Elsewhere (282)
Lionel Shriver on recreational outrage and the corresponding theatre of atonement:
The defence of an infinitely multiplying list of ‘marginalised groups’ is a predatory movement… and its pleasures are those of hunting: spotting your prey, stalking, going in for the kill. Any source of umbrage thus presents an exulting opportunity to score a trophy, stuff it, and hang it on your (Facebook) wall. Mainstream institutions straining to be with-it give credence to this pretence of injury and vulnerability, when no one’s feelings actually have been hurt. So the victory is two-pronged. You take down the sinner, and you humiliate the editors of the Nation by forcing them to participate in an emotional theatre that every-one knows is fake…
When, during that Evergreen foofaraw, a rabid convocation of students cowed the college president into lowering his arms at the podium because they found his hand gestures ‘threatening’, those students didn’t feel jeopardised; they were dominating and emasculating a man supposedly in authority. The students cowering in ‘safe spaces’ don’t feel endangered; they’re claiming territory… Progressives seem especially prone to disguise one feeling as another. Reliably entwined with self-deceit, the problem isn’t solely among the young.
William Ray on the pernicious hokum of “white privilege” guru Peggy McIntosh:
Peggy McIntosh was born into the very cream of America’s aristocratic elite and has remained ensconced there ever since. Her ‘experiential’ list enumerating the ways in which she benefits from being born with white skin simply confuses racial privilege with the financial advantages she has always been fortunate enough to enjoy. Many of her points are demonstrably economic. One is left to wonder why, given her stated conviction that she has unfairly benefited from her skin colour, there seems to be no record of her involvement in any charity or civil rights work…
[McIntosh] simply reclassified her manifest economic advantage as racial privilege and then dumped this newly discovered original sin onto every person who happens to share her skin colour. Without, of course, actually redistributing any of the wealth that, by her own account, she had done nothing to deserve. All of which means that pretty much anything you read about ‘white privilege’ is traceable to an ‘experiential’ essay written by a woman who benefited from massive wealth, a panoply of aristocratic connections, and absolutely no self-awareness whatsoever.
And Heather Mac Donald on Clown Quarter credentials and keeping out the riff-raff:
If Albert Einstein applied for a professorship at UCLA today, would he be hired? The answer is not clear. Starting this fall, all faculty applicants to UCLA must document their contributions to “equity, diversity and inclusion.” Would Einstein’s presentation of scholarly accomplishments reflect his contributions to equality, diversity and inclusion? Unlikely. Would his research show, in the words of the evaluation template, the “potential to understand the barriers facing women and racial/ethnic minorities?” Also unlikely. Would he have participated in “service that applies up-to-date knowledge to problems, issues and concerns of groups historically underrepresented in higher education?” Sadly, he may have been focusing on the theory of general relativity instead.
Read on, and despair.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
The Shriver article is spot on.
The Shriver article is spot on.
Yes, she captures the mutual pretence. I’m still faintly astonished that anyone could believe that the Woke Indignation Of The Week is anything but opportunistic and generally malign. The expectation that one should believe it to be well-meaning and sincere, or at least indulge it as if it were, is itself rather insulting.
As Shriver says, “Despite youth’s reputed belief in the importance of being earnest, the whole ID politics movement is emotionally disingenuous… Bullies on the left ply weakness to conceal aggression.” And that’s the thing – the wider poisonous effect of all this competitive, predatory outrage. It makes bad faith routine, normal, something to expect but say nothing about. It perpetuates dishonesty.
Ridicule is the only rational response.There should be more of it.
“White privilege” taught as fact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmkfzXt8_vE
Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius
Or, rather, Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.
“The Washington Post, which just reported on the outrage surrounding Tigges’ comments, admitted that everything the doctor said was true, but still found a way to describe it as discrimination.”
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/306531/
It’s not surprising that UCLA has ideological litmus tests for faculty hires.* What’s surprising is that it admits it in writing. As a public institution, it opens itself to all manner of litigation for every candidate that doesn’t get hired. Further, we know from James Damore’s situation at Google, California has laws which prohibit making employment decision based on an applicant’s or employee’s politics.
*As a practical matter, individual departments will probably continue to hire whom they wish, especially in the “hard” sciences. The Physics Department will not refrain from hiring a Nobel laureate simply because his research and zillions of dollars of grant funding are ideologically pure enough.
