Author: David

Just Like Us, Only More Oppressed

If you’ve watched the reality series Cops or Live PD, pathological selfishness is very much a staple, a defining attribute of the assorted misfits and predators. I remember one lengthy pursuit of thieves who’d robbed a store at gunpoint, terrorised its owner, and then fled the scene in a stolen car, and whose bid to escape did costly damage to other people’s property, and caused other road users to veer and crash, resulting in serious injury.

When finally apprehended, the thieves, themselves unharmed, were entirely unconcerned by the horror and destruction left in their wake, or the fact that it was all but miraculous that no-one had been killed. Instead, they were loudly indignant, as if they were the victims of the drama, heatedly objecting to the discomfort of handcuffs, and demanding to know why their phones had been confiscated. While, within earshot, injured children were being rushed to hospital.

Scenes like the above, of which there were many, may explain why progressives disliked the series, dismissing it as “copaganda”… I suspect the actual objection is not so much, as claimed, that the series portrayed the police in a sanitised or flattering light, as the officers were rarely the focus of the viewer’s attention.

The stars of each episode, if that’s the right word, were usually the lawbreakers. They, not the police, held the attention. They were generally the ones driving events, whether those events were alarming or farcical. And so, the series offered a glimpse into the mindset of the criminals – the recurring patterns of malevolence and selfishness – in their own words and by watching their own actions.

And obviously, we can’t have that. It makes pretentious sympathy much more difficult to muster.

On crime, criminals, and progressive unrealism.

 

The Thrill Of Word-Policing

Apparently, the word collision is, for Dr Madrid, much too brutal and masculine when referring to the convergence of two galaxies, and the subsequent merging of the supermassive black holes at their centres – an event that will entail the sling-shotting of countless stars and their orbiting planets, and which may release energy equivalent to around 100 million supernova explosions, and to subsequently be detectable halfway across the universe.

Come, let’s pay a visit to the publication laughingly referred to as Scientific American.

The Year Reheated

Or, “Twelve months of our betters being pretentious, neurotic, and perverse.”

A small taste:

Among the mighty titans encountered in November was a radical young lady named Margot, a “nutrition counsellor” who is “root-cause and system focussed,” and whose profound thoughts included “What do we eat during the revolution?” It turns out that you can’t agitate the proletariat without a solid meal plan. While her comrades “break capitalism” and “abolish” prison, Margot envisions herself “coaching people in how to eat from a revolutionary and resistance standpoint.” A task that involves instructing the little people on how to dry pepper seeds and how to wash foraged bin scraps in vinegar in order to remove any trace of those capitalist pesticides. The revolution, since you ask, will be fuelled by cashew milk and vegan pseudo-cheese. Because as capitalism is toppled, and amid the riots and burning cars, there will, it seems, be space for neurotic niche cuisine. Assuming, that is, that the proletariat are tempted by the prospect of economic ruin, roaming gangs of liberated rapists, and evenings spent washing other people’s bin contents.

Oh, there’s more. Much more.

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