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If the World Doesn’t Revolve Around Me Then Burn it Down
In the July 29, 2019 issue of NR-on-dead-tree, James Lileks riffed on the following headline from The Philadelphia Inquirer:
To end fatphobia, we need to dismantle Western civilization, says Philly therapist Sonalee Rashatwar
Given the utter insanity of the claim and the fact that Lileks’s schtick is parody, I assumed it was a gag. But, no. Not only does Ms. Rashatwar want to shred Western civilization, she gets off on the thought:
I love to talk about undoing Western civilization because it’s just so romantic to me.
My next thought was, “Meh. Lileks is trolling. He’s found some left-wing nutcase and is implying that she’s representative of the left.” The more I think about it, though, the more I think that Rashatwar is just another run-of-the-mill claimant in the grift that is identity politics.
The con goes something like this: I’m a victim of “society.” (Rashatwar, for example, “traces contemporary fatphobia to colonial brutality and how enslaved people were treated.”) Therefore you (i.e., everyone who is not like me) must celebrate me and the choices I make and you (i.e., cis-gendered, white males) must foot the bill for my lifestyle. If you don’t, it’s because Western civilization in general – and the United States in particular – are evil and must be destroyed.
“Give me what I want, or I’ll burn it all down and bring incalculable misery on everyone” is the most infantile, selfish attitude imaginable, yet it’s routinely portrayed as enlightened and caring. And this attitude is, unfortunately, no longer the sole property of the left.
Published in General
Selfies or it didn’t happen!
Re: 31
I choose to believe. (But I’d love to see a picture of a bobcat. I wish I had a picture of the enormous hawk I saw in the yard this past week.)
We’ve never seen bobcats in our backyard before! So it took a minute to register what the heck we were looking at…no time to take photos, and with the uncanny awareness of wild creatures, they seemed to realize that they’d gotten our attention, even through the glass, so they went bounding and dancing wildly away.
Since today would have been my late husband’s 58th birthday, I figure it was a present from him!
A game warden was telling me about rearing an orphaned baby bobcat he’d found by her road-killed mother. Apparently, they are fearless and ferocious right from the get-go. He had to don his welding gloves and apron* to give a three pound kitten her bottle! Eventually, she was released into the wild. She made friends with a big male, and the wardens occasionally see the two of them hunting in the game preserve near the Gray exit.
I loved the freaky dance the four visitors did this morning as they headed for the woods. It was the sort of display that would confuse and even frighten anyone who thought to chase after them!
*Because of course he has welder’s gloves and an apron.
I think she’s on to something. Given the alternatives to Western Civilization – serfdom, collective farms, etc. I would expect fatphobia to disappear about as quickly as fatness itself. The new norm would become ultra slimness, a return to the “twiggy” model. A little plumpness would once again be seen as a sign of health and wealth. Where’s the downside?
I recommend Krispy Kreme.
You missed a wonderful opportunity to misspell it again.
You pretty much hit all the buttons.
I was young and horny 50 years ago.
This ‘sticking-it-to-the-man’ thing? You’re doing it wrong.
Your Fatness?
Dear you were barely “rubenesque” last time we met for Brunch. I suspect there is a little fun house warpness to your bathroom mirror.
Who’s reading Ricochet? This post is linked at Instapundit…
Re: 39
Sure. So was I. But people who weren’t young and horny, and who strongly suspected the consequences of the sexual revolution would be disastrous, seemed to think the people pushing it were just wrong, or sinful, and acting out of sexual lust. I don’t think they had much of a sense of something else.
More and varied information, much of it wrong. The older generations in the 1960’s had experienced the great depression, WWII, the Korean Conflict, and an economic boon that was a new thing. There were not many who were spoiled, enabled, or used to just having things however they wanted them.
I think the experiences of the older generations in the 1960’s enabled them to know what they knew but largely prevented them from imagining that a kind of spitefulness and hatred might have been part of the motivation of the people advocating the Sexual Revolution. “If the world doesn’t revolve around me then burn it down” is exactly the kind of outlook that they couldn’t imagine, maybe. (The few who did suspect that that was what was really wrong with the children, or with the people to whom the kids were listening, were easily portrayed as nuts.)
Worse than nuts; they were uncool.