Agonies of the Left: Oh, Bitter Tears
In sport you can only dominate your opponents, sometimes and only briefly. Leftism offers the promise of dominating everyone.
You know, that sort of person.
Capitalist Psy-Ops. She used to be funny, now people just laugh at her.
People with more money than you are fiends.
Unlike lovely socialists.
They made you fat. Because they’re evil.
Put down the cake they made you buy and decapitalize your mind.
What’s a leftwing narcissist to do? See also this.
The perfect accessory for the passive-aggressive. “How dare you arrest me? I have a child in tow!”
Consciousness raising.
Thought crime.
A point of work being to avoid destitution. See also this.
New agony discovered. Hurrah.
We are like North Korea.
Laurie embraces the market.
If in doubt.
Part 8 in an ongoing series. Do please keep them coming. We have so much to learn.
Update:
Welcome, Instapundit readers. Our full catalogue of agonies can be found via the links below.
Think of it as a sociological collage of the left and its fretting, or a psychological profile. Or a warning to your children.
For newcomers, the reheated series should give you a flavour of what else goes on here.
I fight constantly for my looks not to matter
Says the woman who changes her profile picture every other week.
Anna,
Says the woman who changes her profile picture every other week.
Yes, it’s a head-scratcher. But in Laurie’s mind, your attempts to look pleasing merely signal your “submission” to capitalism and a “slavish adherence” to patriarchal control. While Laurie’s own fastidious grooming, co-ordinated nails and hair colouring, piercings, tattoos, jaunty hat collection, etc., signal her liberation from such things. They just look awfully similar to the unenlightened eye. And despite railing passionately (if incoherently) against how some ladies choose to adorn their bodies – on grounds that pubic glitter betrays all womanhood – she also insists that not judging other women’s genital decoration is a radical feminist statement.
All things are possible in Laurie’s mind.
All things are possible in Laurie’s mind.
Except consistency.
Except consistency.
I doubt she even thinks in terms of being consistent. Imagine how limiting that would be for an up-and-coming radical. Instead, her “principles” are oddly non-reciprocal, which suggests they’re generated largely for effect, or wheeled out expediently whenever an excuse is needed.
#10:
working class people that make it and then turn into tories, fucking hate them (also Adele)
How does she know that working class who ‘make it’ weren’t tories before?
working class people
How does she know that working class people who ‘make it’ weren’t tories before?
Well, the Guardian can’t exactly boast a massive proletarian readership, and you’d think that cultivating bourgeois values and habits, so often denounced by the Guardian, might play a role in how successful a person is. But still, Ms Holding’s message is clear. Stay on the plantation, prole, where the left will love you forever. Provided you always agree with your Guardian-reading betters.
Incidentally, Laurie’s posturing about competitive sport has rather backfired. As Dan Hannan quipped, “Odd when those keen on community solidarity are uncomfortable with its most common expression.” Laurie has subsequently announced that she’s being “attacked” “viciously” with a “barrage of hate” for her views on tennis. “Hate” now being defined as disagreement and mild mockery. Oh, and she’s blocking people again. For saying “me, me, me.”
A fearless role model for all women.
Amused by the fact that Penny’s radical friends are now quitting smoking.
This was a battle also being fought during my era of socialist conformity. I’m sorry to see it remains de-rigour for ersatz rebels to start smoking (no rulez teecher!) but glad to see they are quitting for the right reasons rather than just because it’s unhealthy. Awareness raising rulez.
Is LP ‘blacked up’ in No. 7?
Is that allowed now?
Will there be an Al Jolson revival amongst trendy lefties?
Incidentally, Laurie’s posturing about competitive sport has rather backfired.
https://twitter.com/PennyRed/status/354180114331873280
Mustn’t laugh.
Mustn’t laugh.
No, that would be proof of your “vicious” “hate.”
I scarcely need to point out that Laurie isn’t keen on the Boat Race either. It’s insufficiently socialist. And an appreciation of sporting accomplishment must always be policed through a lens of leftwing politics. Those are the rules, apparently.
