Reheated (98)
For newcomers, some items from the archives:
Don’t Oppress My People With Your Expectations Of Politeness And Basic Consideration.
A tear-inducing tale of racial victimhood.
“One day, when I accidentally sat down to study in the library’s Absolutely Quiet Room, fellow students Shhh-ed me into shame for putting on my Discman… I soon realised that silence was more than the absence of noise; it was an aesthetic to be revered. Yet it was an aesthetic at odds with who I was. Who a lot of us were.”
A bold admission. One, I suspect, that reveals more than intended. Also, the claim that one can sit down in a library accidentally.
Inevitably, Ms Gonzalez blames her own moral shortcomings on other people’s race and class, as if, by expecting politeness, they were imposing on her in cruel and unusual ways. Because – magic words – “of colour.” But the common variable, the one that’s hard to miss, is the author’s own rudeness and self-absorption. And so, she blunders into the library’s “Absolutely Quiet Room,” and fires up her music.
On the non-random nature of who you are.
The newborn me was a result of a particular lineage, of choices made by specific individuals and the genes of those individuals – who can of course say the same thing about themselves. To imply that anyone’s birth is a random thing, as if it could have happened anywhere, at any time, as if the particulars were immaterial, is, it seems to me, a little odd. Indeed, arse-backwards. And I doubt that many parents see the birth of their child as some random occurrence, unmoored from any context or preceding events. I’d imagine it wouldn’t seem random at all.
Unless you imagine a queue of souls waiting to spawn in some small but arbitrary body on a continent chosen by the spin of a wheel. Or cosmic bingo balls.
Ontario teachers’ union forbids “right-wing” opinions, endorses deception.
It occurs to me that when your solution to such complaints [from parents regarding classroom indoctrination] includes the words “so parents cannot see it,” it may be time to revisit your assumptions.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Evergreen.
As noted in the original thread, it does rather suggest a psychological gulf – and moral gulf – that can exist between we, the unremarkable, and our glorious betters. Say, writers for the Atlantic. Or indeed readers of the Atlantic. And that’s before we get to the comical double standards, revealed at the end, and the bewildering disregard for even the most basic logical consistency.
And again, it’s worth noting how the woke piety on display is antithetical to expectations of even simple reciprocation – i.e., the basis of morality.
“That’s right,” said Brother Plasterer. “My landlord oppresses me something wicked. Banging on the door and going on and on about all the rent I allegedly owe, which is a total lie. And the people next door oppress me all night long. I tell them, I work all day, a man’s got to have some time to learn to play the tuba. That’s oppression, that is. If I’m not under the heel of the oppressor, I don’t know who is.”
–Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
She is telling us that she should be oppressed. Segregation for savages, anyone?
“I tripped and my penis just accidentally slipped into that random woman’s vagina.”
Well, what’s amusing to me – and, I think, telling – is that Ms Gonzalez’ article was highlighted by the Atlantic as a “must-read,” a measure of the magazine’s progressive lifestyle credentials. As if no-one, at least no-one sufficiently progressive, could possibly see anything absurd or glaringly objectionable in the author’s outpourings.
If the Atlantic know their readership – and I would guess they do – it does rather tell us something.
I should add that Ms Gonzalez’ hypocrisy – and it’s a real humdinger – took me all of 30 seconds to find. But apparently we weren’t expected to notice, or at least we weren’t expected to care. As if it had no bearing on the claims being made.
Don’t take my failure to mention the Atlantic and its readers as meaning I don’t think they, too, deserve to be oppressed. Many of them are indeed Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen. They will enthusiastically do us harm while congratulating themselves on their superior virtue.
Today in Racism™ – candle packaging.
Myself, I thought they looked more like a bunch of space aliens looking down at a subject about to be probed.
I saw a sort of paper snowflake, which I’m assuming was the general idea. But still, THE DRAMA MUST NEVER END.
Apparently, they’re now a highly-valued collectors’ item.
THE DRAMA MUST NEVER END
Indeed, how utterly deranged one has to be to see a candle called “Snowed In” and think Klan hood instead of grade school class winter art project snowflake is staggering.
