In somewhat-surreal-modernity news:

Sensitive readers may wish to look away now:

Traumatic scenes of the desecration taking place can be found below:

A group of five to six kids just starting doing donuts and creating skid marks on the Pride Mural. Right in front of me as we’re reporting on three people getting arrested for doing the same thing last night.@KHQLocalNews pic.twitter.com/FMXGAg77fx

— Adam Schwager (@schwagerTV) June 6, 2024

The situation is of course terribly fraught and further complications have been uncovered by our tireless media professionals:

After allegedly causing “widespread damage” – again, see photo, above – three suspects have been arrested and charged with first-degree malicious mischief, a class-B felony:

Clearly, feelings run high.

Though it occurs to me that the pretentious weeping currently underway could have been avoided by not painting one’s weird religious symbols on the chuffing road at a busy intersection. As if that were a perfectly normal thing to do, and in no way a potential irritant or an invitation to mischief.

And then, inevitably, the sly conflation:

At which point, readers may wonder whether the children’s scootering, and the wider disaffection for the increasingly cluttered and kaleidoscopic Pride flag, may have less to do with “homophobia,” as claimed, and rather more to do with a symbol that is now associated with creepy, compelled unrealism, fantasy pronouns, and the steering of children towards experimental drugging and surgical mutilation. The kinds of things that many people, including many gay people, might find a little contentious, or alienating, or morally repugnant.

That the repeatedly ‘enhanced’ Pride flag now represents a range of things to which a great many people, including gay people, might conceivably take exception – or find obnoxious, indeed degenerate – is apparently unthinkable. Or at least unsayable. And so, with the deploying of the word “homophobia,” gay people are being used as a rhetorical shield against objections to, for instance, pornography in schools, the ideological grooming and sexualisation of children, and cross-dressing men in women’s intimate spaces.

Among other things.

However, pretentious howling is very much in fashion, and so,

I’m guessing the wear and tear caused by normal foot traffic will be monitored closely. Dog walkers will doubtless be urged to avoid the sacred space at all costs, lest the unthinkable occur.

Lifted from the comments, a small point, on suburban versus city living. And those who would prefer that you didn’t have a choice:

I went out on my porch last night and there was a guy milling about in front of my neighbor’s house, sitting on their retaining wall, just, you know, hanging out on somebody else’s property at 11pm.

Freedom from that (and a million related things) is what suburbanites are… https://t.co/O94JKBdBv5

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) May 30, 2024

A thread ensues.

In the comments, Jacob adds:

Well, yes. Quite.

Not having to guess whether some stranger sitting on your wall at 11pm is a threat, or just someone with an impaired sense of boundaries – and not having to do that regularly – is freeing. Likewise, being able to park your car on the street outside without fretting, routinely, about whether someone may try to steal it, or steal some part of it, or just vandalise it out of moron spite, is similarly non-trivial.

And contra Mr Gifford, a thing one might wish to enjoy.

Update, via the comments:

Mr Gifford, since you ask, is a proponent of the “15-minute city.” He doesn’t much like car ownership, or people having the option of living in the suburbs. He’s also rather disdainful of the fact that some of us would rather not “live closer to all kinds of different people,” a proximity to difference – now there’s a euphemism – that is presented as some kind of unexplained moral imperative.

That some people prefer to have neighbours with broadly compatible values and expectations – say, regarding behaviour, noise, the observation of normal boundaries, things of that kind – seems to vex Mr Gifford. The word “privilege” is deployed in a rumbling kind of way.

A rumbling we’ve heard before, while marvelling at its implications.

Update 2, via the comments:

Regarding Mr Gifford’s enthusiasm for our proximity – that’s coerced proximity – to “all kinds of different people,” MattS notes,

Another non-trivial point, one touched on here, and about which readers may have views somewhat at odds with those of Mr Gifford.

Dicentra adds, not unreasonably,

YOU WILL CARRY THOSE FOUR BAGS OF SHOPPING ON PUBLIC TRANSPORT. OR DIE IN THE ATTEMPT. CITIZEN. 