[ Added: ]
As so often, Laurie’s problem is that she doesn’t understand what she feels she ought to criticise in order to signal her leftist credentials. Everything has to be viewed through a filter of leftist presumption, resulting in distortion and inadvertent comedy. It’s quite dogmatic, almost OCD. And so, according to Laurie, any patriotic sentiment is suspect at best, most likely a sign of fascism. Likewise, football is nothing more than “organised sadism” and “corporate-sponsored quasi-xenophobia” that “violently excludes more than half the people.” Why? It just is. It doesn’t seem to occur to her that other, less fiendish motives might be in play quite a lot of the time.
“Incidentally, Laurie’s posturing about competitive sport has rather backfired.”
It’s all so unfair, whines Laurie:
‘I never even said people were wrong to enjoy tennis. Lots of excellent souls clearly do. I just mentioned that I didn’t. Cue barrage of hate.’
But an earlier tweet was a little more, shall we say, ‘judgmental’:
‘I made a promise to my teenage self never to become the sort of person who likes competitive sports, and I’m keeping that promise.’
I wonder if she’ll ever elaborate on what she meant by ‘the sort of person who likes competitive sports’? She couldn’t be thinking of that great mass of stupid proles she otherwise claims to represent, could she?
I wonder if she’ll ever elaborate on what she meant by ‘the sort of person who likes competitive sports’?
I denounce your vicious hatred. You monster.
These people have created their own little world untethered from reality. And it is the very thing they loath — capitalism — which affords them the luxury to do so.
But they seem such small-minded, hateful, bitter people. Where is the humour? Where is the joy?
Where is the humour? Where is the joy?
Once you’ve flattened your personality into two dimensions – power and ideology – there’s not much room for much humanity.
God, but Laurie’s a barrel of laughs, isn’t she? Is Viz comic still running Mille Tant? Because they’ve got an endless stream of storylines right there.
And I might have guessed she’d be a Mac user. Dumping it after only two years, too. That’s the trouble with defining your identity against an ideology: you can’t think of everything. She might look all “radical” to her ignorant chums, but to those of us who have to get by with five-year-old netbooks held together with duck tape, that Macbook marks her out as a spoiled rich kid just as clearly as a BMW, Rolex, or designer clothing.
I have not watched a single tennis match this year, because I wildly dislike twee patriotism, competitive sports and summer
Wow. She’s like totally non-conformist.
Wow. She’s like totally non-conformist.
Yes, in fact Laurie is so non-conformist she has to keep letting us know just how non-conformist she is. It’s what non-conformist people do, you see.
Penny’s pathology points to some kind of awful traumatic upbringing, either sexual abuse or commie-pinko parents (or is it pinko-commie?).
Which, if she’s managed to cook up a genuine case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, there’s cause for a modicum of pity for the damage done to a mere child.
But only a modicum. NPDs grow up to be such relentless @holes that they quickly exhaust what goodwill the rest of us might extend.
Once you’ve flattened your personality into two dimensions – power and ideology – there’s not much room for much humanity.
I am reliably informed that “ideology” means “a rationalization cooked up by capitalist running-dogs to cover their rapacious ways.” Which makes the Left ideology-free.
I informed my reliable informer that such a definition properly belongs to the term “sophistry,” whereas “ideology” is a generic term for “world-view.”
No wonder Jonah Goldberg has fits and seizures when conversing with the Left: their lexicon has been rotated 127° off-kilter, inverted, and stuffed through a wormhole.
David: “you’d think that cultivating bourgeois values and habits, so often denounced by the Guardian, might play a role in how successful a person is.”
Modern Ed.Psych. research is finally wrapping its head around the notion that “traditional” virtues like self-control, conscientiousness, deferment of gratification, etc. are actually highly correlated to future success and happiness. But the academics don’t like it. I’m reading a book on it that makes all the usual Liberal noises, and it quotes a researcher as saying: “It would actually be nice if there were some negative things that went along with conscientiousness.” Um…why? Clearly, so that the high-minded can condescendingly fret over the sad, pathetic lifestyle of those “constrained”, “compulsive” control-freaks who must, MUST be secretly tortured by the self-control and deferred gratification that undergird their worldly success. How else to explain the consistent psychological projection and glaring rhetorical conflation of reasonable “self-control” with abject self-denial?
