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Oh well if they’re young suburban adults nvrmd
So, I was just hanging out with friends, enjoying a smoothie at this nice outdoor place – don’t worry, we had masks, everyone was distancing! We’re totally about that. We heard something coming around the corner, and it sounded like a parade? My friend Jinny gets on her phone (well TBH she was already on it) and googles whether there was a parade scheduled for tonight, like a circus thing, but before she gets her results we see them. It’s a bunch of guys dressed in black with signs and umbrellas, and they’re, like, chanting? I got it on my phone, and I think it was something like Hey Ho, Hey Ho, Oligarchical Capitalism and its Inherent Systemic Oppression of BIPOC and Non-Heteronormative Paradigm Gender Non-Conformity Has Got To Go, or something, and I’m like, whatever –
But then one of them smashes a window, and I thought, can you believe that?
“NBD,” says Jenni. “They have insurance. Trust me. My dad’s in insurance.”
“I know we’re just hanging around downtown to escape the stultifying milieu of our soul-sapping suburban lives,” says Todd, I know, that’s so Todd, “but I have this sudden welling of passion for a cause I’ve barely spent any time thinking about. The sight of these people, their manifest passion, makes me think we should find a store and set it on fire.”
“Awesome,” said Lee. “And let me just say here and now that several of those androgynous people have made me suddenly question my own identity, and I am now going to change my pronouns to ‘they.’”
I guess it was just the heat of the moment – literally the heat, the crowd had set fire to the restaurant where we were sitting – but we just got up and fell alongside, and started marching and chanting and throwing things, and IDK it felt like I was part of something for the first time, so we went inside the drug store and Todd jumped over the counter and got some lighter fluid and we went to the bookstore next door and drenched some stuff and set it on fire. We all did a group pose for the ‘Gram and called it a night, went back to the car and drove back to the boring burbs, laughing, like, what was that about.
You know how you get caught up in something and go with the moment and you’re burning a restaurant and the next day you’re, like, okay, we were in the moment, but then it turns out it was for justice? That’s awesome. I wonder if I can put it on my intern application resume.
Published in General
Oh you need to see it all. It’s Important.
And I remember, within the past year, someone even on Ricochet commenting (and I don’t think they were being facetious at the time…) that Whoopi Goldberg is obviously a very smart person, because after all, she was Guinan.
Wow.
This is part of what’s so particularly scary about these rioters. A good portion of them are white, middle class kids who should have no reason for rioting. There was always indoctrination in schools, but most kids shook that off once they got out in the real world. Now the real world only seems to fire them up for revolution. Somehow the lefty professors have finally figured out how to make the indoctrination stick.
The real world doesn’t kick in until they’re twenty-six. And that gives them six or eight years of wondering what the point to life is and unwittingly lamenting their lack of purpose and importance.
It may simply be a matter of survival being so easy now, that too many people have too much time on their hands.
“Witlessly” might be a better fit there.
Been there, done that.
Is this post eligible for post of the week?
Probably not. I expect that Employees of Lileks and Actual Lileks-es are not eligible..
Yes, that might be better. I was thinking something more like unconsciously or unknowingly or unawares.
But in their case, it isn’t so much an accident…
The definitions of “white” are not only unusual, they do change, depending on what the definer wishes to say.
That’s a good thing.
If a job has a pay range, what difference does it make what I used to make?
I had a job with a state government agency that paid about $33k/year.
Had a job offer for a new job that paid $65k, and the hiring manager (who knew me) thought that was fine. But the VP of HR knocked it down to $49k because she figured that was enough of an increase for me.
You mean expulsion, right?
I think the isolation from the real world and from other people imposed in the name of the Wuhan virus, and resultant entirely on-line life provided much of the environment for these suburban kids to become anti-social rioters.
?!?!?!?!!! !! !!!!!
This is a fantastic idea!
Step one: Locate my enemies
Step two: Put Trump signs on their laws
Step three: Sit back and watch the excrement hit the air conditioning
Okay, someone who lives near Nancy Pelosi needs to put Trump signs on her lawn, then call up the local Antifa Mob and give them directions to her house.
Lawn? This is Nancy Pelosi, Woman of the People we’re talking about here. You can’t put a Trump sign on her lawn — you’d have to put it on her wall or on the locked gate to her mansion.
Use a drone, drop it inside the fence but visible from the street. Maybe a nice rooftop banner as well. And one of those cardboard cutout celebrity photo things of Trump by the gate for selfie opportunities. She’ll never notice, she’s busy trying to find out who she has to pay off to have the photos of her with Hunter deleted.
It can be useful to compare with somebody else’s judgment of what you used to make. I think it’s a bad thing to regulate that question away.
I had a similar situation once. I was offered a job with about 40 percent salary increase over my then-current job. The guy who was trying to hire me said his boss (who had also interviewed me) questioned him on account of the size of the increase it would be for me, but then let the offer stand.
So, it’s not always fair, whatever that means, but government regulation seldom makes things fairer or better. Sometimes regulations are necessary, but I don’t see where that one is necessary.
In that case, if it had been up to the HR office, my application would have been filed away and never seen the light of day. I was interviewed for two jobs. For one (the one I was offered) I had sent in a letter of application in response to an ad in ComputerWorld. For the other, I got my application in through the back door. One of the service technicians who worked on our DEC VAX mini-computer said, “I’m not supposed to do this, but if you give me your resume…” That one got me an invitation to interview, but people who wanted to hire had to go through their HR and that’s when my original application was discovered.
HR departments are strange enough without extra regulations. At the job where I stayed, internal hiring regulations, many of them in response to government regulations, turned the interview process into a rote, mechanical procedure over the years, and by the time I retired had made it difficult to conduct any kind of meaningful job interview. And from tales I have been told, I gather that there is now a political commissar to supervise the procedure and eliminate politically inappropriate applicants for upper-level positions. I haven’t seen it first hand, so I’m not completely sure what it’s all about and how it has come about. But a 3rd-hand description reminded me of what I saw in old Soviet movies of the perestroika era, when films were poking fun at that system.
Tell me what the job pays up front, and I’ll decide if I want to apply. This whole “you make too much already, so we don’t want to hire you”, or “it’s too much of an increase” thing is nonsense.
Do you really want government to regulate nonsense?
Making them children until their brains are fully developed cements childishness for life.
And just what is it you think they are doing now?
The government excels at regulating. The government also excels at nonsense. It’s a perfect combination.
I see the government in more of a nonsense supplier position.
Careful. You may be implying that they are productive.
Are you suggesting that producing non-productive-ness is somehow productive?
I’ll have to consult with Confucius on that one.
Supplier, distributor, and consumer. Different government entities supply nonsense to each other continuously.
Applied entropy.
@flicker
I don’t disagree with the sentiments being expressed, I just am not so optimistic that there will be jobs for these kids to go apply for.
Living in California, it seems far more likely that in ten years, the CCP will be supplying their material needs, as long as they sign on to be an enthusiastic part of a “Neighborhood Revolutionary and Control Commission Supervising Bad Behavior” group.
Those work camps don’t get warm bodies unless some youths supervise some older members of the society into arriving at such camps for re-education purposes.
But where does CCP get their money if not from a productive US?