If you think of communication as an exercise in respect for the other, you don’t repeat yourself. Repeating yourself suggests that you’re either demented or that you just don’t care about the other person’s response; you’re prepared to override it and say the same thing again and again. There’s no way in which a chanted slogan invites an answer.

Douglas Murray and Roger Scruton discuss the future of conservatism, why the left wins the culture war, architecture, Twitter mobs, the importance of apologies, and the “institutionalised fraudulence” of woke academia.

Also, open thread.

Or, A Little Something To Cover The Emotional Wear And Tear.

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For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last twelve years, in over 2,600 posts and close to 100,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year summaries. There you’ll find bulletins from the bleeding edge of academia; thrilling adventures in the world of art; the strange mental contortions of Laurie Penny; and tales of how the great outdoors – fresh air itself – is crushingly oppressive to intersectional feminists.

If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. Also, open thread. 

Wing man. || “Hingst told the court that Short would enter Hingst’s small, windowless office several times a day and break wind.” || The complete North Bergen High School performance of Alien. || Our betters reminisce. || Eminently binge-able. || Salt mining. (h/t, Pogonip) || Skills. || Signage of note. (h/t, Dicentra) || 23 caves. || Mr Yoshimoto has a curry vending machine. || Crows bearing gifts. || Hand-cranked rhythm generator. || Hooters Air. || A feminist is corrected. (h/t, Darleen) || That’s exactly how I would do it. || The question you’ve always wanted to ask. || Tools of wooing. || Shopping mall ceiling of note. || And finally, the boys’ home-made flame-thrower was a partial success.

Via Mr Muldoon in the comments, our betters at work:

Laughable, yes. But not harmless:

Brad Polumbo on cultivated irresponsibility: 

During my final semester in college, I intentionally took a course focused on race, gender, and the history of oppression in the United States… The most jarring realisation: liberal academics define “oppression” so loosely that their victimhood narrative can never end… Each criterion is defined loosely enough to lend themselves to a kind of subjective self-victimisation. This is convincing a generation of young people that their life trajectories are beyond their control.

As noted here previously, woke piety is a kind of positional good, jealously defended and forever in peril. It’s a competitive gig and so the goal-posts have to move, generally by veering further into absurdity. And so we end up with agonised Guardian articles about being oppressed by free cake, and the menace posed by heteronormative pastries and spellcheck software, and about how men discussing barbecues is not only “oppressively penetrating,” but about as “oppressively penetrating” as a thing can be. And students with the moral wherewithal to resist this narrative may find themselves being denounced by their so-called educators.

Victor Davis Hanson on the social corrosive called “diversity”: 

For history’s rare multiracial and multi-ethnic republics, an e pluribus unum cohesion is essential. Each particular tribe must owe greater allegiance to the commonwealth than to those who superficially look or worship alike. Yet over the last 20 years we have deprecated “unity” and championed “diversity.” Americans are being urged by popular culture, universities, schools and government to emphasise their innate differences rather than their common similarities… Some hyphenate or add accents or foreign pronunciations to their names. Others fabricate phony ethnic pedigrees in hopes of gaining an edge in job-seeking or admissions. The common theme is to be anything other than just normal Americans for whom race, gender and ethnicity are incidental rather than essential to their character.

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.