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Turns Out This Thing Is Interactive

May 24, 2023 69 Comments

From the comments, some items you may have missed. We’ll kick things off with some kicking off, care of commenter Mr Farnsworth M Muldoon:

Move along now, nothing to see here, just an adjunct professor with a machete chasing a reporter down the street.

Curious how when you hear of yet another educator being intolerant, childish, or wildly unhinged, you don’t need to ask what their politics might be.

Speaking of unhinged:

REPORT: Ron DeSantis Will Formally Announce His 2024 Bid With Elon Musk, Because Apparently David Duke Wasn’t Available.

After many months of refusing to confirm what so many people already suspected, Ron DeSantis will reportedly announce on Wednesday that he is running for president. And that’s not all: He is said to be planning to formally jump into the 2024 race during a conversation on Twitter with Elon Musk, because apparently other neo-Nazi sympathizers weren’t available.

When you get your news from Vanity Fair.

Found via Flappr.

And with near-telepathic simultaneity:

Twitter Is A Far-Right Social Network.

You see, Twitter has “fully assumed the role of a far-right platform.” “It is,” says The Atlantic, “accurate to call [Elon Musk] a far-right activist.”

It can no longer be denied.

Remember, dear readers, always respect the media.

Oh, and because I do like quoting myself, we revisited the moral pretensions of Guardian columnist Zoe Williams:

The abandonment of distinctions between the unfortunate and the merely verminous is a phenomenon we’ve seen before. As when the Guardian’s Zoe Williams wanted us to believe that the problem with ‘problem families’ is simply that they’re poor, and nothing whatsoever to do with how they choose to abuse their equally poor neighbours. And so attempts to deal with people who repeatedly play loud music at 3am or throw pets from top floor windows are framed as a “demonization of the poor” and “trying to shunt people out of society for not being rich enough.”

According to Zoe, we should be “unstigmatising,” which is to say, non-judgmental. A result of which is that empathy, or feigned empathy, is shifted from the working class victim of crime and antisocial behaviour to the working class perpetrator of crime and antisocial behaviour, on grounds that the thug or criminal is in some way being oppressed and, unlike their neighbours, being made to misbehave.

Presumably Ms Williams’ own neighbours have little in common with, say, the delightful Stuart Murgatroyd, a father of twelve who has never worked and boasts an extensive criminal record, not least for robbing the elderly in graveyards, and whose attempt to challenge an antisocial behaviour order was cut short at the very last minute due to him being arrested for assaulting the mother of his children, herself a convicted getaway driver, on the steps of the courthouse.

And I suspect our infinitely compassionate Guardianista has yet to experience an all-night eleven-hour rave being hosted next door, which would doubtless give her an opportunity to practise that non-judgmental piety.

See? If you poke about, you never know what you’ll find.

Reading time: 2 min

Written by: David

Anthropology Free-For-All Politics

The Pain Of Being Polly

May 22, 2023 55 Comments

Speaking, as we were, of the Guardian’s imperious opinionator Polly Toynbee, madam’s latest outpouring finds her reflecting – if that’s quite the right word – on the burden of her own elevated status. The woes, as it were, of the upper-and-upper-middle-class socialist:

In each generation my family were forever locked in combat with the perpetual old enemy, the forces of conservatism. But to live a well-heeled life on the left is to live with inevitable hypocrisy and painful self-awareness, with good intentions always destined to fall short of ideals, social concern never enough, struggling to be good but inevitably never good enough. I hunted hard for any redeeming twig of a working-class branch of my family tree,

Wait for it.

without success.

Update, via the comments:

We’re also told that, as a child, Dear Polly “envied” her much poorer friends, with their “cheerful,” noisy, and rather small dwellings, which had “ever-open front doors.” Though, alas,

They never asked me in.

As a way to conjure gravitas and fish for sympathy, it’s a bold approach.

The point of the piece quoted above, a long and rambling extract from Ms Toynbee’s forthcoming memoir, is far from clear – as is Polly’s way. However, the gist seems to be that class is a terrible, terrible thing, and that our author, a descendant of the Ninth Earl of Carlisle, and whose life is cushioned by multiple homes, here and overseas, and a well-into-six-figure income, is every bit as much a victim of it. What with her fretting so much.

For brevity’s sake, I’ll attempt to paraphrase: ‘I have never known, and will never know, anything approaching poverty. My lack of diligence, or indeed competence, has never been a significant setback, on account of my class and privilege. Therefore, you should listen to me and do exactly as I say.’

Again, bold. Must be that “painful self-awareness.”

In the comments, further thoughts occur.

Update 2:

Regarding Polly’s purported envy of the humble and downtrodden, Mike D asks,

Peak Guardian? Is that possible?

Which reminded me of the reliably ludicrous George Monbiot, a man who agonises over the “isolating” effects of disposable income, double glazing, and TV remote controls, and who believes that we – thee and me – should imitate the peasants of southern Ethiopia, where homes are made of leaves and packing cases, and where, despite Stone Age sanitation and alarming child mortality, “the fields crackle with laughter.”

For Dear Polly, mingling with the working class is somewhat similar, I should think.

Oh, and Mr Monbiot, lest we forget, was schooled at Stowe, an imposing boarding school in Buckinghamshire, where annual fees are a mere £36,000.

