The Year Reheated
In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.
The year began with a lesson in pronouns and pretending, or dishonesty-on-demand, courtesy of the suddenly ungendered Laurie Penny – now, it seems, a they, depending on who’s nearby and how fashionable they are. And so, we pondered animal pronouns, clown pronouns and pronouns that can change randomly, depending on whim, several times a day. Such is the hamster-wheel world of competitive self-definition.
We also flicked through the pages of The Atlantic, where senior editor Honor Jones, a woman oppressed by comfort and fidelity, shared a somewhat bewildering account of her divorce from a loving and faithful husband. Chief among her reasons were a desire to “be thinking about art and sex and politics and the patriarchy,” a feat no married woman can apparently hope to achieve, and a dislike of crumbs – a recurring topic, mentioned seven times.
And we witnessed the denouncing of racist traffic cameras. Which is to say, devices that record which demographics speed and run red lights, and endanger lives, much more often than others. Writing in ProPublica, Emily Hopkins and Melissa Sanchez conjured a remarkable series of excuses for repeat offenders, who were presented as oppressed, as “activists for racial equity,” and all but heroic, despite some committing 11 offences in a single year. Humdrum notions of personal responsibility were of course avoided, leaving readers to suppose that the only conceivable explanation for the lawbreakers’ behaviour, and consequent fines, was “structural racism.”
In February, we were treated to cultural sustenance, courtesy of Finland’s creative powerhouse Iiu Susiraja, whose artistic immensity has enthralled us before, and regarding whom, the Los Angeles Times gushed, “Kierkegaard comes to mind, as do Sartre and Dostoevsky.”
We also witnessed the mental unspooling of San Francisco school board members, among whom mismanagement and conspiracy theories are elevated to an art form, and for whom two hours spent debating whether a gay white dad is sufficiently “diverse” to join a volunteer parent committee is a perfectly normal use of one’s time.
And via The Independent, we heard of the latest moral crisis and cause of deep mental “trauma” – namely, aircraft seatbelts and insufficiently commodious plus-size bath towels.
March brought us the exquisite agonies of listening to rap while woke and white, along with an implication that one of the most hazardous of words to use, and from which All Decent Non-Racist People are expected to recoil, is simultaneously one to which All Decent Non-Racist People are obliged to be drawn. Say, when listening to rap. Failure to enjoy endless repetition of the word in question is, we were assured, “the silencing of intellectuals in music,” and, inevitably, evidence of racism.
Pale devilry cropped up again, as educator and activist Maia Niguel Hoskin, writing in Forbes, told us that when a black millionaire celebrity publicly slaps another black millionaire celebrity, this is all the fault of white people and “white supremacist culture.” You see, for an educator and activist, the way to be “anti-racist” is to erase any agency, and any expectation of self-possession, from people with brown skin.
We also witnessed a display of intersectional ruggedness, thanks to Ailish Breen, a being with pronouns, and her troupe of ostentatiously “queer hikers,” who regard a simple walk in the countryside as both “quite political” and a basis for complaint, and for whom the very air is yet another a form of oppression. Among the troupe’s many grievances was the phrase “conquering the outdoors,” a term whose weight bears down on their delicate souls. That the expression refers to overcoming one’s own limitations or imagined limitations – which among the less pretentious is generally regarded as a good thing – somehow escaped their notice.
In April, we pondered more diverse identities, and the media’s euphemistic convolutions when covering said beings and their activities. Say, when publicly using a wheelie bin as a sex toy.
We also noted several educators whose paycheque and woke status depend on propagating failure and resentment among the young and impressionable. As when Dr Asao Inoue, of the University of Washington, Tacoma, dismissed students’ proficiency in English as “selfish” and “immature,” a surrender to “white supremacy.” For Dr Inoue and his peers, a student’s ability to convey their thoughts in writing – and to formulate thoughts by writing – is merely a manifestation of “white language supremacy,” an allegedly lethal phenomenon.
And we were captivated by the parenting skills of Mr Jay Deitcher, a social worker and therapist. Writing in Today, Mr Deitcher informed us that his “mind spiralled into darkness” whenever his two-year-old son exhibited even rudimentary signs of being male. A toddler’s coverall with pictures of footballs on it, given as a present, resulted in much weeping and was promptly hidden away so as “never to be found.” Other causes of mental spiralling included a fondness for songs about tractors. At which point we were left to consider the prospects of a father-son relationship premised on a dogmatic, near-hysterical disdain for maleness, for “anything deemed masculine.” A category that includes “playing football,” “cleaning a car,” or any kind of “manual labour.”
