Fintan O’Toole, literary editor of the Irish Times, calls for a “national arts strike” to extort further cash from the taxpayer. “The public has to be reminded that it really does care,” says he. And until more wallets land on the bonfire of publicly funded art, the nation’s creative titans should “close the arts centres” and “hold no poetry readings.”
When Your Country Is Just A Hotel
Or some holiday resort:
Because, says Mr Gold, our pronoun-stipulating essayist, a sense of connection with one’s home, one’s territory, one’s ancestry and how one came to be, is “utterly arbitrary.” A thing of no importance, unworthy of consideration. Says he, or he/him, “The only sensible form of government is one-world government.”
You see, becoming even less important, even smaller in relation to the steering of the ship, one of billions instead of millions, is a good thing, it turns out. And that irrelevance is sensible, a thing to which the rest of us should apparently aspire. Star Trek, I fear, has much to answer for.
A glimpse into the mind of the scrupulously progressive.
Mr Blue Sky
Bluesky is, it has to be said, a strange, unhappy place. One where everything, but everything, is fraught, problematic and seething with complication. Including grilled cheese sandwiches and the paranormal.
Boutique Suffering
Because, hey, cooking is hard:
An exchange of views ensues. In which, Ms Taylor Lorenz, an “online culture journalist,” struggles with causality. Including the seemingly difficult concept that a heavy reliance on delivered takeaway, and the mindset that implies, may have some bearing on how little cash one has left at the end of the month.
You see, preparing a simple meal, even a packed lunch, is a physical impossibility for those deemed downtrodden.
Forbidden Context
You see, caring about your family, your ancestors, your lineage, your children, is “actually absurd,” apparently. And by implication, some kinds of context – where you came from, say – are to be scorned as worthless.
Like Cleverness, But Less So
In the nightmare, I’m held at gunpoint and for 24 hours am forced to read aloud works of “queer theory.” I begin with W. Benjamin Myers’ thoughts on “straight and white teeth as a metaphor for a straight and White identity” – and which allegedly reveal the “uninterrogated Whiteness” of routine dental hygiene and its role in maintaining “arrogant and ignorant straight and White identities.”
While you marvel at the naff, strained metaphor – teeth-brushing as an expression of “Whiteness,” an allegedly pathological state – and the irrelevant, space-filling anecdotal rambling, and the unearned, predetermined conclusion, and the invocation of Judith Butler – this Judith Butler – do spare a thought for your gracious host. As I poke at the smouldering wreckage of academia.
What Your Children Are Being Taught
And why you mustn’t find out:
On the subject of parents being shocked to discover, belatedly, what their children are actually being taught, these three incidents came to mind. Among many others. Note, in the third link, the casual invention of a fake curriculum – yes, a fake curriculum – so as to deceive any curious parents. And all while insisting, “This is not being deceitful.”
In light of which, the “anti-fascist” snuff-video session mentioned above – the one for other people’s ten-year-olds – doesn’t exactly scream anomaly or aberration, or some unfortunate misreading of the room, so much as a ratcheting upwards.
Titillated By The Primitive
And yet, none of these post-colonial theorists want to “decolonize” electricity, antibiotics, and other oppressive constructs of the Western world, in order to return to the authentic indigenous ways of the darkened teepee and dying from a small scratch on the leg.
But What If I Catch Their Whiteness?
On efforts to “decolonise” folk singing; on claims of being oppressed by a rapidly shrinking minority; and on rap, the ‘N’ word, and dumb academia:
Having covered quite a few of these “decolonisation” efforts, which generally rely on a fig-leaf of widening access and removing barriers, it’s remarkable just how rarely any meaningful obstacle to access is actually mentioned. Typically, the humdrum is depicted as gruelling and somehow agonising, and motes are inflated to the size of boulders.