I am reliably informed that “ideology” means “a rationalization cooked up by capitalist running-dogs to cover their rapacious ways.” Which makes the Left ideology-free.
Or, insist that everything about everyone is already ideological – The Personal Is Political!! – and that their ideology is Just and True.
Power is always its own justification; some Ideologies can’t tolerate that others might not have one.
She hasn’t watched tennis this year, and I haven’t listened to idiot lefties blathering away about things they know nothing about. So we are even, then.
But only a modicum.
Oh, I don’t know, dicentra. You have to see it from Laurie’s perspective. What’s the point of being non-conformist unless you can win social approval by ostentatiously declaring your non-conformism? You can see the bind she’s in.
*[ The TypePad spam filter is performing as usual, i.e., with alarming zeal. If anyone has trouble posting comments, email me and I’ll shake them loose. ]*
If you want your personal political, this is the place to go: http://startmeoff.wordpress.com
If you scroll down to the third item – “Is a minority of one a lunatic?” – you will find the author regretting her lack of sophistication in never having suffered from depression. (At least I think that is what she’s saying. If so, it is a significant new Agony.) She tells us that her friends are just “interesting and pleasant people who would like a more just society, and, to varying degrees, the complete destruction of existing structures with their inherently oppressive dynamics.”
Not too much to ask, really, is it?
“Seriously considering trying to write some kind of guide to doing direct action with kids in tow”
There, that’s what I love about the left in one simple tweet. 1) She’s not just considering but ‘seriously considering’ in case you think, er, she’s not serious. 2) ‘Write some kind of guide’ because you won’t be able to think of anything for yourself unless you are told. 3) ‘Kids in tow’ because you shouldn’t just look after them and care for them, you have to drag them round like prizes or use them as props at protests, though frankly they are a nuisance, right, and anyway who wants to stay at home when all your friends are out enjoying themselves?
I have always wondered at what impetus behind some of the odd purges of the Cultural Revolution. Weird things like dumping all violins and only allowing brass and accordions; but there you have it in larval form. “Tennis is to patriotic” “Boat racing insufficiently socialist”. She would certainly be excited to run the “working group” overseeing cultural pastimes and expressions, and gleefully sending folks who like tennis or football to the camps.
because you have to use [children] as props at protests,
In some circles it’s becoming quite fashionable to use children as tools for “direct action.” As when a woman used her toddlers to block a fire escape and trap the building’s occupants. Note the subsequent, quite vehement displacement of responsibility. If that’s not sufficiently unhinged, consider this great parenting demonstration. In the name of “social justice,” an Occupier named Lotus – one of these clowns – wanted to disrupt lawful business at a major port. She therefore placed her 4-year-old daughter on heavily used train tracks. As you do. Now imagine for a moment that the worst had happened in either of those scenarios. Who do we think these idiots would be screaming at? This isn’t politics; it’s psychodrama.
Surely if you were a ‘socially conscious’ activist intent on bringing down the evil multinational corporations, the most responsible place to start would be ‘big tobacco’. That many of them appear to be smokers is quite instructive. It’s so much more difficult to abstain from something that you enjoy in order to obtain moral purity, so it’s probably best(ie convenient) not to include your habits amongst the bad things that ought to be boycotted. Go for McDonald’s and Starbucks instead, much easier to avoid.
Is there such a thing as ‘ethical tobacco’?
Note to leftist clowns: if you’re really against a system, stop hypocritically grabbing handouts from it for your godawful “art”.
Cultural marxism really is the lowest kind of unflushed turd in the toilet of the marketplace of ideas.
I have never been proud of my country until now.
Bravo, Doug!
And, this: Angus Podgorny, that Andy Murray has done us proud!
I have a schizophrenic younger brother with whom I cannot communicate (not least because he has, in the past, threatened violence against me and my family), and these people sound exactly like him. Their world view is totally skewed toward the paranoid and angry. The world (society, religion, people, what have you) as it actually exists is their enemy and must be resisted and destroyed if possible. I don’t know whether to pity them or, more current, resent them because present-day attitudes give them the freedom to indulge, extensively and disruptively, in their delusions out of some misguided sense of “compassion”. If my brother were in an enforced institutional setting, I wouldn’t have to worry about him being murdered on the street (where he lives), because despite all, he is my younger brother, and while I can’t manage him on my own, I still love him.
