Some elaboration on an item from Friday’s Ephemera:

Liberals do this very weird thing where some deranged, violent criminal sticks a gun in your face and demands your wallet, but the wallet only has $20 in it, so from then on they’ll minimize the crime by describing it as, “stealing only $20.”

This is so fundamentally dishonest… https://t.co/fDj2uCk8m1

— wanye (@xwanyex) November 23, 2025

Readers will note the sly conceit that what matters, all that matters, is the sum being stolen this time, not the whole at knifepoint or gunpoint business – as if this lively means of cash extraction were some trivial detail, beneath acknowledgment. A thing with no informational content, no clues as to the character of the perpetrator, their fitness for a civilised world.

Those pointing to the smallness of the sum as if it were a significant mitigating factor don’t seem troubled by the implication that someone who will violate others, and threaten them with death, for a mere $20 is someone who will use very small incentives to behave in monstrous ways. Likewise, the implication that robbing people with only $20 to surrender is a matter of no import.

Indeed, one might note the underlying belief that the outrage and horror of being robbed at knifepoint or gunpoint – the degree of violation and moral injury, the amount of wrongness – depends only on the amount of cash you happened to have on you at the time.

Which, again, rather screws over people who don’t have a lot of money.

The chappie doing the pointing in this case is Brian Rosenwald, a scholar in residence at the University of Pennsylvania, a teacher of history and political science, a shaper of young minds. Mr Rosenwald objects to a three-strikes law whereby “you had people stealing $10 items and getting life sentences,” which he describes as a “disaster,” a series of “foolish, unjust outcomes.”

To which commenter John D replies,

There is, shall we say, some sleight-of-hand. And a now familiar flattening of values, a signature of progressive posturing. And so, as noted in the replies on X, histories of armed robbery, carjacking, assault and battery, serial sucker-punching and other vigorous activities, all horrific for the victims, are somehow reduced to “stealing $20.”

So hey, no biggie.

As noted here many, many times, progressives often have a wildly inaccurate conception of the criminal demographic and of the psychology and motives in play, as expressed by the criminals themselves. A conception so inaccurate, one might call it perverse.

Readers with a taste for corrective statistics regarding recidivism and motives will find much to widen the eyes here. Along with some striking illustrations of how a very large fraction of crime could be prevented by dealing decisively with a surprisingly small number of persistent offenders.

To concentrate, as Mr Rosenwald does, on the assumed triviality of the third strike, rather than the seriousness of the first two and the pattern of behaviour being vividly revealed, is quite the manoeuvre. As if the refusal to be law-abiding after repeated warnings of incarceration – and what might be deduced from that – couldn’t possibly be useful information.

It occurs to me that someone who, having been warned in the strongest terms that any further law-breaking will have severe consequences – and who nonetheless continues violating others, whether for trivial gains or for purposes of recreation – is someone unlikely ever to become a functional and trustworthy citizen, someone to be given, once again, benefit of the doubt.

On this and much else, progressives aren’t just wrong in some detail, some particular, some point misunderstood. The assumptions so often in play, the relentless contrivance, the defining mindset, are fundamentally, directionally wrong. There’s an air of perverse motivation.

Such that the law-abiding, including the many victims of habitual and violent predation, are expected to endorse an insane leniency, a grotesque forgiveness, on grounds that their own safety and expectations of justice should be rescinded in favour of giving an irredeemable sociopath another 56 chances to learn how to behave.

And so, we arrive at the implication that women, for instance, should resign themselves to a low-trust urban dystopia, and learn to accept the growing risk of being menaced and assaulted, or worse, on public transport, so that habitually criminal brutes can be given more chances to decide not to be habitually criminal brutes.

Because accommodating brutes, indulging them with more chances, is somehow better, fairer, more moral.

These are people whose every action screams “I am someone who cannot be trusted in a civilised society. I am dangerous and always will be. I will hurt people, for fun, because it amuses me, over and over again, until I am forcibly stopped.” And our analyst and scholar, our esteemed academic, says, ‘Oh, nonsense. Nothing to worry about. We can fix them.’