Even here in the South in the olden days when there was more Klan than snow* no rational person would think that.
Apparently, they’re now a highly-valued collectors’ item.
The Streisand Effect strikes again…
*(that is reversed now which goes to show how little of both there are, or ever was)
One of my favourite manifestations of THE DRAMA THAT MUST NEVER END was back in 2010, when the Los Angeles branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People expressed outrage over a musical graduation card sold by Hallmark. The card, which had an astronomical theme and contained a tiny speaker, mentioned black holes.
Bizarrely, this was seized upon by activists – presumably activists with hearing problems – as saying “black hoes.” Umbrage ensued, with claims that the card was “demeaning,” racist, an attempt to Crush The Negro, etc. “It sounds like a group of children laughing and joking about blackness,” as one grievance-seeking individual put it. The card was promptly withdrawn, followed by much prostration and blathering about “sensitivity.”
Sadly, the post I wrote on this didn’t survive the relocation to the new blog, and the video of activists listening intently to an innocuous message from a greetings card has long since disappeared, but the old blog’s link is here.
Correction.
With a blunt instrument.
Back in the 60’s black “activists” and “intellectuals” were voicing outrage over such “racist” expressions as “black magic” and “black humor”.
Why not both?
How long do you plan to preserve the old blog? (Setting aside the dubious prospects for Typepad.)
If you squint really hard.
And turn off the lights.
And go into the next room.
Possible a different world.
Hello.
It costs me much less than the upkeep of this place, so I’ve no immediate plans to discontinue it. Of course, as Typepad is in terminal decline, it may well wink out of existence before I pull the plug.
Related: A former NAACP activist was just shot to death when she repeatedly slashed a police officer with a knife.
Regarding the RACIST GREETING CARD DRAMA, what struck me at the time was how no-one involved – neither the store nor Hallmark – had the stones to say, “Get the hell out of here and learn some shame, you low-class two-bit grifters.”
Or words to that effect.
GISS
You should at least be able to archive it locally to your machine. Got this from asking perplexity.ai*:
I may take a stab at this myself when I get some time.
*New AI based search engine. I’ve just been using it starting this morning. So far, much better than google but a bit of a bother UI-wise.
Of course.
How would you feel about it if, when you link to one of those lost posts, your readers were to re-post them here as comments?
Speaking of which, the Internet Archive is still offline. 🙁
I don’t see much point. The handful of posts that didn’t make it were ancient and of no great significance. Not things I’d be likely to refer to. In at least a couple of cases, I’m happy they’re harder to find.
Wilson, the slasher, was trans.
Okay, I’ll respect your wishes. [ Begins covert search for embarrassing posts containing photos of David on his Throne of Evil. ]
It’s the thing about doing this for so long – NEARLY EIGHTEEN BLOODY YEARS – you tend to get better at it. Or at least, you change your mind about some things.
It’s hard to imagine, I know, but there was a time I was young and foolish.
Today In Racism™; Part the Second – noticing plagiarism.
And now you’re no longer young.
There has to be a name for this idea.
What is the name of this concept that we all exist where and when we do as some accidental mistake of a stork? This was last popularized by Disney’s Soul and it is very destructive to families and societies.
YOU UTTER BASTARD.
There went another overcoat.
Untold numbers of theses and dissertations are at risk.
And Georgetown’s X account has a short, context-free post mourning the death.
When did Miss Piggy get into the pronoun game?
Endangered
speciestheses.On the other hand….
Georgetown’s Women’s Basketball, to be specific.
It’s a pernicious, hippyish notion and tends to be mentally blunting. For instance, my favourite line from that post – the indignant progressive who says, with some self-satisfaction, “It’s only by chance you were born to said ancestors.”
As if one could have entirely different ancestors who are entirely unconnected to the ancestors one does actually have. As if, while having entirely different ancestors, you could somehow be exactly the same person you are now, and not someone else.
Joke’s on you. It’s not overcoat season here yet.
It will be.
Those who wish you harm: keep in mind that calls to exterminate men or imprison Catholics or arrest all MAGA people are the kind of calls that in many times and places have led to actual genocides (Armenia, Bosnia, Congo, China, Russia…..).
