In Portland, a gentleman grows weary of the round-the-clock Antifa LARPing. 

Also, open thread.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown, writing in Reason:

Here’s some fun new research looking at “the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue,” published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The paper—from University of British Columbia researchers Ekin Ok, Yi Qian, Brendan Strejcek, and Karl Aquino—details multiple studies the authors conducted on the subject. Their conclusion? Psychopathic, manipulative, and narcissistic people are more frequent signallers of “virtuous victimhood.”

I can hear you gasping as I type. 

The so-called “dark triad” personality traits—Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy—lead to characteristics like “self-promotion, emotional callousness, duplicity, and tendency to take advantage of others,” the paper explains. And “treated as a composite, the Dark Triad traits were significant predictors of virtuous victim signalling.” This held true “even when controlling for factors that may make people vulnerable to being mistreated or disadvantaged in society (i.e., demographic and socioeconomic characteristics) as well as the importance they place on being a virtuous individual as part of their self-concept,” the researchers note.

The authors also note that pretentious victimhood and feigned piety “may be used as a social influence tactic,” a “resource-extraction strategy”:  

Claiming victim status can also facilitate resource transfer by conferring moral immunity upon the claimant. Moral immunity shields the alleged victim from criticism about the means they might use to satisfy their demands. In other words, victim status can morally justify the use of deceit, intimidation, or even violence by alleged victims to achieve their goals. Relatedly, claiming victim status can lead observers to hold a person less blameworthy, excusing transgressions, such as the appropriation of private property or the infliction of pain upon others, that might otherwise bring condemnation or rebuke.

The psychological dynamics and nakedly spiteful inclinations of “social justice” devotees have of course been illustrated here, quite vividly, on more than one occasion. And if I can be excused for quoting myself:

It’s interesting just how often “social justice” posturing entails something that looks an awful lot like spite or petty malice, or an attempt to harass and dominate, or some other obnoxious behaviour. Behaviour that, without a “social justice” pretext, might get you called a wanker or a bitch. A coincidence, I’m sure.

Via Protein Wisdom. 

New York Times contributor David Kaufman, writing here, wants us to know that he’s rendered distraught by “subtle streams of everyday racism that course through our homes, our workplaces, and the outside world.” An endless assault that “bombards people of colour.” People such as himself. It is, we’re told, time for a “cultural reckoning.”

For me, this reckoning begins with traffic signals.

Hm. Perhaps retracing our steps will help. Make things less confounding.

A few months back, before Covid-19 kept us in our homes and George Floyd made us take to the streets, I was walking with a friend, her daughter, and my twin sons. My friend is White and I’m not — something I’d never given a second thought until we reached a crosswalk. “Remember, honey,” she said to her daughter as we waited for the light to turn green, “we need to wait for the little White man to appear before we can cross the street.”

 And in the very next breath:

I realise that White people like to exert control over nearly everything everyone does, I thought, but since when did this literally include trying to cross the street?

It’s a bold leap. Dense with assumptions. And hey, no racism there. Mr Kaufman – who can doubtless detect racism in the motions of subatomic particles – would have us believe that his friend was using the word white as a racial descriptor, rather than, as seems more likely, an unremarkable acknowledgement of a traffic light’s colour when talking to a child. In light of which, Mr Kaufman’s claims of being “bombarded” with racism – daily, everywhere – become at least explicable, if not convincing.

As a Black dad, I was struck by the language at play. How is it possible that well into the 21st century, parents all over Manhattan — well-meaning, #BLM-marching parents — are teaching their children to ask “little White men” for permission to cross the street? And why doesn’t this seem to bother them? It certainly bothered me.

The pedestrian crossing signal that so distresses Mr Kaufman – a rudimentary humanoid figure, made of white lights on a black background – can be seen here, from a safe distance. You may want to steady yourselves. It’s all very upsetting, at least for the exquisitely sensitive – people finer than ourselves, and who write for the New York Times. Mr Kaufman then goes on an investigative journey, in which he learns why, in a society with lots of non-English speakers, crossing signals with words – walk / don’t walk – are being replaced by simple, universal graphics, calibrated to capture attention – say, by using lights of a certain hue:

“It hurts people when they see a white man bouncing a brown baby on their lap!”

Following this recent item on Robin DiAngelo and her lamentable bestseller White Fragility, some of you may have been wondering, “What kind of person is drawn to and internalises this neurotically demented horseshit?”

Well. Via Karl in the comments, here’s a possible answer, captured for posterity during a live-streamed meeting of the New York City Community Education Council on June 29 2020. In a mercifully abridged video, edited by Benjamin Boyce, and embedded below, we see “public education advocate” and gratuitous declaimer of pronouns Ms Robin Broshi using the meeting to chase away the demons nesting in her head. Demons that are also, it seems, tormenting a number of her colleagues.

It’s thirteen minutes long and quite intense. You may wish to bite down on something.

And so, an open thread, in which to share links and bicker. 

I’ll set the ball rolling with the gushing brains of Harvard’s best, and, via Captain Nemo, a textbook display of socialism, darling.

Our betters, you see.

Update: 

In the comments, John notes the agitation of Ms Janover, our Harvard intellectual, and adds, rather drily, “Something is obviously upsetting her.” Well, yes. As a Higher Being, she’s offended by “entitled caucasity,” by which she means expectations of reciprocity.

Needless to say, the upset continues. Despite being quoted verbatim – and despite her own video, which she saw fit to share, presumably expecting applause – Ms Janover is now claiming that she has been cruelly misrepresented by “Trump supporters,” whose “hate” she denounces. After threatening to stab people who disagree with her. We’re told, furthermore, that she will “never be silenced into shame.” Which is rather the problem, one might think.

The not-at-all-entitled Ms Janover is also, it seems, astonished that sharing stabby meltdown videos is not a good way to impress employers.