Why Identity Politics / Social Justice Warriorism is driving me mad

Genius? Dunces? Him? CONFEDERACY???

Mainly because it's killing satire. What would Jonathan Swift have said to all the craziness going on in North American society these days? Possibly, nothing: he'd have been hauled before some human rights or social justice tribunal for writing Gulliver's Travels (alternately, he'd have been given an award by Planned Parenthood for his essay "A Modest Proposal" wherein he --satirically-- suggests that society solve the "overpopulation" and poverty problems in one go by eating their children.) It is satire. He wasn't serious. You have to explain that these days.

When satire is dead, comedy is dead. Also drama, poetry, song, fiction and film. I avoid Hollywood movies for the most part, because  they are no longer interested in telling entertaining and exciting stories. Most of them contain lame preaching on trendy topics, and thus have become the equivalent of medieval morality plays  (in fact, they're probably far worse, becuase at least back then, people knew how to write).  It's the same reason why some Christian ghetto novels and films are so bad. The story must come first; the moral or lesson must be incidental, not central to the purpose of the artwork. But I digress.

I enjoyed this essay/article by Lionel Shriver. I must admit I had not been interested in her work until I saw her interviewed by Mark Steyn, back when he had a TV show on CRTV. Those videos are also worth checking out.

It doesn’t take much parsing to conclude that protecting all and sundry from the terrible experience of having your feelings hurt is the end of free speech altogether. Since nowadays “you can’t argue with what people feel,” umbrage is freed from rational justification. Given that the better part of the human race is crazy, stupid, or both, there’s nary a thought in the world whose airing won’t offend somebody. Doesn’t Darwin offend creationists? Furthermore, in granting so much power to woundedness, we incentivise hypersensitivity. If we reward umbrage, we will get more of it. We do reward umbrage, and we’re buried in it by the truckload.

If you feed me, I will grow.

Trigger warnings/Microaggressions

More from Ms Shriver:

Yet these days, straight white fiction writers whose characters’ ethnicity, race, disability, sexual identity, religion or class differs from their own can expect their work to be subjected to forensic examination—and not only on social media. Publishers of young adult fiction and children’s literature hire “sensitivity readers” to comb through manuscripts for perceived slights to any group with the protected status once reserved for distinguished architecture.

Good heavens, what hope do aspiring writers have, unless the culture regains its sanity?
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From Our Belgio-Canadian Friend

By whom, of course, I mean Mark Steyn. Read his latest on our culture’s ongoing descent into a technologically advanced Dark Age.
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Code Blue

I feel another business opportunity coming on: manufacturing T-shirts in blue (or really, any colour) that read: I WILL NOT BE BULLIED INTO WEARING PINK.

The Prophet Steyn (pbuh):

"Awareness-raising"? I think we need to raise awareness that, unless you've got the T-shirt concession, all these Pink Days are worthless crap that do nothing for the problem they claim to be addressing. If you've chanced to see me in person, you'll know I often wear a pink shirt. Like the country song says, "I Was Pink Shirt When Pink Shirt Wasn't Cool — Er, Mandatory." But, on Pink Shirt Day, I would wear mauve or turquoise or chartreuse or anything but pink, because, when the state is committed to coercing a ruthless conformity, that's the time to show that a flickering flame of the contrarian, iconoclastic spirit still flickers in the Canadian schoolhouse. You may get bullied for not wearing pink on the Day of Pink, but you'll feel better for it.

You are not supposed to be weary of the world, only 4 days into the Easter Season, but I'm getting there. Time to stop reading current events and Pray.
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OK, so March has come in like a lion

We woke this morning to -24C with a -35C wind chill. I'm waiting patiently for the temperature to start turning more lambish. In the meantime, the warmists claim that the "pause" may last for 20 more years. And THEN we'll finally get some global warming. Twenty years is a long time to continue fleecing taxpayers and coercing us to buy curly light bulbs. On a related note, the Prophet Steyn (PBUH), continues to be eerily prescient. And he probably thought he was making a far-fetched joke when he compared climate "scientists" to sex offenders.

Update: Talk about eerie. Mrs. Beazly and I, with NO collusion, and living thousands of km apart, actually each posted about Mark Steyn and climate change within minutes of each other. Brain-sharing, what?
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Weather or not, YOU AGREE.

That seems to be the slogan in some circles of climate science (and government) these days: it doesn't matter what the weather's actually doing because  WE ALL AGREE THAT THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED, and anyone who engages in unwarmthink will be made to regret it.
Mark Steyn on the latest climate craziness.
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As I was saying... Procrastination

Not the forehead of the author, 

who was regrettably too sick to attend Ash Wednesday Mass

Oh my. There are lots of reasons why I haven't been blogging much... well, at all. But some things are just better kept inside, or in the confessional, or at the therapist's, at least for the time being. (Just kidding about the therapist... not that there's anything wrong with seeing one.) Actually, I was seeing a therapist for a while-- a physiotherapist, for my ruined knees (thanks, volleyball and badminton! I love you dearly, but you wreck people's joints), but I had to stop seeing him, because I didn't have time, due to a bunch of other challenges in my life, which I can't talk about (yet) because they involve other people, who have a right to privacy.

