Elsewhere (314)
Theodore Dalrymple finds himself denounced:
Apparently, they were protesting the presence of Helen Joyce, who was talking at a meeting in the Centre. She has written a best-selling book against the current transgender orthodoxies. It so happened that she was also a guest at the dinner, and told me that, but for the police presence, she would have felt in danger of physical assault. Anyhow, as my wife and I walked past the protesters as if we had hardly noticed them, somebody called out “Fascist!” I looked round to see who it might be, but saw no one, and then realised that the person referred to was me.
Dalrymple again, on habitual crime and perverse leniency:
He was brought to trial five months later—remarkably swift in current circumstances. He had 28 previous convictions for 69 offenses, including for violence against the police and others (sometimes while out on bail), car theft, and burglary, which means almost certainly, given the rate of detection, that he had committed closer to 690 offenses. He made no secret of his criminal mindset: he proudly showed pictures of knives and drugs on social media and boasted of the “boxing” he gave to his girlfriends.
And Christopher Rufo also finds himself denounced:
The publication in question, Scientific American, and its ideological capture and subsequent downward trajectory, has been noted here before.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Stochastic terrorism is examined in detail as a concept in this excellent piece.
Needless to say, the overlap of those who invoke “stochastic terrorism” to smear their political opponents, and those who denounce “whiteness” as a pathology, as “inherently violent,” and something to be extirpated and “abolished,” is quite large.
Theodore Dalrymple finds himself denounced
I don’t think there’s any reasoning. They’re just shitty people.
As no-one else was apparently present to be shouted at, and as Dalrymple is unlikely to be recognised in the street by a gang of masked trans activists, the basis for abusing a random passer-by isn’t obvious. Apart from psychological dysfunction, I mean.
But if an elderly chap wearing a tweed jacket and woollen tie was in fact construed as damning evidence of fascist tendencies – if looking unlikely to beat up anyone for their political views is somehow a basis for shouted abuse – it does rather speak to the psychological gulf between the protestors and, well, the rest of us.
A gulf that seems unlikely to be bridged by facts or reasoning, or basic reciprocation.
If someone chooses to spend their evenings standing in the street, in a mask, shouting abuse at random passers-by, it isn’t about politics so much as the shouter’s own psychological shortcomings. Just another messed-up, rather spiteful individual.
And some people can’t be fixed, assuming one were inclined.
“the signs of collapse are clear” says Guardian.
It always makes me smile at the fact that these tunnel visioned, single issue, cretins are so sure of their ideology that they feel the need to wear masks to hide their identities.
I see the author of the Guardian piece, Ms Samantha Floreani, a woman who struggles to support her own premise, claims to be a they.
You can imagine my surprise.
I don’t think there’s any reasoning. They’re just shitty people.
The ideology of leftism both attracts shitty people and transforms normal people into shitty people.
♪♫You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road♪♫ to “An Evening with Jimbo” – Ages 14+ ! (and not at work)
I don’t think there’s any reasoning. They’re just shitty people.
Back in the sixties, science fiction sociopath Harlan Ellison publicly blamed entertainer Art Linkletter for his daughter’s suicide. Harlan had zero knowledge of the personal lives of Linkletter and his daughter and blamed him only because he was an old conservative white man.
Stochastic terrorism…
They can’t use the word “random” because “random” is the official, Snopes-approved categorization for when a white person “in the wrong place at the wrong time”, is brutally attacked by non-whites, where inflicting brutality on the first white person they came across seems to have been the goal the attackers set out with, or where the brutality is gratuitous and out of proportion to the criminal purpose of getting the victim’s car keys or whatever.
And “random”, the Stats 101 word, is used in the opposite way to “stochastic”, the Stats 301 word – to nip in the bud any pattern recognition, specifically any thought that the attackers might have been cued by anti-white hate in culture and politics. No, it’s wrong place wrong time, mugging “gone wrong”, house invasion gone wrong, “not targeted”, no personal beef, no evidence that the victim knew their attacker (this brought up to emphasize the sheer bad luck that the victim’s path crossed the attacker’s, rather than as evidence of a hate crime where the victim was targeted or singled out for particular brutality because of their race).
Next month Hong Kong’s Correctional Services Department (aka Prison Service) will hold an Open Day during which as well as learning all about prison life there will be the opportunity to try out the Artificial Intelligence Chinese-style Foot Drill Learning Station. Chinese-style Foot Drill is better known as Goose-stepping.
