Via the comments, some elaboration on an Ephemera item from Friday, specifically, this feat of contrivance:
Tiktoker blames capitalism for looters and suggests we should have compassion for these criminals instead of law enforcement dealing with them pic.twitter.com/xh89bARkpE
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 13, 2025
To which, Darleen replied,
Looters target evacuation areas. Between the time owners have packed up the kids, pets, and important documents, and when the fire trucks arrive (can be hours or days), looters feel free to liberate all manner of household or store contents.
Dicentra added, not unreasonably,
The kinds of people who enthuse about looting and rioting, and who seem to find it ideologically arousing – often progressive women – are not generally in the realm of coherent argument. Or indeed, good faith. Hence the disregard for the obvious factors mentioned by Darleen. For those like the wide-eyed creature seen above, I don’t think reality plays much part in what’s happening in their heads and then spilling out of their mouths. It’s much more about their own psychology, their own need to be perverse.
See, for instance, this. In which, Vice columnist Rachel Miller, a terminally woke young woman, attempts an indignant defence of looting and feral predation. Via which the allegedly downtrodden will be liberated and empowered, thanks to the destruction of their own local pharmacies, convenience stores, and other amenities.
And who concludes, with obvious self-satisfaction, that those who would rather not have their livelihoods destroyed and their neighbourhoods reduced to a rubble-strewn warzone – including quite a few black people – are “kinda (or definitely) racist.” Because “anti-looting discourse” is a function of “white supremacy.”
Ms Miller’s rush to denounce “respectability politics” – i.e., expectations of moral reciprocation and a general aversion to inflicting on others, arbitrarily, the kind of violation one would not care to receive – is, I’d say, a clue.
It’s not politics, it’s pathology.
One might, for instance, wonder how Ms Miller would feel were she the female Amazon driver seen being swarmed and assaulted here:
Having been assaulted and robbed, and left sprawled in the road, as if she were nothing of consequence, would she be overwhelmed with optimism and other warm feelings?
Answers on a postcard, please.
Recent Comments