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Quote of the Day: No Escape
And everyone was saying, “It’s a conversation.” But it is not a conversation. It’s a one-sided….belief? And there was no room for discussion. It was just arguments; trolling; bullying.
Where was this stated? Can you guess what it was about? A political discussion board? YouTube comments? r/pol? It was said by a yarn dyer regarding a controversy over knitting on Instagram.
In essence, a bunch of ultra-woke knitters created a social media mob over a knitter’s deep desire to go to India. Eventually, they forced her to recant, denounce herself, and prostrate herself before Social Justice. Said yarn dyer was faced with a mass boycott by hordes of outraged social justice warriors and those swept along with the flood. For Social Justice is a jealous and pitiless god, far worse than any atheist’s stereotype of Jehovah.
Every hobby is being infected. Comics? Science Fiction? Computer Games? Sports? Everywhere you look, there are SJWs demanding that we express maximum wokeness at all times.
Our own @She addressed this topic before with politeness and dignity, but I am lacking in those attributes, so I will address this more directly:
“What profession has the most inherent aversion to escape?”
“Jailors.” — Exchange between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien
The problem with denying people escape from the political struggle is that a foe is most dangerous when cornered. When the enemy shrugs his shoulders and realizes he is dead anyway, then you can expect the fiercest fighting. It’s only a matter of time until you or someone you care about faces the psychopathic abomination that is Social Justice. Being a polite, good person will not save you — these inquisitors are just as fanatical as the average ISIS member. Fight back. Grant them no concession and remain on the attack. Keep the outrage on them — how dare they bring politics into this?
This is a stressful strategy, but there is a supportive cheering section all around you. If there is anything I could imagine would unite Ricochetti, it’s standing up to political correctness police, woke zombies, and the Social Justice cultists. We’ve got your back.
Published in Group Writing
I was looking for a quote to write about, then I saw this article. After I got past delightful visions of chasing woke Antifa types around in full plate with a polaxe and warhammer, I figured I had a good quote of the day.
The Quote of the Day series is the easiest way to start a fun conversation on Ricochet. We have many open dates on the March Schedule. We’ve even include tips for finding great quotes, so choose your favorite quote and sign up today!
RAH, dear Paladin!
Because the knitter referred to India as a “colorful” place? Gee, the woke knitters were being “niggardly” with their support of someone travelling abroad.
The situation is very serious. The politicization of everything will increasingly suck the joy out of life for ever-larger numbers of people, will drive dysfunctional-to-outright insane public policies, and will have a very malign economic effect
Almost five years ago, I wrote Life in the Fully Politicized Society. Things have become much worse in the meantime.
Paging @percival
Knitting, for God’s sake. I have been toying with new names for the SJW crowd. I don’t think we should call them warriors. “Warrior” generally connotes fierceness but also nobility. The SJ people are fierce but they are not at all noble. They are bullies and thugs. I know we use SJW sarcastically, but I think we should call them what they are. Here are some alternatives:
SJBs: Social Justice Bullies
SJAs: Social Justice A–holes
SJWMs: Social Justice Warmongers
SJJBs: Social Justice Jackboots
SJBS: Social Justice Brown Shirts
But I agree we have to screw our courage to the sticking place and stand up to them. They must be stopped before they destroy everyone and everything.
If you’re in pursuit, a halberd would be a good choice. Plenty of pointy hook-like bits to snag them with.
I find India interesting, though I wouldn’t qualify it as an obsession.
I’ve been noticing that the NPCs fascination with calling out people for the high crime of “othering” are themselves “othering” the targets of their ire.
That’s probably pathological. They should see a doctor about that. Or just relax and have a beer. Maybe a nice IPA.
I know this is obvious – but it’s not:
In order for collectivism to work properly, everyone has to agree with it. Hence the dichotomy.
People who advocate a system ( our current system rapidly eroding) of individual freedom expect disagreement and dissent, it’s part of the system and are not threatened by it.
However, disagreement represents a threat to collectivists, since it only takes a minority to impede or thwart the collective system. Their ideas can demoralize those who believe. Their natural instincts to survive individually are deemed immoral, and any acts of self-interest are illegal and grounds for exile or execution.
Everyone must “pull together” to work for the same utopian end. When goals are not achieved, it is naturally blamed on the non-believers or even non-enthusiasts. They are slacking, or hoarding or just inconvenient. This is why so many millions get killed, imprisoned or starved under collectivist rule.
In the political game-theory, the collectivists ultimately win because of their passion and because they can more easily gang up on the individualists ( because, of course, individuals eschew organizating themselves) .
Too many on ‘our side’ do not understand these simple concepts, and whistle down the road unaware of the lurking gangs who will rob them of everything.
I read that story this week, and it made me think of the YA Author who was very excited to have her first novel published, but who was attacked by the social justice crybullies, until she was brainwashed into believing that her own novel was a bad book, and yanked it from publication.
Read the whole sad story here.
Read Larry Correia’s profanity-laced (and proper) response here.
Quillette, from which the knitter article came, has become quite a gathering place for stories about the politicized turn everything has taken and its impact on relatively apolitical people. Many of its pieces are not from conservatives; they’re from apolitical, centrist, or leftist people who’ve had the mob turn on them. This article, from a few days before the one on knitting, tells of the insanity descending on, of all things, the world of poetry.
I hope they never find out that, as a Westerner, I find India to be both colorful and exotic.
To be fair, while I don’t think it’s a mobbing offense, I think it is really an odd thing to construe India as being somehow “colorful.” I really don’t understand how reasonable people could make such strange, ill-founded claims.
