Aversions
A thread of possible interest:
This is followed by a non-trivial observation:
On this latter point, should an example prove helpful, readers may wish to revisit the unconvincing contrivance of Guardian columnist Zoe Williams – specifically, her scolding of those who’d prefer not to have sociopathic neighbours – say, the kinds of creatures who blast out loud music in the small hours, and who, for entertainment, hurl pets from upstairs windows.
An aversion Ms Williams denounced as a “demonisation of the poor,” a project of “extinction,” in which those who’d rather not have their ornaments rattled by another all-night next-door rave, are “trying to shunt people out of society for not being rich enough.”
According to Zoe, those who’d prefer not to be assailed by thunderous basslines at 4am, or to have their evenings enlivened by small, terrified animals falling from the sky, are merely being cruel, “dehumanising,” and needlessly judgemental. For Zoe, the problem with ‘problem families’ is simply that they’re poor, and nothing whatsoever to do with how they choose to abuse their equally poor neighbours.
In the world of our Guardian columnist, we – by which she means you – should be “unstigmatising,” which is to say, non-judgemental. Passive and accepting, on an indefinite basis. A process via which empathy, or feigned empathy, is shifted from the working-class victim of crime and antisocial behaviour to the working-class perpetrator of crime and antisocial behaviour, on grounds that the thug or criminal is in some way being oppressed and, unlike their neighbours, being made to misbehave.
Needless to say, this prompted some lengthy speculation as to how Ms Williams might react, should she wake one morning to find a family of violent morons moving in next door to her:
And,
As a real-world test of Zoe’s scrupulously progressive worldview, her professed concern for the common man, it would, I think, make for instructive viewing.
Update, via the comments:
Connor adds,
Well, the idea that Zoe, who lives far removed from rough council estates, would herself behave in the same way she demands that others do is quite laughable. It’s so transparently unconvincing, so absurd, that you have to wonder how these obvious dishonesties can go unchallenged in her world. Unless, of course, everyone in her world is pretending much the same things.
As I said here, with suitably vivid examples:
Part of the reason, I suspect, is that there’s little in-group status to be had in pretending to care about functional people of modest means. Instead, they pretend to care about more exotic demographics. And so, among progressives, we get pretentious compassion for unrepentant and habitual thieves, habitual burglars, habitually criminal drivers. Oh, and dog thieves and armed muggers, obviously.
It seems to me this is the level it typically works on. So, again, pretending.
And let’s not forget Peter Matthews, an Urban Studies lecturer ostensibly offended by “urban inequalities,” and who wants to ensure that more of us live next door to “the poor and marginalised.” Writing in the Guardian, Dr Matthews agonised over litter inequality and the fact that rougher neighbourhoods tend to be strewn with wrappers, cans, and food-smeared detritus. And so, we had lots of fretting about inequalities in litter density, while the question of how the litter gets there remained, rather oddly, of zero interest. With the words drop and littering pointedly not appearing.
Presumably for fear that these practical details might have inegalitarian implications.
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The TV we need.
It would, I think, be quite popular. A ratings smash, as they say.
Elon Musk could buy some of these units and bring in the aliens being dumped into middle-class neighborhoods.
A large part of the housing stock in tony neighborhoods is sub-let anyway, so the sleight of hand should be easy enough to fix.
Back up the renters – and any squatters they invite in – with a legal team.
I think you mean hilarious.
Not my people. That’s all. Simple really. And I would relocate with all due haste.
It would be interesting to see how Thurston and Harper got on with the Murgatroyd brood, all of whom boast Anti Social Behaviour orders.
That. 🎯
Well, the dishonesty, its obviousness, is quite something. And in my proposed reality TV show – Zoe Meets The Murgatroyds – a potential source of some comedy.
And, dare I say it, moments of moral instruction.
Not my people. That’s all. Simple really.
I notice that left-leaning people take great umbrage at that sentiment, thinking we should all like to buy the world a Coke and something must be wrong with you if you just don’t want to be friends . . . unless, of course, it’s the wrong people, like Conservatives. Those people are anathema.
BTW, notwithstanding shrieking girls on TikTok telling me that if I voted for Trump I was not “alllowed” to eat Mexican food on Cinco de Mayo, my favorite cantina in the heart of a red area was enjoying very, very brisk business. I went for the carnitas.
It’s hard not to notice that Zoe and her status-conscious Guardian peers tend to live in neighbourhoods far removed from rough council estates where ‘problem families’ degrade the daily lives of everyone around them. If memory serves, Ms Williams lives in a gentrified part of Camberwell, which boasts a low crime rate, affluent residents, and lots of Georgian architecture. With an average house price well north of half a million.
Well beyond the means of the Murgatroyds, I suspect.
