More fun times in the Clown Quarter, where our betters display their plumage:

The head of Western Connecticut State University’s psychology department shared his own qualms about being white on Tuesday, claiming that “whiteness needs to go away.” Daniel Barrett… goes on to muse about his personal tumultuous relationship with his identity… [and] proclaims that he is “blinded” by his own “whiteness.”

“Whiteness,” an allegedly deplorable yet oddly nebulous phenomenon, is apparently rooted in the “destruction of the environment” and the “total demolition of value,” including, we’re told, the destruction of “integrity, honesty… common sense.” Our theatrically agonised academic insists that “whiteness” has “no nature, no culture, no essence… no value or intrinsic meaning,” and yet it supposedly corrupts and befouls everything it touches and must therefore “dissolve into oblivion.”

Despite the author’s breathlessness and the list of physical and moral catastrophes supposedly caused by “whiteness,” and by “whiteness” alone, an actual definition of this uniquely malign phenomenon – which is simultaneously invisible yet blinding, intangible yet all-powerful – is left to the imagination. The nearest we get is a fleeting reference to the “concept of a white race,” which is bad, and the “power and privilege associated with being white,” also bad. Though details of the latter remain unspecified and mysterious. A vagueness that suggests no grasping of facts or ambition to explain, merely an airing of in-group credentials.

It scarcely needs saying that allowing one’s children to be exposed to the unhappy mental contortions of Professor Barrett would not be the wisest way to spend tens of thousands of dollars. Though conceivably one might use him as an illustration of how minds can come undone.

Update:

It’s worth pondering, for instance, what kind of adult might feel a need to signal their virtue, or what they imagine as virtue, habitually, and in such ostentatious ways. I mean, if you’re about as virtuous as you think you ought to be, given whatever circumstances, why would you spend time and effort putting on a show? What kind of person feels compelled to seem virtuous – to pretend to be more pious than they actually are – and to a degree that involves contortions like those above? At risk of sounding ungenerous, I think it’s a telling activity. A warning of sorts.

And lest we forget, unwittingly comical virtue-signalling also afflicts professors of philosophy.

“Almost everyone I know comes home from a hard day being ground on the wheel of late stage disaster capitalism and tries to wrap their shattered brain around the very real prospect of species collapse. It’s a lot.”

Guess who.

Also, open thread. While I get my act together. 

I wasn’t previously familiar with Rosanna Arquette, an “actress, poet and activist,” but goodness, she puts on a show:

But then, this isn’t her first rodeo:

So, anyway, in the nightmare, I’m trapped at the Atlanta National Convention of the Democratic Socialists of America, which is currently underway, and where the gathered superior beings keep triggering each other. Most notably, bottom right:

To recap: Mr Sensory Overload declares his pronouns and brings up “a point of privilege” – about how distressed and triggered he is by hearing whispering in the auditorium – and such is his distress, he uses the verboten word “guys.” This immediately triggers the Big Ungendered Flamingo Being, who, also clearly distraught, denounces the use of gendered language as itself privileged and oppressive.

Given how one person’s complaint about being triggered instantly triggers another person to complain about being triggered by the previous person’s complaint, you can imagine the rip-roaring pace at which decisions are likely to be made.

I suspect the toppling of capitalism may take longer than expected.

Update:

Mr Sensory Overload, pronouns he and him, is still unhappy.

Update 2:

God help us, there’s more.

Main video via Andy Ngo. Previous nightmare scenarios can be found here, here and here.

You can tell from his outpourings:

As someone who writes about Trump and his subordinates every day, I need every reprieve I can find from the ongoing toxic demise of our country, including in my personal social media. But my decision today to unfriend this individual was no simple purge; I am significantly emotionally wounded.

It’s all terribly dramatic. Practically a miniature opera. You see, while browsing Facebook, Mr Ford saw a photo of an old high school friend celebrating the Fourth of July with her daughter and while wearing a Make America Great Again hat. The latter detail, the hat, being, for Mr Ford, “unacceptable,” a personal violation and source of deep trauma. Naturally, and not at all oddly, Zack decided to scold his old high school friend, as was his duty as a super-woke being:

I gave my friend an ultimatum.

Always a sound opening gambit.

I told her I wouldn’t unfriend her so long as she apologised for wearing the hat and promised me I wouldn’t have to see it in my feed again.

Terms of surrender. A bold choice.

When she claimed I was trying to police her beliefs, I corrected her, pointing out that my conditions only regarded the hat, not her position on any particular issue.

Ooh. Terms of surrender with bonus sophistry. That’s bound to go down well. Let’s see:

When asked to choose between a hat that embodies that evil and someone she’s known half her life,

Wait for it.