Reheated (61)
For newcomers and the forgetful, two items from the archives:
A leftist compulsion is pondered.
A more subtle and common example occurred in January, when the family headed out to a Burns Night dinner at a restaurant adjacent to the university. Before the food appeared, we were treated to a brief poetry reading courtesy of a local academic. I was tempted to roll my eyes at the prospect, but he did get the crowd in good spirits. Until a poem about food and good company was somehow given, as he put it, “a political edge.” And so, we endured a contrived reference to Brexit – implicitly very bad – and a pointed nod across the ocean to a certain president, who we were encouraged to imagine naked.
At the time, I was struck by the presumption – the belief that everyone present would naturally agree - that opposition to Brexit and a disdain of Trump were things we, the customers, would without doubt have in common… The subtext was hard to miss: “This is a fashionable restaurant and its customers, being fashionable, will obviously hold left-of-centre views, especially regarding Brexit and Trump, both of which they should disdain and wish to be seen disdaining by their left-of-centre peers.” And when you’re out to enjoy a fancy meal with friends and family, this is an odd sentiment to encounter from someone you don’t know and whose ostensible job is to make you feel welcome.
Guardian columnist denounces Western medicine as “outdated,” champions use of bush dung.
Apparently, modern medical science, with its oppressive Western paradigms, is insufficiently deferential to “our ways of knowing, being and doing.” We must, says Ms Blow, “embrace all knowledge systems.” “Our unique lens, which views health as holistic and all-encompassing, has often been ignored or worse, considered inferior,” Ms Blow informs us. Well, not everyone is happy trusting their recovery to healing songs and delusions of aboriginal sorcery, and there’s only so much you can achieve by pushing crushed witchetty grubs into a person’s ear.
Despite attempts to romanticise aboriginal medicine, the persistent differences in health and lifespan rather speak for themselves. If aboriginal approaches, untainted by “colonial organisations,” are so praiseworthy and desirable, one wonders why aboriginal people suffer from alarming rates of diabetes, cancer, tuberculosis, chlamydia and any number of other afflictions – from cardiovascular problems to hearing loss and disastrous oral hygiene. And the less contact they have with the “biomedical models” that so offend Ms Blow, the more pronounced the disparities seem to be. Being “disruptive” and “the antithesis of colonial” doesn’t appear to be working out awfully well.
There’s more, should you crave it, in the greatest hits.
Also, open thread.
The Blurting.
That’s what I’m going to call it from now on. 🙂
That’s what I’m going to call it from now on. 🙂
It does, I think, help to have a name for these things. There are other examples in the subsequent comment thread.
Apparently some Canadians think they are more equal than others.
https://www.yukon-news.com/news/former-ceo-of-great-canadian-gaming-actress-charged-after-flying-to-beaver-creek-for-covid-19-vaccine/
My uncle is a confirmed Blurter from the other side—no matter what the subject is, aluminininum, for example—he’ll find a way to use it to bitch about the Democrats.
Also, from your neck of the woods. You should probably skip the probing attraction.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/huge-new-theme-park-opening-19680334
My uncle is a confirmed Blurter from the other side
It does happen, though in my experience much less frequently or incongruously. I think it may be a function of the asymmetry in status signalling. Non-leftist views, including those of humdrum conservatives, aren’t generally regarded as having the same socially elevating effect.
By the way, if anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me, top left, and I’ll rattle the spam filter.
aluminininum
… ah, the compromise spelling.
…he’ll find a way to use it to bitch about the Democrats.
The difference being that there is a perfectly good foundation for that going back to 1828.
Speaking of reheated, via Neontaster, I believe we have seen this modest fellow before.
While Jerry Saltz is not wrong about the function of a critic, I’d have a hard time equating Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel and a scribe pounding out 1,000 words about it.
Now, if you’re talking about modern art …
Well, not everyone is happy trusting their recovery to healing songs and delusions of aboriginal sorcery, and there’s only so much you can achieve by pushing crushed witchetty grubs into a person’s ear.
I denounce myself for the racist crime of agreeing with you.
While Jerry Saltz is not wrong about the function of a critic…
I do recall one Marxist critic, a few decades ago, asserting that the critic’s work was just as valuable as the artist’s. I’m sure that played well with his fellow “intellectuals” but we all know that there will never be a society (outside Cloud Cuckoo Land) where people eagerly read the next lit-crit essay the way normal people read/view/listen to actual works of art.
I denounce myself for the racist crime of agreeing with you.
Ms Blow, who very much wants us to know how radical she is, tells us that she has “embraced disruption” and has “chosen to reject conventional medical training pathways” in order to help aboriginal people. And she plans to do this by disdaining the “colonial” medicine and “Western paradigms” that could save many lives and spare endless sorrow, while hailing aboriginal woo as the way to go, despite its obvious and rather disastrous track record. You therefore have to wonder if her motivation has more to do with badmouthing Whitey, Corrupter Of All The Things. It does seem to be where her enthusiasm lies.
Apparently, medicine must be “decolonised,” even if the result is needless suffering.