It's also hard to blog about funny stuff (or crow about vintage kitchen finds from Value Village) when people on the other side of the planet are being decapitated by Random Lone Wolf Mentally Ill Marginalized Underemployed Violent Extremists of No Particular Religion, simply for being Christian  Egyptian "citizens". I'm rambling.

We were talking about procrastination, which I am really horrible at combatting. That and laziness, which make for a pretty deadly combination, because it does things like prevent you from telling friends how much the friendship means/has meant to you, and then they die and things like that. Thank goodness for heaven (if I get there), where I may get another chance.

So here it is, the 4th day of Lent, and I'm only now getting around to thinking about what I should "do" to observe it.  I know you are not supposed to brag about your mortifications, but this is not really bragging so much as informing. And sometimes by telling other people what you are doing (or giving up), it helps or inspires them. Or not. But for starters, I have decided to give up Not Blogging for Lent. I hope that helps a bit with both the laziness and the procrastination.
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WWBBD?

What Would Bugs Bunny Do? Or say? That is, if his wise-cracking politically incorrect wascally wabbit tongue hadn't been silenced and censored long long ago?

He would probably say the same thing that Mark Steyn would say. We are truly in Wonderland when these words appear in America without any irony: "My USDA rabbit license requirement." 

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Only Mark Steyn

Can bring together in such perfect comedic/poignant harmony the history of ABBA and the downfall of Europe.

In 1945, Europe was in ruins, America had won the war, and, if the Continentals weren't exactly promising to love the Yanks forevermore, they knew that their fate was to be with them, and they couldn't escape even if they wanted to. The US security umbrella and the Eurovision Song Contest both date back to the immediate post-war period. The idea was to help build a continent in which you could sing "Waterloo" rather than fight it, and, if in their excessive generosity the Americans accelerated the Europeans' inclination to softness and decadence, well, it's not their problem, and the Euros might have seen it coming. As Abba's lyric shrewdly anticipates:

The history book on the shelf
Is always repeating itself. 

After winning Eurovision in 1974 Abba bestrode the world like a colossus - if you can imagine any self-respecting colossus going out in public in velveteen knickerbockers, silver boots, pearl kimono and tricorn hat. And that was just the boys.

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There is no point in crying about the destruction of America

So we might as well laugh. From the One. (Steyn, of course.) We are all doomed, LOL!

[T]he president... insists with a straight face that he had no idea that the Internal Revenue Service had spent two years targeting his political enemies until he “learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.” Like you, all he knows is what he reads in the papers. Which is odd, because his Justice Department is bugging those same papers, so you’d think he’d at least get a bit of a heads-up. But no doubt the fact that he’s wiretapping the Associated Press was also entirely unknown to him until he read about it in the Associated Press.

There is a “president of the United States” and a “government of the United States,” but, despite a certain superficial similarity in their names, they are entirely unrelated, like Beyoncé Knowles and Admiral Sir Charles Knowles. One golfs, reads the prompter, parties with Jay-Z, and guests on the Pimp with a Limp show, and the other audits you, bugs your telephone line, and leaks your confidential tax records. But they’re two completely separate sinister entities. So it’s preposterous to describe Obama as Nixonian: Beyoncé wouldn’t have given Nixon the time of day.

Mark Steyn, honorary Catholic

And I mean that in a GOOD way. You can also tell he's still Canadian, because he has heard of Peter Mansbridge (and understands him completely). Some great comments (on Hugh Hewitt) on the MSM's handling of the papal conclave/election. 

Well, you know, I think the papal coverage in the so-called serious media, particularly in the United States but elsewhere, too, has been completely ridiculous. [...] I mean, this idea, the parochialism of it, the idea that somehow the American media’s preoccupations – gay marriage and abortion, should also be the preoccupations of the oldest continuously functioning entity in the world. [...] and the fact that these guys have to go to Columbia Journalism School to talk this kind of ignorant codswallop to the world, is amazing to me.

[...] 

I saw Canada’s most famous newsreader, a man who’s like the Peter Jennings and Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw rolled into one, a guy called Peter Mansbridge. He interviewed Cardinal Ouelette, the former archbishop of Quebec, who was in the running to become the first Canadian pope at this conclave. And you could, and again, he was asking these shallow, secular…the questioning from a shallow, secular perspective. And Cardinal Ouelette is far too polite a man to say to him this is the dumbest bunch of questions I’ve ever had to sit through...

