about as sure as I could be that there is no theistic god (a deistic god is another matter, as it would not necessarily leave any evidence), but I don’t have faith in that notion, any more than I have faith in the notion that Communism will always end in disaster. I have solid arguments for both that I’d bet my savings on, but it is conceivable that I could be proven wrong. This position of non-absolute certainty has been held by almost every self-identified atheist I have ever met.
So it’s racist to assume that only people from Jamaica are stealing a “Jamaican delicacy”. But it’s also racist to eat the product if you are not Jamaican, because that’s “cultural appropriation”.
In other words, it’s racist to follow the left’s own rules about racism.
This is the left’s way of having their cake and eating it too.
“You don’t have to be racist to be racist” or “colour-blind racism” is another example of same.
The left doesn’t really give a crap about eliminating racism. What they really want to do is to destroy western civilization.
Look who’s baaaaack..
Look who’s baaaaack.
It’s getting rather grotesque. Now Ms Allard is “preserving” her sons “anonymity”, their “privacy,” by writing about them repeatedly and in humiliating detail on blogs and in a national newspaper, using her own name, and by extension theirs. With the result that – in her own words – her sons find themselves being read about and talked about “on their friends’ phones, their teachers’ computers,” and being “discussed by strangers on a crowded metro bus.” This is “anonymity.”
The word incorrigible doesn’t quite capture the pathology of it.
…the pathology of it.
The pathology is extensive.
So “normalized” that there are obviously no laws covering this, and, according to US DoJ stats, the rates are declining since the ’90s, though why the DoJ would keep stats for something “normalized” is a bit of a mystery. Typical government waste, I guess.
I never cease to be amazed at nonsense people like her can believe in the face of contrary evidence, but, to steal a quote from upstream, “…if you pull at that thread, the whole thing might come unravelled.” Indeed, and the whole Munchausen by Internet is undone.
It is somewhat gratifying to see that the commenters aren’t buying her claptrap, so I eagerly await her next installment where they are all labelled alt-right Kekistani trolls.
Munchausen by Internet
Quite.
Munchausen by Internet
I doubt Ms Allard will ever make it back from the moral wasteland she currently occupies. And sadly, she isn’t the only one to prioritise a paranoid, misandrist ideology above the wellbeing of her own children. An episode of Vanessa Engle’s excellent documentary series Lefties covers the rise of radical feminism in 1970s Britain. In it, Linda Bellos, now a “diversity” hustler, recounts abandoning her own children, both small boys, in order to spend time “being political” in a separatist lesbian commune.
Her Wikipedia profile mentions two children, born in 1974 and 1976, and the fact that she’s a ‘grandmother’. I think grandmother deserves scare quotes in this instance considering she willingly abandoned the children who made her a ‘grandmother’. The bit in the video where she explains it, calmly, clearly, and not looking at all as pained as she says she is, starts about 26:06. Obviously she couldn’t take boys to a separatist house, are you mad? Honestly, what other option was open to her? Besides abandoning her children I mean, that was necessary.
The whole thing is an interesting display in self-serving narcissism and low-grade lunacy. I’d say it’s funny but it’s rather as though the Heaven’s Gate commune, instead of killing themselves, decided to join political parties and spend the next 40 years causing havoc. So it’s a horror story really.
she explains it, calmly, clearly, and not looking at all as pained as she says she is
Yes, Ms Bellos seems largely unaware of what her own actions say about her, none of it flattering. The whole Lefties series is recommended.
Ms Bellos was also mentioned here.
…the pathology of it.
Mother with NPD, raped as a young woman – textbook etiology for BPD/Complex PTSD.
She’s not evil, just very, very damaged. The best thing for her kids is foster care with a loving relative and supervised visitation, if any, with the mother.
Continuing to be in the market for baby formula, my wife and I are periodically inconvenienced by the locked cases used by most stores. The local Walmart also insists on escorting me to the register or holding it there until I complete my other shopping.
It all seemed a little overboard compared to 8-10 years ago until this month we read of an attempted theft. A few days later news reports noted 3 attempts/arrests in the same week, all by people travelling to our not-so-small town from the neighboring metropolis.
A quick look around and it sounds like
1. most likely local/regional black market.
2. possibly a Chinese black market due to contamination issues they had with local stock.
3. mentioned but never explained is that is is used to cut or mix with illegal drugs.
I never cease to be amazed at nonsense people like her can believe in the face of contrary evidence, but, to steal a quote from upstream, “…if you pull at that thread, the whole thing might come unravelled.” Indeed, and the whole Munchausen by Internet is undone.
Or, as Buckaroo Banzai said, “Don’t pull on that. You never know what it’s attached to.”
It looks about right and is safe enough that you won’t kill people with it – not out of any grand concern for their fellow man, but because having someone die due to something you cut your drugs with is an excellent way to get far more attention from the law.
although in fairness, people actually sought out their “wisdom.”
They used their position to change the culture. Anytime someone wrote in, expressing disapproval of someone’s counterculture behavior, the sisters unfailingly told the writer to butt out and shut up.
@dicentra
It was interesting to watch their metamorphosis over the years from voices of no-nonsense, relatively conservative, Midwestern sensibility to advocates for progressive causes. My guess is a lot of that was driven by editorial demands from the various papers which ran their columns in syndication.
“Abby” (Pauline Phillips) stopped writing in 2000 & the column was taken over by her daughter
“Ann Landers” (sister Eppie Lerderer) died in 2002
The sisters were competitors and estranged because of the rivalry. IMHO they were more concerned with popularity and showing up the other sister so may have contributed to the progressive drift so as survive in urban newspapers.
she explains it, calmly, clearly, and not looking at all as pained as she says she is
Watching the video again, years later, I see I misremembered a detail. It was a son and a daughter. Though that scarcely alters the vileness of it.
It was interesting to watch their metamorphosis over the years from voices of no-nonsense, relatively conservative, Midwestern sensibility to advocates for progressive causes.
They enjoyed being celebrities, and socializing with other celebrities. Spend enough time on the cocktail circuit, and it’s inevitable that you should abandon your traditional mores and adopt those of the people you now count as peers.
“I should point out I was a particularly awful example of the thing I’ve just described.”
Me too, which is why I remain optimistic that most of these youngsters will turn out just fine when they get some life experience under their belts. The harder we laugh at them, the faster that will happen.