An Unfamiliar Neighbourhood
Lifted from the comments, and relevant to the ongoing liveliness, Peter Whittle ponders a recent, very rapid transformation:
An animated chart of some relevance.
Update, via the comments:
Regarding the video above, this came to mind. Tim Newman on knowing your neighbours:
But if you live beside someone who has no reason to get up in the morning and decides to play music at full blast until 5am, or deals drugs in the stairwell of your apartment block, or uses it as a toilet, or keys your car on a regular basis, all of a sudden you realise the character of your neighbour becomes central to your quality of life. The only reason Niemetz doesn’t know his neighbour is because the latter is culturally conditioned to be considerate, and to get up at 7am each morning to go to work. If he wasn’t, I suspect Niemetz would know him intimately.
If you start dispensing with old-fashioned ideas like sovereignty and believe a neighbour is no different from a Brussels bureaucrat, you’re going to be in a for a rude awakening when diversity and vibrancy moves in next door. Of course, those who advocate such policies rarely have to live with the consequences.
Having re-read it, it’s not entirely inapt.
Very much related to the above, and because an example is always handy, the rumblings of progressive educator Dr Adam Kotsko:
The phenomena that Dr Kotsko is unlikely to experience personally, but which he is keen to see inflicted on others, are helpfully illustrated.
See also Douglas Murray on the Simon Schama tendency:
Of course, like so many other advocates of mass immigration, Simon Schama can live pretty much where he wants. And if the area around him goes somewhat downhill because the neighbours all start to come from the rougher corners of Eritrea, then Simon Schama can move. And he will probably move to a very nice area. But not everybody has that choice.
And one thing we can all be certain of is that Simon Schama will never choose to live in Bradford, Malmo or any of the (dare I say it) ‘suburbs’ outside Paris. Yet all the time he will urge other peoples’ neighbourhoods to more closely resemble those great success stories, and look down at people from an ever-loftier height when they dare to object.
Needless to say, Mr Schama’s own neighbourhood is suitably… insulated.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
That.
Community was never talked about before, simply because it didn’t have to be.
Well exactly. I don’t think there is any more fake word today than “community.”
Those one-legged, brown, hamster loving, Presbyterians are all one loving “community” until they find out one of them voted for Trump.
When the left talks about “community”, it usually means “more government”.
For some reason, this came to mind. Tim Newman on knowing your neighbours:
Having re-read it, it’s not entirely inapt.
David Thompson, master of the understatement.
Somewhat related to the above.
I KNOW, RIGHT?
Community in the progresive context translates as “collective”, and “collective” is the fundamental element of all progressive philosophical structures. Progressives despise individualism, and for that matter, individuals. Living, breathing, feeling, thinking human beings are of no consequence, only the abstraction of “collective” matters. It’s one of the reasons progressive utopian enterprises have been so unrelievedly bloody.
[ Post updated. ]
atheist/biologist Richard Dawkins finds out his Leftist brethren have no further use of him when he strays into WrongThink.
I’m just going to quietly leave this here. 😀
But thank you for your link, which brings its own worthwhile observations.
Oh–and Dawkins’ Facebook page has been restored.
Oops. My apologies. I sometimes get behind on reading comments and skip some.
Funny how these “mistakes” (e.g. the Google disappearing information & images of Trump assassination attempt) only go one way.
No apology needed: You gave us a useful link. And your “error” allowed me to re-use the comment David made in the previous thread when I posted something which David had already covered last December. Hence my 😀
And funny how Facebook did not immediately notify Dawkins of a suspected hacking. You’d think that would be something they could do routinely and immediately. And yet…
[ Post updated again. ]
“Diversity” for thee, not for me.
Well, in Mr Schama’s case, you’d struggle to find a neighbourhood more homogenous and genteel – or one more insulated against the transformation he wishes to see inflicted on others. It’s almost too on-the-nose.
And so, Mr Schama, like so many of his peers, can assert his piety, his social status, by mouthing the approved views, knowing that the likely consequences will never touch him, or his family. He is, in effect, preening, doing an egalitarian fan dance, while screwing over those he regards as his social inferiors.
Which would, I suspect, include thee and me.
Here in Knoxville some folks are getting upset by a new form of migrant: the blue state refugee. The shift in American demographics has resulted in Southern cities attracting more people, a move to which I am not entirely unopposed, but locals here just want to remind these escapees from left-wing states – you come as a refugee, not a missionary.
This fellow posted in a foum and got a number of comments asking him, “Why do you presume improvement is even needed?”