“Children are a cancer.” To paraphrase George Carlin, did you ever notice that the most extreme anti-natalists are always people that no one would ever want to have a child with anyway?
Somehow the author looks exactly like I would expect. Is that profiling?
But children are (actually worse than) cancer. Your life is ruined as soon as you have one.
Somehow the author looks exactly like I would expect. Is that profiling?
It’s not, I think, unfair.
I rather like this brief tribute to the late Jaqueline Pearce, aka Servalan from Blake’s 7:
Sounds about right. And I suspect she’d approve.
…the most extreme anti-natalists are always people that no one would ever want to have a child with anyway?
As noted earlier, “Andrea” is really a guy, so you can file that under “physical impossibilities anyway.” He seems to be indulging in cultural appropriation also as he appears as Oriental as Calvin Coolidge, or that Brianna Wu chap.
Combine
with
I have significant confidence (>73.7%, though obviously not scientific) that Nobel laureates, including the hypothetical if-he-were-alive-today-but-not-scratching-furiously-at-his-coffin-lid-Einstein, would do what is necessary to conform to these diversity requirements if they really saw some other advantage to being hired by University X, say to work with Professor Y or make use of Fantastically Expensive Lab Toy. While true that people, even the greatest minds, have only so many brain cycles per minute of life to devote to the things that they want/need to think about. If by throwing away a few here and there to satisfy some bureaucratic requirement, something they are already doing in other respects, will allow them to get on with their work, they will do so. Only when they feel that extra time is truly diverting them from the work that they want to do will they put up much of an objection. This is true of most other things in their lives that detract such as teaching students, attending faculty meetings, etc. It’s just one more damn thing. But if they can get brownie points for diversity such that it gets ignored when they miss more than a few student focused requirements or other distractions, it’s six of one, half dozen of the other from where they sit.
did you ever notice that the most extreme anti-natalists are always people that no one would ever want to have a child with anyway?
Quite a lot of feminist posturing does seem to boil down to some variation of “I am unable to do X successfully, therefore X and everything about it is worthless and contemptible.”
Anyone who is mired in equality, diversity and inclusion, is not a person who will accomplish anything great. He will be too busy measuring each sentence that comes out of his mouth. Constantly looking over his shoulder to see whose watching his every move in he hopes of noting some sort of imagined transgression.
We are in an age of leftist insanity and childish adults.
We need a fucking famine as Kate often mentions.
I think we need a civil war to clear out some of the stupidity.
“Starting this fall, all faculty applicants to UCLA must document their contributions to ‘equity, diversity and inclusion.’”
This is what happens when you have a law against the establishment of religion on the books for a couple of hundred years. People forget why.
“He seems to be indulging in cultural appropriation also as he appears as Oriental as Calvin Coolidge, or that Brianna Wu chap.”
The thought occurs to me that transgenderism is, itself, cultural appropriation. Not, I say as a libertarian, that there’s anything wrong with that, but the cognitive dissonance for those guys must be staggering.
He will be too busy measuring each sentence that comes out of his mouth. Constantly looking over his shoulder to see whose watching his every move in he hopes of noting some sort of imagined transgression.
Yes, and it infects everything.
…but the cognitive dissonance for those guys must be staggering.
The interesting thing is that not only they but other people take their blatherings seriously, as if a guy can expound on the travails of being a woman any more than I can on my imagining I am a Papuan tribesman.
The thought occurs to me that transgenderism is, itself, cultural appropriation.
Tut tut; they ARE female and so are their penises.
The poor are crazy, the rich are eccentric:
http://theothermccain.com/2018/09/03/emma-sulkowicz-crazy-evil-queer-feminist-liar/
I liked Shriver’s article but I thought she missed one key point when she said: “These people are not frightened. They want you to be frightened of them.” I’m sure as an award-winning author she has more than her share of insight into human psychology but she dropped the ball there: these people want normal folks to be frightened of them precisely because they are (or at one point were) so terrified of normals and normalcy.
Nothing drives the desire to inflict fear on others so much as the experience of being afraid.
Progressives seem especially prone to disguise one feeling as another.
That.
Hi Eric,
I wanted to take Latin in high school but didn’t get to. Please translate your sentences.
I wanted to take Latin in high school but didn’t get to.
It’s often translated, informally, as “Kill them all. Let God sort it out.”
Which seems a tad harsh. But there we are.