I sincerely hope that Ms Blow rigorously follows her own advice and avoids all Western medicine.
Also, from your neck of the woods. You should probably skip the probing attraction.
“Blackpool Council is planning to compel landowners to sell up to make way for a £300m entertainment complex…”
I treasure the Fifth Amendment, even though our corrupted Supreme Court is insufficiently zealous in enforcing it.
“…The main tenant of the redeveloped site will be the Chariots of the Gods Entertainment Park”
That just makes the forced sale of homes even more insulting and degrading. “It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world … but for Wales?”
I was not familiar with Jerry Saltz, so I did a quick internet search and immediately found this:
“Republicanism is no longer a political problem; Republicanism is a social problem. It must be treated in the same way coronavirus is treated: it has to be isolated and snuffed-out by repressing it in about 70% of the general population.”
So in his mind conservatives were always a “problem” rather than fellow citizens who held competing views on a range of issues. And now they are a disease. Very Nazi-like, this Jerry.
The tendency of “intellectuals” to embrace totalitarian and exterminationist ideologies (all in the name of “equality” or even merely being “nice”) is very revealing in ways they do not want us to notice. Nor will they be pleased when they notice that an increasing number of conservatives will conclude that it is impossible to coexist with people like them.
As with my comment on Our Betters in Distress, why not go all-in on this? Let’s get the Witch Doctor treatment for COVID and distribute that. Can’t oppose the idea, that would be raaaaycist. Plus it’s not likely to be any less effective than the holy water or whatever gets sprayed in restaurants and bars. Amuses me to watch the staff at the pool hall do a half-ass spray and wipe down of the pool sticks and billiards balls. Amuses me but I learned to be careful not to watch too closely when the girls do all that wiping. See, sometimes they distractedly wipe them real slooow….
“Diversity” training for middle-school children. Behold the quality.
So the UN agencies worrying themselves about the lack of 1.7 billion free doses of vaccine for the entire African population are ignoring equally valid forms of treatment closer to home (and being howwibly wacist to boot).
closer to home
Good point. That as well. They’re gonna kill the planet flying these bottles of vaccine all over the place. My God, someone stop these crazy death-cult extremists. At such a critical time in our history we should not be imposing our western medical hegemony colonialist imperialism on these poor peoplex of color/colour.
embraced disruption
I saw a fellow in a red shirt do that once at the cinema. Didn’t end well for him but the Romulans were thoroughly chuffed at his sacrifice.
closer to home
And note that Africa itself is producing its share of “woke” wankers who condemn and reject “white man’s science”.
https://news.sky.com/story/maternity-tourists-using-nhs-for-free-care-10423169
But will the woke wankers do anything to discourage the Lagos Shuttle and protect their expectant mothers from “white man’s science”? Those poor women.
But will the woke wankers do anything to discourage the Lagos Shuttle and protect their expectant mothers from “white man’s science”?
Heh. But anything that results in theft from white people is good in their eyes.
Social insecurity does seem more prevalent on the Left.
‘Insufficiently zealous’ isn’t quite the term when, from the evidence, they’re bound & determined to smother it with ‘penumbras and emanations’.
they’re bound & determined to smother it
Agreed. I probably should have preceded “insufficiently” with “(cough, cough)” or some other token of sarcasm.
I visited a church with a friend (not my denomination) and saw this same thing: the assumption that we would all agree with some rather radical (and not christian) politics. Why the hoi polloi should reject brexit is not obvious to this american.
Off-topic, except that mocking the Frogs* is never off-topic: Pasteur Institute abandons Covid vaccine after disappointing results. That is indeed too bad, but nonetheless reminds me of this.
* [Glares across the Atlantic, across England, and finally across the Channel]
At the time, I was struck by the presumption – the belief that everyone present would naturally agree
I have noticed that in many venues–newsletters and fora where politics should be irrelevant but where smug declarations are routinely inserted. In some cases the benefits of staying were so small compared to the annoyances that it proved best to just walk away, although the result was that I was unavailable to help out people who clearly could use it.
And thus the camel’s nose is followed by the eyes, then ears, then hump one, and on and on. Only when the camel shit can no longer be ignored does anyone dare speak of it. But by then it’s his tent.
Social insecurity does seem more prevalent on the Left.
For supposed egalitarians, many people on the left do seem remarkably preoccupied with being seen to hold high-status views, whatever they may be in any given week, thereby alerting us to their social superiority.
So the UN agencies worrying themselves about the lack of 1.7 billion free doses of vaccine for the entire African population…
South Africa accuses the West of “hoarding” the vaccine. Old Holborn summarizes this as:
“We demand the evil white saviours save us again”
and comments:
“Next time, a) order on time b) develop your own”
(I do not object to charity, and it may well be that it is to the West’s advantage to arrange for universal global availability of the vaccine, but beggars should not insult their benefactors, much less demonize and murder them.)
Not parody.
where smug declarations are routinely inserted
I’ve mentioned elsewhere that when “land acknowledgement” are bruited in my face I’ve started asking when they’re going to give it back. This serves the dual purpose of embarrassing the speaker and ensuring I don’t get invited back to such events.
