Elsewhere (267)

Cajoling now?
She’s a creature of many moods.

And so, instead, we’re expected to pretend.
As the great Steve Sailer said many years ago, “political correctness is a war on noticing things.

there is a substantial possibility that there would be four carcasses on the concrete
That would, I think, be a more satisfactory outcome. A more just one, certainly. That the law-abiding should feel resigned to being preyed on by sociopathic vermin, repeatedly and with little hope of comeuppance, is a moral outrage.

Secure Beneath The Watchful Eyes.

there is a substantial possibility that there would be four carcasses on the concrete
You’re a much quicker/better shot than I. I’d probably only get one or two before they hightailed it out of there.

A decade ago, when this exquisitely politically-correct phenomenon was also occurring …
The MONA have reappeared in Melbourne this passed year, after the narod became unsettled by the rise of car jackings and home invasions perpetrated by Sudanese yoot.

Last month I organised a small conference of historians who I knew shared my interest in trying to apply historical knowledge to contemporary policy problems. Five of the people I invited to give papers were women, but none was able to attend. I should have tried harder to find other female speakers, no doubt. But my failure to do so elicited a disproportionately vitriolic response. Under a headline that included the words “Too white and too male,” the New York Times published photographs of all the speakers, as if to shame them for having participated. Around a dozen academics — male as well as female — took to social media to call the conference a “StanfordSausageFest.” […]
Never mind the facts and reason, so the argument runs, all we need to know — if we don’t like what we hear — are the sex and race of the author.

Niall Ferguson, here.

Maps are racist.
Great googly moogly – “Critical Cartography”.

Historically, maps have been used to colonize and conquer – and are primarily created by white men…

Attila, Gengis Kahn, and all the other “non-white” conquerors of history could not be reached for comment, but in general, throughout history, I think the maps are not used to colonize, but that they come after the fact, because the dastardly white men generally were going to unmapped areas. The whole chicken and egg thing.
My favorite slide from her presentation that proves “oppression” – where black kids got hit by cars. Oddly enough, where black kids live, but that is supposed to prove white oppression, because they were being run over on purpose or something. Also the quote from the slide:

Geography does not belong to geographers alone, anymore than medicine belongs to doctors.

Right-O. Miss Robinson of SU last seen wandering lost in the wilderness using a “radical map” looking for some herbs to cure her appendicitis.

God forbid that the people be allowed to defend themselves. They might get crazy ideas, such as that they are not serfs but citizens, and we cannot have that!
As an ex-pat American living in the land of leprechauns and lunatics I’ve had people honestly tell me that no one needs a weapon to defend their property because human life is more important than any property you may have. I have to say that the urge to burgle their homes has only ever reached the “it’s not worth it for the lols” stage but I’m keeping my options open. 😉

I’ve had people honestly tell me that no one needs a weapon to defend their property
Let’s not forget that the Guardian has for decades made excuses for criminality, urging us to fret about the poor quality of toothbrushes available in prison, while disdaining those who wish to see career thugs and sociopaths suitably punished.
A telling example, one of many, was Decca Aitkenhead’s interview with leftist lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who airily dismissed burglary – the violation of someone’s home – as “really quite inconsequential,” thereby implying that the wellbeing of burglars is of at least equal importance to the wellbeing of their numerous victims. And so any anger at being burgled is waved aside as somehow plebeian and unsophisticated.
Aitkenhead and Stafford Smith are, of course, unlikely to have their pieties tested in the real world, as burglary and theft are much more likely to affect working class people in poorer neighbourhoods. And so our Guardianistas pretend to feel sympathy with working class criminals, usually habitual criminals who prey on their neighbours for years, while dismissing the criminals’ equally working class victims, whose expectations of lawfulness are not considered important.

leftist lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who airily dismissed burglary – the violation of someone’s home – as “really quite inconsequential,”
That interview actually made me angry. When my mum got burgled it was definitely *not* “inconsequential” and she couldn’t sleep properly for weeks. What world do these people live in?

When my mum got burgled it was definitely *not* “inconsequential”
Well, quite. And yet both Ms Aitkenhead and Mr Stafford Smith insist that being burgled has “zero” emotional impact and no real material repercussions, and is therefore trivial and unworthy of serious punishment. Especially, we’re told, if the burglar is a “young black person.”
Neither Guardianista pauses to consider the impact of burglary, even repeatedly burglary, on someone who is, say, elderly and isolated, and perhaps uninsured, and who has no means of replacing whatever possessions were stolen. The victim’s violation, and the subsequent anxiety, and the sense of injustice, are to be dismissed as trivial. Merely, and I quote, an “idiotic attitude.”
And this is the man that Ms Aitkenhead, who “didn’t much mind being burgled,” regards as her “hero.”

