Reheated (127)

I’m exercising my eyebrows.

Re-reading the thing this morning, I’d forgotten how mad it is, how laughably cack-handed. It really is a textbook illustration of The Desperate Segue. 

And so we go from acknowledging the rarity and expense of mirrors in the sixteenth century to suddenly being lectured on the psychological crises of cross-dressing men. As if this were an obvious trajectory for catalogue notes in a museum about Tudor England.

When badly dressed actors open their mouths.

Further to our rumblings about progressive empathy, or pseudo-empathy, this.

Also this.

Further to our rumblings about progressive empathy, or pseudo-empathy, this.

Also this.

Which brought to mind this:

A person doesn’t just happen to be born into a context that their parents also just happened to be born into.

I could not have been born to Mr and Mrs Jeong in South Korea, any more than I could have been born to a Yemeni peasant couple, or a Californian billionaire. Much as I – the person talking to you now – could not have been born in 1652.

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.

Yet progressive empathy, or whatever it actually is, would seem to be premised on a kind of Rawlsian tosh that falls apart the minute you start thinking about it.

It’s important to remember that empathy – understanding the perspectives of other people, their motives and desires – can often result in revulsion, in moral disgust. And if, say, moral disgust isn’t a socially acceptable possibility – if that’s ruled out in advance, as above – then whatever it is you’re doing, it isn’t empathy. 

From the carjacking post: 

The mismatch of progressive assumptions with the perpetrators’ own stated motives, the way their minds work, is quite something. The idea that carjacking, for instance, is done for reasons of survival, to meet basic needs, and only done in desperation or under duress, because of some supposedly oppressive and racist social system, is darkly funny. Perverse to the point of absurdity.

As illustrated, vividly, in the study linked above – say, by the female carjacker named PoPo, who terrorised a random woman, stole her car, her purse and her wedding ring, then “bought some drink and… weed and… got my hair did.” Because, you know, hair.

Or her fellow carjacker, Little Ty, who, contrary to progressive assumptions, had no need of money – “We don’t need money, we have money” – via means one might guess at – but who simply finds pleasure in violating others. Or the ferals named Loco and Corleone, who boasted that financial security wouldn’t stop them from indulging in carjacking because they just like doing it. Because it’s exciting.

Pretty much by default, the mental process – such as it is – is see it, want it, take it. The fear and degradation of the victim is just icing on the cake. A point expanded on by a carjacker named Tall: “It’s a rush thing… when you’re pulling someone out the car… Just a rush come over me… I mean, I feel good.” And likewise, Big Mix, who found his victims’ terror a “kick,” and indeed “hilarious.” And the aforementioned PoPo, who boasted, “It’s funny just to see them shaking and pissing all over theyself.”

And yet progressives will conjure elaborate explanations, outright fantasies, that bear no relation at all to the motives stated by the criminals themselves. The reality of their nature.

Ooh, I hear laughter in the rain…

I’m not sure I comprehend the basis of her grievance.