I LOL’ed but he is not wrong.
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Douglas Murray gives his thoughts on lootingOctober 1st, 2020 |
 14 comments to Douglas Murray gives his thoughts on looting |
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That was fun. A urine-drenched plinth-filled zombie apocalypse is a great image. Not so great as an aspiration.
I grew up in Portland–before it was weird, let alone insane. Murray says they deserve what they’re getting; I have sympathy for that (getting the government they voted for…good and hard). But I feel bad for all the not-weird Portlanders who are having to watch their (my!) city destroyed.
I suspect there is a silent majority in Portland that would like to stop this, but don’t know how. They are peaceful, progressive, have all the right causes on their car bumpers, etc. and just cannot understand how all that love could lead to this (snark!).
Maybe that will be a silver lining in the aftermath of this anarchy: some of the woke, the middle of the road Left, will see where this extremism leads and will move away from the crazier ideas and people doing this stuff.
To use a snark I learned on samizdata (which I then discovered is a paraphrase of an Oscar Wilde snark!): you’d need a heart of stone not to laugh
I’m liking the new angry sarcastic Dougie..
You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.
I f’ken lolled.
😆 😆 😆 😆 😆
@ GregWA at 8.33PM.
No, you are wrong. Socialism is just fine. THIS iteration of it has gone a wee bit off the rails but with the right people in charge (singing Kumbaya, eating their hand knitted lentil and tofu bakes, organic museli and granola bars and lots of peace and love) it will be just fine.
The theory can’t be wrong, otherwise everything they think, everything they have worked for, their very lives are rendered irrelevant. Their ego will not allow them that admission. So, their thinking is that Socialism hasn’t been pursued to its logical conclusion. Just do it harder and THIS time it will be fine.
Reality is biting them in the backside and they are not getting the message. They are irredeemable.
Samizdata desperately needs a sarcasm font, IMHO.
This reminded me of an article I just read. The President of Princeton University was doing his usual “Systematic racism is embedded in the University” etc. So the department of education has opened an investigation, since it is a condition of many of the federal grants and the FAFSA system they get that the school does not discriminate or behave in a racist manner. Apparently Betsy DeVos did not know that he had his fingers crossed behind his back when he was spouting all that nonsense.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8746309/Princeton-University-investigation-Department-Education.html
I am sure it is all posturing that will never come to anything, but it did make me laugh.
That along with the Minneapolis city council demanding an explanation from the Police there why crime is dramatically rising in the city, and why people are afraid to walk the streets. I mean you have to admire those politicians chutzpah, but if you made this shit up for the story in a novel your editor would tell you to tone it down to make it more believable.
Looting is indeed “Social Justice” without the state acting as middle man – Social Justice is the doctrine that all income and wealth rightly belong to the collective (the masses) and should be “distributed” according to egalitarian principles (“fairness” – like a mother cutting up shares of a pie for the children) from the “haves” to the “have nots”.
When Conservative Party Ministers say they support Social Justice do they know what it means? Well whether they know or not – LOOTING is what they are supporting. Ditto with anyone else who supports Social Justice – which is the sworn enemy of traditional Justice which is “to each their own” NOT “from the haves to the have nots”. When some priest or minister says from the pulpit that they support Social Justice any poor people should logically take the person at their word and rob-the-church and rob-the-priest-or-minister. If the priest or minister protests (as they are stripped of their clothing and so on) the masses could logically reply “this is Social Justice – we are only doing what you suggested”.
Of course the vast Corporations and individual billionaires who fund and support Marxist LOOTING movements such as “Black Lives Matter” (founded in 2014 by three Marxists who described themselves as “trained organisers” who were quite open about their desire to destroy the United States and the “capitalist” West in general) do not think the looting applies to THEM.
When, for example, Mr Bezos watches his competitors (stores) being looted and burned by the movement (Marxist Black Lives Matter) that his “Amazon” and “Washington Post” supports, he does not think that HE PERSONALLY should be looted – after all he needs his vast wealth (so added to by the “lockdowns” of his competitors that his Washington Post supported) the fund space ships and so on (he really seems to believe this) – it is little people who should have their wealth looted, NOT him.
I am not a Marxist, indeed I have fought them all my life – but I can not help feeling a sneaking desire for all these university trained “Woke” Corporate Managers and Progressive Billionaires to find out what looting is really like – up close and personal.
https://www.takimag.com/article/the-two-eisgrubers/
Fraser,
You may enjoy Theodore Dalrymple’s thoughts on this subject.
