Unreliable Narrators
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.
That’s *almost” it. They need to be perverse because they desperately want to know that someone cares about them enough to help them set limits.
Every single person I’ve met who exhibits this behavior (in my 55 years on this Earth) has come from a less-than-ideal family situation. Parents who care too little. Parents who interfered too much. Every. Last. One.
Now we know…to stop our good host bursting at the seams
If looters want free stuff we can put them in prison. Free housing, free food, free medical care, free dental care, free heating…
Of the avowed Marxists I’ve encountered, the full-on revolutionary leftists, almost all of them seemed to have issues of some kind. Something not explicable in terms of their own arguments.
And you do have to marvel at how self-styled progressives – the people who loudly announce their own supposed compassion and altruism – are so often defined by making weirdly contrived excuses for pathological selfishness.
Say, the kind of pathological selfishness seen above and throughout the Progressive Retail series. Excuses for sociopathic behaviour are a staple of progressive posturing, appearing all but weekly, and with increasing moral convolution and outright perversity.
This should not pass unremarked.
And again, given the contrivance required – the routine departures from reality and consecutive thinking – it seems fair to suppose that the motivation is less a matter of reality, of things out there, and more a matter of psychology. Of some internal trouble.
And meanwhile your token diversity Indian subscriber is off to have a nice meaty Sunday roast at a proper old British pub.
Nightmare, all this cultural appropriation. Or whatever it is.
Dicentra: “…that kid I posted not too long ago, whose parents found a head and hands in his room…“
Say what?! Human head and hands..?
What you notice also, typical of Marxists, is that they are rather indifferent about the “poor” people they supposedly care about.
Because the issue is not just that people at all income levels commit theft.
The issue is people at all income levels are also victims of theft, probably more so when poor.
The poor are also less able to recover from the financial impact of theft or the consequences of high crime (like store closures), less able to just move away somewhere m
They don’t care about the poor. It’s just a pretence.
“So, more than was strictly necessary. “
Always overorder, because curry is one of those things that’s even better reheated the next day!
Not something you forget once you’ve seen it.
Absolutely accurate, this. I didn’t find it funny at all.
[ Muffled chuckling. ]
Engagement-bait post on X asks for examples when you don’t realize at first that this actor here is the same actor over there.
Two exemplary ones:
Gary Oldman
Johnny Depp
Jenette Goldstein was one that surprised me when it first clicked. And which reminds me of one of the ripostes from Aliens:
Still good.
Unspanked on aisle four.
And in “pan-species desire” news.
Engagement-bait post on X asks for examples when you don’t realize at first that this actor here is the same actor over there.
Too easy to play in the UK where I am convinced they have about 40 actors and everyone switches shows during the rotation in theatrical volleyball. Just finshed the two seasons of “Blue Lights” on britBox and now wondering where Happy will go next after his reincarnation from Seamie in “Hope Street.”
*sigh* I wish they had continued with “Annika” past two seasons . . .
Somewhat related: my Husband enjoys watching old TV series on Tubi. We are watching “NYPD Blues” and I have to say, I don’t think Rick Schroder was appreciated enough for his portrayal of Det. Danny Sorenson. But watching old series, it is fun to see characters walk into an episode and you’re thinking, “Oh, look, it’s so-and-so before they got known for this-and-that . . .”
Spanking would be insufficient, unless it leaves them bleeding and crippled.
The authors deserve a little attention from animal welfare authorities.
I just watched this movie the other evening.
As tomorrow is going to be traumatic for many, Time™ offers some helpful advice, as only they can.
Okay.
They encourage neuroticism, then offer supposed cures.
A favorite tactic of the left.
Pelt them with kidneys.
Save a couple for that wanker employee telling people to go round rather than do his job.
Johnny Depp and Val Kilmer catch me by surprise. Also Gary Sinise. I used to mix up Robert DiNero and Al Pacino.
Watched an old rerun of M*A*S*H with Jack Soo as a guest star. Couldn’t place him though I was sure I knew some other character. Then flipped over to an episode of Barney Miller. Ahh…
Where are the sirens?
What is truly stunning is that as many as 21% of Americans think otherwise.
Just think what pain and misery could have been avoided, and what future pain and misery still could be avoided, if people with (supposedly) common sense would just speak up.
One for Daniel, I think.
Absolutely accurate, this. I didn’t find it funny at all.
