Our Betters Make Laws
Welcome to Seattle, where a dislike of being robbed, or seeing others being robbed, is disdained as “anti-poverty bias.”
It’s called “the poverty defence,” and would not only make stealing legal, but apparently fencing items as well, and would cover over 100 misdemeanour crimes.
Because enabling criminals and demoralising their victims will result in flourishing neighbourhoods, a boom in employment, and a future that’s more progressive and compassionate. Full of hugs and puppies.
Update: via the comments:
As noted in the piece, the most enthusiastic supporters of the proposal, the ones disdaining objections as “anti-poverty bias,” are remarkably contemptuous of the people whose lives will be degraded, should the proposal succeed. And who almost certainly have a much clearer understanding of the proposal’s supposed beneficiaries, having encountered them first-hand, most likely more than once. But the compulsion to indulge criminal choices, from a safe distance, and to then bask in the subsequent in-group elevation, is, for some, quite strong, despite the contortions it can entail.
And regardless of the consequences for the victims of such posturing.
Update 2:
In the comments, Burnsie quips,
Look at it as a way for people to steal their way out of poverty with dignity and respect. Don’t you feel better now?
Grim humour aside, this is a recurring theme of leftism, a defining thread. Pretentious compassion for Degenerate Group X is much more statusful – i.e., beneficial to the leftist – than compassion for the law-abiding victims of predators and sociopaths.
If that nice Mrs Wilson down the road finds her meagre possessions suddenly reduced in number, this allows little opportunity for advancement within leftist circles, where unobviousness and perversity are a kind of woke currency. Showing sympathy for Mrs Wilson, and those like her, is commonplace and humdrum, i.e., low status. Practically conservative. But feigning compassion for the person who robbed her and who will merrily rob others until forcibly stopped – on grounds that thieves and burglars are vulnerable, marginalised or in some way oppressed, unlike the people on whom they prey – is much more promising.
Yes, it’s contrived and selfish and morally perverse, but we’ve seen it many times.
Via Alice.
Also, open thread.
Off on a tangent here… so the much awaited vaccine has arrived. Local newsfolk have breathlessly reported on the first injectees and all, so one might think that OMGCOVIDSTOPTHESPREAD might take a back seat.
One would be wrong. Every local source is vomiting the various WEALLGONNADIEUNLESSYOUWEARMASK 24/7!!!!!
Bizarre, no?
By the way, apologies for lack of new posts. I have a cold and am feeling a little woolly-headed.
[…]that you are not having flashbacks to rolling out of the kaserne on alert to take up positions in the Fulda Gap[…]
My job was to cancel some Czechs, as my brigade’s infantry battalion’s commander put it during a GDP walkthrough.
As a tanker, I would be interested in simulating Prokhorovka in a computer game versus the various paper-and-counter wargames that I’ve played on the subject.
By the way, apologies for lack of new posts. I have a cold and am feeling a little woolly-headed.
Sorry to hear that, David. Take good care of yourself; that’s what’s most important. And don’t worry about us, we’ll play quietly among ourselves.
[sneaks behind bar, inserts Scientology leaflets between pages of log book of patron offenses]
And don’t worry about us, we’ll play quietly among ourselves.
That’s a comfort.
[ Scrambles henchlesbians. ]
WTP: fwiw, you’re very much not alone.
Back on topic: this woke currency thing reminds me of my days doing criminal defense appeals – mostly for convicted murderers. I saw my role as watchdog over our system and our constitutional rights, and worked hard at defending those things. But it never used to fail that, at every dinner party populated with affluent liberal types, someone would ask me in hushed tones “so how many of your clients are innocent?”
“None so far” I would (accurately) reply, “but maybe one of the next 100 will be.”
The pained disappointment among the gathered cognoscenti was always illuminating.
By the way, apologies for lack of new posts. I have a cold and am feeling a little woolly-headed.
How can this be? Between the Neverending Lockdowns and “WEALLGONNADIEUNLESSYOUWEARMASK 24/7!!!!!” no one was supposed to get sick from anything ever again.
Seriously, all snark aside, feel better soon. Take care of yourself, we’ll be here when you post again.
Bizarre, no?
Not really. Leftist media has been rooting for the virus all along. Now we get from CNN and New York Slimes fear-mongering about how the vax may KILL PEOPLE.
Lockdowns, masks and “emergency orders” are to be drummed into us as the new normal. Once the Wuhan Lung Rot is in the rearview mirror, the next liberty-killing emergency will be climate change.
SimCity. Thought it was rather weak at the time and the more I heard about it the more silly, immature it seemed.