We were told, for instance, that racial minorities are being “deterred” from visiting the British countryside “due to deep-rooted, complex barriers.” Barriers such as the fact that rock-climbing instructors are usually white. And apparently this unremarkable state of affairs, in a white-majority country, is something that needs fixing.
Though it occurs to me that if a person with brown skin were being deterred from trying rock climbing by the fact that the instructor is likely to be white, then it seems somewhat unlikely that said person is interested in rock climbing to any significant extent. And a person deterred by such things may also want to reflect on their own racial assumptions. But we’re not supposed to mention those, at least not in an unflattering light.
Being Real, She Says
Readers will note Mrs Newsom’s assumptions of accidental criminality – among occupants of San Quentin, a maximum-security prison – and her obliviousness regarding how much effort is required – how many accidents – to actually end up in a prison of any kind.
On progressives and crime, and the boggling wrongness of Mrs Gavin Newsom.
Have You Tried, Er, Paying Your Bills?
Take That, Conventional Family Structure
On the non-random nature of who you are; on the apparently “problematic” Calvin and Hobbes; and on the family unit as reinvented by Guardian contributors:
“For us,” says Eleanor Margolis, “the ideal parenting setup would consist of three or four of us sharing responsibility for a child (the others involved would also be responsible for providing the sperm).”
Providing the sperm. A joyous and maternal turn of phrase.
Also of note, the idea of wanting a baby, but with only a third or a quarter of the responsibility. A kind of low-commitment parenting.
Bodes well.
All this and more.
Discontinued Lines
On fatherhood, but done the super-progressive way.
The Progressive Passover
Carney’s Canada
The Food Professor- What many Canadians may not realize is how deeply our country relies on rules and regulations. While regulation is necessary, the sheer volume has become problematic.
According to Statistics Canada, federal regulatory restrictions increased by 37% between 2006 and 2021. This surge has been linked to a 1.7-percentage-point decline in GDP growth, along with decreases in business investment, productivity, employment, and the rate of new business formation.
The Hub- It’s time to rein in Canada’s red tape state: DeepDive
Not Going Boldly, If At All
When space exploration is stupefied by progressive imperatives:
We are, however, told that we need more deaf and disabled people in space. Because space exploration just isn’t difficult enough and dangerous enough as it is. And choosing astronauts with hearing problems, poor eyesight and motor-control issues will make things much more exciting.
And frankly. when you’re asking, apparently in all seriousness, how a mission to Mars would benefit Black Lives Matter, as if it somehow should, I think we can say that the foolishness in the room has risen to hazardous levels.
Oh, there’s more. Much more.
Have You Listened To The Lichen?
The class, since you ask, is Ecofeminist Poetry & Poetics. Taught by a Professor of English, Brian Teare, who will, we’re assured, situate relationships and encourage re-feeling. And who will also reveal how “chattel slavery, imperialism, industrialisation, settler colonialism, and militarisation” can be understood – and righteously tutted about – by listening to “birds, goats, willow oaks, and lichen.”
Now Wash Your Hands
“Gosh, that’s good — gosh gosh gosh gosh gosh gosh,” Champ says in the video.
Mr Champ, a middle-school teacher, has been finding pleasure in odd places.
You May Want To Bite Down On Something
There Was An Attempt To Impart Information. To people of a progressive leaning.
Keepers Of Deep Knowledge
Three tales of leftist librarians. And the loud buzzing inside their heads.
Something-something “white supremacy” something-something “privilege.” I’m paraphrasing, of course.
But really, it’s the same doctrinaire horseshit we’ve seen a hundred times. And according to which, the world will be enormously improved by the “abolition of policing in all its forms.” If that isn’t sufficiently unambiguous, our Ivy League librarians insist that their “ultimate goal” is, and I quote, “the complete abolition of law enforcement… everywhere.” Because “a world without policing” will somehow, rather conveniently, be a world without crime.
And because helping people find the books that they’d like to borrow is just too boring and insufficiently high-status for minds such as these.
Oh, there’s more.