Already Broken
Margot, seen below, is a “nutrition counsellor.” She is “root-cause and system focussed.” Oh, and she has some questions:
Turns out you can’t smash capitalism and agitate the proletariat without a solid meal plan.
Tiktok commies are doing revolution meal prep, I am dying 💀😂
You cannot make this up. pic.twitter.com/2OYFD6A2NP
— Right Side of History™️ (@xxclusionary) November 15, 2023
“We can fight with our food,” says she.
Bridge crossed, methinks.
Update, via Mr Muldoon in the comments:
Apparently, the revolution will be fuelled by cashew milk and vegan pseudo-cheese. Because as capitalism is toppled, and amid the riots and burning cars, there will, it seems, be space for neurotic niche cuisine.
Update 2:
NielsR adds,
I suspect that the fantasy of being in charge and important, of correcting others amid some cosmic drama, is very much the appeal. It’s the standard pattern of the type. And Margot, dear Margot, is very much of a type.
And so, while her comrades “break capitalism” and “abolish” prison, and as violent criminals roam the streets unmolested, Margot will be instructing the little people on how to dry pepper seeds and how to wash foraged bin scraps in vinegar to remove any trace of those nasty pesticides. And I doubt that this fantasy, this contrived, absurd mindset, is amenable to realism or logic, or any kind of correction. It’s probably best considered as a case of bad wiring.
Margot and her peers, these psychologically precarious young women – all of a remarkably narrow social class – are, they tell us, the ones who will be “moving the world forward.” And they’ll bestow this gift, this glorious transformation, by “coaching people in how to eat from a revolutionary and resistance standpoint,” and by making endless TikTok videos about themselves and their cultivated mood disorders.
Assuming, that is, that the proletariat are tempted by the prospect of economic ruin, roaming gangs of muggers and rapists, and evenings spent washing other people’s bin contents.
Each other?
The revolution always eats its own, as they say.
So, she’s at least got the protein covered.
She’s a philosopher, you know.
Calling Dr Strangelove…
Capitalism has a remarkable record of providing adequate nutrition, while revolutionary alternatives have often led to malnutrition and famine, so this is an important question.
Heh. It does rather call to mind custard pies and clown shoes.
At least she recognizes that staying fed can be a very real problem during socialist revolution.
Although she has not yet taken that obvious next step in concluding that the entire project may be a poor idea.
I’m now wondering how all this sensible meal planning is going to play out with the Fat Liberation wing of the Revolutionary Leftists, mentioned here.
This seems like a poor strategy. Many socialists have based their support on the fact that cheese cake and pumpkin spike lattes will still be available — and indeed free — come the revolution.
“impact = divest from capitalism”
huh, and I thought the key metric was, you know, making lives better.
Also, sounds pretty bourgeois to be telling the proles what their nutritional needs are. Isn’t that the basic premise, that they will happily take only what they need without a managerial class? And as always, will get what they ask for, good and hard.
I very much doubt that the revolutionary fantasy, or pretension – or the LOUD ELECTRICAL BUZZING NOISE IN HER HEAD, or whatever the hell it is – is in any way amenable to reason, or the lessons of history.
So we’re getting rid of those useless feeders, then. Good to know…
For some reason, this came to mind.
You made me choke on a sweet.
No refunds. Credit note only.
But it does rather capture an appropriate level of farce, the destiny that awaits.
Perhaps one day our betters, our would-be overlords, will figure out that the reason their projects veer towards the ludicrous and doomed is because of the kinds of people they are.
Though, frankly, I wouldn’t count on it.
“making lives better”
Well, of course. Oh, wait – “your life” as opposed to hers (in her fevered imagination)? Not so much…
I visited some hippy communes back in the day. They were always supported by a rock band or an insurance settlement or drug dealing or something. Their efforts to support themselves were always play. not real.
She did the smug face. They always do that.
Destroy capitalism and feed ourselves, she says.
Because as capitalism is toppled, and amid the riots and burning cars, there will, it seems, be space for neurotic niche cuisine.
[ Post updated. ]
If some hippies open a cafe and borrow some money to get it going, that is capitalism, no matter how they run it. If a kid is funded by his parents with supplies to open a lemonade stand–still capitalism. As they say, capitalism is the exploitation of man by man and communism is the reverse.
A ‘nutrition professional’.
I think she was handing out little cheese bits on a toothpick at the grocery last visit.
Mulch?
Experience militates against it.
Yes, but you can make money in the former.
So, Hickory Farms?
She can always look to the examples set by Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao. Meal planning was easy under these leaders. You had nothing to eat and died.
Oh, and the meal planners will be the first to go. Silly girl.
So, Hickory Farms?
Piggly Wiggly.
“Piggly Wiggly”
Let’s go, Hoke…
cashew milk and vegan pseudo-cheese
Wow – talk about white privilege! And wealthy white capitalist privilege at that! Do these people hear themselves?