Pronouns cropped up again, not for the last time, in May, when Kelsey Smoot, “a cultural and gender theorist, a writer, an advocate, and a poet,” boasted that her friendships – sorry, them’s friendships – are based on an ultimatum. Namely, that anyone in her orbit must perceive what they are told to perceive, rather than the physical reality staring back at them. Ms Smoot, who is not-at-all unhinged, also boasted of keeping count of even accidental “misgenderings,” which enables her to excommunicate any friends or acquaintances who fail to hallucinate. Ms Smoot, we learned, expects “concerted effort” from those who wish to partake of her personal magnificence. Her fascinating self.
We also explored the minefield of modern progressive manners, thanks to the practised neuroses of New York Times contributor Ms Raksha Vasudevan, for whom the word “white” is a go-to pejorative, and who tells us she lives on “Arapaho and Cheyenne land,” i.e., in Denver.
We heard one parent’s account of the psychological abuse of her 12-year-old daughter, who had been told, in class, that the routine insecurities of puberty were in fact evidence that she must be transgender. We thereby entered a world of activist educators for whom a “safe space” is one in which middle-school children are ideologically groomed by unqualified misfits, conspiratorially, in secret, and while actively avoiding parents’ knowledge or consent. A subterfuge we’ve encountered more than once.
And we cast a widened eye over the middle-school libraries in Loudoun County, Virginia, where woke librarians don’t find anything inapt about 11-year-olds learning about the general awesomeness of prostitution. Because “high-end escorts” can “pull in half a million dollars a year.” Librarian Stefany Guido suggested that “some students” – again, 11-year-olds – could be considered “sex workers,” which, in her mind, is just like being an architect. Though it seems to me that an 11-year-old “sex worker” would be an abused child, a child being trafficked. Not, I think, an ideal aspiration for the pre-pubescent.
The mixed messages of campus life cropped up in June, when students at Adelphi University were told they must “not discriminate” against registered sex offenders, as if this were information of no utility whatsoever, while simultaneously being urged to report and denounce “dating violence,” “lack of consent,” and “incapacitated sexual contact.”
Elsewhere in academia, at Norway’s Oslo Metropolitan University, we met Dr Martin Moen, an activist for trans rights, and whose rather convoluted apologia for child molestation gave new meaning to the words contrived and transparently dishonest.
The radical ruminations of dysmorphic men continued in Washington, where a panel of activists and self-styled educators engaged in a taxpayer-funded mission to enlighten lesser beings. Mr Ganesha Gold Buffalo, a trans activist and prostitute, told us that his expertise, a term I use loosely, is rooted in the “sounds of my ancestors screaming from outside my window, coming from the ground, coming from the earth.” His mind, we learned, “was decolonised” in nearby woods by howling “nature spirits.” Needless to say, a great many pronouns were stipulated – among them, she, her, and goddess. Other terms of address included cyborg, unicorn, and Wakanda.
Oh, and via charts and number-crunching, we learned of the quite significant correlation of blue hair dye and serious mental health problems.
Woke theatre criticism and its complications were topics in July, as two Toronto Star reviewers, Aisling Murphy and Karen Fricker, applauded each other, and thereby themselves, for seeing an indigenous play and submitting to strict conditions on what they may subsequently write about it. Indigenous theatre, we discovered, requires approval that is both pre-emptive and unanimous, and its writers, actors and directors must be exempt from unflattering feedback, i.e., reviews of a kind that paying customers might have found useful, had they been available. Untroubled by irony, the critics, or rather non-critics, then bemoaned the ongoing, quite rapid decline of their profession and of the wider newsprint media.
Cultivated incompetence was also championed by the Oregon Health Authority, on grounds that “urgency is a white supremacist value.” Whereas, in matters of health, tardiness and lack of forethought are apparently aspirational, a woke ideal.