While having no idea how.

And when faced with an avalanche of pushback and factual correction, Mr Rosenwald, our statusful scholar and thinker of deep thoughts, simply waves his hands dismissively and says, “I could care less – I’m a historian. The research on three-strike laws is unambiguous. Who cares what people on here think?”

Before ascending to the heavens, like some higher being.

Pst314 adds,

And not just academia.

I’ve mentioned before an episode of the long-running comedy-quiz show QI, in which Stephen Fry and his celebrity panellists sneered at the three-strikes policy with much tutting and condescension.

Viewers were given the impression that otherwise harmless and adorable people were being incarcerated simply for stealing “nine videotapes” or a few boxes of cookies. The assorted luvvies seemed oddly incurious about the rather more serious crimes that must have occurred previously. Nor did they seem interested in having those who’d been incarcerated roaming free in their own neighbourhoods, carjacking their neighbours, or breaking into their homes.

None of the participants seemed keen to find themselves or their loved ones being robbed at knifepoint, or gunpoint, even for a modest sum.

But everyone congratulated themselves on being so lofty and enlightened. Not like those redneck Americans and their silly, punitive ideas. Expectations of punishment and public safety being so terribly déclassé.

A recurring theme of the QI series is to show how common assumptions are sometimes wrong or misleading. And so there was a certain unintended irony in seeing the left-of-centre politics of the host and panellists being affirmed by an omission of facts. An omission that could not plausibly have been an accident.

The same sleight-of-hand as practised by our indignant academic. In a show about the wrongness of things that are widely assumed.

From the Guardian‘s lifestyle pages, some exquisite sensitivity:

Being so special, you see.

It’s all rather high-gear, positively operatic.

Like I said, for an opening, it’s pretty rich stuff.

The one being so immensely special, so rapturous and ecstatic, is Ms Miranda Luby, a lifestyle journalist who “writes regular opinion columns… about life as a 30-something.” Which is to say, about herself.

Ms Luby was excited to discover that her immense specialness has a name:

Vivid and complex. Not at all like you.

The last three words, I’ll just leave those there.

When not aching with her own humanity, Ms Luby likes to tell other people about how she aches with her own humanity:

As readers of the Guardian‘s lifestyle pages can doubtless testify.

Clearly, more self-absorption was in order.

At last, a special hat.

Self-absorption, it turns out, comes at a price.

Well, yes. Not exactly a plot twist, but modish, very now.

Such is the quest for specialness. Happily, Ms Luby tells us that she’s steered clear of any neurotic spiralling:

No identity-announcing hat required. Ah, all is well.

Ms Luby’s numerous accounts of her own remarkableness include what it’s like to have face-blindness and to be afraid of supermarkets, what it’s like to think you’re dying, and what it’s like to realise the “negative effect mirrors were having on me.”

Entirely unrelated to anything above:

Now excuse me while I hide the breakables.

Via Julia.

I paraphrase, of course. Though not, I think, wildly:

Yes, from the pages of Vice, it’s a men-are-the-problem-and-therefore-unnecessary article. Because we haven’t had one of those in weeks.

Lesbian relationships being entirely free of aggravation and disappointment, you see. With rates of failure and divorce twice that of heterosexuals, more than double that of gay male couples, and with high rates of alcoholism and spousal abuse. What one might infer from that, I leave to others.

And,

At which point, readers may wish to share their favourite joke about female indirectness and the two dozen possible meanings of the words “I’m fine” when uttered by a woman, depending on the precise intonation and the current alignment of the planets.

Readers may also note the replacement of a once common but now seemingly unfashionable grievance – ‘Men don’t express their feelings’ – with one of a much more modish kind – ‘Men are expressing their feelings and it’s exhausting and unfair.’