At least the Diet for a Small Planet hippy commies advocated for foods that proles could afford and that might be available in a communist setting.They borrowed from world cuisines too, if I remember correctly (my father had the book).
Cashew milk and vegan “cheese” requires capitalism to exist, for the most part, and it’s not cheap to purchase, either.
No kidding. You ever try milking cashews? Little bas*ards…
I’m quite fond of cashews, but cashew milk is an abomination.
I was once obliged to try soy milk “sweetened” with apple juice. I still wake up screaming.
but cashew milk is an abomination.
It’s called cashew milk because no one can say nut juice with a straight face.
[ Slowly heads for back door with coat ]
[ Rummages under bar for curare darts, blowpipe. ]
hippy commies advocated for foods that proles could afford and that might be available in a communist setting.
That would be chaff and even that would be gone after the last crop under capitalism.
They borrowed from world cuisines too
Cultural appropriation!
The post revolutionary staple is cabbage with nuggets of lard on Sundays.
Lard? That’s high living right there.
Cashews? Seriously? Does she have any idea where cashews come from? (Ans.: NO)
I was an engineer, and I still build stuff. I hear SO MANY stupid ideas for “idealising” the world, which show ZERO knowledge of how the material world works, or where stuff comes from.
And media culture promotes this ignorant attitude.
My favorite example is an advert for iPhone from a few years ago, when the cameras were getting really good.
Beautiful imagery, colors, scenes. Swooping musical score. Intellectual voice intoning phrases about Beauty and Truth Revealed by the Creative Minds.
And OK, “Science and engineering are good and useful, but it’s the Artist, the Poet” who we should really value.
In the midst of flogging a product of the absolute bleeding edge of science and engineering and the rest of modern civilisation.
Honey, come the revolution, there ain’t gonna be any cashews and there ain’t gonna be any iPhones.
We have one not far from the ranch. If we did not give them our broken or old bales of hay every fall, their horses would starve in the winter. They are not very good at maintaining fences or growing stuff, but they built a great fire pit surrounded by stone benches for their solstice ceremonies and such.
Their art projects are kind of neat, but their continued existence requires an outside community of productive hard workers with surplus agricultural products.
From the related videos, Bloomberg, which used to be a numbers-oriented information source, doesn’t get around to asking a black urban “gardener” how much sustenance is actually created by his “bringing people closer to that which sustains them” project. Although, to be fair, they give him enough vine to talk about his Mugabe-like enthusiasm for occupying and displacing white people.
In a somewhat similar spirit, “imma be honest with you, I feel like riding horses is a redneck sport”
I don’t know for sure, but I’m betting most farmers don’t like socialists too much.
The old ant/grasshopper divide.
She might want to rethink her whole, fight with food, idea.
I suspect that the fantasy of being in charge and important, amid some cosmic drama, is very much the appeal. It’s the standard pattern of the type. And Margot, dear Margot, is very much of a type.
And so, while her comrades “break capitalism,” and prison is abolished, and criminals roam free, and while windows shatter, Margot will be instructing the little people on how to dry pepper seeds and how to wash foraged food scraps in vinegar. To remove any trace of those nasty pesticides.
And again, I doubt this fantasy, this contrived, absurd mindset, is amenable to realism or logic, or any kind of correction. It’s probably best considered as a case of bad wiring.
[ Post updated again. ]
The status quo’s looking pretty good right now.
So you’re not tempted by the prospect of economic ruin, roaming gangs of muggers and rapists, and evenings spent washing other people’s bin scraps in vinegar?
Margot won’t be happy.
At CookOut, a North Carolina based fast food with locations throughout the Southeast US, I can get chicken nuggets as sides to my burger. Think of it: a nice double-double, with cheese and bacon, and two sides of nuggets, perhaps washed down with a cherry cheesecake shake.
I think I got my lunch planned for today . . .
*snort*
As they say, you couldn’t make it up.
I recall a video of Richard Feynman speaking at an event in California. It wasn’t a lecture hall thing, people were gathered around sitting on pillows, iirc. Anyway, some fat old leftist type asked Feynman that, since he’s so smart, why wouldn’t he invest an antigravity device. It would solve so many of the world’s problems. Feynman politely takes his question at face value and provides an earnest response. I have this sick fantasy in which that situation ends when Feynman goes Pete-Townsend-on-Abbie-Hoffman-at-Woodstock on his ass. Sigh. You can’t always get what you want.
Before the Challenge launch in which a teacher was to be the first “regular person” to fly into space, some fat old Burl Ives look alike lefty was being interviewed on CNN for whatever reason. He proffered his opinion that perhaps next we should launch a poet so s/he could look down on the earth and enlighten us about it. Pity we didn’t try his idea first. Now WTF did I put my revolver?