A portion of actual virtue is what you restrain yourself from doing. Not hitting your wife or kids, not shoplifting, not yelling at the waiter. Such restraint is what makes a civilization but it runs counter to letting your emotions run wild.
The other portion is the acts you actually do. Helping someone find a job, visiting someone in hospital, helping your kids with homework. Such acts are what makes a GOOD civilization. The woke can’t be bothered with such things. Their idea of virtue is yelling at strangers and calling them fascists or supporting trans XY in locker rooms, ignoring the right to privacy of women. There is zero actual virtue involved.
Such restraint is what makes a civilization but it runs counter to letting your emotions run wild.
Many on the left celebrate and even worship the idea of “the natural man”. Remember Norman Mailer?
The other portion is the acts you actually do. Helping someone find a job, visiting someone in hospital, helping your kids with homework. Such acts are what makes a GOOD civilization. The woke can’t be bothered with such things.
Helping individual people, one by one, face to face, is too much work–and progress is slow. Much more fun to invent villains and bully the innocent.
In Iran, they may be about to execute 15,000 protesters but the West is silent. Our betters seem to have an unseemly attraction to the worst dictators. Like wearing Mao jackets in China recently. urgh
Dalrymple is always worth reading.
Think I see the problem. The solution is a lamp post and some rope.
Liberals have lower empathy for people close to them, for which they overcompensate by performative virtue signaling towards distant people. Links to study published in the journal Nature.
This sort of thing happens because liberals have more empathy for hood rats than for good people.
Florence King termed them ‘tender misanthropes.’
pst314 on empathy: it is worse than the Nature study. A study in CA found that those driving hybrid cars (this was before lots of elec) mainly prius were the rudest. Conservatives (in the US sense) give much more to charity and actually volunteer much much more.
Ah, but it is the easiest kind of virtue, being largely theoretical, and any costs are generally borne by someone else.
For instance.
it is worse than the Nature study. A study in CA found that those driving hybrid cars (this was before lots of elec) mainly prius were the rudest.
I have noticed other patterns, too. For instance, BMW drivers tend to be significantly more aggressive.
Conservatives (in the US sense) give much more to charity and actually volunteer much much more.
Yes, indeed. Liberals and leftists have attempted to “refute” those studies by telling me that it is more virtuous to agitate for a bigger welfare state or even full socialism than to actually spend time helping those in need.
All leftist behaviour is trivially explained when you realize you’re looking at people with the mentation of teenage girls – immature, selfish, vain, and obsessed with fashion (be it hemlines or opinions) as social status.
When a society allows women to replace husbands and fathers with a government paycheque, they will. And we know what happens to children of single mothers.
Ah, but it is the easiest kind of virtue, being largely theoretical,
That’s because the “people” are largely theoretical too. Leftists love “people” in the abstract, cartoon, stereotypical way. When “people” become “persons” is when the hating starts
@pst314: BMW drivers? No, no, these days it’s Audi all the way!
BMW drivers? No, no, these days it’s Audi all the way!
Them, too. And I am amazed at all the young male BMW and Audi drivers: Those makes used to be bought by middle-aged men after they’d become successful, not by young punks.
It’s always been about the money.
@Steve E, Sir PTerry put it well:
The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness.
Considering the bad things that clever people can get up to, I can’t entirely blame them.
Cleverness ≠ wisdom. Cleverness ≠ virtue.
Thanks for that TomJ.
That’s at the heart of every totalitarian leftist state. Things just won’t work until you have the right kind of man (New Soviet Man, New Socialist Man) and inevitably, in an effort to hasten his arrival, the technocrats start killing off the old man.
A wide selection.
the basis for abusing a random passer-by isn’t obvious. Apart from psychological dysfunction, I mean.
That.
Well, again, if someone chooses to spend their evenings standing in the street, in a mask, shouting abuse at random passers-by, it isn’t about politics so much as the shouter’s own psychological shortcomings. While otherwise baffling and incongruous, as an expression of spiteful intent and an unhappy disposition it is at least comprehensible, if not alluring.
And as we’ve seen many times, woke activism, and wokeness generally, does seem to attract a high concentration of the psychologically marginal.
Should further illustration be necessary, there are currently 532 items tagged psychodrama.
In other news, I think I’ve sorted out the strikethrough link issue. So yay is me.
Apart from psychological dysfunction…
JFC.