One more time:

It occurs to me that there’s something a little dissonant about the framing of affection and basic consideration – say, remembering your partner’s birthday – as “unpaid.” As “emotional labour.” As if being in a relationship or having any concern for those you supposedly care about were some onerous, crushing chore. As if you should be applauded – and financially compensated – for the thirty-second task of adding a birthday to the calendar on your phone.

The attitude implied by the above would, I think, explain many failures on the progressive partner-finding front and the consequent “stepping away from dating altogether.” Though possibly not in ways the author intended.

Before we go further, it’s perhaps worth pondering how the conceit of “emotional labour” is typically deployed by a certain type of woman. Say, the kind who complains, in print and at great length, about the “emotional labour” of hiring a servant to clean her multiple bathrooms. Or writing a shopping list. Or brushing her daughter’s hair.

And for whom explaining to her husband the concept of “emotional labour” is itself bemoaned as “emotional labour.” The final indignity.

The kind of woman who bitches in tremendous detail about her husband and his shortcomings – among which, an inability to receive instructions sent via telepathy – in the pages of a national magazine, where friends and colleagues of said husband, and perhaps his own children, can read on with amusement. The kind of woman who tells the world about how hiring servants is just so “exhausting,” while professing some heroic reluctance to complain.

As I said, worth pondering.

But back to the pages of Vice, where Ms Ashley Fike is telling us how it is:

Stoic, heroic women burdened by needy, emotional men. It’s a bold take.

And I can’t help but wonder what all of those single women, cited above, are doing instead of finding a suitable mate and building a happy life, perhaps even a family. Are they searching for a sense of purpose in causes, protests and political fashion, fuelled at least in part by envy and resentment? Just speculation, of course. But it would, I think, explain the tone and emotional convulsions of so many single, progressive women.

Again, the term “emotional labour” and its connotations of calculation, antagonism, and something vaguely inhuman. As if the concept of wanting to care, to help, to remember those birthdays, were somehow alien or offensive.

The reliance on this conceit – as the basis for an article, perhaps an entire worldview – doesn’t strike me as an obvious recipe for contentment, or indeed love. What with the endless cataloguing of shortcomings. All those reasons to resent.

Ah, a glimmer of hope.

So, don’t bore your wife with your troubles, gentlemen. No, search out a therapist. Or, “Be vulnerable, like we asked, but somewhere else.”

Also,

Again, connotations. Things implied. Not a wife, or wife-to-be. Just a shag. A rental.

And then, given the above, an inadvertent punchline:

No laughing at the back.

What women want, we’re told, is “mutual support,” which is to be had, apparently, by “the choice to stay single” and “choosing solitude over stress.” Ditching all those tiresome, exhausting men who appreciate having their birthdays remembered. Because “being alone is easier than managing someone else’s emotional life.”

Yes, I know. “Mutual support” via “solitude” and “being alone.” It’s a mastery of logic available only to expensively educated female journalists of a progressive leaning. You may have to tilt your head and squint.

So I see. Perhaps the crying and depression will come later.

As so often with progressive lifestyle advice, it’s hard to shake the suspicion that the one giving the advice is speaking, unwittingly, of themselves and their own immediate circle, their similarly progressive peers, rather than of men and women more generally. Just as one might wonder whether the objective is to encourage the credulous to sabotage their own lives, their own prospects for happiness.

See, for instance, the blatherings of Laurie Penny, who seemed very excited that “more women are living alone than ever before,” and who thrilled to the “growing power of uncoupled women.” By which she means, but is careful not to say, a dependence on the state and on state benefits. And for whom the “emotional labour” of coupledom includes cooking food, which single people don’t require, of course, and being considerate of a partner’s allergies.

Readers may wish to imagine a version of the article quoted above from a male perspective, and the likely reactions to it, at least from the scrupulously progressive readers of Vice.

From the pages of Vogue, where upscale ladies probe the issues of the day:

Specifically,

That’s the issues of their day, of course, not necessarily yours.