Although not quite cashew milk, you may be interested in this instructive video:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJCTIPWPNtw
“imma be honest with you, I feel like riding horses is a redneck sport”
As horses were not native to Africa, and as braided or styled manes have been around forever, sounds like she is doing some cultural appropriation and colonizing equestrianism.
Can I get back to you on that?
“urban “gardener” how much sustenance is actually created”
Ah. The occasional “rooftop gardens” trope that resurfaces every few years. As if a few hundred square feet will produce enough calories to support the building’s population…
Are you not swayed by these utopian visions?
Strange as it may seem, I find I can quite comfortably live with that.
Meh. Not being happy garners them much attention. Being the center of much attention makes them happy. It’s a viscous cycle.
Near the end, she says Tiktok videos need to be more than 1 minute “for better engagement”, so she adds some filler. Length of video: 59 seconds. Ipsa res loquitur.
First, the rich. Then each other.
If alternatives to real milk are on the play list, here’s a contender.
The whole thing has an air of the, shall we say, unconvincing.
It’s perhaps worth noting Margot’s self-preoccupied comrade, Rachel, and her incoherent rambling about anger – a term she uses many times, as if it were a credential, a boast. A kind of social jewellery.
Says she,
It’s curious just how often ostentatious claims of anger – pretentious anger – and emotional dysregulation generally – crop up among these people.
A great lesson in what happens if there is no government is Somalia which has devolved into constant warlord warfare. Gangs have stolen all the power lines for scrap. It is simply charming.
Two experiments have been done of dividing a country in half and making one communist and one capitalist: Korea and Germany. Striking results. Some diehard western commie asserted that even though E germany was much poorer, it was ok because there was less inequality. He did not ask the E germans who tried their best to flee what they thought.
Did not St. Maggie Thatcher address this very point, clearly, resolutely, and without apology 40 f****n’ years ago? Yet here we are yet again, a much, much more, tremendously more wealthy and technologically advanced society relative to 40 years ago, relative to any preceding 40 year time span. And our leaders, our conservative…”conservative” leaders, US, UK, Oz, etc. etc. leaders, are more in line with the Labor and other leftists of that day than with her. They lack the fire, the determination, the moral and philosophical backbone to speak directly, resolutely, and without equivocation regarding the tremendous success of the policies and even beyond what she spoke of, the very civilization that made all this possible. Because someone might think their tweets are mean.
Rooftop gardens…
This thinking even infests the people I mentor. One guy had a proposal in the “urban agriculture” realm (generally multistory buildings full of hydroponic systems). He had hardened his design to be independent of city electric power for the lights and pumps by putting solar arrays on the roof.
Five stories of hydroponics lit by LED arrays. Powered by a portion of the output of one roof full of solar panels.
I asked him for the rough numbers on light needs, efficiency, and power budget. Blank face.
Come on, guy. Your entire scheme depends on getting light from outside the building to inside.
A few quick napkin calculations showed that each floor was going to get the equivalent of 9% of full sunlight actually onto the plants. At best.
Sigh.
[ Sounds of tomorrow’s Ephemera being scheduled. ]
…it was ok because there was less inequality.
Of course they never define “inequality” because the life of a factory worker drinking his 50% wood chip coffee in his two room apartment waiting seven years for his Trabi was not exactly anywhere near “equal” to the local party apparatchik.
“50% wood chip coffee”
*looks over at chicory/coffee sitting on desk. Yum*
*looks over at chicory/coffee sitting on desk. Yum*
Oh sure, chickory is one thing, but when you skip the acorn ersatz coffee and go straight to oak bark even Euell Gibbons would raise an eyebrow.
“oak bark even Euell Gibbons would raise an eyebrow”
well, duh. Everyone knows that pines make the best eating. Next to grape nuts…
Everyone knows that pines make the best eating.
“but some parts of a Michelin radial are edible”
hmmm. Read that as “radical”…
Long pig, anyone?
It’s curious just how often ostentatious claims of anger – pretentious anger – and emotional dysregulation generally – crop up among these people.
As children, they were taught that feelings, their feelings, were what it meant to be taken seriously. Now they cannot navigate life. Of course they’re filled with anger.
I am… consumed by anger as motivation, always… I carry it very deeply with me all of the time… It infuses every part of my being, all of the time.
It’s curious just how often ostentatious claims of anger – pretentious anger – and emotional dysregulation generally – crop up among these people.
Wait, how is that possible? She isn’t an old white guy, so how can she be angry? I guess my edition of the rule book is now out of date.
He did not ask the E germans who tried their best to flee what they thought.
Well, to be fair, many of them would have been, er, unresponsive. And perforated.
I understood from Sozlhenitsyn that after the revolution we’d be eating frozen fossil salamander, when lucky.
Must be off now, to manage my new band, “Niche Cuisine”.