When you consider that psychology/psychiatry attract a high concentration of the psychologically marginal, well…the call is coming from inside the house.
Well, again, if someone chooses to spend their evenings standing in the street, in a mask, shouting abuse at random passers-by, it isn’t about politics so much as the shouter’s own psychological shortcomings.
But don’t forget those who, although not out in the street, nonetheless support the abusers.
This is the thing right here. People, doctors…so to speak…who are highly trained, have passed through weed-out courses, who have the brains, for lack of a better word, and ability and discipline to refine surgical skills are doing this. These are not your typical flimflam artists, grifters, wise guys, jewel thieves, or even high-end thugs engaged in such behavior because they never learned or understood or even had the skills or ability to make a respectable life for themselves. These people could have done many, many other things with their lives. Yet they choose to do stuff like this. And they are legion.
Stochastic terrorism…
They can’t use the word “random” because…
I think the primary, overriding reason the left uses terminology like “stochastic” is because it is easier to intimidate people with obscure words that very few people are familiar with. Leftist intellectuals love to write about “mystification” and how language is used to oppress the masses, and yet they are the chief practitioners.
it is easier to intimidate people with obscure words
Hence the left’s embrace of postmodernism.
The Colorado Club Q shooting suspect is non-binary. Uses “they/them” pronouns.
Not a MAGA conservative, in spite of the groundless accusations made by the left.
Suspect arrested in attacks on New York City gay bar.
He is gay, has a personal animus towards the bar, and has a criminal history.
Once again, not a MAGA Republican “Christianist”.
Once again, not a MAGA Republican
It is a standard tactic of the left to immediately make baseless accusations: Many people will only remember the loud sensational accusations and may never even hear about the evidence that refutes them.
Psychology: I started out in psych in college but soon realized that a) it wasn’t a real profession unless you became a phd and b) all my classmates were nuts and c) in the major books of the time you could say anything and people would believe you.
Shoulder reduction surgery: talk about permanent and potentially disfiguring. yikes.
It is a standard tactic of the left to immediately make baseless accusations: Many people will only remember the loud sensational accusations and may never even hear about the evidence that refutes them.
See also: burying the lede.
pst314: I would guess that 90% + of the “right wing violence” they talk about is these claims about some shooter that later turn out to be false. The rest is “violence” that consists of not agreeing with something they say or do. The DOJ recently has raided homes during the night of abortion protesters who were “blocking” entrances (I doubt it) and arrested them but not a single arrest in fire bombings of churches and non-abortion pregnancy centers.
By the way they brag that they have arrested 900 J6 “insurrectionists” when less than 50 went inside and even they didn’t know that was the “plan”. It is terrifying.
<i> BMW drivers tend to be significantly more aggressive.<i>
I have noticed that the position of “rude, aggressive driver” has been taken over by Audi drivers.
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Shoulder reduction surgery: talk about permanent and potentially disfiguring.
That is the thing, all of these “affirming” surgical procedures are.
Shortening a clavicle in some cases of bad fractures (or poorly set) is a legitimate indication, but the lateral end is attached to the scapula, which can cause the whole shoulder to be in an abnormal position after.
Add on that the guy will still have a male rib cage which are generally wider than those of a female so you end up with an odd appearance, and downstream problems from the compromised biomechanics. Same problems with the lengthening procedure for “male affirming”.
Of course there is also hip widening, that doesn’t change the angle of the hip to the femur so one has to pretend to walk like a woman, and toe shortening because big man feet.
It is becoming absurd, Kyle’s knees were not supposed to be a suggestion.
…the lateral end is attached to the scapula…
“Dem Bones” started playing in my head bone after reading that.
For those who missed it, I’ll just leave this here.
For those who missed it, I’ll just leave this here.
Indeed.
“Transwomen are women and transmen are men, and we have the scars and bills to prove it!”
I blame breast implants for all of this. If you can get fake boobs, why not the rest? A slippery slope indeed. Of course fake boobs are a big deception of the men involved so it is lies all the way down.
Of course fake boobs are a big deception of the men involved…
Not really, unless they’re really good, and tastefully (ahem) understated. Most aren’t.
Stochastic terrorism…
They can’t use the word “random” because
…they mean different things? Part of the left’s successful takeover of academia is that they’ve not only destroyed respect for academia, but academics. You end up with a kind of redneck rejection of “book larnin'”. The Bezmenov demoralization proceeds as planned.
it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.
