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Anthropology Politics

Her Values

July 27, 2025 111 Comments

From the pages of Business Insider, more progressive-woman-lifestyle news:

I knew I didn’t want to live in the US anymore. Not only did I feel empowered abroad, but I also felt that the US no longer aligned with my values.

What those values might be will, perhaps, become clear, if only by implication.

I quit my job, divorced my husband, and moved to Italy to retire.

That’s the article’s headline. The star of this drama is Ms Cindy Sheahan, a former real-estate agent. Judging by the tone and triumphant photograph, I’m guessing we’re supposed to regard Ms Sheahan as some kind of inspirational figure. No explanation is offered for Ms Sheahan divorcing her husband, taking half his stuff, and then putting half a planet between her family and herself. There are no mutterings of neglect or infidelity. No hardships of any kind.

The nearest we come to a justification is,

I didn’t want just to walk the dog, play pickleball, and tend a garden. I wanted a bigger life.

And, er, so,

Once I stepped out the door and visited places I had only dreamed of and ate food I had only read about, it was ridiculous to think I was going to go back to my “normal life.”

Again, the whys and wherefores of this radical uprooting remain oddly nebulous. Beyond, that is, the intrigue of unfamiliar food. We are, however, informed,

I wasn’t into the US’s overconsumption. With the divisive political climate and the ridiculous gun culture, there was no way in hell I’d live there after experiencing a more peaceful life in so many other countries.

So says our woman of high progressive principle – the woman who abandoned her husband and family, and her job, seemingly forever, despite promising to return:

My company was kind enough to let me take a sabbatical while I sorted out my world. It turned out to be a mistake for them, because I decided I wasn’t coming back.

Quite what Ms Sheahan’s employers made of this, or indeed her husband and four children, is, alas, not disclosed. Evidently they were deemed of no importance in this tale of progressive empowerment. And so, Ms Sheahan went searching for herself in Cambodia, and in Vietnam. And Laos. And Madagascar. And Turkey and Cyprus. And France and Spain and Portugal and Greece. Indeed, this quest for self – this attempt to find an alignment of values – spanned “nearly fifty countries.”

Before – presumably thwarted – trying Italy:

I moved to [Palermo] in October 2024. I didn’t want to live in the suburbs – though living in the outer areas will always be less expensive and, in some ways, more authentic.

And as you can imagine, Ms Sheahan is so into authenticity.

So, I chose to live in the city centre.

And being so authentic, so attuned to higher matters, her days are now spent eating alone in restaurants:

Eating… when you want to is nice. You can go back to the same restaurant twice… You have no one to apologise to or explain yourself to.

Oh, and grocery shopping. Specifically,

tomatoes, eggplants, zucchini, sun-dried tomatoes,

Ah, the inexhaustible romance of buying tomatoes. It’s all about personal growth, you see:

I feel like I outgrew a lot of people and places in the US.

For some reason, the abandoned husband and four distant children come to mind.

Don’t get me wrong, I desperately miss my friends and family, especially my kids.

Ah.

But they’re all able to travel,

So screw those guys. Madam has tomatoes to buy.

If the above sounds vaguely familiar, you may be thinking of this.

Via Dicentra.

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Reading time: 3 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Politics

Explaining Civilisation

July 1, 2025 121 Comments

And in thriving multiculturalism news:

Exactly zero men who would loiter near schools to harass or sexually assault young girls will be deterred by a power point presentation. If that’s not innately unthinkable to you, no amount of talk will make it so and you simply have no place in civilization. https://t.co/5Beehg9EGK

— Hunter Ash (@ArtemisConsort) June 27, 2025

From the Telegraph piece in question:

Officers have drawn up a PowerPoint presentation for asylum seekers in hotels on the key points of “UK culture” which they are told they should respect. It includes recognising that women “have the same rights as men,” so “must be treated with respect and courtesy.” They are also told that violence of any kind is “not acceptable,” which is emphasised by being capitalised in the presentation.

Ah, capital letters. That should do it.

The unhappy statistics quoted in the article – say, that illegal migrants from Afghanistan are 22 times more likely to commit sex offences – will melt away in no time. And the fact that remarkably similar patterns are found in other European countries suddenly drenched in vibrancy is something that will doubtless just sort itself out.

The uninvited newcomers – chiefly, it seems, men of fighting age and all mysteriously unencumbered by identifying documents – are given helpful pointers on the customary use of pavements and pedestrian crossings, and are warned about the hazards of randomly strolling through moving traffic on busy roads. They are also introduced to the novel concepts of avoiding foul language in public and not abusing animals for amusement purposes.

Other teething problems have, it seems, arisen:

The initiative by Northamptonshire Police followed community and parental complaints over young male asylum seekers loitering near a primary school in the county, including claims of filming.

Not loitering at the gates of primary schools in order to film small children being another cultural subtlety requiring clarification.

The police presentation, obtained under freedom of information laws, warns migrants against taking photos and videos. Its disclosure comes just days after a 29-year-old Afghan asylum seeker tried to defend his rape of a 15-year-old Scottish schoolgirl by citing cultural differences and a language barrier.