At which point, readers may discern the makings of a pattern.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Reading time: 2 min

Written by: David

Anthropology Film History Politics

Perfecting The Species

May 21, 2023 61 Comments

For devotees of the farcical and grotesque, a spot of history:

The first Five Year Plan had relied mainly on Soviet assistance to construct massive Soviet-style factories, foundries and so on, all built with essentially slave labour. However, for the Great Leap Forward, Mao got it into his head that the Chinese should do all these things completely from scratch. This inconceivable moron actually ordered the peasants, most of whom were barely educated, to start smelting steel in their homes. Each family was tasked to produce a certain tonnage of steel, without being provided with any raw materials, any equipment, or even the most basic instruction in metallurgy.

Whether out of a sense of duty or fear, the Chinese peasants complied and started building crude stone kilns in their back yards. Now, it turns out that modern steel production is in fact a highly complex, laborious process. The peasants never got anywhere near meeting their absurd quotas, and the steel they did produce was of such poor quality as to be utterly useless.

The big-brained Communist tampered around with agriculture too and came to the perfectly ignorant but quintessentially Marxist conclusion that household vermin are agents of capitalism. Yes, like capitalists, they exploit the labour of the proletariat and therefore must be totally eradicated. And by far the worst of all these bourgeoisie oppressors was, naturally, that most vile and heinous creature, the sparrow…

As part of the “Smash Sparrow Campaign,” children were enlisted to bang pots and pans around, chasing the sparrows out of their nests. Later, adults knocked the nests out of the trees and crushed the eggs underneath their sandals, until there were almost no sparrows left in all of China… Within a year of the “Smash Sparrow Campaign,” itself part of the larger “Four Pests Campaign,” the locust population exploded and did what locusts do best. The Communists had played God and literally created a Biblical plague.

In the following video, quoted above, Professor James O’Flannery concludes his lively, somewhat unorthodox three-part lecture series on the Chinese Revolution. Or, to borrow one of his chapter headings, Our Turn Fuck Up World.

Needless to say, given the subject matter, some dark turns are taken. Notable moments include an explanation of the inevitability of sociopathy in communism; the pivotal role of hysterically self-righteous adolescents; and a lesson in demented street signage. Readers may also detect some, shall we say, contemporary resonance. And do watch to the end.

Parts one and two.

The professor’s lectures on the French and Russian Revolutions, the latter in three parts, are also recommended.

How drunk you should be while watching them is entirely your own business.

Reading time: 2 min

Written by: David

Politics Pronouns Or Else Those Poor Darling Paedophiles

Endorsement Of Note

April 12, 2023 60 Comments

From the barren North:

A transgender paedophile who was allowed to serve time in a women’s prison praised Nicola Sturgeon as a “great First Minister” and has become an online cheerleader for her controversial gender reforms, it has emerged.

Katie Dolatowski… has written dozens of social media posts backing legislation which would make it easy for Scots to change their legal sex. Under a new identity of Alyanna McKenna, which Dolatowski has been referred to as in court documents, the 22-year-old wrote: “Nicola was a great First Minister, it’s a shame that people are trying to make [her] out as some evil person.”

Said the evil person.

Via social media, Mr Dolatowski has aired his view that “Trans women aren’t a threat if I use the bathroom” – meaning, one assumes, that other dysmorphic men aren’t a threat to him – while also insisting, “I know I’m not a threat to anyone.” Except, of course, 10-and-12-year-old girls in supermarket toilets. Much like the ones Mr Dolatowski filmed and sexually assaulted.

Regarding those who object to the presence of such creatures in ladies’ toilets,

Dolatowski… told those who did not feel safe: “Don’t use public bathrooms.”

Readers will note that both the Telegraph and the court refer to Mr Dolatowski as if he were in fact a woman – not a mentally ill, paedophilic man. I’m sure the parents of the molested children were thrilled by the consequent air of unrealism and unhappy farce.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the paragraph above, Min replies, “Adding insult to injury.”

Well, indeed. It must be quite surreal, and presumably upsetting, to hear lawyers and officials pretending that a 6’5” man – the 6’5” man who recently molested your child in a supermarket toilet – is somehow, magically, a woman. One would hope that lawyers, judges, and the other occupants of a courtroom – and possibly, at a stretch, even journalists – were interested in reality, in establishing facts. Not affirming some unhinged and misleading fantasy.

Via Mr Worstall.

Reading time: 1 min

Written by: David

Academia Anthropology Film Free-For-All Politics

The Unsayable, Said

April 10, 2023 80 Comments

Little things. For instance,

On the one hand, all good people are for affirmative action. That’s a sign of virtue. On the other hand, to talk about the predicate, the reason that affirmative action is needed, which is that there are these gaps in educational achievement and proficiency, is verboten. So, we kind of twisted ourselves in knots that we have to embrace something but deny the factual underpinning of it.

Below the fold, you’ll find a short film by Rob Montz about Amy Wax, quoted above, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Wax has been mentioned here once or twice before. Generally regarding her observations of everyday phenomena that are seemingly unmentionable, at least on campus, and the performative indignation and outright hysteria that reliably ensues. As when students, supposedly adult intellectuals, claimed that the professor’s mere presence on campus was “physically and emotionally harming all of us,” with the law school’s Dean, Theodore Ruger, another supposed adult, invoking the “lasting trauma” of hearing her speak.

Notable moments in the film include Professor Glenn Loury summarising the inevitable consequences of “affirmative action” and wildly varying standards of admission – which, it seems, mustn’t be acknowledged realistically – and Professor Wax’s comment about the race-grifting “equity” establishment, and its opposite – gratitude.

Reading time: 2 min

Written by: David