That’s a corruption of a Brecht poem.
The problem with Pratchett isn’t so much that he smugly steals from greater thinkers to preach to adolescents; Heinlein does the same thing. It’s that so many of Pratchett’s readers never graduate beyond Pratchett and think he came up with this stuff himself.
Of course fake boobs are a big deception of the men involved…
Not really, unless they’re really good, and tastefully (ahem) understated. Most aren’t.
Have you conducted a scientific study?
Most aren’t.
I’d suggest the reason you think that is because you only recognize the bad boob jobs. The good ones, you can’t tell so you don’t know.
Have you conducted a scientific study?
Suggested methodology.
I blame breast implants for all of this. If you can get fake boobs, why not the rest?
There are many perfectly good indications for breast implants to include, but not limited to, correcting marked asymmetry/agenesis or reconstruction..
Most common plastic procedures, even if done for purely cosmetic reasons, are generally benign, don’t adversely affect function, and are antipodal to making an ersatz johnson out of a hunk of thigh or forearm, shortening bones, or otherwise doing the same as putting a body kit on a VW and trying to pass it off as a Ferrari.
Next up, Kyle’s dad is a dolphin.
That’s a corruption of a Brecht poem.
In fairness, judging by his plays, it’s difficult to stay awake long enough to absorb his pearls of wisdom. I got dragged to Mother Courage and Her Children twice and fell asleep both times.
The good ones, you can’t tell so you don’t know.
What he said, there have been a lot of advancements since the sub-glandular hemispheres (discussed here previously) and tear drop shaped sub-pectoral (or sub-muscular) which are almost indistinguishable, visually and otherwise, from natural.
[ Fetches notepad, pencil. ]
Will this be on the test?
I trust you guys know that I do not oppose boob jobs after cancer surgery or for weird deformations. And of course many of them look great. I was talking about camel noses under tents.
Will this be on the test?
I know, right. I have three plastic surgeon friends in my sphere of influence. So I’m well informed of all that’s new and interesting. Also my wife and her friends have been known to use these services from time to time, so it’s often a topic of conversation.
I learn so much from our little chats.
Will this be on the test?
Yes, 20 multiple choice and choice of 1 of 3 essays.
I was talking about camel noses under tents.
They usually look more like grapefruits and cantaloupes.
I was talking about camel noses under tents.
Though there has been augmentation documented for over a century (though the results less than stellar in the long run), modern implants have been around for around 60 years,. OTOH, the first recorded “male to female” procedure with phalloplasty was in the ’40s so the horse and cart can be argued forever.
Regardless, pinning the recent wholesale “affirming” procedures on the fact that a couple guys got the bright idea to put silicone in bags in the ’60s instead of just pumping it into the breast (a previous technigue) would be a bit of a stretch.
I blame Mae West.
I blame Mae West.
I blame Wagner.
I agree with Iowahawk.
Another variety of defective people destroying our culture.
For too many of my geek acquaintances cannot see what is wrong there.
Another variety of defective people destroying our culture.
Ah yes, the abomination that is the ROM. Toronto has such an inferiority complex, by endeavouring to be “world class” it falls prey to this kind of charlatan architecture. Some of the interior spaces that resulted are ill fit to display the museum’s extensive collection.
Have you conducted a scientific study?
This may bring a whole new meaning to ‘double blind study’.
I’ll get my coat…
Many trials will be required to reach any firm conclusions.
And don’t forget peer review.
Well Porter Wagoner gave us Dolly Parton, so…?
Old and cold: Preferred pronouns.
The hot new thing: Preferred adjectives.
Old and cold: Preferred pronouns.
The hot new thing: Preferred adjectives.
I can’t tell if it’s a piss-take.
We live in unhinging times, so it can be hard to tell. It did occur to me that maybe the parent, the one seeking pre-approval for adjectives, could have been indulging in some elaborate wind-up, one that passed undetected by its target. Or maybe the anecdote is a fiction, a self-flattering fantasy. Again, it’s hard to tell. As the archives here illustrate, a thing being farcical doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
But either way, it must be quite strange to go through every day with your own “identity” foregrounded, forever in mind and endlessly referred to, and always craving an affirmation that is at best a polite lie. And with unending deference and flattery as an aspiration, an ideal.
I think we’ll give that baby a post of its own.
Comments that-a-way.
I’ll get my coat…
I can’t tell if it’s a piss-take.
Isn’t that Poe’s Law?