I’ll be taking a break for a few days, and so, to soften this terrible blow, here are some items from the archives:

Role Models, You say.

On the weirdly woke marketing of retailer John Lewis.

Gardening Gone Wrong.

Four women fondle straw, tongue moss.

Bravely, I Cope With Rejection.

Royal Air Force sidelines fitness tests, prioritises brownness, womb-having.

Why Don’t You Welcome Further Degradation?

Observer columnist excuses habitual, organised shoplifting. Dystopian surrealism ensues.

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

Not entirely unrelated to ongoing events:

Mr Politano, by the way, is a “He/him. Bi/pan.” Just in case it wasn’t clear that he’s better than you.

The subject of social trust – specifically, its erosion – has, of course, been mentioned here before.

Update, via the comments:

From the subsequent rumblings:

It does rather call to mind numerous polyamory ‘cope’ videos, in which clearly neurotic and unhappy people try to convince themselves that they’re totally cool with their chosen lifestyle miseries. Often while on the verge on tears.

Pretending not to see the obvious implications of, say, this phenomenon here, and variations thereof, or this lively, uplifting scene, is, I suppose, a skill of sorts. But I wouldn’t say that such pretensions are a basis for applause.

Update 2:

And speaking of practised unrealism:

As Steve E adds, drily,

The idea that there may be very real physical constraints on some favoured policy – that reality may not comply with half-baked theory – seems entirely alien to Mr Snow. An attitude not uncommon among his progressive peers, and which may help explain the lively events currently underway in several British cities.

Mr Snow, since you ask, is married to the philanthropist Lady Edwina Louise Grosvenor, daughter of the sixth Duke of Westminster, one of the country’s richest landowners, with an estimated fortune north of £7 billion. Needless to say, Mr Snow does not live in, or anywhere near, the kinds of “diverse” neighbourhoods now being trashed and terrorised by competing tribes.

Tribes that apparently shouldn’t exist.

Also open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Memorable watermelon. || Maybe it’s a meat thing. || Monster competition, 1967. || Mirror for sale. || Two men with placards, an exchange of ideas ensues. || The thrill of watching dough. || Card game. || How to earn a doctorate in psychology. || She’s got a big one. || Bouncy. || Just one job. || One of these things is not like the others. || You want one and you know it. || Oh glorious enrichment. || We revolve around him, you know. || Cinema snacks. || Fancy a little chicken? || Not unfair. || No, I insist, ladies first. || It’s “gender affirming,” see. || A compendium of profanities, sorted by subject and rudeness. From cobblers and cack to putain de merde and cona da tua mãe. || Stiff competition for food. || “Unfortunately, the cost of this mistake is quite high.” || And finally, funereal scenes.

To be notified of new posts, you can follow me on X / Twitter.

To register with the blog and thereby enable extra commenting options – including @username mentions and live notifications – scroll down to the black ‘Meta’ box at the very bottom of the page. It’s free and quite painless.

Further to this, and also via Charlotte Gill, let’s visit the world of politically radical tableware. Specifically,

Because this is what you need to know when taking a class in ceramics:

We funded this.

But remember, universities need more money 😉 pic.twitter.com/gKEbweQsVG

— Charlotte Gill (@CharlotteCGill) July 29, 2024

For those deeply intrigued:

Well, obviously, you can’t just learn how to make plates.

And hey, who wouldn’t want some of that lovely racial awareness? Or, less coyly, practised question-begging and pretentious racial guilt. Or unearned racial resentment, depending on how brown you happen to be. I mean, you can’t just go through life interacting with people as individuals. You have to cultivate a neurotic habit of seeing people as avatars of some supposedly put-upon racial group. Or conversely, as oppressors, as proven by their pallor, their deplorable whiteness.

And a fragrant utopia will surely follow.

The creative titan behind the project – named, inevitably, Working With Whiteness – is Victoria Burgher, a self-styled “artist from a colonising country,” for whom pretentious, and rather invidious, racial agonising has been a path to many grants and awards. Ms Burgher, we’re told,

You see,

And,

Strained metaphors are very in, it seems. Along with teetering piles of assumptions. Also, Bad Whitey. It’s all terribly original. Very daring. Not at all conformist.

It occurs to me, however, that Ms Burgher’s contrived, modish waffle may make a kind of sense if you think of it as an attempt to add social heft to the otherwise pedestrian art that she actually produces.

For instance:

“From The River To The Sea… #2 (2023). Porcelain, cobalt, gold lustre and glaze, 27cm.”

And,

“White But Working On It (2022). Glazed porcelain ceramic badges, 5-6 cm.”

And,

“Whiteness (2018). Ink on bagasse (sugar cane fibre), fabric, pins, 14 x 14 cm.”

It would, I think, explain a few things. As it often does.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the unattractive objects shown above, and others very much like them, Martin D adds,

A fair question. One worth pondering.

Ms Burgher approvingly cites Ms Robin DiAngelo, the peddler of neurosis mentioned here, the L Ron Hubbard of wokeness, and whose devotees, as we’ve seen, are often wildly unhinged and nakedly malevolent. Which probably tells us much of what we need to know about Ms Burgher and her racial affectations. The mindset she wishes to inflict on others. And by extension, those who succumb.

And so, Ms Burgher makes her unattractive tat, and calls it art, and treads on ceramic eggshells, and calls it performance art, while listing the hallucinatory evils of having pale skin. And while telling those sufficiently credulous that “whiteness is oppression,” the source of all that is wrong, a basis for eternal shame, and that white people should “not behave white.”

You see, we will purge the world of bigotry by embracing wholesale the mental habits of the bigot.

So, yes. Someone quite fucked up.

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

Attention, music lovers. Charlotte Gill brings thrilling news:

I knew you’d be keen.

Naturally, all this healing and coexistence, all this righteousness and resistance, necessitates certain rules, indeed a manifesto:

As Ms Gill observes, one eyebrow slightly raised:

Ah, but, you see, it’s “the radical act of collective song.” The “radical act of joy.” And the radical act of shunning white people as some kind of moral contaminant. How the time must fly.

Readers intrigued by the prospect of shaping the tapestry of their collective sound, via “somatic practice,” “singing and healing together,” and “co-creating an anthem,” can savour the results of all this radicalism below:

This is what a “Decolonise Choir” looks and sounds like. Find out more in my new piece 🚨🦄 🌈 💰 🌹 https://t.co/gFm6yv2QKo pic.twitter.com/pSaI9301Sx

— Woke Waste 💰🦄 (@WokeWaste) July 25, 2024

You may now resume your humdrum, dreary, non-decolonised lives.

Update, via the comments:

Nikw211 asks, not unreasonably,

Indeed. It’s a head-scratcher.

However, as the only racial group being explicitly excluded is Old Whitey, the obvious inference is that the cause of all this alleged misery and “trauma” is the party being excluded. As if the mere proximity of People Of Pallor would inhibit and befoul any creative endeavour, any glimmer of “joy.” Given the minority status of white people in London, it seems a bit much. And ever so slightly ungrateful.

And it is, I think, worth noting that the nation’s capital, where these dramas of “resistance” unfold, has in my lifetime gone from a native white-majority city, over 90%, to a native white-minority one, around 35%. Yet it would seem that even this dramatically downsized white devil population is, for some, still too burdensome and oppressive.

A cause of “collective trauma.”