Everything It Touches

The issue is that the nasty SJWs are the loud ones.
There are quiet SJWs? Isn’t the first rule of ‘social justice’ to talk about it all the time?

especially for people who don’t fit into the usual societal structures.
People who don’t fit into the usual societal structures are helped by what is effectively bullying people into conformity? If those people happen to fit the societal structures that others are being bullied into, I suppose. SJW is predominately a bullying culture. I am inclined to believe that it is to some degree a byproduct of a failed anti-bullying effort. Rather than teach, or even more importantly allow, victims of bullies to stand up for themselves, schools and such have provided new SJW-based tools for bullies to use. If our “educators” had intentionally set out to make things worse…well it would be interesting to see how that would have been. Just for the sake of comparison. Sadly such examination is not logically possible.

And I do think it could potentially help people suffering from depression by making them feel wanted and loved (even if only for their immutable characteristics), especially for people who don’t fit into the usual societal structures.
This, by Jim Goad, came to mind:

So many of these multitudinous oppressed “identities” seem like nothing more than cheap cloaks to mask nakedly annoying personalities. People with bad personalities seem to have a built-in defence mechanism that makes them believe you actually hate them for any other possible reason besides their bad personalities.

And if you inculcate victimhood and pretentious tribal acrimony, and do it culturally and institutionally, at every turn, for years – both as a universal excuse for any possible shortcoming, or vanity, or lousy life choice, and as a kind of competitive piety, a marker of status – then dysfunctional behaviour will follow. And fantasists and hustlers who exploit that dysfunction will thrive and multiply.
And so our seats of learning continue to disgorge haughty, vindictive bitches who exult in their own obnoxiousness.

In a decade or so of blogging about the phenomenon and poking about in its academic nest, I can’t say that tolerance, Christian or otherwise, has been an obvious defining feature.
Outlying metaphors like onward Christian soldiers aside, the telling aspect of the SJW movement is in the name. They’re warriors necessarily deploying themselves in the midst of a great and profound injustice. This deployment constitutes the tacit but incontrovertible truth that something’s wrong that pretty much justifies any solution. It’s a fight club that just doesn’t happen to talk about the technical charter it does not possess. It’s rationally and, in the collective sphere, legally illegitimate.
The rest is the simple history and trajectory of Utopianism. It is the collective manifestation of clinical personality disorder because it runs on appearances, projection, prejudice, the lie, and underlying, intolerant force.
It’s that force that de-legitimizes it – we will overcome you for your own good. It is a fundamental – no, perhaps the fundamental – ailment possessing humanity, that of personal dysfunction > un-thought, intolerant ideology > collective force and chaos. True morality, on the other hand, is manifest by the personal mandate.
Finally, this phenomena indicts cultural conservatives and political rightists too, because original contractual government notwithstanding, they are largely incapable or unwilling to maintain their functional, traditional status quo in the face of this malaise and malice. It has infiltrated all aspects of their institutional structure and lives and they take virtually no action to hold or reform their own institutions against it.
Utopianism is technically illegal but its evangelists have convinced ordered, neutral, negative-rights society that they warrant not only a voice but an entire activist movement against that structural society, operating within and even funded by it.

While we’re discussing the cultivation of pathology, I thought I should mention – as a kind of momentary respite – that hereabouts the weather is glorious, and a very fat bee has just flown in through one open window, buzzed around the room, quite loudly, then left via another open window. Which made me laugh.
Now back to our scheduled programming.

Why does every proposal to SAVE HUMANITY!! include chains?
Does anyone remember when TED talks were at least vaguely reputable?

This headline sounds like Titania wrote it:
https://abcnews.go.com/culture/story/jason-momoa-shaved-beard-raise-awareness-recyclable-aluminum-62480854?cid=clicksource_4380645_null_icymi_hed
The 2 ideas just don’t connect (unless Mr. Momoa had an aluminum beard). It’s like saying “Blogger David Thompson cleaned the hamster cage to raise awareness of pickled eggs.”