The author of the above, Ms Chanté Joseph, formerly of the Guardian and a stipulator of pronouns, has a theory to share.

“Quite culturally loser-ish.” I’m guessing the intended readership may be the kinds of ladies whose days are driven by endless niche anxieties regarding in-group status. Of “social benefits” and seeming, as if that were the primary function of an intimate relationship or a lifelong pairing. 

Writer and activist. Because one can’t just be a writer. Also, norminess. And dear Lord, we can’t have that.

If you say so, madam.

Ah, the innate loveliness of women. The tender, caring sex.

But remember, it’s totally not about image. Just the embarrassment of an Instagram feed cluttered with obsolete boyfriends. Like unfashionable shoes.

One more time:

I would guess that these are not routine anxieties for regulars of this parish.

Behold, the social blemish of norminess. Or possibly conservative.

Again, the loveliness of women. And then there’s the implication that one might tailor one’s romantic life to the preferences of random strangers on the internet. Dating, or not dating, for likes.

Readers will, I suspect, have registered that these agonies seem to bedevil those who inhabit a world of activists, influencers, and self-styled content creators, and in which one has to be mindful of any shifts in the script. Because those other bitches are always watching.

Don’t look at me. I have no idea. Apparently, women are being “forced to re-evaluate our blind allegiance to heterosexuality.”

We seem to have veered off a cliff. In a cloud of old gender-studies lecture notes.

Never. Not once, you hear.

At which point, readers may be left wondering – among other things – whether the above is an elaborate attempt to rationalise sour grapes, a matter of loudly dismissing that which isn’t easily had. Of, as they say, cope.

Possibly on account of being the kind of women whose world is one of influencers and activists, of Instagram narcissism, and whose preoccupations include denouncing heteronormativity while needlessly stipulating one’s pronouns. The kind of women who fret about whether having a husband or partner, someone to love and be loved by, looks “culturally loser-ish,” or unfashionably “Republican.”

Not the most obvious enticement for a man with other options.

Update, via the comments:

The piece quoted above would seem to fit a genre of article, typically appearing in progressive publications, in which unendearing women try to conjure some elaborate social or political explanation for why they’re so often found unendearing.

It’s also an article in which almost every other assumption is alien to me.

I’m still trying to imagine being the kind of person who frets about whether coupledom or singledom is the more fashionable “flex.” The kind of person who stresses about how an intimate relationship will seem – say, to strangers on the internet – and whether that relationship denotes norminess and therefore being insufficiently radical. Whether it will look too conservative, too “Republican.”

It strikes me as quite bonkers. A weird and impractical set of priorities. And should it need saying, a recipe for misery.

As noted here many, many times, progressives often have a wildly inaccurate conception of the criminal demographic and of the psychology and motives in play, as expressed by the criminals themselves. A conception so inaccurate, one might call it perverse.

On the subject of prison and its occupants, Inquisitive Bird shares some corrective statistics while poking at one or two common myths:

There’s much more to be had in the linked piece, along with some eyebrow-raising charts.

Unsurprisingly, a similar pattern is found here in the UK:

And then there’s Sweden:

In short, before ending up in prison, the vast majority of the perpetrators, the supposedly downtrodden and marginalised, have at least five prior arrests, with almost half having 10 or more, and one in seven, 20 or more:

At which point, the phrase that comes to mind is the nature of the beast. Conceivably, other phrases may occur to readers. 

Those with a taste for grim humour are steered towards this rather vivid indication of how a crime rate can improve when just three burglars – with over 200 convictions between them – flee the police in a stolen car before colliding with something solid and ceasing to be.

An illustration, one of many, of how a very large fraction of crime could be prevented by dealing decisively with a surprisingly small number of persistent offenders.

And as commenter Geoff quipped, following this:

Well, indeed.

For those of you with X accounts, Inquisitive Bird can be followed here.

Update, via the comments:

MarkL quotes this,

And adds,

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.

It must be that progressive empathy we hear so much about.