And where, needless to say, you will delight in being surrounded by “all kinds of different people.”

At which point, this came to mind, along with this. And of course this infinitely charming scene. Among many others.

Update 3:

In the comments, Daniel Ream adds,

And if everyone involved has shared values and behavioural expectations – the kind of cultural common ground – and moral common ground – that Mr Gifford would presumably disdain as problematic, as mere “privilege.”

A while ago, I mentioned that for many years a neighbour has had an ‘honesty box’ on a small, home-made stand on the pavement outside their house. Passers-by can help themselves to surplus produce from the owner’s vegetable garden, or small plants, or unwanted toys, or whatever. People leave the suggested, very nominal charge or whatever they deem appropriate.

In a box. That doesn’t get robbed.

Almost every time I pass it, I’m faintly pleased that it exists. It does seem rather symbolic. And it serves as a reminder that I’ve lived in neighbourhoods where such a thing would very promptly be vandalised and thrown into the road, and where delight would be taken in its destruction – and in the misery of its owner.

And the difference between the two scenarios – or between this scene and this one – is not caused by poverty, or indeed “privilege.” It’s about being better people. The kind of people one might, say, prefer as neighbours.

Update 4:

Regarding the reference to better people, EmC replies,

To acknowledge the obvious does have an air of scandalousness. Such is the practised dishonesty of our times. But at risk of being thought “privileged,” or insufficiently egalitarian, I would prefer to walk down the street without someone doing this in order to do this. To me or anyone else.

Outrageous of me, I know.

Quoted below, extracts from a conversation that in many circles would result in much hissing and flailing of limbs, but which, it seems to me, very much ought to be had:

From the following video, in which Andrew Gold talks with the formidable Mia Hughes, author of The WPATH Files, about pseudoscience, malpractice, and experiments on children.

It’s a forty-five-minute watch, but there’s plenty to chew on. Much that could be quoted. I should point out that the later sections of the interview, which explore surgical affirmations, or as one surgeon puts it, “creating body types that do not exist in nature,” does get a little vivid, and indeed surreal.

Regarding the obstruction by activists of the Golden Gate Bridge, a not unfair observation:

My toddler’s new thing when I tell him to stop doing something is to respond, “I’m just <literally the thing I’m telling him to stop doing>, so I’ll be like, “get down off that chair” and he’ll say, “I just wanted to be on the chair.” These people are literally toddlers. https://t.co/JrJMgoQ1ZI

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) April 15, 2024

And,

Reminder: these people arrive at thought-terminating cliches because their views are extraordinarily stupid and cannot be defended on their own terms. “I should get to shut down the economy any time I’m mad enough about something” sounds so retarded that they have no choice but…

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) April 15, 2024

Note the lofty defence offered by our pronoun-stipulating champion of the obstruction – that “protests are meant to be disruptive. It’s the whole point.”

A protest, then, is not meant to persuade the general public, or to get them on-side, or to make others sympathetic with whatever this week’s cause may be. But simply to be disruptive. To gratuitously frustrate, and aggravate, large numbers of law-abiding people. To exert power. By doing random harm. That’s “the whole point.” A vision doubtless attractive to those with antisocial inclinations.

And those inclinations aren’t being indulged and given rein reluctantly or under duress. The screwing-over of others is sought out and chosen, over and over again. This is recreational sociopathy.

We’ve been here before, of course:

And what kind of person would have urges like that?

Hence the need to consider other, less edifying motives.

Update, via the comments, where other illustrations come to mind:

They are, as it were, pleasuring themselves.

Update 2:

In the comments, pst314 adds,

Alas, being incorrigible narcissists, I suspect that reciprocation isn’t a restraining factor, or a common feature of their thinking. See, for instance, this rather glorious illustration:

And from which, this bears repeating:

One more time. This is who they are.

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

In the piece linked above, Ben Sixsmith responds to an attempt, by Lukas Shayo, to problematise a much-loved comic strip, one that must now, it seems, be fretted over as both “violent” and “sexist.” Readers familiar with the strip in question may wonder whether complaining in print about Calvin’s mom being, well, a mom, and about the “sexism” of a cartoon six-year-old, should result in some reflection on one’s chosen career, and one’s life choices more generally.

