Stigma, You Say
Via the comments, and from the land of unfinished thoughts:
Housing is a human right and evictions are an act of policy violence.
My HELP Act would give a lifeline to families facing eviction and vital resources during this time of crisis. pic.twitter.com/RyU1dkBe05
— Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) April 3, 2026
Ms Ayanna Pressley, a congresswoman with gratuitous pronouns, and mouther of the words above, acknowledges that the most common cause of eviction, by far, is the repeated and habitual non-payment of rent. Efforts at eviction generally being a last resort, a desperate and costly attempt to limit further loss or damage. To limit further theft and trespass.
Ms Pressley then complains that this behaviour – behaviour warranting eviction – has “stigma” attached to it. Which, of course, it should.
As Egino adds in the comments,
Adding further costs and complications to the process of evicting problem tenants seems likely to result in higher rents and a contraction of supply. And then there’s the claim – baldly asserted and seemingly unchallenged – that “housing is a human right.” A claim that, if enacted, would entail the compelled labour of others. For which, I believe we have a word.
When claims of this kind are made, there’s a recurring reluctance to complete the train of thought, to acknowledge certain, fairly basic, practical and moral details. Instead, we often get something not unlike a child’s shopping list, in which little thought is given to what costs might be involved.
And so, we arrive at the very modern impulse to frame almost any kind of personal shortcoming, including moral shortcomings, as some state of blessed victimhood. In which, normal consequences for delinquent behaviour become violence, something to denounce and inhibit. With the result that the functional and law-abiding are faced with ever more obligations to indulge that dysfunction, and ever more difficulty defending their own interests.
Inevitably, in the subsequent replies, we learn that Ms Pressley has an extensive property portfolio of her own, including several residential rental properties, from which she earns around a quarter of a million dollars a year. Readers may wonder how Ms Pressley might feel if her tenants decided that “housing is a human right” and that “eviction is violence” and therefore abusive and illegitimate, and so, hey, screw paying the rent, despite our promises.
And that $250,000 a year is only outstanding rent and so, by Ms Pressley’s moral calculus, of no importance.
Via Pst314.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
So pay the rent like you said you would.
Stigma is not a bad thing.
As we’ve discussed before, social stigma and the concept of shame do have some value as social correctives. Deterrents of a sort.
Or maybe I should say had.
What grates, I think, is the very modern impulse to frame almost any kind of personal shortcoming, including moral shortcomings, as some state of blessed victimhood. With the result that the functional and law-abiding are faced with ever more obligations to indulge that dysfunction.
Dodging rent is an act of violence, eviction is only self defense, problem sorted (offer not valid in Washington, Oregon, California, or New York).
I’m just going to leave this here.
For no reason whatsoever.
Parasitism is an act of violence, and we should do everything possible to stop it.
Translation: my constituents are scumbag losers.
This cannot be said too often.
Putting forth their best candidates.
The feigned naïveté is wearying.
There is at the very least an assumption of infantilism. Again, eviction is generally a cost to be avoided if possible – a last-ditch effort, one usually preceded by numerous attempts, likely made over months, to resolve the issue. If a tenant struggles with the idea that not paying the rent is followed by one’s delinquent arse ending up on the street – if that’s a concept too complicated and alien to comprehend – then I’m not sure what to suggest.
Beyond avoid, I mean.
One more time.
And for those of you who follow him, and I think you should, Mr Burkett is back.
And not entirely unrelated to the post above.
As I was saying on a previous thread re Di’s X discussions regarding the aesthetics of art, or more specifically their decline. This guy is speaking in the context of Europeans vs Americans and Marlow’s Hierarchy of Needs (which I was also kinda getting at but had forgotten the term) but there’s a parallel to many elites and art snobs in our own culture. Those who are born into a highbrow social status, arts-wise as well vs. those who are the first generation of their families to achieve such opportunities on their own or mostly so.
https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/2040976854065049796
Europeans are pissing away the whole of Western civilization, the art is just collateral damage.
But again, stigmas and shame don’t just grow on trees. Someone has to express them, especially in company that does not like hearing it even if many of them agree with it. The current environment instead throws the stigma and shame onto anyone attempting to apply stigma and shame in the direction it actually needs to be applied. It’s somewhat akin to the Five Monkeys Experiment. Kinda. Sorta.
Extremely. It is getting very, very old. It is long past time for SOMEONE, in the medical community at the very least, someone or entity of some gravitas, to at the very least apologize for their part or institutions’ part in not just the covid mess but this transitioning of children as well. There cannot be any chance for a restoration of trustin the medical profession without it. At least not within a generation. It’s not about the politics or about being right, it’s just how things, especially human things, work.
Never going to happen. Cannot happen. That’s an admission of liability, and you can’t put the pin back in that grenade.
Surely Rep Pressley would agree that good government is also a human right, in the sense she’s using the term – ie something everybody should get for free. And tax liens are an act of violence!
But instead we’re told that government is so important that there’s no end to the amount of money it should get, while various forms of private goods and services are so important that no one should have to spend anything on them at all.
LOL. That.
Tell me you want to turn your city into a homeless shelter without saying you want to turn your city into a homeless shelter.
This will of course be followed by an inevitable lack of housing, as builders will stop making residential units. Unexpectedly™.
And as the builders flee, and the homeless are attracted by the generous social programs, the decline will accelerate.
But, as cities in the US that are trying this are discovering, unlike the USSR and other socialist states in the past, they can’t put up barricades to prevent the productive people from leaving.
Relevant.