Lawyers for Sadeq Nikzad, who entered the UK illegally on a small boat in 2023, told the court that he had not been educated about the significant cultural differences between the UK and Afghanistan. He was jailed for nine years for the sex attack, in Falkirk town centre.

Last week the Telegraph revealed that foreign nationals are responsible for more than a quarter of convictions for sex assaults on women.

As I’m sure you’d agree, it’s all going terribly well.

Readers will, of course, recall Finland’s answer to such sudden-onset vibrancy – namely, the please-don’t-rape-me dance, performed below.

Finnish socialist women dance to ask fake asylum seekers not to sexuaIIy abuse European women. Socialist women are a problem. pic.twitter.com/PtIwNRpwx9

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) April 27, 2025

As a yardstick of civilisational self-destruction, and dark farce, it’s quite a thing. As is the pernicious conceit, so fashionable among Our Betters, that if only we were kinder and more thoughtful, if only we fretted more and were somehow more accommodating, and if only we’d stop noticing, these things would just go away.

As illustrated during last year’s tribal rioting:

There’s also a weird air of displacement, of vehemently resenting those who notice the problem. And so, we get claims like this one, in which BBC broadcaster Dan Snow denounces as “stunningly racist” even the suggestion that incompatible tribes exist. Because Mr Snow feels they shouldn’t exist, that they somehow ought not to. And so, magically, they don’t. And only Very Bad People would say they do.

And from the same, what one might regard as a telling detail:

The idea that there may be very real physical constraints on some favoured policy – that reality may not comply with half-baked theory – seems entirely alien to Mr Snow. An attitude not uncommon among his progressive peers, and which may help explain the lively events currently underway in several British cities.

Mr Snow, since you ask, is married to the philanthropist Lady Edwina Louise Grosvenor, daughter of the sixth Duke of Westminster, one of the country’s richest landowners, with an estimated fortune north of £7 billion. Needless to say, Mr Snow does not live in, or anywhere near, the kinds of “diverse” neighbourhoods now being trashed and terrorised by competing tribes.

Tribes that apparently shouldn’t exist.

The unrealism of such people and their peers, Our Betters, has created a problem on a vast scale and which is dire in its implications – a problem that they are apparently unwilling to fix or even clearly identify. And so, they retreat further into unrealism and absurdity – with PowerPoint presentations on not abusing animals and please-don’t-rape-me dances – while expecting others – those on whom they’ve inflicted the problem – to become unrealistic and absurd too.

It’s the progressive way. In this and so much else.

Update, via the comments:

One of the consequences of massive, indiscriminate immigration – equivalent to the entire population of Sheffield, every year – is that it radically alters the general mood of those on whom this demographic transformation is being imposed. One might, for instance, aspire to the role of gracious host, as it were, of making newcomers feel welcome. But this ideal presupposes an immigration policy that is limited and selective, and in which newcomers have good reason to feel lucky – and grateful.

The graciousness of the locals, the ideal, depends on the notion that the host country is regarded as something special, a desirable thing, something worthy of respect.

But massive, indiscriminate immigration undermines that ideal. If seemingly anyone can walk in and demand goodies, any ill-mannered flotsam of the world, and if they can do so with no discernible sense of gratitude, or any expectation of such, and with no apparent regard for the norms and values of the host society, as if they were unimportant, then the indigenous population may feel they have little reason to be gracious. Indeed, being gracious may be something of a struggle.

I realise that even the idea that the locals might dare to think in such terms – of being the gracious host – is, for some, anathema, a basis for tutting and scolding. But the sense that the value of one’s society – one’s home – is being pissed away, sold off cheap, is not a promising basis for coexistence.

And yet here we are.

Doubtless there are progressives who would regard the ‘gracious host’ attitude as wickedly hierarchical and ‘othering’, or even racist. But I suspect it’s how quite a few people process a sudden influx of newcomers, regardless of the gasping of lefties. I suspect that something along those lines is a necessary precondition of any subsequent coexistence. A social lubricant.

And were I to relocate to, say, South Korea, I think I would feel much like a guest – and feel a corresponding obligation to be on my best behaviour. Possibly on an indefinite basis. I very much doubt I’d feel entitled to disregard queueing norms, or to, quite literally, shit on the doorsteps of the indigenous.

But hey, maybe that’s just me.

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Written by: David
Agonies of the Left Film Politics

Dumb, Yes, But Fashionable

June 21, 2025 90 Comments

From the world of cinema and pretentious agonising:

The world is big and different people will be interested in different things, but this seems like a really stupid thing to think about for more than two seconds https://t.co/qWAKhVNMKG

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) June 20, 2025

The implications of Mr Boyle’s modish piety, presumably unintended yet implied nonetheless, are explored quite pithily in the replies.

Among which, the implication that white writers and directors should only concern themselves with suitably pale-skinned characters, carefully excluding non-white characters, and non-white actors, lest they appropriate or colonise something or other.

