The results can be… revealing:

You see, caring about your family, your ancestors, your lineage, your children, is “actually absurd,” apparently. And by implication, some kinds of context – where you came from, say – are to be scorned as worthless.

An earlier, related exchange comes to mind:

One more time:

I’m guessing that’s some kind of progressive metaphysics.

Though I doubt mere obliviousness would fully explain this phenomenon. There’s an element of contrivance, of affectation and perversity.

Mr Convente is currently invoking victimhood – because people have read his pronouncements and have either laughed or pointed out why those pronouncements are unconvincing. Mr Convente is also calling Mr Burkett various vulgar terms and is insinuating some nefarious racial motive, despite offering no actual evidence to that effect.

Because if you pause to consider the physical basis of family, even in measured terms, and if you point out the logical idiocy of the “It’s only by chance you were born to said ancestors” school of thought, seemingly favoured by so many progressives, then this can only be explained by some seething racial animus. Apparently.

Mr Convente also declares, with some pride, “I don’t want kids.” Being, as he puts it, “too selfish.”

Our Betters, ladies and gentlemen. See their pieties shine.

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading, of course.

Lifted from the comments, a revealing choice of words:

Also, while there is nothing wrong… Again, a revealing tone, I think.

Mr Yglesias, since you ask, is currently said to earn around $1.4 million a year, chiefly from his 18,000 Substack subscribers. It therefore seems quite likely that he has savings and investments of some sort. I wonder what it is that he thinks happens to that money while he’s terribly busy complaining about the rich.

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

The alleged harms of debate and the citing of statistics are not mere rudeness or a failure to flatter, but “lasting psychological damage.” Because statistics can do that, apparently.

What might constitute controversy in the minds of such implausibly delicate creatures is not made clear, though we are told that the terms “blind review,” “handicap parking” and “immigrant” were considered “harmful language” by Stanford University’s IT department. Which does rather suggest a kind of neurotic contrivance.

Humble, you say. We’ll get to that in a second.

You can guess where this one’s going.

And,

And what better gift to the world than imposing your own hang-ups and inadequacies on everyone else, quite emphatically, at every opportunity?

And then we arrive at this glorious conundrum:

The study, found here, informs us that those most keen to pre-emptively shut down discussion, including by vigorous means, also “rated themselves as higher in… empathy.”

The inversions of progressive “empathy” – and its routine departure from reality – have of course been poked at here before.

And regarding those claims of humility, nothing says, ‘I entertain the possibility that my assumptions may be wrong’ like forbidding any and all attempts at contradiction.

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

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading of course, this strikes me as broadly accurate:

Much of the content here that’s about crime, antisocial behaviour and recreational malice is informed by a fairly visceral dislike of expectations of exemption and immunity – and actual immunity – from normal moral consequences. Consequences that I would expect to befall me, were I sufficiently selfish and unpleasant to engage in similar behaviour.

Hence the term The Unspanked.

Likewise, were I to move to a distant country, hoping to flourish, it would not occur to me to behave as these vibrant newcomers do. Or in ways seen quite vividly here. Were I to repeatedly violate the values and decencies of the indigenous, as if I owed nothing to those on whom I impose – as if their values, their expectations of reciprocation, were contemptible – then I would very much expect my welcome to be withdrawn.

And quite promptly.

Update, via the comments:

Rafi adds, drily,

Indeed. The convolutions of which, we’ve poked at before.

While Chow Bag quips,

Well, yes. There does seem to be a lot of frantic, rather neurotic calculation as to whether normal rules should apply, depending on the pigmentation or cross-dressing tendencies of the perpetrator, to whom indulgence must be extended. If you squint and pretend. If you perform the necessary contortions.

And so, we arrive at scenes like this, or these, in which malevolent bedlamites, beings clearly driven by spite, expect to be spared normal consequences, to which the rest of us would be subject, and merrily exploit their assumptions of immunity. Behaving in ways that, for anyone else, would likely result in a good kicking.

Needless to say, this is not a recipe for a fragrant tomorrow.

As illustrations go, this one is worthy of note:

There are many things to dislike about progressivism, even just from a purely aesthetic point of view, and so we spend a lot of time on here ridiculing it on that basis, but it’s important always to remember that the main problem with progressivism is that it’s not true.

It’s… https://t.co/Wqs5FaS6JZ

— wanye (@xwanyex) April 7, 2026

Readers will note Mrs Newsom’s assumptions of accidental criminality – among occupants of San Quentin, a maximum-security prison – and her obliviousness regarding how much effort is required – how many accidents – to actually end up in a prison of any kind.

Such wildly inaccurate conceptions of the criminal demographic and of the psychology and motives in play, as expressed by the criminals themselves, have been noted here before, with corrective – one might say eye-widening – statistics and illustrations.

Update, via the comments:

Among the scrupulously progressive, there’s also a failure to grasp that criminal and antisocial behaviour is rarely confined to one sphere.

We might, for instance, revisit the outpourings of Nora Loreto, who insisted, quite emphatically, that habitual car theft is a “victimless” crime. Ms Loreto was far too busy applauding herself for mouthing the approved attitudes to consider what it is that stolen cars are very often used for, and by whom, and the rather significant overlap of car theft with getaways and other untoward activities, including human smuggling.

In the case mentioned here, a trio of burglars – with over 200 convictions between them – also amused themselves by stealing cars, endangering other motorists in truly alarming ways, and assaulting and mugging the elderly and bedridden cancer patients.

But hey, accidents happen.

And among progressives, contrivance and obvious falsehoods function as luxury goods, as markers of in-group status. Like rhetorical jewellery.

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