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Posts Tagged ‘Same As It Ever Was’

In the News (#1200)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 29, 2021| 1 Comment »

Those in government office a[re] the proper subjects of scrutiny…not those who hold them to account.  –  J.D. Tuccille

Same As It Ever Was

All prohibitionism is the same:

The place of the humble egg in the street food culture of Gujarat…has become the latest flash point in the growing role of religion in everyday life…under [Hindu nationalist] Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who[se]…policies to reshape India…include tightening a ban on alcohol and adding protections against the slaughter of cattle…But even devout Hindus don’t always agree among themselves what practices the faithful should follow, a conflict that also raises issues of income and class.  Hence the bitter disagreement over eggs…[which some high-caste] Hindu…vegetarian[s]…consider…to be meat products.  Citing complaints from Hindus as well as [bogus] health concerns, local officials in Ahmedabad…and at least four other cities in mid-November banned the sale and display of meat, fish and eggs on the street…facing a lawsuit and protests, officials in Ahmedabad relented and allowed sales…to resume for now, though the dispute is being considered by the courts…

Stalkers in Blue

Cops regularly demonstrate exactly what they are:

Two [cops, James Delinicolis and Angelo Dellosa,] who regularly [harassed] women while [wearing their magical clown costumes were allowed to skate despite] pleading guilty to misconduct in public office over sex with a 17-year-old schoolgirl…in March 2020.  The…other charges [they faced] were withdrawn, including attempted…sexual assault [at gunpoint] and multiple charges of intentionally recording an intimate image without consent…Judge Peter Berman…[let them off] with…community service…[because they testified they were scared of jail despite the fact that they apparently also] tried to rape a schoolgirl…The two [routinely tried to intimidate] …women [into submitting to]…sex…with the[m]…

I Spy (#990)

Remember this when some useful idiot claims you don’t need anonymity online:

…Customs and Border Protection…routinely use[s] the country’s most sensitive databases to obtain the travel records and financial and personal information of journalists, [bureaucrats, politician]s and their staff, NGO workers and others…includ…ing email addresses, phone numbers and photos from passport applications…Running background checks as a matter of course may be creepy, but it’s difficult to imagine it not becoming standard practice when that information is available at agents’ fingertips…because of the fetishization of national security…an[d]…also because it’s so easy to access information on almost everybody…The number of journalists jailed around the world set another record in 2021…[with] 56 journalists…arrested in the U.S. this year…as many as in 2017-2019 combined….journalism isn’t a status, but rather an activity in which anybody can engage…and…annoying powerful people has become an increasingly dangerous activity even where it was once safe…

Permanent Record (#1018)

An important victory in the fight for sex worker rights:

Magistrate Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai…in Gililland v. Southwestern Oregon Community College, et al. [ruled] that a nursing student who was discriminated against because she was a former adult film performer is sex discrimination prohibited under Title IX.  This ruling is a historic victory for sex worker rights and will likely be expanded upon in years to come…Gililland asserted the college’s behavior was “gender stereotyping” her…The college…contended that Gililland was not protected by Title IX because…“employment history is not a protected status”…Judge Kasubhai…rejected th[is as bullshit and]…determined the “heart of this analysis” is “the kind of woman…that [the college] perceived [Gililland] to be because of her employment history…an ‘unclassy’ woman unfit to be a nurse”…

Censor Chic (#1046)

I’m sure you’ll extend the same courtesy to authors who aren’t violent, genocidal  megalomaniacs, right Amazon?

Amazon quietly removed criticism of…Xi [Jinping’s propaganda screeds] by scrubbing bad reviews, ratings and comments from its Chinese site…agree[ing] to Beijing’s demand to have anything below a five-star review of…The Governance of China removed from Amazon.cn about two years ago…The move is the latest example of western tech companies willing to [kowtow to] Chinese censors for access to the country’s massive consumer market…

Droit du Seigneur (#1183)

It’s good to see this lurid narrative turned against cops for a change:

A Putnam County [New York cop named]…Wayne Peiffer [has been] charged with protecting [what prosecutors refer to as] a sex trafficking ring…in [exchange for sexual services.  The sex workers were arrested and prosecutors]…are [attempting to threaten them into cooperation by threatening them with deportation to Mexico]…One of the Queens-based s[ex workers escaped]…and is being labeled a fugitive…

As in the Virginia case, it’s tough to tease out reality from fantasy here, but I’ve done my best to extract what appear to be the facts from amongst the dysphemized descriptions, agency denial, and outright lies.

Thought Control (#1197)

There is nothing as contagious as a bad idea:

…Local public libraries in Texas…are fielding a flurry of book challenges from [censorious twatwaffles].  While book challenges are nothing new, there has been a growing number of complaints…in re[sponse to censorship demands from politicians.  In]…October…state Rep. Matt Krause [bloviated nonsense about “pornographic books” in school libraries, and was soon joined by violent prohibitionist]…Gov. Greg Abbott…In the weeks since, school districts across the state have [been forced to waste huge amounts of money and work-hours] review[ing] of their book collections, and state officials have [sp]un in[creasingly-stupid propaganda about]…inappropriate content…In Victoria…Dayna Williams-Capone says the number of [copycat] complaints about books is the most she’s seen in her nearly 13 years…about 40…books f[rom a short list]…that touch on topics of same-sex relationships, sexuality and race.  After Williams-Capone and her staff [turned down] the [censorship demands], the…[would-be censors tried to go over their heads]…to the library’s advisory board…[who] voted…to [trust their] librar[ians’ judgement rather than accede to the demands of prudish ignoramuses]…