If anyone thinks I was unfair to Mr Bezos (“he is a libertarian Paul – he is not like the Marxist Billionaires, he is not a baddy from an Ian Fleming novel”) I would direct them to his Jack Ryan television series on Amazon Prime.
One of the enemies of “Jack Ryan” on the Amazon television series is the government of Venezuela, and Venezuela is shown as horribly oppressed and its people also reduced to terrible poverty – “see I told you so Paul – Mr Bezos is one of the good guys!” – except that Venezuela is shown in the series as having a CONSERVATIVE government with the noble rebels being the Social Justice supporters.
An inversion of reality – thanks to Amazon. Just as the vast Corporations (at least most of them) regularly present President Trump (as they gloat over him having Covid 19) as a “threat to liberty” whilst it is actually they, the vast Corporations, who support a Chinese style “Social Credit” system where anyone with “reactionary” opinions would be persecuted – after all any sign of conservative social opinions (even years ago) will get a manager fired from most of mega Corporations – and they are very supportive of the “stake holder” “Build Back Better” “Agenda 21” “Agenda 2030” totalitarian “Sustainable Development” of “stake holder” “Build Back Better” (the full circle – with “Build Back Better” being the current slogan of Mr Biden and Mr “Boris” Johnson, till they switch to the slogan “Sustainable Development”).
Under any of the slogans (which are interchangeable) the idea is to eliminate real competition (which is why most of Big Business loves the idea) and real consumer choice – essentially back to the system of the Industrial Recovery Act and National Recovery Administration (the Blue Eagle THUGS) of Franklin Roosevelt – ruled unconstitutional (nine votes to zero) by the Supreme Court in 1935 – evil never really dies, it just comes back under a different name. The “National Industrial Recovery Act” of 1933 (struck down nine justices to zero in 1935) is the “Sustainable Development” Fascism (for it was based on the principles of Mussolini – Fascist Italy) of today.
Two hundred years ago it was the set of ideas of the French socialist Saint Simon (active long before Karl Marx) – under this vision of socialism, Big Businessmen were not to be shot – on the contrary they would be IN CHARGE, with the Credit Bubble bankers (not honest money lenders – specifically Credit Bubble people) being the most important of all – and all in the name of SCIENCE.
SCIENCE, SCIENCE, SCIENCE – but of the Saint-Simon, Jeremy Bentham (13 Departments of State controlling most of life), Sir Francis “New Atlantis” Bacon type – not a real seeking after truth (Sir Francis would have had people who said that the Earth goes round the Sun punished), but “SCIENCE” as a means of SOCIAL CONTROL – a justification for “New Atlantis” style tyranny – as we are now finding out with Covid 19 and the “Environment”.
A perfect description of an extreme delirium sufferer or cult member, but let’s not forget those who are unable to give, rather than to get, any message. Some Portlanders are realising that California’s well-fixed election law means they can vote only for the mayor who did it or for the rival who denounces him as a faded-red capitalist-roader running dog of the bourgeoisie (except she says it in the lefty slang of today, not yesterday). If the law also forbids write-ins, then I guess voting Trump is the only way any Portlander could signal an opinion – and I fear it is a naive Portlander who has not wondered whether such ballots might end up in the trash, though possibly not before being collated with their sending address info.
Indeed. “Property is theft” means the only politically-correct way to acquire property is theft. Once upon a time, socialists were for the nationalisation of crime (at least in theory – stealing to supplement party funds was winked at); only the anarchists openly supported spontaneous theft. But that distinction seems to have disappeared. It’s a pity that the act of theft destroys so much of the wealth it expropriates – the BLM method particularly – but any lefty will eagerly explain that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, and as eagerly demonstrate how to break a lot of eggs without making an omelette.
There seem to be a lot of people who take stuff totally for granted with no idea how it is produced or where it comes from. People have to work to produce stuff. If you can just help yourself to everyone else’s stuff then there is no need to go to work to earn money to buy it. How long before there is no more stuff because nobody works anymore? This isn’t hard to understand really.
There is a website called NotAlwaysRight.com that just contains thousands of anecdotes from people, mainly in the retail and service industries, about the idiots that they encounter. Not every story passes the sniff test of course, but the vast ocean of ignorance and stupidity out there is frightening.
people who take stuff totally for granted with no idea how it is produced or where it comes from
In short, it is an extreme variant cargo cult
“Everybody knows the world is full of stupid people, but I’ve got the pistol so I’ll get the pesoes-yeah that sounds fair!”
That old song pretty much sums it up, n’cest-ce pas? 🙂