[ Takes shelled, slightly fluffy, hard-boiled egg from PiperPaul, rolls it to Stephanie. ]
Oh no, here come the henchlesbians!
[ Opens Darleen’s file, adds wayward, suspected troublemaker. Also, short skirt. ]
It’s not just about Somali gangs though. Following that logic means your neighbourhood fills up with polite middle-class Indian immigrants instead. Their children get all the grammar school places, then thirty years later they’re running the country and opening the floodgates to another million of their fellow countrymen. This is not a good outcome.
Liberals love to talk about respecting and preserving native cultures. But not Western cultures: Those must all be obliterated.
Schama’s an old hand at that. He’s been nothing but a disappointment after Citizens.
More like locusts.
Meteors!
Another telling exchange, that.
It’s interesting that when championing rapid and massive immigration and its alleged social benefits, Mr Schama often uses the word parochial, generally to disparage those who disagree with him. And yet his own caricature of dissenters itself suggests a certain narrowness and lack of familiarity – not least with the lives and neighbourhoods on which his ostentatious virtue would be inflicted, albeit from a safe distance.
A remoteness from on-the-ground concerns as seen, for instance, here.
And again, I very much doubt that there will be many muggings or stabbings or machete attacks in Briarcliff Manor, Mr Schama’s Westchester home.
And no-one will be shitting on Mr Schama’s doorstep.
Unfortunately.
Guardian contributor and ex-Twitter commissar says “arrest Elon Musk”. Also: Pass legislation that bans opinions he doesn’t like from appearing on social media.
Well then, why not return the compliment and suggest putting Bruce Daisley in prison? And make it a felony to publish the sorts of crap served up in the Guardian? Turnabout is fair play, right Bruce?
Two articles, possibly related.
As someone quips in reply,
Ms Gonzalez has of course been mentioned here before.
I think David may have touched on this before: patients can be denied care if they’re perceived to be racist
Let’s all agree to never call 999 when proponents of social credit are in trouble.
And DEI doctrine states that only white people can be racist. Equity!
Also: British police should “take a look at” Douglas Murray.
People very much want to be viewed as moral, as good people. If you have rejected religion and embraced woke, the only positive virtue is not charity or courtesy or family or faith, but rather DEI. Anything is justified to defend this new religion, as we are seeing. In the new faith, there are no prohibitions against lying or killing, no limits placed on the adherents. This is not turning out to be so grand.
your neighbourhood fills up with polite middle-class Indian immigrants instead
Who will proceed to shit all over the beach.
It’s so easy to make fun of these fools:
I seem to recall hearing that, according to food inspectors, Indian restaurants are among the worst violators of food safety regulations.
Any science fiction writers hang out here?
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James Lileks’s column has been cut from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It’s the end of an era.
The astronauts who are stranded in the ISS may not be able to come down until 2025.
There’s only one thing to do.
I haven’t been able to find any details on the “why”, but absent solid evidence I assume it’s a combination of (1) the ongoing newspaper decline, and (2) Lileks is insufficiently liberal to please the editors.
Sigh. It is indeed.
I haven’t been able to find any details on the “why”
@pst He had a column earlier this year that caused a lot of flap with the Perpetually Outraged community, who then focused their ire into a Twitter mob and besieged the paper with complaints. He only mentioned it in passing on the Bleat blog, but I think one of his commenters posted a photocopy of the article in question. He had a meeting with the Powers at the paper about the column, posted the requisite apology, and then nothing more was said. This happened concurrent with some shake-ups and restructuring at the paper, and may have been the excuse needed to cut his column, because a few months later he posted on the Bleat that his column was ending.
May be coincidence and not causation, but I have a feeling that column that caused the complaints, added to the fact that he’s an older white male, was at least related to the end of his newspaper column.
Thanks. I’ll look for it if I have time. Can you recall any specific keywords that ought to be guaranteed to find that column?
Can you recall any specific keywords that ought to be guaranteed to find that column?
Haha – I can barely remember what the column was about. But I Ducked “Lileks column 2024 complaints” and found this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1clqi9b/i_couldnt_find_what_was_offensive_in_lileks/?rdt=44882
which is around the same time as I remember the flap, so it seems right. I should have used “offensive” instead of “complaints” in the search, or both.
I know one of the Bleat commenters posted a photo of the column, I THINK after Lileks posted something about the Doom or something coming out of nowhere. I did not find it offensive, nor could I figure out what was, so I can’t give you any guaranteed keywords. But if you go through the Bleat archives from around that time, you might come across mention of it.