We also noted the scrupulously intersectional priorities of Canadian women’s shelters, where a deranged dysmorphic man roaming the halls wearing only a bra and brandishing his genitals, along with several stolen kitchen knives, was deemed of much less importance than the fact that a female resident had dared to “misgender” him. Setting aside the man’s threats to use his collection of knives on female residents, one can’t help thinking that a man who demands access to a women-only space, and to be perceived as a woman like any other, and who then goes out of his way to show, repeatedly and unequivocally, that he is not in fact what he claims… well, this probably tells us something. The words that come to mind being submissively pretend and psychological bullying.
In August, we were treated to some scholarship from the world of “queer studies” – in particular, the research of Mr Karl Andersson, a PhD student at the University of Manchester. Mr Andersson wanted us to know, at length and in some detail, just how often and how vigorously he masturbated to shota, a Japanese genre of erotic comics featuring young boys. That this paedophilic self-pleasuring – sorry, “ethnographic fieldwork” – had been approved by Mr Andersson’s supervisors doubtless speaks to the lofty standards that prevail among practitioners of “queer studies,” and in academia’s Clown Quarter more generally.
We also turned for mental betterment to Scientific American, where Camilo Garzón and science historian Rebecca Charbonneau fretted about space exploration and signalled their sensitivities with an enormous list of things that they consider problematic. A list that includes the remote locations of telescopes, the concepts of civilisation and intelligence, and the “colonial” violation of hypothetical microbes, whose autonomy and wellbeing would apparently be desecrated by human curiosity. We were also told, repeatedly, albeit unpersuasively, that those who can construct orbital telescopes and land robots on distant planets should defer in matters of science to those who can’t.
September brought us more boutique identities, thanks to activist, author and illustrator Maia Kobabe – pronouns eir and ey – whose pornographic cartoons for middle-school children had not been universally well-received by parents. These parental concerns were, however, dismissed as merely “a very organised effort to erase trans and queer and non-binary voices.” There being no other possible reason to object to eleven-year-old children being exposed to “vagina slime,” fellatio, and “strap-on hotness,” or the joys of masturbating while driving. All of which met with enthusiastic approval from TIME magazine’s Madeleine Carlisle.
Theatrical complications also came via Canada’s interim Green Party leader, a dysmorphic woman who expects everyone else to refer to her as “he” and “they,” but also sometimes “she,” and who was rendered distraught by an on-screen caption with pronouns that didn’t correspond with her preferences at that particular moment.
We also marvelled at the intricacies of progressive club-going and intersectional dancing, all of which has to be carefully organised and ruthlessly policed. Lest the wrong colour people gyrate near each other.
And identitarian struggles thrilled us once again, with news from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where two rival student tribes – lesbians and the transgendered – were fighting for territorial possession of a ladies’ washroom. Thus unfolded a tale of nerve-shredding trauma and fearless self-involvement, as the toilets in question were given an extensive makeover via the uplifting medium of graffiti. Indeed, with so much graffiti to be scrawled on walls, and then responded to indignantly with additional scrawling, students were soon reporting queues and “lengthy wait times.”
The assumptions and psychology of the Activist-Wanker Caste were poked at in October, as vandalism and traffic obstruction hit British headlines on an all-but-daily basis, and with emergency vehicles being paralysed by the woke and well-heeled. The general public was not, it has to be said, overly sympathetic to this antisocial roleplay. However, and rather conveniently, the combination of practised self-involvement and feeling powerful at others’ expense turns out to be its own reward. For a certain kind of person.
In the pages of Scary Mommy, where wokeness and woo routinely coincide, Ms Annie Midori Atherton enthused about the merits of paranormal parenting – specifically, witchcraft. Several “real witches” were consulted for their wisdom, with their “magical knowledge” including the need to “harness the power of crystals,” and checking one’s jewellery for ancestral “emanations.”
And we also parsed some contrived racial grievance in the pages of the Globe and Mail, whose readers were led to believe that expectations of workplace professionalism are terribly racist, and that brown-skinned employees must be allowed to “bring their whole selves to work.” A wholeness of self that includes behaving in ways likely to be “interpreted as violent or aggressive.” A dislike of being bullied by the emotionally incontinent is, we were told, merely evidence of “deep, inherent bias and deeply inherent systemic racism.”
Those still getting up to speed with the notion of preferred pronouns were doubtless thrilled, in November, by the arrival of preferred adjectives, whereby the self-esteem of the psychologically marginal can be maintained, albeit shakily.