“Your life is ruined as soon as you have one.”
Huh. My wife and I didn’t get the memo.
Quite a lot of feminist posturing does seem to boil down to some variation of “I am unable to do X successfully, therefore X and everything about it is worthless and contemptible.”
Aesop’s fables are so wasted on the young. The fox and the sour grapes explains more about human nature than thousands of pages of political philosophy.
The fox and the sour grapes
While poking through feminist outpourings I’m often reminded of the tone adopted by teenagers when they want to convey how stupid and unfashionable their parents’ taste in music is, or how stupid school sports are, especially the ones that they, entirely coincidentally, happen to be no good at.
Thanks, David!
If I remember right, that goes back to a soldier who wanted to know how to tell the Cathars from the respectable folk.
As a complete aside, in the Shriver piece…
“during that Evergreen foofaraw a rabid convocation of students cowed the college president”
I like a writer who uses good words, and that’s two excellent ones in a single line. Bravo, Lionel!
“Conservatives can be disingenuous, too — high-mindedly defending the health of the economy by protecting ‘wealth creators’, when they just want to pay lower taxes.”
Hmm. Speak for yourself, Li. Sure, I want to pay lower taxes. But I also firmly believe that this will benefit society by (among other things) assisting those who create wealth. It’s a win-win. That’s why I think it’s the correct policy. If I thought it would benefit only myself while harming humanity as a whole, I’d think twice. In doing so, I might then try to come up with a clever-sounding moralistic argument to cover my selfishness, but that doesn’t mean that the one that I have is also false.
If I thought it would benefit only myself while harming humanity as a whole, I’d think twice. In doing so, I might then try to come up with a clever-sounding moralistic argument to cover my selfishness
That’s a fairly succinct summary of the “government must regulate socal media” braying coming from Conservative, Inc. these days.
If I thought it would benefit only myself while harming humanity as a whole, I’d think twice.
There’s also the non-trivial issue that state dependency tends to breed more and wider dependency, which, once established and made habitual, is very hard to undo, either politically or culturally. With the result that at some point the level of dependency, and the expectation of more, becomes unsustainable, indeed ruinous. That the left has seemingly decided that we must no longer think of welfare in terms of the deserving and undeserving – that we mustn’t acknowledge the role of choices and responsibility – rather suggests that the ratio in question has already shifted in an unhappy direction and is likely to continue.
Quite a lot of feminist posturing does seem to boil down to some variation of “I am unable to do X successfully, therefore X and everything about it is worthless and contemptible.”
Steve Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism, which has since been adapted to feminism in general:
Heh. Quite.
Hmm. Speak for yourself, Li.
Well exactly. Putting wealth creators in scare quotes is a tell in my book. But as to taxes, taxes are not the problem. Spending is the problem. Especially spending on “loans” for extended childhoods in pursuit of snowflake degrees and subsidizing the leftist theology of most such college professors. But I digress…
Quite a lot of feminist posturing does seem to boil down to some variation of “I am unable to do X successfully, therefore X and everything about it is worthless and contemptible.”
You say X but you really mean Y, right?
While poking through feminist outpourings I’m often reminded of the tone adopted by teenagers when they want to convey how stupid and unfashionable their parents’ taste in music
“I hate you Daaaad/Pay attention to meeeeee” sums up rather a lot, yes.
Steve Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism
Evolutionary psych may have a bad rap, but it’s proven better at predicting and modelling human behaviour than the alternatives.
I noticed something curious: the Quillette article on Ms McIntosh attracted precisely the sort of “trophy hunters” Shriver is describing in the Spectator. I’m not sure if the comments in Quillette make me want to laugh out loud, or reach through the ether and throttle some pretentious “progressive” numbskulls.
Why not both? 😊
Hmm. Speak for yourself, Li. Sure, I want to pay lower taxes. But I also firmly believe that this will benefit society by (among other things) assisting those who create wealth. It’s a win-win. That’s why I think it’s the correct policy. If I thought it would benefit only myself while harming humanity as a whole, I’d think twice. In doing so, I might then try to come up with a clever-sounding moralistic argument to cover my selfishness, but that doesn’t mean that the one that I have is also false.
I was listening to an interview some weeks back with a member of the Australian cabinet about tax cuts that had passed Parliament. The sneering radio host stated that people on some high income would get a tax cut and asked why they deserved it. It suddenly hit me that the correct response is to take a page from the US Declaration of Independence and ask why the swarms of officers sent hither to harass us and eat our substance deserve it.