Okay, you did say open thread.
These are Commie Cough infection rates for each of the US states.
Note that while the curves aren’t identical, they are very similar. There is a high correlation within climatic zones. There is no correlation with extent of government mandates. (If you are particularly motivated, hereyou can look at each state and see how infection rates correspond to mandates. Spoiler: not at all.)
There is only one conclusion to draw from this (although I’m pretty certain Johns Hopkins didn’t) — government mandates, at least as applied in the US, made absolutely no difference in the progress of Mao Tse Lung through the population.
Looking at all those state infection curves yields another conclusion: Winnie Xi Pox is rapidly running out of people to infect.
After doing a little visual calculus, it seems likely that about 90% of Americans who are susceptible to MTL have already been infected. Which, in turn, means that if every remaining uninfected and susceptible American was to get completely vaccinated tomorrow, the maximum number of lives that could be saved is 40,000.
TL;DR: Mandates and lockdowns accomplished exactly nothing.
Well, save for destroying economies and civil rights.
Not parody.
Palate cleanser:
https://youtu.be/WwJYvp8oo-E?t=223
I’ve started asking when they’re going to give it back.
That’s the shot. The chaser is who do we give it back to? Where you and I live that opens up a whole mess of mischief.
Where you and I live that opens up a whole mess of mischief.
Where you and I live all of these so-called “land acknowledgements” defer to the Haudenosaunee or the Six Nations–in reality the Mohawks. But the Haudenosaunee claim doesn’t stand up without the existence of the white man. The white man (British Crown) bought the land granted to the Mohawks from the Mississauga who are Anishinaabe or Ojibwe. The Mohawks and Ojibwe were traditionally enemies. The Anishinaabe might get mention but the Haudenosaunee get the knee because of their numbers today.
So who do we give it back to and how do we prevent a war from breaking out?
Palate cleanser:
That performance would have required a cover charge and a three drink minimum back in the day. Bad Steve E, bad Steve E.
Palate cleanser:
Unfortunately I have no shame.
“Diversity” training
Colourblindness is an indicator of white supremacy? In the same way that a genetic over-abundance of melanin is an indicator of white supremacy I suppose.
Well, save for destroying economies and civil rights.
And mostly getting rid of Trump.
Sister of Laurie Penny not-entirely-honest shock.
Colourblindness is an indicator of white supremacy?
And so, the victims of such mind-shrivelling dogma – chiefly, the children and their parents – must not only accept claims that are absurd and untrue, but must also defer to a level of argument that is fit only for contempt. In order to conform, in order to avoid social disapproval, they must lower their standards and become stupid. Or at least learn to pretend to be stupid.
Sister of Laurie Penny not-entirely-honest shock.
From the link: “It’s pointless trying to correct the lie. The people who propagate it know it’s a lie.”
It’s certainly pointless trying to explain to them why they are wrong, but it is worthwhile to publicly show them to be wrong and to be congenital liars, so as to destroy their public reputations and the reputations of their employers.
Ownership of land, as nasty as this sounds, is always determined by use of force. If you don’t have an army, you don’t own your land. You lease it, in the form of taxes, from the prevailing power.
As for the Americas and such, can someone explain to me how this worked? Did the first tribe of people who crossed that Siberian or whatever “land bridge” own ALL of the Americas? North, south, central? 100% of it? When the Europeans arrived, did the indigenous peoples, numbered according to what I can somewhat quickly google at (supposedly) 60 million or so, “own” 100% of all that land? By what right? Also per quickly google, the population of Europe was around 70-80 million or so on half the land mass area. Was it wrong for those Europeans to cross the Atlantic in ships? If they had trekked their asses across the EuroAsian land mass and walked across possibly frozen ice, would that have entitled them to as much of a share as the last “indigenous” tribe?
Do these questions occur to anyone else or am I some sort of mental freak?
Other politically incorrect questions include “What does land ownership mean when we know that American Indians engaged in near constant wars of conquest and genocide ever since they crossed the land bridge from Asia?” Perhaps a legitimate conclusion is that Europeans should hold the land in perpetual stewardship lest that genocide continue until the Sun goes dark.
Do these questions occur to anyone else or am I some sort of mental freak?
I’ve been asking the same questions since the early 70s after listening to a Mexican-American teacher in my high school angrily lecture the gringos in the class that they are living on land “stolen” from Mexicans.
No questions allowed …
Especially pointing out that “Mexicans” are as “white” as any other Euro-descendent on the North American continent really causes conniptions.
OK…but WHY DOESN’T ANYONE OF PROMINENCE ASK THESE QUESTIONS? Why am I the lone freak? Why is there NO ONE on the right suggesting that if anyone needs to be reprogrammed it’s those who believe Trump told people to drink bleach or that the words “We don’t need you to do that” are EXACTLY equivalent to being told, no ORDERED, “do not do that”? Why don’t our “leaders” on the right go on the offensive? Why always the passive, excuse making?