The sociopathic mouthings of Sophie Lewis also widened eyes, with Ms Lewis, a feminist “theorist” at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, keen to “abolish the family.” By which she means, all families, including yours. This mission of familial disintegration would, we were assured, and despite all evidence to the contrary, only have positive, indeed utopian, outcomes. When not wishing for the destruction of other people’s family bonds, Ms Lewis passes the time by championing abortion, via drugs or dismemberment, as a form of “anti-violence,” a corrective killing of the “violent” foetus.
And we also met Duke University’s Kathy Rudy, a lecturer in Women’s Studies and self-styled “queer theorist,” who told us, “I know I love my dogs with all my heart, but I can’t figure out if that love is sexually motivated.” Readers who have been licked by a dog and somehow not found the experience particularly erotic were told that, “The line between ‘animal lover’ and zoophile is not only thin, it is non-existent.”
The year drew to a close with the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, among whose members “decolonisation” and railing against “white supremacy” are very much in fashion, and “anthropology of the self” is The New Hotness. Expectations of evidence, however, are both old-hat and oppressive, on grounds that “scepticism is violence.”
Similar noises echoed at Montreal’s Concordia University, where even light is being “decolonised” – by people with salaries and lots of taxpayer subsidy. Apparently, “all physicists and other scientists” should divert time and effort from their actual work in order to become familiar with indigenous “bodies of knowledge.” Presumably, on grounds that one simply can’t do physics or astronomy without a detailed knowledge of magical talking beavers and rival chiefs stealing the Moon. “Feminist theory” and “critical race theory” will of course be brought to bear, as these things are “part of physics in a holistic sense.”
And at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication, assorted luminaries of the Canadian media expressed their bewilderment at why their line of work doesn’t inspire the expected deference among the general public. The word hate was deployed frequently, with little regard for meaning, and panellists insisted that being a journalist on Twitter, where readers can tweet mockery and corrections in close to real time, is indistinguishable from surviving in an active warzone. Other mortal hazards included pejorative use of the word woke – one of many things that can induce “anxiety, depression and post-traumatic distress.” Possible explanations for the public’s failure to hold their betters in high regard remained oddly untouched, however. Even when Hill Times columnist and “anti-racism expert” Erica Ifill boasted that she doesn’t bother to interview white men. And who did so confident that she would not be challenged by any of her peers, or by any of the would-be journalists gathered in the audience.
Yes, our betters at large. These, then, are the heights to which we must aspire.
Heavens, buttons. I wonder what they do.
“We also flicked through the pages of The Atlantic”
How much longer until The Atlantic has endorsed every disorder found in DSM-5?
Are tar and feathers really sufficient punishment?
The Atlantic. Sigh. Another skin-suit zombie, like ScientificAmerican and Economist.
Thank you, David. Not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Also tip jar hit. *Ping*
Bless you, sir. May you always have enough coat hangers. The good kind.
As noted in the post, The Atlantic does seem increasingly geared to the preoccupations of neurotic middle-class lefties. Which I suppose might explain the self-satisfied articles on how we should prioritise the feelings and wellbeing of habitual thieves over those of the people they prey upon.
And on how insufficiently woke crossword puzzles are one of “the systemic forces that threaten women.”
Anyone who uses “woke” in a published article should pay a fine of 25 pounds. This article contains 10 wokes, so you should pay 250 pounds, with proceeds going to a food bank.
What term would you suggest for the phenomena noted above?
We also marvelled at the intricacies of progressive club-going and intersectional dancing, all of which has to be carefully organised and ruthlessly policed. Lest the wrong colour people gyrate near each other.
It’s like visiting a parallel universe.
It is at times like finding yourself in an episode of Quatermass.
With this material this ought to be the golden age of satire along the Peter Simple or History Man lines. Yet where is it?
Peter Simple
Having lived all my life on the other side of the Atlantic, I never heard of Peter Simple until somebody mentioned it here. (Thank you, whoever that commenter was.) I borrowed a collection from the local library and although I enjoyed many of the columns, many more left me flat because I did not recall all the historical events and rhetoric that they were meant to satirize.
What term would you suggest for the phenomena noted above?