I am daily seeing social media posts from liberals I know that we’re “literally” living in 1933 Germany and must vote accordingly.
These same liberals support punishing wrong-thinkers with loss of employment and actual prison (and, of course, deplatforming.)
It was a lot easier to ‘vote with your feet’ in 1933 Germany than it was in 1917 Russia.
Isn’t it “interesting” that these liberals never talk about the horrors of communism?
I’d suspect it’s because they know nothing about them. When we have people who have not read a book in their life being admitted to college it seems a bit much to expect them to know anything, let alone something that’s been hidden, glossed over, and lied about for a century.
Certainly possible for young liberals, who have been badly mis-educated.
But the liberals I know personally are mostly my age, which is to say middle-aged to retired, and they do indeed know about those horrors because they were reported in the news for so many decades. Unfortunately, these liberals somehow decided that those horrors were exaggerated or excusable or even praiseworthy.
And how did they come to be so badly educated? They were taught by older liberals who knew better but who subscribed to the doctrine “no enemies to the left”.
The older ones aren’t much better. Perhaps they were lying but most of those on the left I’ve spoken with about the death toll of things like the Ukrainian famine, the Great Leap Forward, &c. didn’t have a clue. Hells, a lot of those I’ve spoken with on the right were equally ignorant. The major difference being the reaction of the two groups – the former started inventing rationales on the spot.
Lying and obfuscation are integral features of socialism in all its permutations.
Over the years I came to believe that most of them were only pretending to know nothing: They’d heard about these things but dismissed them from their minds because they conflicted with their ideology. I came to this conclusion by noticing things they would let slip, and by how they would “forget” things that I knew they were told about.
Men are behind the 8-ball at this championship of note.
Community Notes says she ain’t — she’s a basketball player, hence the height.
The previously linked article says the cops were doing a welfare check, because her shrink was worried about her. To me it looks like she had a psychotic break. That would explain the knife and the manic aggression.
Still not worth becoming a cause célèbre for BLM. It was just a tragic situation.
Being a basketball player doesn’t account for the baritone, Community Notes or no.
A 6’5″ woman might have acromegaly, which might have affected her vocal cords.
Pronouns are rohypnol.
(h/t Josh Slocum @disaffectedpod)
dicentra — re rohypnol, further considerations on an analogous topic, see Theodore Dalrymple (0ften quoted on this site)
“In my studies of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is …in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A variety of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
Tell me you’ve never been a parent without telling me you’ve never been a parent.
It is a comment made most often by people who lack a very common but rather significant experience. An experience that tends to throw quite a lot of progressive hokum into doubt. And so, we get this assertion – an insistence – that a specific person, a particular individual – say, our loudly self-satisfied progressive – could just as easily have been the child of someone other than their parents. Via some seemingly paranormal means.
When you state it plainly, it’s a little odd. Foolish, even.
Yes. Odd how with all this focus and hysteria about mental health that her shrink asked the cops to do his (her?) dirty work. I do think the best way to deal with these situations is to do as the BLM people say, send the nutter professionals in to handle these situations. Just perhaps have the cops as backup. These jeenyuses created many of these problems in the first place. Maybe not directly. Maybe so. Either way, not worth wasting good cops when we have far more appropriate canon fodder.
It’s always a blank slate with them.
Again, it’s a pernicious, hippyish idea, and utterly wrong. It denies connection, lineage, and territorial claim. It also denies how Homo sapiens have been reproducing for the last 300,000 years or so, and it denies the things that pretty much every parent will come to realise.
And more to the point, it’s used as a rhetorical weapon by unpleasant people with unpleasant motives. Say, to demoralise and undermine, to say you have no claim on your abilities, your decency, or your home. Everything must be random, a result of predation or some unearned “privilege.”
As if genetics were irrelevant. As if culture and civilisation didn’t matter.
I’m not clever enough to comment, but best blog on the interwebs. Donated.
Bless you, sir. May visitors be impressed by your skills with a kitchen knife.
[ Looks at regulars. ]
Are you sure?
