A Simple Thing, Made Worse
Lifted from the comments, a little elaboration on an Ephemera item from yesterday. Specifically, an everyday scene from Ruislip, Greater London:
Queuing means the old, small and weak are treated fairly. Not all cultures queue. I saw this living abroad. pic.twitter.com/XAXOY5n5uq
— Larry Lemon (@larrylemonmaths) May 13, 2024
Note that the would-be bus passengers, the ones accustomed to queuing and now looking on in weary dismay, have varied shades of skin.
As Rafi adds in the comments,
Quite. And the fact that mentioning the degradation may result in scolding or social punishment of some kind is itself part of the degradation. Plenty of people are itching to seize upon any such transgression, thereby asserting their own high status. Above the likes of you.
And so, quite a lot of people who don’t much care about the skin tone of those doing the pushing and jostling, but who do think that politeness and queuing are good things, things that a society shouldn’t lose, are, by many progressives, pushed into the category of Incorrigible Bigot, as invalid by default. As if the grievance, the stated issue – “queuing means the old, small, and weak are treated fairly” – could only be about the pigmentation of the players, not their actual behaviour, to which attention has been drawn.
And with those who prefer politeness suitably cowed or demoralised, the degradation continues.
It should, I think, be pointed out that this suppressing and demoralising effect, the adding of insult to injury, has not gone unnoticed by many of those keen to do the suppressing and demoralising.
Some years ago, I mentioned a car journey in which, for reasons that escape me, I was distractedly listening to BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends – a sort of whimsical revue of chat, music, and substandard stand-up. The generic left-leaning comedian of the week, whose name I didn’t catch, was pleased by the taboos surrounding immigration and multiculturalism. Lots of code words were used – “Sun-reader,” and so forth – so that the disdain for working-class people and their fears wouldn’t be too overt.
The gist of the comedian’s punch line was, “Isn’t it hilarious that people who have concerns about mass immigration and failures to assimilate – the rapid and estranging transformation of their neighbourhoods – now have to be quiet because otherwise they’ll be called racists and possibly lose their jobs. Ha! We won!”
This triumphal non-joke – and it was blatantly triumphal – was deemed incredibly funny, or at least ideologically congenial, and much mannered clapping ensued. Of course, this was aired shortly before the uncovering of events in Rotherham and elsewhere, and before our immensely vibrant age of Congolese machete gangs.
And so, if that nice Mrs Wilson, the old dear two doors down, can no longer get on a bus, and dreads waiting for a bus because of the Third World scuffle that now ensues, and if she no longer feels she can complain about this without being thought racist, then this is totally fine, apparently. Indeed, it’s a basis for triumphal smugness by BBC comedians and BBC studio audiences.
Today’s word, since you ask, is alienation.
Update, via the comments:
sk60 adds,
Well, again, quite.
And the rate at which new arrivals materialise, their sheer numbers, will have an effect on how well, or how poorly, those new arrivals adapt to the customs and values of the host society. Indeed, it will have an effect on whether those new arrivals feel inclined, or obliged, to make any such attempt.
700,000 is equivalent to the entire population of Sheffield, by the way.
And yet, it seems we’re supposed to imagine that such massive, unprecedented immigration, seemingly indiscriminate immigration, both legal and otherwise, couldn’t possibly create problems. Things one might lament. Things lost and irretrievable.
If the word irretrievable sounds too emotive, consider the practicalities in the bus stop video. How does the customary courtesy prevail – how does it reassert itself – against a jostling mass of rude people? People whose attitude is screw the rules – and by extension, screw everyone else. The considerate, including the elderly or frail or physically unimposing, will either have to start jostling too, or just stand back in muted dismay and wait for the next bus. Probably in the hope that the same thing doesn’t happen, or happen quite so badly.
So, one more time. Some things, when lost, may be irretrievable.
And note, as in the case linked above, the progressives loudly denouncing as “hostile” any reservations about massive, unselective immigration can in the very next breath bemoan “societal breakdown,” as if the two things couldn’t ever, under any circumstances, be related.
Our betters, you know. They say so themselves.
Update 2:
Roger Scruton has written extensively about conservatism being less a doctrine than an attitude–love of one’s home and community and culture and a desire to preserve these things.
I don’t know if any of the Monty Python crew were commies, but contempt for ordinary folks and bourgeois culture were a big part of their comedy. I’d be pretentiously lit-rary and say “a thread running through their humor” except that the thread was a fucking hawser. And now John Cleese is, too late, regretting the part they played in undermining that culture. (Not that it’s clear even now if he fully understands.)
[ Tips hat in respect ]
Virtually nobody I realizes that this is what is meant by “happiness” in “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Not joy, not pleasure, but the concept of true happiness or fulfillment which the Classical Greeks pondered and debated so much. And in my youth the hippies and leftists used that passage in the Declaration of Independence to justify a life of hedonism. Shallow asswipes that they were.
Are you fluent in Greek and Latin? A wonderful thing.