Likewise, the implication that a white person couldn’t possibly comprehend the inner life of a brown person – these magical, put-upon beings – which itself rather implies that white audiences needn’t turn up to films in which non-white people appear prominently. Due to their alleged incomprehensibility.

Strange basis for a global film industry, if you ask me. But there we are.

Update, via the comments:

Previously in the world of pretentious agonising:

Setting aside the small matter of, er, assault and strangulation, readers may wish to ponder the notion, advanced by Mr Rivera and his numerous supporters, that white people, especially white people with blonde hair, shouldn’t be allowed to serve Japanese food.

Do follow the link for the inevitable twist and colossal hypocrisy.

And from the comments following which, this:

The dogmatic scolds who bang on about “cultural appropriation” rarely display much understanding of how culture comes about. Perhaps they imagine that the world would be richer and more pious without Akira Kurosawa’s vivid reworkings of Shakespeare, or his ‘appropriation’ of American band music of the 30s and 40s, and without Kurosawa’s own films inspiring Sergio Leone and George Lucas, etc. The riffs and copying, the to-and-fro, are to a very large extent what culture is.

But no, we must all become twitchy and neurotic. That’s bound to go well.

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Written by: David
Anthropology His Pretty Nails Politics

Drag Queen Incongruity 2

June 19, 2025 30 Comments

Further to this, which some of you are still processing – understandably, I suppose – I do have more. Complete with wearied question:

Who actually enjoys this? Serious question, who enjoys watching this stuff? It’s not even a morality question or whatever. It’s who the hell finds this entertaining? https://t.co/f3sA7wytqx

— Gary (@plzbepatient) June 18, 2025

In the subsequent thread, the term humiliation ritual is deployed.

Not unfairly, I think.

Other questions include “Is this real?”

Update, via the comments:

In reply to the question immediately above, EmC notes this,

It occurred on June 18, 2025, celebrating a resolution honouring Black drag history,

And asks,

Er… why?

It does, I think, raise the question of whether further resolutions, and further transvestite vamping, will be required for drag queens of other racial and ethnic groups. Lest some drag queens feel insufficiently included and affirmed.

Hm. I suspect today may be a day of many questions.

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Written by: David
Politics Those Poor Darling Burglars

Have You Tried Storing Them Upright?

May 25, 2025 94 Comments

From the Telegraph, on crime, incarceration, and dubious conclusions:

Up to 43,000 criminals are set to avoid prison each year under Government plans to combat jail overcrowding, an analysis of official figures by the Telegraph reveals. The criminals, including burglars, shoplifters and knife offenders, will instead face community sentences under the plans to scrap most jail terms of under 12 months.

The law change, recommended by an independent review headed by David Gauke, the former Tory justice secretary, will order courts to only jail offenders for less than a year in “exceptional circumstances,” including domestic abuse, stalking, and breaching orders linked to violence against women and girls.

The analysis also reveals that up to 1,500 killers, rapists and other serious sexual and violent offenders will be eligible for early release each year under the shake-up, which is designed to free up nearly 10,000 prison spaces.

Readers will note the odd implication that the level of serious criminal behaviour at any given time should somehow conform to the amount of prison space you have at that time. As if the moral gravity of a criminal act, and likelihood of recidivism and danger to the public, should be determined by whether or not you can be bothered to build another dungeon.

Speaking of recidivism, it’s perhaps worth revisiting this:

UK data show that 70% of custodial sentences are imposed on those with at least seven previous convictions or cautions, and 50% are imposed on those with at least 15 previous convictions or cautions.

Other, related statistics, linked above, may widen the eyes.

Update via the comments:

Regarding burglary and its devotees, this came to mind:

For readers curious as to exactly how much misery, fear, and social degradation a very small number of burglars can inflict on the world, on the better people around them, this item here may prove illuminating. In it, three prolific burglars, who between them had accumulated over 200 convictions, met their not-entirely-tragic end after colliding head-on with a lorry, while driving down the motorway at more than twice the speed limit, in the wrong direction, in a stolen BMW. Their fiery ceasing-to-be resulting in a rather significant drop in the local burglary rate.

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.

Needless to say, there’s more to chew on in the linked piece. Likewise here, where friends and relatives of the three burglars – the ones with over 200 convictions between them – claim, somewhat improbably, that the deceased were “too good for this stupid, shitty world.” As if the trio – whose other activities included assaulting and mugging elderly couples and bedridden cancer patients – were, unlike their numerous victims, somehow deserving of public sympathy.

And which, I suspect, tells us something about the quality of those friends and relatives, their moral orientation.

In the comments, Geoff quotes this from the recidivism link, above:

before ending up in prison, the vast majority of the perpetrators, our supposed victims, have at least five prior arrests, with almost half having 10 or more, and one in seven, 20 or more.

Then adds,

I don’t think people understand it takes a lot of work to end up in prison.

Well, indeed.

Via Tim Worstall.

Previously in the world of crime and punishment, a trilogy of sorts – parts one, two, and three.

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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.