Hey, I sympathise with Penny about summer. My least favourite season too. But honestly, you Brits have it easy when it comes to summer, when a few 30 degree days in a row is counted as a heatwave (come and bask in our balmy 45 degree heatwaves sometime). I admit your winters are far worse than ours though.
I have a schizophrenic younger brother with whom I cannot communicate…, and these people sound exactly like him. Their world view is totally skewed toward the paranoid and angry.
Your brother has a physiological brain disorder over which he has no control.
What the hell is their excuse?
Gee, a bitter sort, no?
I would truly love to have the ability to collect up all the Laurie Penny’s of the world and deposit them on an alternate Earth. Temperate climate, natural foodstuffs available (if they can find them, or kill them), and no oppressive patriarchal, capitalist System to get between them and their now-intimate connection to Holy Mother Gaia.
I suspect they’d all be dead within a month…
“You will find the author regretting her lack of sophistication in never having suffered from depression.”
I have just had to physically restrain myself from posting an extremely rude comment on that silly, smug woman’s blog post, a rare event for me. Oh yes, depression and mental illness are so romantic and evidence of such deep and profound insight into the universe, obviously. May she develop strangulated piles…
I haven’t watched a single tennis match this summer, either. In fact, I don’t think I’ve watched one since high school. I just don’t like tennis.
Laurie Penny writes books: http://www.penny-red.com/tagged/books
Clearly, if you see any of her books for sale, you should steal them. Because she hates her some capitalism.
I’m intrigued by Penny’s objection to “twee patriotism”. Does she mean that she would be in favor of more serious, earnest, full-throated patriotism? I assume she would be violently opposed to that, rather than just whining about it. So why imply that the patriotism is too weak, when she’s actually upset that any of it is there?
I’m reminded of a truly great quote from Trudy The Bag Lady,
“I can take reality in small doses, but as a lifestyle, I find it too confining.”
from ‘The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life In The Universe’, starring Lily Tomlin as Trudy
And here we stupid Yanks were pleased that Andy won just because we like our Scot friends and can commiserate when a losing streak has gone on too long. It is, nonetheless, good to know that you poor folks have the same sort of imbeciles that we are forced to deal with every day of our lives, as apparently they represent 51% of our electorate. Misery loves company.
I’m hearin a lot of mockery here, but it all seems to overlook the fact that Penny’s radical friends are starting to give up smoking! Unfreaking real! I mean seriously, try and wrap your conciousness around such a bold and transgressive anti-capitalist act. Oh sure, the rest of us sheep that make up the 99.5% of the population that continues to smoke can make fun, but this is actually a move that should make us sit back and think. Giving up smoking….whoa, heavy.
rjmadden @ July 08, 2013 at 13:10:How does she know that working class people who ‘make it’ weren’t tories before?
She doesn’t. There have always been lots of working-class Conservatives. At the 1872 Conservative party banquet in the Crystal Palace, Henry Cecil Raikes MP famously remarked:
“A few years ago, it was said that if a Conservative workingman could be found he ought to be put in a glass case. We have found for him the largest glass case in England to-night!”
Such “false consciousness” is even more common in the U.S., which truly annoys the Left.
INSTALANCHE!
One of the ironies of this post industrial age is that the “working class” doesn’t.
“Is there such a thing as ‘ethical tobacco’?”
Non-state-subsidized tobacco.
David, I have a question that I’d like to get your opinion on.
One of the tweets posits that ‘patriarchy’ and ‘capitalism’ are intimately connected. I take that to mean that the two bolster or mutually reinforce each other. Or something like that.
Secondly, it also seems to me that people on the left also accuse capitalism of destroying the fabric of society.
Thirdly, society is said to be patriarchal.
So if you take all three of these statements together, they basically say that capitalism and a patriarchal society reinforce each other, except that capitalism destroys the fabric of a patriarchal society.
So which is it? Does capitalism undermine patriarchy? Does it reinforce patriarchy? It’s all very confusing.