Belatedly, and via pst314 in the comments, Rob Henderson on luxury beliefs and conspicuous convictions:

The chief purpose of luxury beliefs is to indicate evidence of the believer’s social class and education. Only academics educated at elite institutions could have conjured up a coherent and reasonable-sounding argument for why parents should not be allowed to raise their kids and should hold baby lotteries instead. When an affluent person advocates for drug legalisation, or anti-vaccination policies, or open borders, or loose sexual norms, or uses the term “white privilege,” they are engaging in a status display. They are trying to tell you, “I am a member of the upper class.”

Affluent people promote open borders or the decriminalisation of drugs because it advances their social standing, not least because they know that the adoption of those policies will cost them less than others. The logic is akin to conspicuous consumption—if you’re a student who has a large subsidy from your parents and I do not, you can afford to waste $900 and I can’t, so wearing a Canada Goose jacket is a good way of advertising your superior wealth and status. Proposing policies that will cost you as a member of the upper class less than they would cost me serve the same function. Advocating for open borders and drug experimentation are good ways of advertising your membership of the elite because, thanks to your wealth and social connections, they will cost you less than me.

Unfortunately, the luxury beliefs of the upper class often trickle down and are adopted by people lower down the food chain, which means many of these beliefs end up causing social harm.

Take polyamory. I had a revealing conversation recently with a student at an elite university. He said that when he sets his Tinder radius to five miles, about half of the women, mostly other students, said they were “polyamorous” in their bios. Then, when he extended the radius to 15 miles to include the rest of the city and its outskirts, about half of the women were single mothers. The costs created by the luxury beliefs of the former are borne by the latter. Polyamory is the latest expression of sexual freedom championed by the affluent. They are in a better position to manage the complications of novel relationship arrangements. And if these relationships don’t work out, they can recover thanks to their financial capability and social capital. The less fortunate suffer by adopting the beliefs of the upper class. 

Needless to say, many of the issues raised by Mr Henderson have, over the years, been given a chewing here. From the unconvincing contrarian Laurie Penny and her suboptimal lifestyle advice, and the naked hypocrisies of Simon Schama and Clive Stafford Smith, to our mulling of the 1970s sitcom The Good Life, supposedly a moral lodestone for the modern anti-capitalist.

For the last time this year, and with infinite subtlety, I’m going to remind patrons that this rickety barge, on whose seating your arses rest, is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant a while longer, and remain ad-free, there’s an orange button below with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. For those wishing to express their love regularly, there’s a monthly subscription option top left. And if one-click haste is called for, my PalPay.Me page can be found here. Additionally, any Amazon UK shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last twelve years or so, in close to 3,000 posts and over 100,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year summaries. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that.

If you can, do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company. Also, open thread. 

“Look at you shaking, you little bitch!”

From the Land of Let’s All Talk About My Feelings, behold our betters at large:

“You don’t know me…” “YOU’RE WHITE!”

Update, via the comments:

Reciprocation is a lovely thing. || She reeks of class. || Intruders detected. || It is damaged. || The undead. || Because you demanded it, four decades of Argos catalogues. (h/t, Things) || Caption unnecessary. || Kitchen nightmare of note. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || If you’ve ever wondered what would be published in a journal of “feminist geography.” || Girls’ night in. || This may amuse. Do try it out for yourselves. || Slightly underwhelming library books. Includes Bowling for Women and How to Make a Mystery Smell Balloon. || The size of space. || The Crawling Eye (1958). || Crisis averted. || Cutie. || It’s called a guqin. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || And finally, via Dicentra, the eternal struggle.

When they put up the posters [advertising the event]… the campus completely melted down. They had two campus-wide meetings attended, according to reports, by hundreds of students, faculty, and administrators about what to do with me coming to campus… The rumours were spread – not just rumours, emails, including from the student government – that I was a white supremacist coming to campus with my white nationalist followers to target minorities… They organised safe spaces for my visit. They organised safety teams to guide people to safe spaces with glow sticks if they couldn’t find the safe spaces. In the library, which was the main safe space, they had colouring books for students—college students. It was the craziest thing.

William Jacobson recounts a lively visit to Vassar College.

Other subjects touched on include blogging versus Twitter, and the Oberlin College / Gibson’s Bakery court case:

It’s just an example of a powerful left-wing entity, which essentially runs the town and is not used to people standing up to it, and which has reacted, in my view, completely irrationally… Oberlin moved to transfer the case out of… their home county, because they didn’t think they could get a fair trial… I think that should tell you something of the bubble that the college community is.

Professor Jacobson explains the Oberlin saga in more detail in this video.  

