So what do we do? I think now is the time to get serious…. It’s kind of fluffy to talk about hope at the moment. I mean hope is great but in the meantime there’s always spite. Spite is good if you can’t get to hope. Carry on living and carry on working to spite those people.

I was under the impression that for Laurie Penny, quoted above, spite had long been a default position, a familiar and rather comfortable mental state. Hence the apocalyptic psychodrama, the enthusiasm for vandalism and violence, and for physical obstruction and mob harassment, and likewise the grandiose air of entitlement, and the bizarre fabrication of threats. Along with her disdain for the concerns of taxpayers as “anodyne and inconsequential,” and her complaints that remembering birthdays is both a ghastly imposition and “unpaid emotional labour.” And – oh yes – her pride in the abuse of people who politely ask for some basic civility.

So. Not, I think, a new development.

Ben Shapiro on abortion and evasion: 

Today, The Atlantic ran a bizarre piece by Moira Weigel titled, in Orwellian fashion, “How the Ultrasound Pushed the Idea That a Foetus Is a Person.” Which is somewhat like saying, “How the Microscope Pushed the Idea That Cells Exist,” or “How the Hubble Telescope Pushed the Idea That There Are Stars Outside Our Solar System.” […] But Weigel goes even further, assuring readers that ultrasounds were primarily a form of warfare against women rather than a tool allowing doctors to identify problems with foetal development as early as possible.  

“What is a foetal heartbeat?” asks Ms Weigel. “And why does it matter?” As we’ve seen, pregnancy is a subject that leaves some feminists looking not only disingenuous but actually monstrous. 

Roger Kimball on academia’s inauguration meltdown: 

Academia has an infantilising effect. I understand that. Many professors dress and act like adolescents right up to the time they are ready to hand in their tenure and live off their generous pensions. The Peter-Pan aspect of academia is not entirely the professors’ fault. After all, the points at which the real world intrudes upon academia are so few and so tenuous that academics may be forgiven for some of their hyperbole and inadvertently comic displays of self-importance. They exist, like kept women of yore, entirely at the pleasure of an affluent society they despise. So in a way it is not surprising that they endeavour to transform their entire campus into a sort of existential boudoir, which is French for “room for pouting in.”

Peter Wood on attempts to make ‘progressive’ activism mandatory for students:

New Civics has appropriated the name of an older subject, but not the content of that subject or its basic orientation to the world. Instead of trying to prepare students for adult participation in the self-governance of the nation, the New Civics tries to prepare students to become social and political activists who are grounded in broad antagonism towards America’s founding principles and its republican ethos.

And Malhar Mali interviews the people behind the excellent Real Peer Review:  

@RealPeerReview is a Twitter account that has steadily gained popularity and fans by exposing the humorous, nonsensical, and absurd trends in scholarship that are sometimes found in academic research. From Ph.D. theses, M.A. theses, to articles in disciplinary journals, the account highlights laughable “scholarship” such as exploring the black anus, how pumpkins and pumpkin spice lattes are oppressive and symbols of white privilege, a paper on a researcher’s experience of completing jigsaw puzzles, and how a scholar felt while drinking coffee and reading the Guardian.  

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Speaking of selfishness:

Alas, the fatuous grandstanding and self-congratulation was halted for all of five seconds.

Lifted from the comments, some links of possible interest.

Sargon’s Week In Stupid: Inauguration Special may offer some grim amusement. Do stick with it – there are gripping interviews and filmed outbursts of what one might generously describe as performance art, and the chutzpah of Bernie Sanders, captured at the end, is a thing to behold. (Amid all the moral dissonance and fits of outright lunacy, one of the more telling sights is the staggering amount of garbage left strewn on the streets by the feminist protestors. I can’t help thinking it’s rather symbolic and speaks to the character of those involved.)

Joan steers us to this charmingly progressive lady, who, immediately, emphatically and for no discernible reason, starts haranguing a fellow plane passenger and denouncing his failure to vote as she did – and threatening to vomit on him – before, some commotion later, being escorted from the flight by police officers. Something tells me her husband chose poorly. Or lost a bet.

And here we see a young lady of the left chanting “Love trumps hate.” Seconds before setting a woman’s hair on fire. 

Feel free to share findings of your own.

Attention, lovers of culture. Commenter Jon Powers wishes to inform you there is performance art afoot.

Update:

The psychodrama progresses as expected.

Update 2: 

By golly, it’s heading this way.