Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Quote of the Day: Activism
“Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.” – Thomas Sowell
More Sowell food for the mind. Need more be said? In one sentence he explains the BLM and Antifa movements.
Published in General
Yes.
“Like”.
Now, nothing.
I’m not familiar with this quote but Sowell is a sharp mind. I have often reflected on activism as mostly a weapon of the Left on the field of political conflict. I suspect when the Left captured our educational process that activism became a real advantage for the progressive movement. Now they have close to a lock on media. Maybe there is now more of a need to counter that activism.
Edited to add: Isn’t this why we got Trump as POTUS?
“Sowell food for the mind.“ Good one, Seawriter.
I’ve used it before. But why not go with what works.
Or, use it until Camper finally gets it.
Or until Kent finally explains it to me.
Or, explains it to me, and then I re-read it three times to myself, slower each time, finally exclaiming, “Oh! I get it now.”
I’m happy to use this to describe all those who actively oppose President Trump because they don’t like him.
Give that man a paragraph, and he can explain all of world history. Concision is a tool few have at their command. Thank G-d for Thomas Sowell.
This is the Quote of the Day. We have plenty of openings this month if you would like to share a quotation to educate, honor another, celebrate yourself, brag about your new acquisition, or just so you can rant. Our sign-up sheet is here.
Or, if you’re looking to write something a bit more creative, you might try our Group Writing Project this month: It was a dark and stormy night…
Perfect illustration, Percival!
Just looking at that could make one crazy.
She probably has some uses. Have her whip up a vodka gimlet.
I nominate as prime examples Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, especially the latter. A recent quote:
“From my standpoint, it’s not new to see this undercurrent of racism and certainly unconscious bias, but I think to see the changes that are being made right now is really — it’s something I look forward to being a part of,” Markle said. “And being part of using my voice in a way that I haven’t been able to of late. So, yeah, it’s good to be home.”
Oh, and we need you SO MUCH.
Yes, America is racist, and that’s why Meaghan had to go to England to marry a prince.
But why, when the British public turned on her for being an utter twit, did they flee back here?
Two reasons. First, Meaghan chafed greatly in her royal suit of clothes, her forced restrictions on what she could say, and her having to bow to those greater in the pecking order; and in the US she has absolute freedom to say and do as she wishes. And secondly, she was intimately known and actively disliked in England, and the royal family was the only show in town; but in the US she is more insulated from public disparagement and has a wider and more diverse audience to feed and to feed off of.
Yeah, but we are supposed to be the racists.
She joined an ongoing concern of which she had little knowledge and for which she had even less talent.
Meaghan, like Kamala, is the beneficiary of both white privilege and the advantage of claiming black victimization. It’s odd how she can have both. One would think that the two would cancel each other out.
And be judged not by the color of her skin but by the content of her character? How quaint.
In his important memoir of life in Germany between the wars, Sebastian Haffner made a related observation. Speaking of the period when the political and economic situation began to stabilize (which he credits to Gustav Stresemann), he says:
The last ten years were forgotten like a bad dream. The Day of Judgment was remote again, and there was no demand for saviors or revolutionaries…There was an ample measure of freedom, peace, and order, everywhere the most well-meaning liberal-mindedness, good wages, good food and a little political boredom. everyone was cordially invited to concentrate on their personal lives, to arrange their affairs according to their own taste and to find their own paths to happiness.
But…and I think this is a particuarly important point…a return to private life was not to everyone’s taste:
A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…Now that these deliveries suddenly ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk. (emphasis added)
and
To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. they began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.
I think we have quite a few people in America today who have “become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions.”
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/42473.html
That’s what she’s trying to avoid.
Brilliant comment . Never to presume , but a fun word shop :“Activism is a way for smart people to get useless people to feel important…
The jokes write themselves. They are all non-CoC compliant, but they do write themselves.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I just gotta know. Can you give me hint? Just say it in pig-latin.
The Brits aren’t racists, they’re twitists.
The UK is class-bound, and the US is the land of opportunity, even for grifters.
They revolve around what we know of Kamala’s character.
The main thing on Markle that proves how dense she really is, would be to measure WHAT “changes that are being made right now” that are helpful and beneficial and since there are none, thereby certify her as a useless activist; then secondly to determine how does she imagine she is “being a part of it” – other than mouthing off and making “appearances,” eating some canapes and getting photographed with other celebrities. Like the ones strolling around in her wedding who had never heard of her before Harry. No field work or even marching. Case closed, go back to wearing high fashion when not in your trendy torn jeans around the mansion.
And p.s. when she edited that issue of Vogue or whatever -featuring a bunch of the most promising young women in the world- they were highly weighed not in the direction of scientific research, etc. but being “activists,” and I wrote a post at that time on what a meaningless silly role that was. Ms. Harry appendage seems to have found her peak when she was an 11 year old who wrote a letter criticizing an advertisement, and the company pulled it, which went to her head. Don’t be surprised if she wants eventually to run for office and replace Pelosi.
It literally represents fantasy.
Two modern terms highlight this dynamic:
Antifa LARPing involves imagining people they hate (you and me) as fascists.
The left is unwilling to actually discuss its positions so as to avoid shattering the fantasies involved.
Ouch! Do you seriously have to do that to me this early on a Sunday morning??
Another mimosa is required to restore balance.
She can definitely handle a mimosa. That’s Bartending 101.