Robert Murphy on the pathologies of the leftist campus:   

This is not a matter of “Oh, gee, there’s a bunch of people who have different views about whether health insurance should be provided by the government.” That’s not what I’m talking about. [These are people whose reaction is,] “Oh, there’s a speaker coming to campus and we don’t like that person’s views. We are going to credibly threaten that we will break stuff and hurt people, we will set things on fire and smash windows.” And so, then the school has to cancel because of security concerns. And then that gets spun as “Oh yeah, the reason that speaker couldn’t come here is because he would incite violence.” The kind of mindset that would do that and would see nothing weird about that. “Yeah, the reason the speaker can’t come here is because he promotes violence – by us, his enemies.” 

Which rather calls to mind the tenderly whispered wife-beater’s lament: “Don’t make me hurt you, baby.”

Needless to say, examples abound. And do note the role of their academic enablers.

Cathy Young on Lenin and his admirers: 

Many leftists in places like Jacobin magazine see Lenin as the “good communist” to Joseph Stalin’s “bad communist” — the revolutionary wrongly maligned as an authoritarian. Indeed, Lenin’s birthday this year was marked on Twitter by New York State Senator Julia Salazar, a member of the new crop of young progressive politicians. The “Lenin good, Stalin bad” formula was also popular among Soviet reformers, both in the late 1950s-early 1960s and in the late 1980s. It was wrong then; it is wrong now… As independent Russian historian Nikita Sokolov recently told Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, Lenin’s only consistent position throughout his political career was that “he was a fundamental believer in violence as the solution to any problem.” 

Based on history, and their own writings, it seems entirely possible that devotees of Marxoid fantasy typically start with the ideal of violence and coercion, the titillating rewards of having power over others, and then work backwards in search of a pretext.

Oh, and Dr Jennifer Cassidy is an Oxford University politics lecturer who has thoughts on what kind of books you’re allowed to have on your shelves.

“Abolish work.”

Or, Buy Me Everything I Want, Now And Forever.

At the University of North Texas, a small act of mockery proves revealing:

When [maths professor, Nathaniel] Hiers noticed “a stack of flyers” on microaggressions in the department faculty lounge in November, he read them and found the ideas wanting. Then he wrote “Don’t leave garbage lying around” in jest on a chalkboard, with arrows pointing to the flyers.

Those of a delicate disposition may wish to avoid this image of un-woke waywardness.

Do remember to breathe.

Needless to say, such demurral – promptly construed as “upsetting” and even “threatening” – could not go unpunished:

Hiers claims that the reasons he was given for his firing trace back to the microaggression fliers: He wouldn’t subject himself to “additional diversity training” or retract his criticism of the fliers, and his “actions and response are not compatible with the values of this department.”

Professor Hiers’ claim regarding the reason for his firing appears to be confirmed, in writing, by the maths department chairman Ralf Schmidt, who cites the incident as pivotal in his decision and describes Hiers’ mockery of the flyers as “cowardly.”

The department-endorsed leaflets insist that statements such as “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” are in fact racist, sexist “microaggressions” and, in ways somewhat unclear, terribly oppressive, even a grave health risk, allegedly “targeting” the “marginalised group membership” of theoretical persons. Persons who, we’re told, consequently endure all manner of hardships, from poverty and migraines to heart disease and eating disorders. And so, it turns out that airing a belief in the importance of competence – as opposed to a preoccupation with a person’s sex or skin colour – is some kind of malevolent incantation, a powerful curse.

Professor Hiers is now suing the University of North Texas.

For Mother’s Day I asked for one thing: a house cleaning service.

In the pages of Harper’s Bazaar, Gemma Hartley bemoans the chore of getting her multiple bathrooms cleaned by someone else. Actually, the clean bathrooms are, it turns out, a secondary concern:

The real gift I wanted was to be relieved of the emotional labour of a single task that had been nagging at the back of my mind. The clean house would simply be a bonus.

It’s been said, here at least, that when someone uses the term “emotional labour” unironically, the person doing the mouthing is most likely a bit of a nightmare. Say, the kind of woman who complains about the “emotional labour” of hiring a domestic cleaner. Or the kind who bitches about her husband and his shortcomings in the pages of a national magazine, where friends and colleagues of said husband, and perhaps his own children, can read on with amusement.

My husband waited for me to change my mind to an “easier” gift than housecleaning, something he could one-click order on Amazon. Disappointed by my unwavering desire, the day before Mother’s Day he called a single service, decided they were too expensive, and vowed to clean the bathrooms himself. He still gave me the choice, of course. He told me the high dollar amount of completing the cleaning services I requested (since I control the budget) and asked incredulously if I still wanted him to book it.

Details ensue.

What I wanted was for him to ask friends on Facebook for a recommendation, call four or five more services, do the emotional labour I would have done if the job had fallen to me.

Many details.

I had wanted to hire out deep cleaning for a while, especially since my freelance work had picked up considerably. The reason I hadn’t done it yet was part guilt over not doing my housework, and an even larger part of not wanting to deal with the work of hiring a service. I knew exactly how exhausting it was going to be. That’s why I asked my husband to do it as a gift.

This, it seems, was unknown to said husband and so, alas, ‘twas not to be.

Sometimes, it can feel surprising that any beauty still exists in the world. It can feel wrong to keep cultivating our gardens while the world shatters outside our windows.

Yes, it’s time to once again gawp at the mindset of the Salon-reader demographic. Or at least the Salon-writer demographic, with which it presumably overlaps. Specifically, a piece by Ms Alex Dew, “a recent graduate of Eastern Washington University’s Master of Fine Arts programme in Creative Nonfiction,” and whose urgent bulletin to the world is titled My Houseplant Garden Is A Tiny National Park Donald Trump Can Never Destroy.

If that sounds a tad overwrought and not entirely even-keeled, do read on.

I begin each day by taking a mental inventory of whatever horrors Trump has committed since I have been asleep,

As one does.

scrolling through news outlets and social media on my iPhone, even though I know that this probably bad for my mental health.

I suspect this may be a matter of putting the cart before the horse. And perhaps tellingly, mental health is mentioned more than once in Ms Dew’s article.

There is evidence that Trump’s presidency has had a negative effect on the mental health of many Democrats, with 72% of those surveyed in one study reporting an increase in anxiety since he has taken office. Sometimes, it’s enough to make me not want to get out of bed.

A phenomenon at which we’ve previously marvelled. More than once.

After reading the news, it is time to attend to my indoor garden, to do the work of keeping my plants alive: the trimming and the watering and the fertilising. This work is meditation, a way of going on.

Yes, going on. Bravely, heroically, and despite the realisation that your preferred candidate lost an election, four years ago.