I personally favor putting “woke” in scare quotes to call into question the legitimacy of the concept–always look for quick and easy ways to challenge the legitimacy of leftism.
It is at times like finding yourself in an episode of Quatermass.
An apt comparison.
Quatermass and The Times. Quatermass and the Yale Men. And the ultimate horror, Quatermass and the Grauniad.
If you get stressed out reading these accounts of woke madness.
anything but woke
Mr Jay Deitcher, a social worker and therapist.
Is today’s word ‘irony’?
the hamster-wheel world of competitive self-definition.
LOL. That.
I encountered the statistic that in a certain zip code in Chicago and a few other cities, the murder rate for young black men is higher than it was for US troops in Afganistan or Iraq. To research this, I’ve been watching the show 48 Hours where they follow various police departments solving (or not able to solve) murders in US cities. The murderers, usually young black males but sometimes older and some hispanic, seem lost in a world of drugs and crime. Totally lost. There are no fathers around, no one seems to know the real name of anyone (it is all “D”, fatboy, and other nicknames), people pass cars, phones, and guns around like it is a commune. A guy is driving a car and doesn’t even know who it belongs to. Many have no fixed address and crash with various people. A young man refers to going to “work” by which he means burglary. A minor beef between two people leads to a shootout in front of a bunch of people, which is how they are usually caught. No one seems to know that stores have cameras, that phones can be tracked, that killing your cousin in front of the whole family will not be forgiven and you will be turned in. They continue to wear a shirt with blood on it. While the young ladies interviewed are reasonably articulate, these young men are almost unable to communicate.
A minor beef between two people leads to a shootout in front of a bunch of people
A pathological culture of pride and honor, partly because they nothing of value to be proud of. They know they are (rightly) at the bottom of society and therefore they will kill for any smidgen of status.
I have some sympathy, by the way. But as a shorthand for the kinds of unrealism and competitive pretensions illustrated above, the probity-eroding contortions, it’s one that’s widely understood. I don’t as yet have a better but equally compact term.
Suggestions are of course welcome.
from the Atlantic article:-
“The run-down buildings are being razed, and the dwellers are being moved into fancy new buildings next to neighbors paying market rates, an upgrade that Fairley, who had at one point moved to a new unit when her old one became infested with mold, had been looking forward to”.
Fairley being the drug-addict serial porch pirate so admired by the author of the piece. Certainly moving into a “fancy new building” with neighbours sufficiently affluent to pay the astronomic market rents would have reduced the miles trodden by this poor unfortunate in pursuit of other people’s property.
(On re-reading I see that this ingrate had at one point already moved into one of these new units. The reason why that is presumably no longer the case was clearly not of sufficient import to be mentioned).
Boxing Day activities.
pst
I was pleased but more than s little surprised that you enjoyed so much of Michael Wharton a.k.a. Peter Simples work as I had always assumed it to be quintessentially English and most unlikely to travel well.
As this is clearly not the case I can also recommend the works of J B Morton as “Beachcomber”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beachcomber_(pen_name)
from the Atlantic article:-
This one, just to be clear.
Another Year of The Absurd. Kudos your way for the fortitude necessary to revisit the whole mind-numbing thing!
And :::ping::: something a bit more substantial in way of appreciation.
Bless you, madam. May your drawers be soft-touch.
“The run-down buildings are being razed, and the dwellers are being moved into fancy new buildings next to neighbors paying market rates, an upgrade that Fairley, who had at one point moved to a new unit when her old one became infested with mold, had been looking forward to”.
I strongly object to living next door to people like Fairley. Not only because of the theft, but also because people like her have slovenly habits that bring dirt and damage and vermin. Can you imagine paying $$$ for a brand new home, only to have to deal with bedbugs and roaches and rodents? No amount of money would compensate for going through that.
For those who missed it, somewhat related.
For those who missed it, somewhat related.
From that link:
“Peter Matthews, an Urban Studies lecturer with an interest in ‘urban inequalities,’ ” writing in the Guardian…proposes that we “demolish large areas of high-value owner-occupied housing and replace it with high density, socially-rented housing”. He provocatively calls his proposal “deliberate urban degeneration”.
David sarcastically notes that Guardian columnists and editors do not themselves choose to live in the squalid neighborhoods they want to force upon others. I would like to see someone document that “shocking” disparity by publishing the home addresses of all those leftist professional liars along with their homes’ market value. Providing that illuminating data to the public would be a social good.