Tell me you’ve never been a parent without telling me you’ve never been a parent.
Speaking of parenting, what 11 year old doesn’t take an iPad as a gift on a first date?
[ Removes 2 crayons from nostrils. ]
[ Acts casual, says nothing. ]
And yet the excessive gifts were fairly low on the list of things that one might notice.
[ Starts compiling Friday’s Ephemera. ]
And in Thing-That-Never-Happens-News.
And yet the excessive gifts were fairly low on the list of things that one might notice.
True, but it does add an extra level of Kafkaesque surreality to the whole enterprise.
It’s the way, amid everything else, she slips in the court appearances.
These delusional, poisonous creatures are paid very well.
This cannot be pointed out too often:
A ruling attitude of liberals: “No enemies to the left”.
Or recall this old bon mot: “Liberals think communists are just ‘liberals in a hurry’ “.
The corollary is: “Liberals think of themselves as ‘communists with more patience’ “.
Think of them as chaff, intended to obscure and confuse.
Seems unlikely they’ll take up residence in the communities they intend to turn over to the criminal element.
Mia Hughes:
Previously and related.
Johnny Somali is at it again, now in South Korea. Permanent solution needed.
Pronouns are rohypnol.
Bookmarkable essay.
And in Thing-That-Never-Happens-News.
She’s not complaining about the male teacher wearing a skirt on dress-up day, probably because she doesn’t want people to think she’s Maud Flanders. In such ways, conservatives concede provocations and territory marking to their opponents, and for what: people will still think she’s Maud Flanders. Much depends on how he wore the skirt, and middle schoolers are at the age to tell when somebody is taking “let’s pretend” too seriously.
She makes a glancing reference to a sane, moral and workable principle (teachers shouldn’t share their personal lives with their students), but then thinks there’s some tactical or strategic advantage to be gained by taking a leaf from the underage trans playbook that a child’s feelings (in this case, a girl is creeped out by this teacher) and whims (she wants to be assigned to a different classroom) are authoritative and create legal rights.
Treating the “creeped out” feeling as an individual whim, and leaving the response as a judgement call for sixth graders to make, undermines it as a protective response to possible sexual predation. Is the teacher overstepping the mark? Is the girl overreacting? Are her classmates underreacting? Adult intervention is required to set things right.
“Empathy”, says the speaker as the clock runs out, making her opponents feel more and not less at home in their belief that they’re the rightful arbiters of who’s entitled to empathy from whom, and all the more certain that empathy in this case requires that the girl and her parents be re-educated to suppress her ick response to skirt-wearing men.
Damn Zionists daring to fly their flags…
Permanent solution needed.
Drop his sorry ass on the other side of the DMZ so he can culturally enrich the North Koreans.
Service dog or prop for bullying strangers?
The woke Inquisition has ways of dealing with such heretics.
Rhetorical question.
Update: it’s still running.
“Policy win”.
IOW, SSDD.
Suicidal empathy.
Stockholm is in the neighbourhood.
The thing that never happens has happened again.
I’ve lost track of the number of liberals who angrily insist that this is not happening, and that anyone who says otherwise is an evil islamophobe. (Meanwhile they rant hysterically about a mythical American Christian Taliban.)
Too damn cute not to share.
[ Pokes spam filter, frees comments. ]
Yes. I assumed the mother was using the fashionable framing deliberately, perhaps in an attempt to highlight the ironies, the contradictions. But it doesn’t work, largely for the reasons you suggest. And especially given the kinds of psychology in play, which are low in conscientiousness and therefore remarkably untroubled by contradictions or double standards.
The kinds of people who enable cross-dressing perverts to have proximity to children, and power over them, are unlikely to be moved by expectations of reciprocation. Their blather about empathy is a ruse, and is not meant to include empathy for the victims of this farce, i.e., children disconcerted by the presence of a cross-dressing pervert.
A better approach, I think, would be to make it clear that the school is actively enabling opportunist degeneracy, and to treat them accordingly.
The European mind cannot comprehend…
By the way, a question. If the spam filter (wrongly) intercepts one of your comments, do you get a message telling you that your comment is being held for approval?
Negative.