Hmm. Speak for yourself, Li.
Aside from the fact that her throwaway line about taxes is nothing more than a virtue signal designed to prevent the outrage mobs from coming after her, the assumption underlying her statement is that nothing we earn or create belongs to us. Rather, it belongs to the government at whose sufferance we are allowed to keep something and who is in a much better position to determine how our wealth and income is distributed. The proper answer to such a remark is, “You’re damn right. It’s my money.”
I’ll buy that as long as you never drive on the public roads or flush your poop into the public sewers.
A functional society needs both private and public spheres.
Oh, and stay off the public sidewalks.
Aside from the fact that her throwaway line about taxes is nothing more than a virtue signal designed to prevent the outrage mobs from coming after her
She’s had the outrage mobs after her for the past year since she spoke out about the nonsense of cultural appropriation, so I doubt she cares about that. It seems more like what Christina Hoff Sommers aptly called “the liberal fear of looking conservative.” For many liberals of Shriver’s generation, they were the leftmost flank in respectable political discourse, and they were free to define themselves to their advantage against the religious right and pre-civil-rights racists. Now they’ve been outflanked on their left by a new breed, and many of them are stuck in no-man’s-land, waffling over how to define themselves against the intersectional fanatics without conceding any ground to their old enemies or rethinking their caricatures. There’s a growing genre of essays lately that peer deeply into the liberal navel, trying to find something substantial to keep them from being rhetorically tarred as conservatives. (Spoiler: it usually boils down to more positive feelings about the welfare state. Thin gruel.)
I’ll buy that as long as you never drive on the public roads or flush your poop into the public sewers.
Ah, yes. The go-to “Gotcha!” line.
Sigh
There are obvious things which require financing by the commonweal. Marines, for example. I do not have the power (yet) to invade a country and overthrow it for my own nefarious purposes. Thus, I’m certainly willing to toss a few shekels into the hat for a some MEUs and F-35s. Ditto roads and sewers, though in fairness, I get my water from a well and have a private septic system on my land, so I’m cool there, I guess.
The fact is, most taxes are merely schemes to redistribute my money to someone else who has not earned it. I have worked 60+ hours per week for thirty years running a small business, only to see the government siphon off more and more of every dollar I make. What’s siphoned never seems to benefit me in any way. (See, e.g. condition of state highway in front of my house.) The amount I pay does, however, seem to make it into the pockets/EBT cards of people I see at the gas station using EBT to buy Snickers bars and cash for their smokes and booze.
But, by all means, prop that “just don’t use public roads” straw man up again. You really showed me.
Not at all. Had your first complaint had the clarity of your second, I’d never have scolded you. I’ve been saying for 30 years that Americans have had their wealth stolen and that’s why they don’t want to pay taxes. Why should they? They pay taxes and their roads and bridges are crumbling, water’s unsafe in more and more places, they’re one serious illness away from the street, but by God those banks got bailed out. Your Tax Dollars At Work.
It’s a good thing huge American vehicles and sportsball exist; I honestly think the remaining middle class (all twelve of them) might erupt in revolution otherwise. Although sportsball is showing a slight weakening of its power to pacify.
but by God those banks got bailed out. Your Tax Dollars At Work.
After nearly going tits-up due to government policy and (the government-mandated) loans to people who the bankers knew couldn’t repay the debt, I don’t really see the bail-out as all that problematic.
YMMV, of course
Had your first complaint had the clarity of your second, I’d never have scolded you.
Well then. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Or, perhaps you should not be so quick to toss off you “scoldings.”
And BTW, your second comment conflicts with your first. The answer to the problem(s) you identify is not more taxes but fewer, and then only to fund things which truly benefit all.
But I suppose, glib comments directed at someone you don’t know are easier than actually thinking about a problem and formulating a solution.
(Memo to David: Regarding the comments in the previous post, I’m obviously the “Evil Twin.”)
David, I apologize for getting cranky. I’ll do better in the future.
Perhaps this will lighten the mood.
They pay taxes and their roads and bridges are crumbling, water’s unsafe in more and more places, they’re one serious illness away from the street…I honestly think the remaining middle class (all twelve of them)…
That is a fine litany of leftist boilerplate nearly antipodal to reality.