As for “urban degeneration”, it really is a shame that leftists do not daily suffer the horrific consequences of their destructive policies. If Peter Matthews were to get mugged on a monthly basis, and his home burgled and vandalized, that might force him to change his thinking. Or maybe not–leftists do tend to have serious learning disabilities.
For those who missed it, somewhat related.
Also from that link: Commenter Rich Rostrom notes that a map of Section 8 recipients (think council housing in the UK) looks very much like a map of high crime areas. When you relocate the welfare recipients the crime magically goes where they go.
What struck me at the time was an academic, a supposed expert employed to teach others, resting his argument on a report that he seemingly hadn’t read and which actually undermined his position, albeit despite a great deal of coyness and evasion on the part of its writers.
What struck me at the time was an academic, a supposed expert employed to teach others, resting his argument on a report that he seemingly hadn’t read and which actually undermined his position
That seems to happen with increasing frequency. At one time, long ago, the publishing of false facts and fatally flawed reasoning might have been fatal to a career in academia. But as the left has taken over academia it has protected and rewarded such garbage. We now have entire departments devoted to the promulgation of lies.
Instalanche!
This is the best-written thing of the entire year. You remind me of Tim Blair.
Seems unlikely, but thank you.
Holy moly, can’t we make this stop?
I can’t imagine a stricter enforcer of gender roles than the Transcult.
Housing: I have lived in my suburb for 30 yrs. When I moved in and until a few years ago, it was virtually without crime. There was 1 murder in 8 yrs in a town of >100,000. Section 8 housing vouchers changed that. We now have carjackings and armed robberies. Progressive heaven.
Woke policies are incoherent. They demand that hotels report crime and then try to prosecute hotel owners (usually small bus) for running a nuisance. If you own rental properties, you cannot ask prospective tenants about criminal history but are liable if someone is raped/killed on your property. As a consequence, landlords figured out that credit score is a good substitute for criminal record and now the left wants to ban that too. In the absence of a way to weed out criminals, many landlords now act like racists, not renting to any minorities at all. Add in rent controls and the weirdest things happen: people stop building apartments and existing ones go condo. Bad luck I guess. Cause and effect, how does it work?
Good stuff, Mr Thompson. Tip jar hit.
But this term is what the silly juveniles used to describe themselves, anything else would be less accurate and precise.
It would at least be a good starting point.
Holy moly, can’t we make this stop?
I can’t imagine a stricter enforcer of gender roles than the Transcult.
Note that the individual making the claim has a very punchable face—as usual.
Bless you, sir. May your tea towel hygiene be beyond reproach.
Instalanche!
[ Panic ensues. ]
Housing: I have lived in my suburb for 30 yrs. When I moved in and until a few years ago, it was virtually without crime. There was 1 murder in 8 yrs in a town of >100,000. Section 8 housing vouchers changed that. We now have carjackings and armed robberies. Progressive heaven.
Crime is up in my suburban neighborhood, from what it was 4 years ago.
I know a number of suburbanites whose neighborhoods have been ruined by an influx of black Section 8 recipients. Also blacks who have jobs but are nonetheless ultra-low-class in their conduct.
Randos from my YT history
Andrew Tate….
She looks a little deflated….
I love Pearl giggling at the end
And from the Fresh&Fit podcast….
If you haven’t dealt with “Young People” TM for a while it’s an eyeopener. These women have never been spoken to like this.
And from the same group Andrew Tate in full flow
I laughed.
And from the same group Andrew Tate in full flow
Some people never marry & have children because of problems, which is very sad.
But choosing to remain single and childless is insane.
Say, do you have your Christmas cuetlaxochitl on display? Vox has thoughts.
Speaking of Vox, Mr Jay Deitcher, a social worker and therapist, discusses the romantic city of Albany, NY, and his angst, and redemption regarding his wedding(s).
RTWT, if it is all a long troll, the guy is brilliant, if not displaying emotional incontinence is not a good look.
Say, do you have your Christmas cuetlaxochitl on display? Vox has thoughts.
Do the people at Vox really want to give their hearts to Aztec culture?
Fascism: Admiral Rachel Levine calls on tech companies to censor “misinformation” to protect the “health equity of sexual and gender minorities.”