A woman accused of stalking a man by sending him more than 159,000 text messages—including death threats—said she wants her case to go to trial because she believes the jury would find her innocent and order them to get married.

Today’s word is optimism.

…you don’t call yourself a warrior because you consider yourself tolerant and conciliatory.
No, they fancy themselves “warriors” but actually are just role playing. Newborn kittens are more capable “warriors”.
Today’s word is optimism.

Moreover, Ades said she didn’t take the plea deal because she is certain jurors would find her not guilty and even order her and the man to marry.
“They’re going to say, ‘You’re not guilty and on top of it we, like, demand that you two get married,’” Ades told The Republic.

There are laws against cruel and unusual punishment over here.

Jason Momoa shaved his beard to raise awareness to recyclable aluminum
That is truly bizarre, as there is no “crisis” of aluminum not being recycled. Unlike so many recyclable materials, aluminum is profitable to recycle and centers pay poor people who bring cans they have collected from dumpsters and the street.

People who don’t fit into the usual societal structures are helped by what is effectively bullying people into conformity?
The state is the biggest bully of them all, and using the state to bully people you don’t like is virtuous.

a very fat bee has just flown in through one open window, buzzed around the room, quite loudly, then left via another open window.
It’s all go at Guild of Evil HQ.

It’s all go at Guild of Evil HQ.
I don’t think you appreciate just how fat and loud the bee in question was. Like a hairy, motorised golf ball.

A Moose once bit my sister.
Well, don’t leave us hanging.

As to the order of cause and effect, ie. whether SJW ideology turns people into jerks, or whether they were assholes already, I think it’s a mixed bag.
My conjecture is that striking an SJW pose is merely a passive aggressive way for inadequate people to exert control over others. See, also, “gluten sensitivity.”

I hope the Easter hamster was tasty despite the small drumsticks.
We always have our ham the weekend after Easter Sunday, as it usually sells out for Easter so the new ones are nice and fresh, as fresh as a cured item can be.
If you can find it, try basting your ham in real Coke, made with sugar instead of corn syrup. In the U. S. it’s available in Mexican groceries, and intermittently in Jewish groceries.

Ah. I was hoping for a tale of intense family drama.
I was hoping that someone would reply with the next line, after which I would reply, and we would go back and forth until David asked the henchlesbians to escort us outside.

Oh FFS.

One on the panel, Mark Tonga, said using the term ‘disabled’ portrays people as having ‘less capacity and less ability,’ The Daily Telegraph reports.

There may be a reason for that.

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore is considering a plan to normalise the term ‘Access Inclusion Seekers’ when referring to disabled people.

Allrighty, then, problem sorted. Unless, I guess, someone disabled doesn’t want access or inclusion, or does, but isn’t seeking.

Why does every proposal to SAVE HUMANITY!! include chains?
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts. – H.L. Mencken

Well bees do invoke geometry constantly. And a bit of the calculus.
Seems to be some sort of projection.
Best to not be too sticky when being invoked.
They are just trying to point out baby spiders but only the cats and dogs know the drill.
Practice.

How’d the bee get past the window screens?

How’d the bee get past the window screens?
My brief UK experience is that such contraptions are simply not a thing there. Found it oddly liberating when working in the offices of a software development company many years ago in suburban Bristol (in Admiral Nelson’s former home or so I was told…last I checked it’s now a dentist office) that the second story windows were wide open, no screens…being a Florida boy, this was kinda like going commando. Similar in the B&Bs I’ve stayed in there as well.
Oh, and the milk man delivered fresh cream to the office for the tea and coffee. I think that was more a function of the location than SOP. But just a guess.

They must use up a lot of flypaper in summer.

Now that’s just plain ridiculous. If there’s one thing that unites all mankind, it’s the firm belief that MY dog, cat, or hamster is the very best dog, cat, or hamster in existence. And thus when you meet another dog, cat, or hamster owner each of you is eager to start bragging. Animals bring people together. They’ll never push people farther apart despite the SJWs’s best efforts.