I will never forget Peter Mansbridge's coverage of Mother Teresa's funeral. He turned to his colleague and said, in his serious, sonorous, time-filling, journalist-guy voice. "You have to wonder now, whether her order will continue into the future..." or something equally preposterous and ignorant. Canada's "most trusted news anchor" probably thought Mother Teresa had, like six old nuns working alonside her in the slums of India. He did not know that the Missionaries of Charity had gone worldwide and had thousands of members. Did. Not. Know. 

h/t Pundette
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"The Algae that Ate Detroit"

I'd go see it.
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I love him cuz he makes me laugh

Heigh-ho. I hear the Democrats are working on a devastating attack ad showing Mitt bayoneting Big Bird…

MS at NRO

I almost want to sue him myself.

Just to keep him writing this kind of comedy gold.

In the same spirit, I see that I’ve just been awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Under Ireland’s citizenship law, I’m an Irish national (through my father). Ireland is a member of the European Union. The EU has just been given the Nobel Peace Prize. QED. Come to think of it, my mother’s Belgian, so I’ve been awarded two Nobel Peace Prizes.

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Reason #3040595854837366 to homeschool

The Steyn:

Yet somehow a bureaucrat in the Department of Agriculture wound up with a monopoly on what your kids eat.

If only we could opt out of Big Government and its attendant demonic bureacracies as easily.

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Mitt Romney, alpha male--who knew?

Mark Steyn, that's who.

Ten minutes in, he jumped right on Big Bird, and then he took off – and never looked back, while the other fellow, whose name escapes me, never got out of the gate. It takes a certain panache to clobber not just your opponent but also the moderator.

I can already see the billing for the next debate: Killer Mormon v. Listless Sourpuss

Meanwhile, at American Spectator: 
Reason magazine's Matt Welch: "That wasn't a debate so much as Mitt Romney just took Obama for a cross country drive strapped to the roof of his car."
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Let's have the t-shirts made up now.

Mr. Steyn:

Free speech is a gift given to us in 1948 by U.N. officials? Who knew?

The only appropriate response of free-born peoples to such a statement is: **** off, ******. Free speech is not in the gift of minor Swedish timeserving hack bureaucrats, either to grant or withdraw.

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If you want to understand Obama's UN speech

If not his entire presidency, you need Mark Steyn, the only man on the planet who can make the Fall of Civilization seem funny. The accent and ginger hair are just a bonus.

If I understand correctly the cumulative vision of the speech, the future will belong to gay feminist ecumenical Muslims. You can take that to the bank. But make no mistake, as he would say, and in fact did: "We face a choice between the promise of the future or the prisons of the past, and we cannot afford to get it wrong." Because if we do, we could spend our future living in the prisons of the past, which we forgot to demolish in the present for breach of wheelchair-accessibility codes.

Barry does Vegas

As only Mark Steyn can tell it.

The president is surrounded by delirious fanbois and fangurls screaming "We love you," too drunk on his celebrity to understand that this is the first photo-op in the aftermath of a national humiliation. [...] 

The president is too lazy and cocksure to have learned any prepared remarks or mastered the appropriate tone, notwithstanding that a government that spends more money than any government in the history of the planet has ever spent can surely provide him with both a speechwriting team and a quiet corner on his private wide-bodied jet to consider what might be fitting for the occasion. So instead he sloughs off the words, bloodless and unfelt: "And obviously our hearts are broken..." Yeah, it's totally obvious. [...]

When it comes to a flailing, blundering superpower, I am generally wary of ascribing to malevolence what is more often sheer stupidity and incompetence.

A must-read.

Say what you will about Dubya, but never in a thousand years would be have behaved in this manner.
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You can have my moustache--when you shave it from my cold, dead face

Good on ya!

Hair as a political statement: hippies, call your OWS tents

Mark Steyn with the latest from the surreal world of Things Islamists Find Offensive.

If we could have President Obama’s and General Dempsey’s backbones replaced by waxed Pakistani mustaches, we might have a sporting chance.

Some people run with the bulls, some people eat fugu, some people sue Mark Steyn.

How do you  flirt with destruction?

This is an alarming trend. Soon Mr. Steyn won't be able to so much as submit his favorite pie recipe to the town compilation cookbook without somebody suing him over the quantity of lard.

Here's your weekend slice of Steyn Pie:

  When you don't have frighteningly white upscale liberals obsessing about the racist subtext of golf, it's amazing how much time it frees up to talk about other stuff. For example, as dysfunctional as Greece undoubtedly is, if you criticize the government's plans for public pensions, there are no Chris Matthews-types with such a highly evolved state of racial consciousness that they reflexively hear "watermelon" instead of the word "pensions." So, instead, everyone discusses the actual text rather than the imaginary subtext. Which may be why political discourse in the eurozone is marginally less unreal than ours right now: At least they're talking about "austerity"; over here, we're still spending, and more than ever.

This reminds me of that Twilight Zone episode where all the words in the English language were redefined over the course of a week or so: "lunch" became "dinosaur", "Wednesday" was now the word for "dog", etc. We seem to be well into the twilight zone at this point.
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