[ Recalls the fate of Tim Eulenspiegel. ]
Glossing over what he means by “poor” or “suburbs”, not a trivial point, there are many places where you can find upscale developments next to areas with mobile homes in various states of repair, both of which are not urban, and the denizens of the latter not “rich”.
As it can be instructive to try and figure out where people are coming from, Mr. Reilly made this statement at a debate in 2016:
Right, Spanish clubs and ethnic food are among the foundations that makes life, “…more interesting and fun…”, with nary a downside.
His X bio also states, “freedom rider”, which is interesting because that happened well before he was born. Hard to take him as a serious person.
[ Recalls the etymological roots of “stigmatize”. Contemplates punishments that would result in stigmata. ]
It scarcely needs pointing out that the Peak District National Park, one of my regular haunts, is usually about as genteel and agreeable as you can get. It’s a place where strangers are likely to say hello, and where if you underestimate the strenuousness of a hike, a passing driver will stop to give you a lift, along with water and some fortifying sweets.
Not an obvious venue for morons armed with ghetto blasters, or morons fighting each other with torn-down branches. Like fucking savages.
Not entirely unrelated.
Imagine, if you will, me winning one of these billion dollar lotteries that come around once or twice a year.
Also not entirely unrelated, this.
Especially the “expression of joy” towards the end.
That reality TV show already exists, check out ‘Nightmare Tenants Slum Landlords” on Youtube (other similar reality show also available) that shows how most (the 5 to 10%) of social housing tenants just can’t help themselves. It’s quite riveting if distressing.
“In the Land of Ten Million Boobs, breasts are no longer binary.”
Another one for my guilty pleasures and unfathomable horrors viewing list.
Ping.
(Did I do that right?)
You did indeed. And bless you, sir. May the thing you remember be as good as you remember.
Like most Leftists, she clings to the notion that wealth disparities are entirely the result of unjust power structures, as if we were living in the 1500s. Indeed, if you went back in time, you’d find among the poor plenty of rascals as well as humble souls who behave themselves, because poverty was in fact imposed on them by the circumstances of their birth.
I think of the average Dickens novel, which has characters from all walks of life, and there are plenty of villains among all strata as well as virtuous rich and poor, but mostly just quirky folks up and down the social continuum.
In a socioeconomic system like ours — where you can get somewhere by the sweat of your brow — dysfunctional people settle in the bottom quintile of the socioeconomic landscape, whereas those who can escape elsewhere do so.
I’ve heard complaining from some quarters about low-income housing not being built in nicer school districts because of NIMBYs, and yet the critics fail to acknowledge that low-income housing attracts dysfunctional people. Yeah, you might get a few reasonably functional single moms in their whose kids behave well, but you’ll also see police cruisers in the parking lot several times a week, plus porch piracy goes up in the surrounding neighborhoods along with other petty crimes. Or in some cases, serious ones.
Is Zoe an insufferable Cluster B who spouts popular talking points to maintain her status? Or is she incredibly naive and low-IQ.
I guess we’ll never know.
[ Adorns tip jar with sea shells, glitter. ]
I enjoy watching a show “48 hours” in a watching-a-train-wreck sort of way. A clear takeaway is that there are segments of society, neighborhoods, where hardly anyone is working (and it is usually women who are working), women have several baby-daddys, everyone goes by a nick name like Red or fat boy, yards are unkempt, people all do drugs. It is not just “poor” ir is chaos. People get shot for owing someone $20.
I spent six months in Puebla, the only city in Mexico that actually celebrates Cinco de Mayo (it’s a purely local event) and it amuses me to point out to annoying baizuo the actual history and meaning of the holiday.
“But but but that doesn’t matter, it’s like St. Patrick’s Day”
“Yeah, I’m Irish Catholic on my father’s side. So about St. Patrick’s Day…”
A “Darling Buds of May”, but updated for the 2025s
Aversion to psychotic ferals, American edition:
Update on father who murdered police officer after cops shot his gun-wielding son:
This makes me wonder yet again what fraction of blacks are psychotic, racist ferals.
See Theodore Dalrymple’s nightmarish accounts of decent but very poor people, trapped among ferals in council housing.
And let’s not forget the ludicrous Peter Matthews, an Urban Studies lecturer with an interest in “urban inequalities,” who wants to ensure that more of us live next door to “the poor and marginalised.”
Note, too, said academic’s struggle with basic logic.
My brother has had both legs amputated below the knee. He lives in an “assisted living” building. This building is a brand new 10 story highrise. He moved in two months after construction was completed 2 years ago. The assisted living apartments take up about 20 units in the building which is shared with subsidized housing units for the low-income. The common areas of the building already look like they’re 10 years old even with a full time security guard stationed in the main lobby.