In the middle of their street?
It is not irretrievable. It simply requires will. Countless in history are the times polite men have taken up arms and gone to war to create a space where they can, once again, live politely.
Thoughtcrime in Airstrip 1
This.
Things lost and irretrievable.
—————————————–
Which of you handwringing Anglo-Saxon pussies is willing to:
It’s not irretrievable.
The political critters of the Left will take any power you surrender out of fear or convenience.
It’s harder for them to muscle in when you and your community have already organized to address your own needs.
Definitely. Thanks for that. I never totally dropped out like the main character in that movie but there were times when I got fed up and just said “no”, not caring about the consequences. Initially I was surprised the first time that actually worked. Sometimes later it worked again, sometimes not. When it didn’t, I was ok with the consequences. The couple of times I was laid off in mass cuts, it amused me how the people doing the dirty work of letting me go seemed rather uncomfortable with how ok I was with it. The first time, I had to work really hard to restrain myself from cutting the conversation short by saying, “Check please”.
Guess what is upstream of culture?
Some minuscule quantity of fully assimilated foreigners (from the most agreeable and intelligent portion) does not justify the mass importation of their countrymen. If you want to live in Mumbai then move there and don’t expect others to accept Mumbai appearing in their own country.
And with all due respect to the terrible person that is MLK, he represents one part of the system of enforced tolerance.
Here in the US, there are lots of legal immigrants from India, china, S. Korea, Iran etc who come with education and are eager to fit in and are almost universally successful. There ae a dozen ethnic groups including even Nigerians whose mean family income is higher than whites. None of these cause social problems. But countries like Venezuela send all their prisoners here–saves them lots of money. Not good immigrants to be receiving.
Venezuela was once a source of decent people. The productive people would come to south Florida spending their petro-bucks back in the 80’s when I worked retail. Were even decent tippers. They came to the US to spend their money because they couldn’t buy decent stuff in Venezuela due to creeping socialism, protectionism, trade/tariffs/taxes, whatever. Once their government took over the petroleum industry the country finally went all the way downhill. Now as the rats have eaten all the seed corn, they are scattering here.
That was…interesting. Or so said my Other Half.
They played the archetypal role of trickster, an irreverent, disruptive, playful force that seeks to puncture puffery and dismantle overly regimented regimes.
They took the piss out of the BBC’s extreme formality and self-regard and poked fun at the aspects of British culture that took themselves entirely too seriously.
This is a healthy thing. The laughter was laughter at ourselves and our foibles. That doesn’t mean it was all goodness: tricksters sometimes go overboard and wreck things that need to be kept intact. But overall they were the Weasley brothers letting off a spectacular fireworks display at Hogwarts to chase out the tyrannical Dolores Umbridge and her rules-bound regime.
I think 4chan serves the same function sometimes. The way they troll feminists and other leftists can be truly genius. They also are capable of producing horrors. So. All in moderation.
Good Morning Britain asked viewers to answer their poll “Is multiculturalism working?” 5% said yes, 95% said no.
I’m assuming the large, normie audience for breakfast TV didn’t get the memo about pretending otherwise.
So multiculturalism isn’t working. What now? Is it actually possible to deport all those people?
Is it actually possible to deport all those people?
A question Canada is currently grappling with.
While I can understand the arguments for removing (Canadian) citizenship from citizens who possess dual citizenship, because they can always go to the other country, I am extremely wary of allowing any government to unperson its citizenry that way. To me it seems to be a much smaller step from “only if you have dual citizenship” to “if you annoy the regime”. Especially in Canada.
Leaving that aside for the moment, while it would be possible for any Western country to cancel every visa, slam the immigration doors shut, and embark on a massive “[country] for [countrians]” civic program, it would require a massive undertaking and would have to start with the gutting of most governmental departments. Because they’re On The Other Side, and will fight it tooth and claw. And that’s not even considering the inevitable Hawaiian judge who will just claim it’s illegal for no particular reason.
It may be possible in the US. It’s not practically possible in Canada, because the problem immigrants are concentrated in the cities, which dominate the voting in our parliamentary system. No government running on a nativist platform could get a majority, and if a majority government did embark on this program as a surprise it would be exiled to the political wilderness for a generation.
It took multiple successive governments dedicated to the annihilation of Canada to get us here; it would take multiple successive governments dedicated to rebuilding it just to get back to where we started, and building is a lot harder than destroying.
Take from our example what you will.
Agree, mostly, about the dual citizenship thing. I don’t think that would/should be necessary because (hopefully) the volume of dual citizens who are a problem is much lower. But you’re speaking of Canada and I don’t know how hard/easy achieving citizenship is there. I could see a case for doing so if citizenship requirements had recently been loosened with the explicit purpose of creating these problems. One could argue that the act of loosening was itself illegal/unconstitutional. But again, Canada. I wouldn’t know.
Does the Commonwealth membership complicate this matter for Canada as well?
Well, this is “progress”. And as I’m wont to point out, disease also progresses.