Readers unfamiliar with the incident and its elaborate, rather farcical inversions of reality, can find a short but informative overview here. As I wrote at the time,

It’s worth noting that Oberlin College is the Clown Quarter writ large, a leftist fiefdom, where woke psychodramas are normative, encouraged and institutional. And hence the delinquency and moral inversion – the ripened fruit of all that leftist psychology. Such that students were encouraged by staff to side with a trio of physically aggressive shoplifters - people stealing for fun – and to actively destroy the livelihood of a baker who would rather not be preyed upon by thieves. The expectation of lawfulness, of common civility, being repaid with libel, harassment and ruin. Activities that Oberlin’s administrators were happy to enable, using college funds, and often with bizarrely adolescent behaviour of their own.

Our betters at large.

Oh, I think you’ll find it is. 

Also, open thread. Because I’m generous that way.

Back yard scenes. (h/t, Holborn) || Synchronised boobies. || Hey, baby. || Being proud, they filmed it. || “Grandma always wanted a pig.” || Twitter indignation. || Twitter done well. || Dental nerves. || He does this better than you do. || Documentary idea of note. (h/t, Damian) || Unmix your music. Not there, but not bad. || Always respect the media. || Teachable moment. || Teachable moment 2. || The longest sight-line? || Unexpectedly. || New shoes, I see. || On Soviet cannibalism. || “I heard about McDonald’s never decaying so I wanted to find out whether this was true.” || Underclass scenes. || Everything wrong with The Shining. || And finally, if you laugh at this, you’re a terrible, terrible person.

Currently, 17 percent of American homeowners have a smart video surveillance device, and unit sales are expected to double by 2023… The popularity of these devices has led to the “porch pirate gotcha” film genre, a sort of America’s Funniest Home Videos of petty crime.

In the pages of The Atlantic, our sympathies are solicited. Though not for the people being robbed, of course:

The first time Ganave Fairley got busted for stealing a neighbour’s Amazon package, she was just another porch thief unlucky to be caught on tape.

The words first time and unlucky should perhaps be borne in mind.

The deliveries that were dropped daily on her neighbours’ porches caught her attention. At that point, she didn’t know about the cameras or [neighbourhood watch app] Nextdoor. In the months that followed, the police would find a cache of the neighbours’ belongings and mail in her possession… Her sister told me that Fairley generally sold the packages “for a little bit of nothing, just to get high.”

I sense that some of you may not be feeling overly sympathetic.

Ms Fairley – who invokes racism as a cause of her local notoriety, and whose extensive cache of stolen belongings included other people’s credit cards – is described to us at length and in the softest possible light. We learn of her dysfunctional upbringing, her struggles with a mouldy apartment, and her various drug habits, including “trekking daily to a methadone clinic” – a heroic feat, apparently. Ms Fairley’s failure to attend numerous court dates – for petty theft, mail theft, receiving stolen property, possession of heroin, and child endangerment – is, we learn, due to her having “a lot going on” in her life. In at least one instance, it turns out that what was going on was stealing from a resident she’d previously targeted and who, while being robbed again, was waiting to see Ms Fairley appear in court.

The fact that Ms Fairley is gay is mentioned too, as if that were somehow relevant or an explanation for credit card fraud and chronic thieving. We’re also told, touchingly, that she has “family members’ names tattooed on her neck.”

Lifted from the comments – two items, not unrelated.

Our betters opine:

When specifically asked about [journalist, Andy] Ngo, who suffered a brain haemorrhage as a result of a violent attack while covering Antifa demonstrations in Portland, Ore. in June, [Professor Troy] Storfjell replied, “I don’t have a problem with it.”

You see, Mr Ngo is a “militant fascist,” a “Nazi.” If only in the minds of bedlamites who are employed to educate other people’s children.

Our betters at large. Or, Trick-or-Treat, the Antifa Way.

The second link, the video, does, I think, reveal the root motives of the personalities attracted to Antifa. Unless, of course, the obvious way to address an ostensibly political disagreement with someone is to find out where their parents live and then harass them at night in a fairly sinister manner, having already doxxed and threatened the person’s elderly mother. The point here being to intimidate Mr Ngo and his family, and to underline their vulnerability, specifically to violence. To make them feel unsafe in their own homes. There’s a spiteful ingenuity.

But hey, “social justice” is all about piety and compassion.

The basic message of the masked night-time visitors – a message illustrated vividly elsewhere – seems fairly straightforward. ‘You see who we are, and show others who we are, and so we will punish you.’

Needless to say, this also reveals who they are, but I suspect they just can’t help themselves.  

Update, via the comments:

Alas, her telekinetic powers failed her when she needed them the most. || For all your kerning nightmares. || Our political titans. || More joys of public transport. || Winter in Japan. || Landing in trees, in 360 degrees. || The thrill of yarn. || Are we there yet, dad? || He does this better than you do. || I question this design choice. || Oversharing of note. || You shall go to the ball. || Shopping centre scenes. || He sees you. || Headline of note. || “You’ve walked out of the movie three times?” || Woke AF. || Feminist standards. || “Rhetorical violence.” || Always respect the media and their lofty moral leadership. || In fairness, it is easy to miss. || And finally, what appears to be the aftermath of a traumatic collision.