As Ben replies,

I’ve said before, regarding the pop-culture site io9, the more insufferably woke the site has become, the more generic and unwritten its content feels. By which I mean, it was once possible to stumble across lengthy articles on niche pop-culture subjects, often written with an affectionate expertise. Now, however, it’s difficult to differentiate one contributor from another. The content doesn’t read as if anyone in particular wrote it. It’s flavourless, uniform in its politics and ideological assumptions, both pointedly announced, and uniform in its tone. It might as well be generated by an algorithm.

Regarding Ben’s piece, Aelfheld adds,

It’s practically a genre – and a tool for the forging of progressive credentials. Basically, take something that’s very good and that a lot of people like, or have liked as children, and then problematise it, sour it, generally in a narrow, glib, and self-satisfied way. While getting details hopelessly wrong and missing all kinds of subtlety.

Or as Ben puts it, “joyless Buzzfeed-esque finger-wagging.”

See also, certain popular songs of the 1940s.

The author of the joyless prattle, Lukas Shayo – CUNY and Brooklyn, naturally – does rather struggle to find his “10 ways” in which Calvin and Hobbes should elicit regret or disapproval. We’re told, for instance, that,

And we’re informed that the absence of smartphones and GPS tracking devices – the strip concluded in 1995 – may be “baffling for young readers.”

Mr Shayo also bemoans Calvin spending “too much time by himself,” thereby allowing his imagination to entertain the reader.

We’re told, with improbable earnestness:

Also troubling to Mr Shayo is the thought of our comic-strip protagonist being “unsupervised in an enormous forest.” Or, unregistered by the author, what Calvin perceives as an enormous forest. This, remember, is a six-year-old boy who regularly ventures into outer space and who perceives his stuffed toy as an eloquent, talking tiger. This one reminded me of being six or so myself and, with my cousin in tow, fearlessly exploring a small strip of woodland behind my grandmother’s house, and which six-year-old me chose to see as enormous and therefore a basis for adventure.

Given that the charm of Calvin and Hobbes so often hinges on the mismatch between what Calvin imagines and rather more mundane reality, you’d think that Mr Shayo might entertain such possibilities. But no. Wokeness must be announced, a posture assumed, and things found problematic. Because contrived disappointment, a souring of all the things, is the latest must-have. For a certain kind of person. And everything, especially things that many people have enjoyed, must be judged – and found wanting – by the narrow standards of one’s own self-admiring in-group at this precise point in time.

Update, via the comments:

Aitch adds,

While Dean reveals,

I suppose that’s what makes it grimly funny, in a disappointing modernity kind of way. If you poke through Mr Shayo’s other, numerous contributions, the tone, such as it is, is much the same. There’s no obvious personality – no sense of any particular person having written it – no sense of mischief, and no discernible wit. Mr Shayo is, however, capable of making entirely contradictory claims, on the very same subject, mere days apart.

For instance, in the “10 Ways” article quoted above, Mr Shayo worries that the absence of smartphones and GPS tracking devices may be “baffling for young readers,” and he bemoans how the strip “doesn’t have any modern technology.” And yet we’re told – days later – that, “the lack of technological influence makes the strip read as a timeless work.” “It always feels that it’s something that could still happen today… the absence of technology is hardly notable.”

Likewise, Mr Shayo insists that “ending Calvin and Hobbes is exactly what saved it,” and praises the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, for refusing to license spin-offs, adaptations, and potentially lucrative merchandise, thereby “living up to the ideals that the strip… championed.” “Ending the strip,” we’re told, “was a good decision” and “there is no reason to tarnish that legacy by adding more to an already concluded work.”

While, one week earlier, “Calvin and Hobbes needs to be an animated show.” Because “an adaptation or continuation is essential.”

These, shall we say, inconsistencies, among many others, aren’t a result of some cunning AI spoof, some infinitely deep intelligence. This is just the standard of writing, and thinking, now deemed good enough.

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