The genre has evolved a lot. Cities: Skylines is the current king of the hill, but you’ll need a monster rig to run it. SimCity 4 will run on a potato, but seems to have stability issues. YMMV.
Once the Wuhan Lung Rot is in the rearview mirror,
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Next will be Covid 21,22,23,24 etc. etc.
Guaranteed the Muz, Chinese, Norks and other friends of Democrats are dumping tons of cash into microbiology.
Mrs. the Fourth conned me into getting a puppy back in February. (I have been dogless for decades.) as a result I have met pretty much all the neighbors, many of who ALSO have dogs that I was previously unaware of.
As the US presidential campaign sign said, “DOGS 2020 – Because Humans Suck”
(and oh boy do I agree with those above about the rot in US and international politics. The rest of my family is joy-joy that Trump is out, and I learned the hard way that suggesting they start pay9ing serious attention to the news (back in September) resulted in most of them watching CNN and Rachel Madcow. Heavy Sigh.)
The remark above about the Canadian finance miinister’s confiscatorial musings reminded me that such are not new. Back in the early days of the Clinton administration (IIRC) his candidate for Sec. Treasury said much the same thing: How 1) unfair it was that so much money was held by private persons in tax-deferred retirement accounts, and 2) that FedGov needed the money, and hey, there it was, so why not?
Fortunately she(?) did not make it into office.
But I fully expect the Biden/Harris admin to try this. (BTW, I am taking bets on biden’s duration in office. I personally think the 50/50 line is about 10 months. welcome, Pres. Harris!)
Regarding adverse vaccine reactions, Derek Lowe
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/
had a recent posting titled “Get Ready for False Side Effects” discussing the inevitable adverse outcomes to be expected anytime you dose millions of folks, and the difficulty of telling which, if any, are the result of the vaccine. Doubly so this time, because so many of the recipients are going to be elderly with pre-existing health issues.
(I’m on an extended chat with a bunch of Amazon customer service types, hence my sudden availability to bang away at the keyboard in between sentences…)
The remark above about the Canadian finance miinister’s confiscatorial musings…
She’s a former journalist, which is far from the most egregious mismatch for a cabinet post in the Turdeau (sic) government. The health minister is a former graphic designer.
Welcome to Canada!
I didn’t think online multiplayer games would be my kind of thing…But
This my shocked face. 🙂
This my shocked face. 🙂
You can now imagine your dignified and unflappable host staring intently at his phone, trying to avoid a barrage of atomic death, and shouting, “Bugger bugger bugger!”
On the upside of things, crime will likely go down in surrounding areas as criminals go to
to Seattle to conduct business.
Some doublespeak to digest…
Wow.
“cancel some Czechs” gets nothing? (It’s not even something that I dreamed up; it’s what that LTC told his troops.)
sniveling noises in the background
“cancel some Czechs” gets nothing?”
Sorry. I remember that joke from the seventies, but any possible comments were obliterated by jumbled thoughts about the Fulda Gap and a tanker friend who served there.
Welcome to Canada!
No, they aren’t.
I personally think the 50/50 line is about 10 months.
I found it remarkable that just a few election cycles ago we were all hit with breathless exclamations that “Sarah Palin is just a heartbeat away from the presidency!” This year, with a candidate who was in every aspect more frail than McCain, we heard nary a peep. The closest thing I think I saw was the yard signs in my neighbo(u)rhood that read “HARRIS 2020!!! (and also Joe Biden)”. The lefties definitely knew what was up — they just did a stellar job of keeping it quiet so that the normals wouldn’t get upset.
I game, but not the video variety. My preference is play-by-post and I’m currently writing Bane and Vic Sage in an AU DC game. Details upon request (otherwise I’ll blather on endlessly).
Details upon request
Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
My preference is play-by-post
Remember sheets of paper covered with little hexagons?
Remember sheets of paper covered with little hexagons?
[Looks at shelves full of 1980s wargames]
“Remember”?
No, they aren’t.
Couldn’t find the original article but did find this 2000 transcript of an interview Art Buchwald did:
And the Canadians built new schools, new houses, created jobs, because they’re expecting 50 million people to show up
Wth? No we didn’t.
Also, Ms. Jacobson has since returned to the US.
In an unintentionally hilarious example of our national inferiority complex, the National Post decided to weigh in on the issue. Apparently still stinging from Ms. Jacobson’s rebuke twelve years prior, they managed to find two whole people who disagreed.
Buchwald was an American humorist. The only thing worth reading on the editorial pages in the 70’s and 80’s. Yes, there used to be something called humor back then. Kinda hard to describe in today’s terminology. 😉
If anyone breaks into my house, and I’m home, one of us is ending up dead.