When my mum got burgled it was definitely *not* “inconsequential” and she couldn’t sleep properly for weeks.
One of the things that gets missed when these utilitarian analyses of the economic cost of petty theft get tossed around is the trauma of having one’s sense of safety and security in one’s own home shattered, sometimes permanently. There’s a reason for that old chestnut that “a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged”.

That interview actually made me angry.
I’d not read it. Now I have. Now I’m angry.

I’d not read it. Now I have. Now I’m angry.
It does, I think, reveal a kind of contrived, narcissistic calculation, in which notional categories (e.g., “young black person”) trump actual behaviour and who did what to whom. And we’ve seen variations of the same many times. For instance, when the Observer’s Barbara Ellen told us that unprovoked aggression against people deemed “posh” – including the bullying of children – is “part of an instinctive protest against inequality” and all about “socio-political emancipation.” Apparently, it’s not just routine thuggery or driven by petty malice, it’s “protest” and therefore righteous.
Likewise, in 2011, following the London riots, when the middle-class Marxist China Miéville claimed to be “horrified” that members of the press and public had used the word feral when describing the career predators and assorted thugs who, seeking excitement and a sense of power, had beaten pensioners unconscious and burned random women out of their homes. And who, on the arrival of firefighters, had dragged them from their vehicles and punched them insensible. According to Mr Miéville, the people doing these things, often while laughing, they were the real victims.
But I suppose if your moral calculus is driven by a kind of narcissism, in which status is accrued by identifying the most exciting and improbable victim group and pretending to care about them, then perversity will follow. And so we arrive at a shift of empathy (or pretend empathy) from the working class victim of crime to the working class thug or criminal, on grounds that the criminal is in some way being oppressed and, unlike their neighbours, being made to misbehave.

I’d not read it. Now I have. Now I’m angry.
Yeah, I had similar feelings back in 3rd/4th grade after standing up to a bully and being punished for “fighting” and then being told how it wasn’t his fault, how I should have tried to “understand” him, feel sorry for him. I know this is cold, and yes quite petty, but as the WWII generation passes on, as they have moved out of influence at least, it is only those elderly whom I have felt protective of. I no longer feel quite that way with these elderly now in their 60’s and 70’s who were part of creating this idiocy. And women were the worst perpetrators of such. And I say this as someone approaching that age myself. Hell, if such a thing were to happen to my wife I’d be furious and out for revenge. Perhaps I’ll be hoisted on my own petard one day. I’ll probably deserve it. O-blah-dee-o-blah-dah…

To be honest, David’s “internet pub” here is the closest I’ve found to Tim’s old blog,
The massage parlour next door is going out of business, so I may knock through and upgrade this place to a wine bar and brasserie.
This may affect the prices.

The massage parlour next door is going out of business, so I may knock through
No need to redecorate then.

No need to redecorate then.
They had the same classy velour and flocked burgundy wallpaper. What are the odds?

Is everybody next door?
It’s the flocked wallpaper. Theirs has fewer stains.

No need to redecorate then.
So, then, I assume the next fundraiser will have a different payee?

@ Spiny Norman
Tim’s blog can still be found here, although I am not sure if it is the same as the old one.

Personal anecdotes on the subject of burglary.
About 30 years ago the family home was burgled while we were in bed, nothing taken but my mother’s handbag. However my little sister didn’t sleep properly for months after and moved bedrooms so she wasn’t at the top of the stairs. Then around 15 years ago my flat in London was burgled. I was insured and did not lose a moment’s sleep. However I did lose several sets of cufflinks – not valuable but rather cool 60s gear – that used to belong to my father, now deceased. I am still angry about the loss of this link with him and would relish the chance to pound whatever worthless smackhead took them.
Two minor incidents, but don’t fucking tell me that burglary should be just laughed off or that our sympathies ought to be with the criminal. My sympathies are with firstly the victims, but also the many people – the majority in fact – from tough backgrounds who work their arses off and do their best to get along without fucking over anyone else.
On a cheerier note, quite a while after the first burglary, we had a knock at the door and a copper was there. He asked if we had been burgled, as he had a guy in the car who was being driven round identifying homes he had burgled, for ‘taking into consideration’ purposes. My stepfather, a robustly built former rugby league player, shot out of the house, opened the police car door and gave the lag in the back a erm… stern warning, I think we’ll say. The police gave him a minute of intimidatory ranting and then suggested that would probably be enough as they didn’t want the lad to soil himself and make a mess of the car.
Made us feel a lot better. Today it could land you in trouble, depends on what type of copper you get I suppose.

Oh, for what it’s worth, I still read Tim Blair’s Daily Telegraph blog, but I haven’t tried to post a comment there in a couple of years.

Fun and games at Monash University. This is to woo potential students.
Seems they’ve played their hand a little early. But yes, it’s quite revealing. Sort of, “Be a sexy, ill-informed agitator. Have strident opinions on things you don’t understand. And above all, flatter yourself.”