David/Farnsworth, re Optimism: Coincidentally, I just watched a true-crime show about a spectacularly lovely young lady who called 911 to report she had just killed her (spectacularly handsome) boyfriend. Brought to the police station she asked for a lawyer so they did not question her, but put her in holding where – on camera – she engaged in a 4-hour+ monologue (including dance routine and song) about the incident. Later details furnished showed she had sent tens of thousands of emails and texts to the victim and refused to accept his increasingly-frequent assurances that he wanted to conclude their relationship. Until, of course, she took matters into her own hands.
The broadcasters, while discoursing endlessly about the perp over a 2 hour show about both her trials for the killing, buried until the last 5 minutes what was the most interesting thing about her: that 2 psychiatrists independently concluded and testified that she was a Cluster B — one said Narcissist, the other, Borderline. Yep. 2 hours of nattering and explaining nothing about her and her actions, and then in the ultimate buried lede they disclose the single thing that pretty much explained it all.
Brought this up because of your Optimism link, but also because there is a mystically-fascinating tie-in to your other links (and their associated comments) about personality disorders, and the damage afforded by our current education system: the perp herself testified both at her bail hearing and later in mitigation of her offense that she could be a valuable asset to her community since her professed goal was to be a school guidance counselor.
Per local usage, I’ll just leave that there.

“Social justice” holds you responsible for the actions of others with whom you’ve never had any contact, and had no influence over. It’s the opposite of justice.
Despite the term being used frequently and ostentatiously, clear definitions are rarely volunteered. That’s the first warning sign.
As you say, “social justice” entails treating people not as individuals but as mascots and categories. And judging a person and their actions based on which Designated Victim Group they supposedly belong to and then assigning various exemptions and indulgences depending on that notional group identity and whatever presumptuous baggage can be attached to it, with varying degrees of perversity. And conversely, assigning imaginary sins and “privilege” to someone else based on whatever Designated Oppressor Group they can be said to belong to, however fatuously, and regardless of the particulars of the actual person.
Which is to say, “social justice” is largely about judging people tribally, cartoonishly, and by different and contradictory standards, based on some supposed group identity, which apparently – and conveniently – overrides all else. It’s glib, question-begging and instantly pernicious. Morality for the mediocre. As you say, viewed rationally, it’s something close to the opposite of justice. And yet, among our self-imagined betters, it’s the latest must-have.
In much the same way, “equity” – another word favoured by both educators and campus activists – is defined, if at all, only in the woolliest and most evasive of terms. And which, when used by those same educators and activists, seems to mean something like “equality of outcome regardless of inputs.” Inputs including diligence and punctuality. And that isn’t fair either.

What was the original tweet?

What was the original tweet?
This one, I think.

Finally, bold action has been taken to get these weapons of terror off the street.

Loud SJWs are a problem, but the silence of the 93.7% of non SJW students is greater.

Speaking of ruining everything it touches, Kate Smith becomes an unperson for having sung a song with doubleplusungood wrongthought lyrics eighty years ago.
Also, via Ace, Wokelahoma !, the musical “reimagined” for the millennial generation with all the cliches one would expect.

Williams College, where annual tuition is $57,000.

It is so frustrating. It’s so tiring … to be here.

For this problem, obvious solution is obvious.
Meanwhile, here in the civilized states, today is still Confederate Memorial Day and amazingly with nary a protest.

Diversity is our strength!
Taken at face value, “diversity” is the belief that the less we have in common, and feel we have in common, the happier we will be.

fried chicken
Isn’t that a racist stereotype?

If I understand the Williams incident, the Council unanimously approved the black students’ budget request 15 minutes BEFORE the protest began. This qualifies as a win-win.
It’s like one of those fake bar fights in a low budget western movie. The bad guy anticipates the fake hit by the hero and falls back on the poker table before the blow lands.