Two guys discuss the phallusy of cis-lesbians and girldique.
True? If so, why does she merely say she has videos? Why not distribute copies before making announcements? She could simultaneously give a deposition.
Maybe because it’s BS. Maybe setting the table for the time in the not so distant future where deep fakes and AI simulation make all video evidence suspect and thus irrelevant? She could very well still be compromised. It’s a distraction from what/where the supposedly real black book is. I find no specific criminal evidence about the Epstein situation believable. Not that it didn’t happen, not that these elite scum didn’t do what they are accused of, but there’s a lot of smoke here. Something certainly appears to have happened. On the whole, yes. There’s a large amount of solid, bizarre but not explicitly criminal evidence. But so much of the individual criminal pieces are either rumored to exist or there are plenty of good reasons to doubt the sources. And Epstein and Maxwell were arrested, Epstein is dead for some reason, and Maxwell sits in prison for some reason. Yet the whole thing smells like a conspiracy theory mind f***.
Heh…or the opposite…somewhat. They are working on developing a convincing deep fake/AI copy with Dershowitz’s face inserted. They just haven’t perfected it yet but want the tease to build anticipation for a convincing sell.
@pst314: “Why the story of the poinsettia is a troubling one.”
Well. that intrigued me enough to read the article to find out what was so troubling:”Poinsett was an enslaver and a firm believer in American expansion, and during his tenure as secretary of war he oversaw the displacement of thousands of Native Americans.”
Those happy-go-lucky Aztecs would never do such things, right?
‘Hey, Siri, why are people eschewing the pleasures of the traditional Boxing Day sales in favour of shopping online?’
I’m guessing Mr Deitcher’s insufferable neuroticism is something we’re supposed to find endearing. As noted following this, our twitchy therapist seems to imagine that his outpourings of inadequacy, his “dope lines,” could only be quoted for the purposes of admiration.
It is, I think, another one of those articles, now practically a genre in progressive circles, where the obvious reaction is, “You know we can hear you, right?”
progressive circles,
That one’s hilarious.
Like so many others in the genre, it does tell us more about the author than was perhaps intended. And, by extension, her peers.
…his “dope lines,”…
I think he meant “lines of a dope”, speaking of which, he is at it again agonizing about having to buy a jacket.
Aside from the apparent frequency his mind spirals into darkness, can’t say he is wrong.
Those happy-go-lucky Aztecs would never do such things, right?
Stop! You’re tearing my heart out with your sarcasm.
It’s a distraction from what/where the supposedly real black book is.
I think there really was something going on. Sometime in the last couple years I saw a brief comment by one semi-public figure that he was invited to Epstein’s island along with many scientists and scholars, and while sitting talking with a famous scientist they were approached by a young girl who offered them a massage. They declined, but for what legitimate purpose would a girl in her early teens be going around offering massages to middle-aged men?
On the other hand, I do question the veracity of the woman I cited: Her actions don’t sound like what someone would do if they wanted to expose a crime while protecting themselves from being “silenced”.
progressive circles,
From the link: A woman who insists that “women aren’t nags,” while complaining about the “emotional labour” of hiring servants to clean her bathrooms, and how “exhausting” it is.
“Emotional labour”. Heh.
Social Justice Kittens 2022 calendar:
And the rest of 2022:
pst314’s avatar malfunction is making my eye twitch.
the parenting skills of Mr Jay Deitcher, a social worker and therapist
Not to mention his therapy skills: How many people has he harmed?
pst314’s avatar malfunction is making my eye twitch.
Yeah, but it’s not nearly as bad as the subject matter posted here.
It is unclear why my avatar is not the head-and-shoulders silhouette that other commenters have:
The 2023 Social Justice Kittens calendar is out:
More:
And the rest:
It is unclear why my avatar is not the head-and-shoulders silhouette that other commenters have:
It is because you mocked Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca so Huitzilopochtli is out to get you.
And the last six months:
It is because you mocked Quetzalcoatl…
Will I find my quezovercoatl on fire in the alley?
I will admit the amount of untrustworthy information has caused me to cease paying much attention to this story except for anything having to do with that little black book. I despise what happened to these girls but the process itself makes them not entirely believable. I don’t really blame them as they were indoctrinated into a world of horrible lies that destroyed their character and their future. That said, “early teens”? I was under the impression these girls were more the high school age at least. Except possibly the ones who matured such that the could reasonably pass for high school age.