Partly, yes. Anyone who was actively involved in the most draconian, or even slightly draconian…if that’s a thing…measures definitely has liability issues. That does not prevent more innocent or even completely innocent parties from speaking up on behalf of say the AMA …YES I KNOW THAT ONLY 15% OF DOCTORS BELONG TO THE AMA…ahem…when inevitably the more guilty parties step aside, retire/general attrition, or are pressured to step aside by people who actually care about the medical community’s reputation. At some point, this lack of trusts starts to erode the bottom line. People are just now (why it’s taking so long…well…see previous post) starting to get it through their thick doctors’ and nurses’ heads that the lack of trust is affecting their willingness to accept medical care/advice/whatever from those who refuse to acknowledge that the problem even exists. Which is why this is even…finally…coming up right now. And that specific X thread was begun by a Californian. The concern is finally getting through to them.
I have known more than a few leftists who want to change that.
WTP:
This guy is speaking in the context of Europeans vs Americans and Marlow’s Hierarchy of Needs
——————————-
That post is simplistic and reductionist to the point of incoherence.
Well, I would agree on simplistic and reductionist…kinda…and agree that the Bolshies made more about the arts, specifically. However to his more general point on the shop window thing, the aesthetics of life in general, for the average person were a big selling point for the West. The Soviets couldn’t produce a decent washing machine let alone jazz, Hollywood, rock and roll or any other “pedestrian” interest but by
GodLenin, they had the Bolshoi.I was more interested in his contrasting the European snob attitude towards Americans, the Marlow hierarchy and how it kinda paralleled a similar point that I was trying to make on the other thread. I don’t 100% agree with that Marlow pyramid either but I do believe it is approximately and directionally correct. This is what made art a valuable tool for the Bolshies.*
*Whole other rabbit hole as to how the subjectivity of art was used to feed artists’ and their sycophants’ egos.
There is an interesting, simple exercise one can conduct to find out the consequence of some policy. In the case of renters, ask if you, personally, or the person you are talking to, would become a landlord if you/they discovered it is impossible to evict non-payers or get money from those who destroy the rental. I knew a guy in Chicago who had a rental and after a few years the headache was too much and he sold it. Bye-bye rental property supply.
I see what you did there.
I believe the gentleman were referring to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Marlow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a little known unpublished work by Raymond Chandler. Most notable for the change in spelling of the detective’s name.
At the top of the hierarchy:
Getting paid.
Playing the horses.
Booze.
Dames.
Good times, good times.
No. Maslow was the guy Elsa got on that plane with. Victor Maslow.
Bunny bookmark.
Lol. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Stop it right now. This is a Reddit thing.
Either Ms Pressley has an almost charming naivete, in which she believes United States has infinitely deep pockets forever and will never run out of resources and so any and all demands can and must be met, or she’s part of the crew of Dunning-Kruger misfits who are trying drive the United States to its knees by overloading every system.
At some point, we won’t be able to pay this 38 trillion dollars of debt. And then what? The Revolution! Yippee! We’ll see if we can top China’s record for how many bodies we can stack on top of each other.
It’s the way to bet.
That would be the Cloward-Piven misfits if the goal is to overload the system past the point of collapse.
From the replies to this.
Harnessing the power of lameness and table tennis.
You have to marvel at the conceit that the way to stop mass looting, machete wielding and all kinds of stabby liveliness is to open a youth club that offers counselling and table tennis.
Because Our Betters can’t bring themselves to admit that they’ve imported an essentially feral population. One that cannot be fixed. And which frankly, even if it were possible, isn’t worth the effort and expense.
But will they get free driving lessons (unlike the natives)?
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the Trump administration that attacking civilian infrastructure in Iran is prohibited under international law, according to his spokesman.
“Even if specific civilian infrastructure were to qualify as a military objective,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Dujarric said an attack on these civilian targets would still be banned if it risks “excessive incidental civilian harm.”
If U.S. President Donald Trump moves forward with his threats to strike power plants and bridges, Dujarric said a court would determine whether the attacks amount to war crimes.
And if the United States just . . . left the UN?
My husband has an aunt who worked for some NGO doing business with the likes of the UN and the IMF. She was paid handsomely to do two things: write white papers and attend meetings. Said meetings were never held in places like Overland Park, Kansas but posh capital cities, usually places like Geneva (and no offense to people in Overland Park, I’d much rather hang with you guys for a few beers).
“Yes, I saw how much interested you were in poor Grinevich’s nails,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, laughing.
“It’s too much for me,” responded Levin. “Do try, now, to put yourself in my place — take the point of view of a countryman. We in the country try to bring our hands into such a state as will be most convenient for working with. So we cut our nails; sometimes we tuck up our sleeves. And here people purposely let their nails grow as long as possible, and link on small saucers by way of studs, so that they can do nothing with their hands.”
Stepan Arkadyevich smiled gaily.
“Oh, yes, that’s just a sign that he has no need to do coarse work. His work is with the mind. . . .”
— “Anna Karenina” by Tolstoy
“Midnight basketball”, anyone?
The level of unrealism – and eye-widening inadequacy – is quite something.
Even if it were possible, it isn’t our job to fix these ferals. Or to attempt to explain the most basic aspects of civilisation.
They just shouldn’t be here.
The Venn diagram of the two is a perfect circle.
In Boston something doesn’t go to plan, unexpectedly, of course.
Meanwhile in Florida, a transplant and dope “advocate” has unexpected thoughts.
Over in Caledonia another day ends in Y.
Savour the irony.
Details.
“[C]laims that only women are affected are “scientifically” inaccurate.”
The disease is endometriosis.
The Canadian reality shortage has reached alarming levels.