Suffered through this earlier this week. Yes, not funny at all.
Re for Daniel:
Bowie I buy, Lynch kinda from what I’ve read but not a huge fan personally, Dylan as he matured, Nico probably, don’t know much about Morissey, but Byrne? David Byrne or someone else? Or did he have a baptism in Pat Boone’s pool that I didn’t hear about?*
*Perhaps because I have gotten nauseous regarding celebrity “news” starting many, many years ago.
Does everyone get a free “I’m with Stupid” t-shirt? C’mon…for 80 bucks, surely…
(fixed? link)
Flashback of note.
‘Children’s’ should be taken advisedly.
Das:
One of the more poignant characters in the progressive repertory theater is the silenced, emasculated father figure who has no option but to go along with the transitioning/queering of their house and children. Some are just as brainwashed as their wives, others break out in toothache smiles.
Yes, less than 5% of Teen Vogue‘s readership consisted of actual teenagers. Which raises a question I’ve asked before: What kind of adult searches out a magazine with lots of adolescent-level politics and sexualised content – how to masturbate, use sex toys, etc – and which is supposedly aimed at teenage girls?
Still, let’s not forget that a venture hailed by the Guardian as “serious journalism” and a “voice for the Resistance,” and described as “lucrative,” proved to be commercially disastrous, with its print edition folding less than two months later.
Yes, this is true.
[ Vaguely recalls something read many years ago ]
Some contend that the romanticization of women as compassionate and virtuous is a consequence of the myths [ lies ] concocted in the age of Courtly Love.
I like to joke that there are only twelve actors in Canada. This is most noticeable in low-budget genre TV, which was filmed here for decades for economic reasons. The format is one or two American actors parachuted in to anchor the show, and the same dozen or so jobbers to fill out the cast. Like Teryl Rothery.
Twelve O’Clock High is great for this, although you have to be d’un certain age to recognize most of them.
Yes, although I don’t think “art” is exactly required. Captain Marvel and The CW’s Supergirl were not exactly…art, yet they both do a stunning job of revealing just how shallow the “oppressed women” narrative actually is.
I think there’s a different dynamic at play: most of these writers simply aren’t smart enough, or have enough self-awareness, to realize how people who aren’t deep in their own brand of self-deception see their work. They’re so used to the artifice, to lying to themselves, that the crimestop kicks in when they try. But they have to write something, so they write what they’re most familiar with. And then you get heroic, powerful young women whose biggest enemy is…older, more successful women. Who are deep in the throes of regret for the choices they had to make to become successful.
The mills of the gods don’t always grind slowly.
Speaking of lunatics… (somewhat NSFW, though)
Dog vs. security cam
For quite some time I’d thought the Aussies had more sense than the rest of the Anglosphere. It seems I was mistaken.
Same here. Pity. The crown was there for the taking. Hopefully it has returned to its rightful place. Though Argentina and Italy deserve props for keeping it going outside the Anglosphere.
Fatal flaw: Venn diagram omits girlfriends.
I have a theory: men and women each have their own flaws. One flaw of women is to pretend weakness to get what they want from men. Not all women do this but I have seen plenty who do. It was when women became the majority in universities that we started getting safe spaces, coloring books, trigger warnings, fainting at the sound of anything contrary, and claims that words are violence. This fake “harm” dovetails nicely with Marxist theory of oppression. Thus the two became wedded in the woke world. Women not only needed to be liberated, they were an oppressed class (like serfs) who would be oppressed forever even when 60% of college students and governors and mayors.
Why are photos reversed in so many twitter posts?
If that’s what it appears to be, both the cat and the dog have acquired a theory of mind about the camera.
Do they interpret the lens as an eye, and furthermore as an eye that can reveal their illicit deeds? Is the cat actually a tattle-tale about the dog’s behavior? I know dogs are capable of feeling bad when they’re caught doing bad things, but why would a cat care about rules applying to the dog?
Would the cat ever shift the camera so it could eat something forbidden? And if so, would the dog rat out the cat?
To defeat the image-scanning bots looking for copyright violations. People used to upload mirrored videos to YouTube for the same reason, but YouTube now scans for that.
Alternate take: it isn’t, it’s just been edited for amusement and engagement.
If they develop opposable thumbs we are doomed. Doomed, I say! Remember Poul Anderson’s Brain Wave?