Holi, The Festival of Colors, India
the architecture of the Soviet era reflected a souless/joyless place. Opened the new issue of Family Circle and there is an article about 2 dads, who, I suppose will be found to be wonderful if I bothered to read the rest. Won’t be renewing, not because I am homophobic, but just cannot relate to those stories, and really don’t care to.
The old live and let live idea of being a free people is becoming a dim memory.
I’m rethinking that whole “knitting cruise” idea. OTOH, Knitters are, by definition, always armed with at least two very sharp sticks. And I have long been baffled (pleased, but baffled), that my knitting project, along with the circular needle its usually on, are welcomed onto airplanes, while other hobby projects that seem to me to have far less potential for mayhem, are waved off.
Just FYI, those circular knitting needles I mention are between 24 and 42 inches long, and look like this:
My cousin did time in prison for a white collar crime. She was allowed to crochet at first, and later she was allowed to knit. I think local charities gave her yarn to make things for them, and she could keep the excess and use for herself.
Speaking of knitting…there was a great Italian blogger, now disappeared, who called her blog “Joy of Knitting.” Here’s something she wrote:
Cupio dissolvi…These words have been going through my mind for quite a long time now. It’s Latin. They mean “I (deeply) wish to be annihilated/to annihilate myself”, the passive form signifying that the action can be carried out both by an external agent or by the subject himself…Cupio dissolvi… Through all the screaming and the shouting and the wailing and the waving of the rainbow cloth by those who invoke peace but want appeasement, I hear these terrible words ringing in my ears. These people have had this precious gift, this civilization, and they have got bored with it. They take all the advantages it offers them for granted, and despise the ideals that have powered it. They wish for annihilation, the next new thing, as if it was a wonderful party. Won’t it be great, dancing on the ruins?
I think it likely that the nihilism she describes is connected to the thuggish behavior of so many “SJW”s.
That’s nothing new. Should have seen when I was defending war on Saddam Hussein back in 2002. 😜
In his memoirs, Russian rocket developer Boris Chertok tells of his experiences while he was in Germany with Soviet occupation troops, right after the war. One of his friends was an officer, Oleg, who was also a talented poet. Irrespective of his military talents, Oleg’s prospects for promotion were not viewed as favorable, because his poetry was “very unsettling to the political department.”
And why was Oleg’s poetry looked upon with disfavor? It was not because the Red Army had any dislike of poets. Nor was it even because his poetry contained criticisms of the regime–there were no such criticisms. No, the objection was because of what the poetry didn’t contain. As another friend of Chertok’s, Mira, explained the situation:
The political workers consider his poems to be demoralizing and decadent. Not once does he mention the Party or Stalin in them.
Of course, something like that could never happen in the US…we are not a society where someone could have their career opportunities gravely limited because of their failure to engage in expected political cheerleading. Right?
I was reminded of Chertok’s store when there were attacks on the movie “Gone Girl” (which I’ve neither seen nor read)in 1914. “Gone Girl” apparently has a female protagonist who is a rather nasty piece of work, attempting to get revenge against men in her life by making two false charges of rape and one false charge of murder. The film has been denounced by certain critics for portraying such a woman. For example, Rebecca Traister of the New Republic told Financial Times that the movie’s depiction of “our little sexual monsters” traded “on very, very old ideas about the power that women have to sexually, emotionally manipulate men. When you boil women down to only that, it’s troubling.” Apparently, in Ms Traiser’s view, there must not be even one character is one book or movie who departs from the image of womanhood that Traister and her like-thinkers believe should be standardized.
It is slightly encouraging that *Maureen Dowd*, of all people, pushed back against this craziness:
The idea that every portrait of a woman should be an ideal woman, meant to stand for all of womanhood, is an enemy of art — not to mention wickedly delicious Joan Crawford and Bette Davis movies. Art is meant to explore all the unattractive inner realities as well as to recommend glittering ideals. It is not meant to provide uplift or confirm people’s prior ideological assumptions. Art says “Think,” not “You’re right.”
But still, these forms of crazy have gotten much worse in the intervening years.
This is the trap that artists will increasingly find themselves in. They will be rewarded if they include the full box-checking range of diverse characters in their writing. But should they not depict those characters EXACTLY as the social justice thugs demand, they will be destroyed.
I wondered about that when I needed to go to the courthouse to sit in on a hearing. They had no problem with my long pointy skewers, but I did leave my scissors in the car.
The medium is the message. I remember reading years ago, when email was just getting into the workplace and academy, that one engineering firm had to establish two exits. The arguments using email had become so vituperative that fights were feared. The author of the piece I was reading speculated that it was the lack of body language, among other things, that caused the problem.
Social media is the same thing on steroids. It is inherently toxic.
Like talking on the telephone and other diabolical rites.
Our beloved GrannyDude often shares thoughtful work from Quilette, too, if memory serves me correctly.
Yeah. OK to take on plane:
Not OK to take on plane:
(Theoretically, today, toenail clippers are an “allowed” item. However, it’s up to the discretion of the individual TSA agent. In July of 2018, he let my knitting needles through. But not the toenail clippers. All profiling aside, it’s a ridiculous state of affairs.)
They probably messed up. My aunt and uncle attended free concerts at West Point regularly. One day after 9/11, they confiscated her sewing bag. She had knitting needles and a pair of collapsible scissors.
They were worried that a little old lady was going to hijack a military academy with knitting needles.
Wow. People who hate Trump did that to her; therefore, it’s the fault of Trump’s America.
I realize you’re being sarcastic. Here’s how Rod Dreher addresses that:
She could have done it, too. She was my aunt after all.