If you artificially lower the value of something don’t be surprised if people treat it as if it had no value.
Another reason: the ability for a middle-class family to raise several children in a house. Leftists do not like detached single family homes.
This is why it’s standard and required for Leftists to hate cities like Houston, Dallas, Orlando, Phoenix, Charlotte, etc., which have “sprawl”. Which is to say, an affordable ring of single family homes and suburban neighorhoods.
Not anymore.
And note that our academic’s failure to register glaring omissions and fundamental errors is a result of his leftist politics. He has learned to look away from the obvious, to pretend it isn’t there. That’s the price of his piety.
In the thread
This is the kind of mentality that I want to slap upside the head. Dollars to donuts this Holier Than Thou idjit has 1-never been a victim of crime 2-has done his level best to avoid jury duty.
18 years in DA office and I’ve read tens of thousands of police reports, misdemeanor case filings, etc. Finding the person who commits “petty theft” because of “I gotta steal a garbage bag full of cosmetics from CVS because I’m SOOOO hungry” is in the order of finding a unicorn snacking on the tulips at your local park.
These perps – especially the repeat offenders – are doing it because they consider working for a living is for suckers. They choose to steal because they want to, not have to.
I loathe cheap, confrontational reality tv, but I would watch that!
Also, if you artificially lower the value of something don’t be surprised when it becomes valueless. Just look at diplomas and degrees.
My sympathies.
Partial solution: A separate entrance for the subsidized housing units. The welfare recipients thus have no access to the common areas used by the normies.
… champion of the downtrodden – albeit, until now, from a safe distance
A funny article in the Irish Times about how the nice residents and business owners of a nice area of Dublin got an immigrant tent city literally on their doorsteps; how the countermeasures (barricades on every surface and in every eyeline) sap morale and quality of life; how the normal mechanisms of feedback and pushback seem to be disabled; how people are coming to the realization that what had been tolerated as temporary might turn out to be a permanent new normal. Sounds suspiciously like the “legitimate concerns” of nasty people, but these are nice people, so their delicate language about the “time of tents” (as if a plague of waterproof fabric had descended) isn’t interrogated, and their social media probably isn’t worth combing through for any troubling references to the low-class Conor McGregor.
Diversity for thee – but not for me.
Watched stuff like that happen to many of the mountain communities that surround the Los Angeles basin. Any significant snowfall and the “flatlanders” swarm to Big Bear, Wrightwood, et al, tromp through people’s yards (hey, teh snow belong all of us!) block streets, leave tons of trash.
One favorite hiking trail we used to enjoy, just north of Azusa in the San Gabriel mountains, was Bear Creek. If you wanted an easy and nice day hike that got you back into forest, running water and some falls, it was perfect. Until some of the flatlanders decided it was a great place to find some easy squatting not far from the parking lot/trail head and next to the river. Then haul in bbqs, chairs, coolers, and change their baby’s diapers and dump them next to the water, and leave huge messes.
Outdoor etiquette, the very basic rules of hiking — take out everything you bring in and leave the place better than you found it — are unknown or sneeringly ignored by these hordes. Guess such rules are just proof of yte privilege.
Here in the States, we don’t need a TV show for that. We have whole cities dedicated to the premise that voters get to live cheek to jowel the filth they vote for. San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Venice Beach.
Gringos can’t say “dieciséis de septiembre,” so “cinco de mayo” it is.
Jean Valjean. That’s what they think all thieves are. They’re living in Les Miz, which is why they hate all cops (Javert) and glorify revolution.
But that stands to reason, doesn’t it? The Main Cause of Everything is power structures and bigotry. Nobody would steal if they weren’t so desperately hungry.
Which, that doesn’t explain why rich people steal, does it? Why does the middle-class man embezzle from his company? He’s not starving. Bernie Madoff? Never missed a meal in his life.
It just doesn’t register that poor people can be greedy and antisocial just as easily as rich people.
We’re not gonna survive this, are we?
Individually or civilisationally?
It’s always hypocrisy. None of it is real.
Well, the idea that Zoe would herself behave in the same way she demands that others do is quite laughable. It’s so transparently unconvincing, so absurd, that you have to wonder how these obvious dishonesties can go unchallenged in her world. Unless, of course, everyone in her social circle is pretending much the same things.
As I said here:
It seems to me that this is the level it typically works on. So again, pretending.
[ Post updated. ]
Album title.
Heh.
But this is the thing. Sometimes, quite often, the avoidance of obvious factors is so glaring, so implausible, that it doesn’t seem to be accidental. It doesn’t seem to be an error. The impression given is of things being pointedly not considered. Of choosing not to notice things. And hoping others do the same.