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.
White progressive women really are the worst of society.
Upon watching it again, I’ve come to a conclusion: The woman is hardcore Marxist to begin with, and she opportunistically uses the looting as a pretext to bash capitalism.
She asserts that the looters aren’t motivated by greed but by desperation, and then observes that Elon and his ilk can commit wage theft when they want to appropriate stuff that’s not theirs.
How does that work? Poor people loot because they don’t have enough, but people who have more than enough also unjustly appropriate stuff. When does the transformation occur? At what income level do you stop stealing for a righteous cause and start stealing for an unrighteous one?
Because people across all income levels commit theft — it’s just that looters are scary because they’re on the streets, whereas an identity thief might not even be in the country and is hidden behind a keyboard.
No, she doesn’t care whether the looters are greedy or desperate. She’s just happy she can use them to illustrate her Cause.
🎯
They’re not our best and brightest hope. They’re reliably, directionally wrong, on any number of issues.
And hence the acronym, A.W.F.U.L. Affluent White Female Urban Liberal.
Another A.W.F.U.L., on the same subject.
Note how Professor Dávila’s outpourings are oddly non-reciprocal and difficult to distinguish from sociopathy.
Speaking of sociopathy, I found a YouTube channel called The Behavior Panel, four blokes with training in spotting sociopaths and interrogating criminals and terrorists and the like.
Here they are dedicating two episodes to analyzing that kid I posted not too long ago, whose parents found a head and hands in his room, and he up and confessed with zero natural affect.
Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b_g31OT39U
Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDuNC6Z0wjg
Yes, they conclude he’s a psychopath, and one of the most textbook cases they’ve ever seen.
Speaking of sociopathy, I found a YouTube channel called The Behavior Panel
One of my favored channels. Their episode regarding Prince Andrew’s disasterous BBC interview is comedy gold. A British friend and I still use the phrase “just an ordinary shooting weekend” with the stress on the last syllable of “weekend” to crack each other up.
No, she doesn’t care whether the looters are greedy or desperate. She’s just happy she can use them to illustrate her Cause.
Joining her kinder, gentler sister who believes so much in the nobility of the poor that she remains blind to any meanness. That sort of person is mostly found as a foot soldier or volunteer to NGO charities, never knowing or wanting to believe their superiors are just in it for the money.
That. Again, that.
Can’t believe I’m here at the weekend, toiling away, again. I should be out… fishing, or golfing, or scuba diving or something.
Meh. If you went fishing , you would just find yourself back in a forum similar to this one only you would be debating whether that’s a redfish, bluefish, whiting, weakfish or sea trout. All positions stated with extreme 100% confidence. Ask me how I know…
Huh? And here I thought people looted because they were hungry? What? They won’t run INTO a Salvation Army for a free meal … but they’ll run INTO a fire? They won’t run INTO a food bank … but they’ll run INTO a fire?
Communists are such deep thinkers …
And pssst … the fires are extinguished where they’re looting. They’re running INTO the ashes.
What I realised over the past decade, marriage, working with senior women, looking at educated progressive women…is that women communicate more, and express or display empathy and compassion.
They are not necessarily better at communicating, or higher in genuine empathy or compassion.
And this is not just with regards to men, where the utter lack of empathy is striking and almost taken for granted.
Women, especially the ones most loud about feminism and their own victimhood, have nothing but contempt towards less fortunate members of their own gender.
What’s the phrase again? “The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution.” Or something similar.
I did go fishing once, years ago. Or rather, I sat on the riverbank while a friend fished.
It was not what I’d call a thrilling day out.
These are not serious adults.
Well it is called fishing, not catching. It does have other advantages…tho those other advantages decrease proportionally to the number of other people involved
If fishing is thrilling something is wrong.
I could almost feel sorry for her staffers being dragooned into that.
Almost.
And again, the message seems to be “We are unable to co-ordinate our moves, or even our limbs.”
Which doesn’t exactly leave one swollen with confidence.
[ Sounds of scuba gear being dragged up from cellar. ]
Lady, Just go pet your cats. Looters are criminals and should be treated as such. No sob stories, just jail them. Looters destroy families. They are scum.
Absolute gold if you ever found this arrogant woman annoying.
The woman is hardcore Marxist to begin with, and she opportunistically uses the looting as a pretext to bash capitalism.
The grand irony is that such behaviours are considered acceptable and are encouraged while capitalism exists but are quickly punished under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Apparently one has a duty to fellow comrades but nothing but disdain is owed to fellow citizens.
Women: it is startling how many girls the murderers get. Women write letters to them in prison. The NYC assassin was deluged in mail and $.
Looters: it is a simple-minded lazy trick to ascribe benign motives to looters. I have known too many cases of DEI hires who just had no interest in doing a job once given one. If they followed the advice of Amy Wax, any young black person could have a job and a multiple of the income they have currently. A blogger I read had a landscaping business in San Fran. Whenever he encountered a homeless person he gave his business card and said “just show up, I have work always”. Of 100 cards given out, not a single one showed up.
[ Watches Grand Tour episode Jaaaaaaaags, awaits delivery of curry. ]
Not a new phenomenon, regrettably.
Don’t see why you’d need scuba gear for that.
[ Squeak of Neoprene. ]
JD Vance needs to speed up opening the baby camps…
[Mark Twain has entered the chat]
Love the horses but it’s still pig swill.
Status update: I AM FULL OF CURRY.
How much flatbread?
Kulcha naan and paratha. To go with the chicken tikka korma, the chicken Jalfrezi, and the Jaipuri chicken. And the vegetable rice. And the dahi raita. And the poppadoms.
So, more than was strictly necessary.
[ Fingers packet of chewy caramel Tim Tams. ]
I remember when it first started to occur to me that the sugar-and-spice thing might be a big con in the aggregate. I was reading a story about some nasty, ugly drug kingpin in South America, I forget which one, but the number of women he had around him, then thinking that his henchmen weren’t just in it for the money, on down the line, the number of women who tolerated such evil scum was rather disproportionate to the number of such men. Then thinking about the number of assholes that I knew IRL who did not seem to have trouble attracting hot babes. Now of course these are not all one-to-one relationships, nor even one-to-many but given biology and human nature, the number of women in this world who have little fundamental concern about evil is way disproportionate to the narrative we are steeped in.