If this person really has a kid, it needs to stay with the father. As one person put it, Transhausen By Proxy.
I was under the impression these girls were more the high school age at least.
I believe some of them were as young as 14.
I will admit the amount of untrustworthy information has caused me to cease paying much attention
Well yes: Most of what is published is either reiterations of what has been said before or is mere hints that something new will be revealed.
My personal suspicion is that this was some sort of blackmail operation. Didn’t someone do an analysis of Epstein’s finances and conclude that he was wealthier than could be accounted for the size of his investment enterprise? What I really wonder is whether he was doing this on behalf of some third party.
poinsettia Anything given a name or discovered or invented earlier than tomorrow was done by a non-woke, white, oppressor, colonist. Any word of latin was from slavers. Any word in English: colonists racists and sexists. The only cure is to not speak at all…so that is what I recommend for our woke fiends (not autocorrect). And don’t eat any foods or use any technologies except those invented/developed by people from the stone age. Good luck to you all.
regarding whom, the Los Angeles Times gushed, “Kierkegaard comes to mind, as do Sartre and Dostoevsky.”
Can’t believe I watched someone peeing on a drum.
No refunds. Credit note only.
No refunds. Credit note only.
Barkeep, you got any eye bleach behind the bar? Would come in handy here many days…
Will this do?
what I recommend for our woke fiends (not autocorrect). And don’t eat any foods or use any technologies except those invented/developed by people from the stone age.
Indeed. And given the implacably coercive nature of the left, it would be only fair to “encourage” and “assist” them to eschew the blessings of modern civilization.
Can’t believe I watched someone peeing on a drum.
Fear not. She is not a typical Finn. Really.
Posting this without comment….
Next level monthly fem cycle. Apparently.
Posting this without comment….
I made the mistake of embiggenifying the picture so I could read the comments.
Don’t.
Meanwhile in The Great White North, a great new activities book for kids!
Meanwhile in The Great White North,
Just imagine what kind of hellscape these kids are going to create as adults.
They will have no moral compass after they’ve been brought up in critical theory, critical race theory, radical trans theory and now maid. It’ll make the horrors of the 20th Century look like Disney World.
an implication that one of the most hazardous of words to use, and from which All Decent Non-Racist People are expected to recoil, is simultaneously one to which All Decent Non-Racist People are obliged to be drawn. Say, when listening to rap. Failure to enjoy endless repetition of the word in question is, we were assured, “the silencing of intellectuals in music,” and, inevitably, evidence of racism.
These grifters don’t care about the contradictions. They count on them. It’s all just a trap.
Well, a disregard for contradiction and begged questions, and a disdain for reciprocation, are pretty much defining features of “critical race theory” and its proponents – and of woke hokum more generally.
As I said in the original thread, the authors’ conclusion – i.e., bad whitey – appears to have been arrived at, as if predestined, well in advance of any actual thinking, should any have occurred.
But then, in order to conform, in order to be counted among the pious, there are any number of things one simply mustn’t think about with any degree of clarity or realism, and any number of things one must be careful not to notice.
And so, it literally stupefies.
…one simply mustn’t think about with any degree of clarity or realism…
...and on that note, Science™!
…and on that note, Science™!
Or, Person with mental health problems has mental health problems.
Motorist of note. Also, scroll down for sentence of note.
But then, in order to conform, in order to be counted among the pious, there are any number of things one simply mustn’t think about with any degree of clarity or realism, and any number of things one must be careful not to notice.
“I thought so little, they rewarded me
By making me the Ruler of the Queen’s Navy!”
Sir Joseph was rewarded for not thinking with the post of First Lord of the Admiralty.
But today the reward is merely to be allowed to have any job and to be left in peace–more or less.
Edit: forgot to change my handle back to pst314.
Motorist of note. Also, scroll down for sentence of note.
Seems to have a solid reputation for anti-social behavior. Instead of 8 months suspended he should get 80 months with no early release.
Readers are invited to suggest morally fitting consequences.
Readers are invited to suggest morally fitting consequences.
What is his penalty for driving on the wrong side of the road?