Regarding Mao-ling psychodrama, Charles Murray has a modest proposal.
Previously, and very much related.

This is what the students were protesting and Charles Murray was referring to: An active member of the Polish resistance to communism speaking about resisting totalitarianism. And yet the students think they’re the heroes here. Appalling.

I’ve never seen SJW ideology make an adherent a better person.
I suppose it’s a kind of cheap grace, which is always popular:

“If I regurgitate these attitudes and incantations, and if I stipulate my pronouns, then I become A Very Good Person Indeed, and therefore statusful. Which saves a lot of time and effort, frankly. And being instantly transformed into A Very Good Person Indeed, I am entitled to defame and browbeat and bully, to denounce books that I haven’t read, and to remind others of my Very Good Person status in all kinds of exciting ways. Like needlessly harassing people and blocking doorways, and putting polite and elderly scholars in fear of their safety. And if anyone hurts my feelings – say, by drawing attention to my ignorance, hypocrisy and pretension – my basic moral emptiness – then I can denounce them as opposing all of the glorious causes that I now champion and pretend to embody, so heroically.”

Something along those lines.
And given the kinds of personalities typically attracted to such things, I doubt that being a better person was ever on the cards.

Why does every proposal to SAVE HUMANITY!! include chains?
Professor Bostrom’s ideas are just a teensy bit scary:

He also suggests we lean into mass government surveillance, outfitting every person with necklace-like “freedom tags” that can hear and see what they’re doing at all times.
These tags would feed into “patriot monitoring stations,” or “freedom centers,” where artificial intelligences monitor the data, bringing human “freedom officers” into the loop if they detect signs of a black ball.

Right. I’m guessing ‘1984’ is filed in the ‘practical advice & self help’ section of the professor’s bookcase.

Tim Newman is in his wheelhouse again.

“If someone says, ‘My arm hurts,’ we typically grant credence to their claims.
Which is why we also accept it when people say “I’m Napoleon Bonaparte!” and put them in charge of France.
Which might actually be a good thing currently, but that’s beside the point:-).

Got a lot of responses while I was away 😀
They do bang on, the heathens. Unlike me, soul of brevity that I am.
I was objecting only to the ‘never’ and ‘always’…
No quarrel there.
I’m just noting that it inadvertently actually manages to do good on rare occasions.
Given the role of unintended consequences in all human endeavour, I’m sure it must from time to time. Not unlike spitefully shitting in the village’s only water supply and two weeks later hearing that the local child molester is among the people feeling unwell.
I exaggerate, of course. But not, I think, enormously.

“Aren’t all cyclists into BDSM, of a sort?”
Genius, Tim.

The Swedish moose migration?
Are we talking about Greta Thunberg?

“When I decided that I wanted to take hormones to feminise my body, the last thing I wanted to do was to go in front of a psychologist to justify my decision,” Florence Ashley, a transfeminine bioethicist
Ah! So the opiod-addict is the one writing the paper on why medical professionals should just take his word that “my arm hurts” and hand over the drugs … cuz trust or something. Yeah, no bias here.

…medical professionals should just take his word that “my arm hurts” and hand over the drugs…
One would think a “bioethicist” might actually be required to study how medicine is practiced, but maybe not. Yeah, the hell with that whole history, exam, test, nonsense, waste of time and money. “Hey doc, I’m feeling my feminine side today”, “No problem, Mac, here is a bottle of estrogen for you. Next !”

… someone with a leftist point of view who nevertheless tolerates other opinions…

No idea at all why this lot would be opposed to seeing a shrink, none at all.
It’s a mystery to me, too.

This is why feminism will eventually die off… woman are biologically evolved to attract men and vice versa. There is nothing more ugly to a man than a vitriolic feminist woman in all her putridity. The article you posted about the restaurant with the male hating tax is a microcosm of this fact.

“Aren’t all cyclists into BDSM, of a sort?”
No.
I cycle comfortably, clad conservatively, affording neither physical nor aesthetic pain to myself or others.