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Same As It Ever Was

Posted in History, Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 19, 2012| 16 Comments »

Time isn’t holding us, time isn’t after us
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was. – David Byrne, “Once In a Lifetime”

Metaphors are at best imperfect; no matter how alike two things are, there are bound to be some differences.  The same thing goes for historical cycles; no two eras can be exactly the same.  That having been said, there are so many parallels between our era and the Victorian that it’s positively eerie; as I said in my New Year’s Day column,

…a coalition of conservative Christians and small-minded, narcissistic, middle-class white “feminists” has succeeded in selling its ideas of social engineering to the society at large, resulting in an ever-increasing mountain of restrictions on private “vices” such as sex and drug use.  Once again we are being told that sex is “harmful”, especially to “children” (meaning anyone under 21), that prostitutes are the mentally defective “victims” of evil men, that there is a secret international conspiracy to sell millions of women and children into sexual slavery to satisfy “sinful” male lusts, and that women are eternal, sexless Trilbys who require paternal protection from mustachioed male Svengalis.  Once again white Westerners are being urged to take up the “White Man’s Burden” and work to shepherd the degraded, childlike brown races from their inferior state by forcing them to accept our vastly superior culture  (for their own good, of course).  And once again plain, honest language is avoided in favor of vague, polysyllabic euphemisms designed to hide meaning rather than convey it, as discussed in my column from last New Year’s Day.

Given all this it’s no surprise that anti-sex worker fanatics refer to themselves as “abolitionists” and like to fantasize that there are “more slaves now than at the height of the Atlantic slave trade”, or that they write in an overblown, lurid style drawn straight from the penny dreadfuls.  Health fascists employ rhetoric one might expect from the likes of Sylvester Graham or John Harvey Kellogg, and then there’s snobbish, racist social engineering like the latest from New York:

…[Proposed]…legislation…would ban eating in the New York City subway system…[on the grounds] that [it] breeds rats.  It’s far from clear that the proposed ban would be enforceable…[and] the claim that noshing leads to litter and filth harks back to racial and class stereotypes from the Victorian era…[when] social reformers tried to crack down on working-class public eaters and food vendors — many of whom were immigrants — by linking them to squalor, disease and shame.  To 19th-century guardians of public morality, the newfangled habit of eating outside the home was a menace to body and soul.  The oyster stalls of downtown Manhattan were an assault on the family values of the dinner table.  The “hot-corn girls” who sold their wares on the streets were no better than prostitutes.  Public eating was a gateway sin that led to drinking and debauchery.

As I pointed out in my column of one year ago today, the “gateway” argument is employed by lawheads to argue in favor of logically-unsupportable bans on consensual activity by claiming (without proof, of course) that the activity in question “leads” inevitably to serious consequences:

“Eating in public may beget a certain freedom of manner and nonchalance in little ladies and gentlemen,” Putnam’s magazine warned in 1853, “but we fear the practice is not calculated to promote the health either of the mind or the body.” For children, the magazine hinted darkly, eating in public was worse than unhealthy — it was bad for their morals.  All this sermonizing about public morals was a euphemism for a more concrete threat:  the growing populations of Irish, German, Italian and Jewish immigrants…for the families flooding into Ellis Island every day, street peddling was often the first step up the ladder of capitalism. Street food cost less than restaurant fare, because vendors didn’t have to pass on the already skyrocketing cost of rent to their customers…Well into the 20th century, social reformers lobbied the city to crack down on immigrant pushcart vendors…[arguing] that eating in public was “unhygienic” and led to diseases like cholera.

You can hear an echo of Victorian finger-wagging nowadays from lawmakers who pit public eating against cleanliness, godliness and that elusive quality we refer to as being “civilized”… but…in many of the great cities of the world, public eating and all of its glorious manifestations…are occasions for celebration and communion, not shame and punishment…To be sure, some foods…travel well [and] others…not so much.  And some subway passengers do throw their leftovers on the…tracks.  But instead of criminalizing a biological necessity like eating, we should enforce the already existing laws against littering…we don’t want to end up like Washington, where transit police officers, during an undercover crackdown in November 2000, infamously arrested and handcuffed a 12-year-old girl for eating French fries. (The officers who searched her book bag, according to the girl, asked if she had any drugs or alcohol in addition to her fries)…

Because, you know, French fries are a “gateway drug” which inevitably lead to shooting up heroin.  Yes, that’s an absurd exaggeration, but to whores and our clients it sounds no more ridiculous than the common assertion that having sex with someone for practical reasons (rather than “love”) and being honest about one’s expectations up front, somehow inevitably leads to violent crime.

The idea that denying oneself physical pleasures, from sex to tasty food to chemical stimulants, is a good in and of itself arrived in North America with the Puritans and grew dramatically during the 19th century (as described in Warner’s All or Nothing).  But the notion that it is somehow justifiable to impose one’s own personal beliefs or preferences on society as a whole is the deformed spawn of the Social Purity Era, and its reappearance is yet another symptom of Neo-Victorianism.

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