We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day

As noted elsewhere, the people here that are getting the vapors and seeing this election as a modern day Reichstag fire are the same people who spent the last 8 years weaponizing government. They have seen what happens to Christian bakers and pizza places who show badthink. They don’t want the tables turned and their angry and afraid.

– Commenter Duffy over on White Sun of the Desert.

20 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • AndrewZ

    Identity politics makes people paranoid. It teaches them to see other people not as individuals but as representatives of a category. The categories are organised into an elaborate hierarchy of victimhood and oppression and all social interactions are treated as an expression of the power relationships between the groups.

    A person who has internalised this way of thinking will start to see everyone who belongs to one of the designated oppressor groups as a threat and will feel acutely uncomfortable in their presence. They will feel that they are surrounded by enemies who are just waiting for an opportunity to do something terrible to them. Since they have been trained to interpret everything they see and hear in terms of power relationships they will see threatening messages everywhere, and their heightened self-consciousness will make it seem as though it’s all aimed at them personally.

    The SJWs are so full of rage and so ready to lash out because they really do think that they are under constant attack. They need to scream and shout to relieve the unbearable psychological pressure of living in a state of permanent siege. That’s also why many leftist writers have such a breathless, frantic style full of hyperbole and wild accusations. It’s the desperate strung-out voice of the paranoiac.

    To somebody in that state of mind, it would be impossible to conceive of a rich white male Republican – the apex predator of oppression – wanting to do anything other than establish a brutal tyranny. Now I’m sure that some leftists have been deliberately exaggerating their fears for political effect and that some have just expressed themselves carelessly. But I suspect that many of them really do believe that Trump is the new Hitler because that’s the kind of thinking that identity politics naturally leads to.

  • Thailover

    I love how Slithery mocked Trump in the last debate because he refused to unilaterally accept the outcome of the election before seeing how it would go down, saying that his behavior flies in the face of 200yrs of tradition, etc, blah-blah-blah, and then when SHE lost, she didn’t even have the integrity to give a concession speech, and her Media Matters paid for rioters are now ripping apart other people’s cities.

    “Deplorable” doesn’t even cover it. The Left are the rotten white fuzzy mold covered squashed-flat vegetables in the bottom of city curb trash cans, swimming in their stenched feted brown goo slime….in late June.

  • Thailover

    Andrew, I have no doubt that you are correct about the extraordinarily weak minded. But I suspect more than half of the SJW’s are merely pathetic assholes who feign “outrage” because they’re 27yr old babies.

    I don’t know about you, but I’m enjoying the hell out of these pathetic societal parasites falling down in a tantrum, kicking and screaming. Boo fucking hoo.

    Today was the day students walked out of their universities in protest…and no one gave a shit. I know I don’t.

  • Slartibartfarst

    I think maybe @Thailover just nailed it.

    I must admit that this whole US Presidential Election thingy has been HUGELY entertaining for me and my family. Especially my 15 y/o daughter, who wants to study political philosophy and is fascinated by political shenanigans. She is delighted at the outcome as she utterly despises fascism, cant and hypocrisy and reckons that The One has proven himself to be rubbish during his term, and the Crooked One deserves everything she gets, and more, and hard.

    Even my 6 y/o son is entertained. He is sat next to me and reading this out loud as I type it. “Ah! That’s me!” he just exclaimed with a laugh and a smile.

    So, thankyou Obama, Hillary, the Marxist Liberals, and not forgetting Trump, whom one can’t thank enough, for such a superb piece of theatre – a serialised farce with huge dollops of tragi-comedy and drama, worthy of Brian Rix (27 January 1924 – 20 August 2016) and a beautifully surprising and uplifting denouement. Absolutely brilliant. Job well done. You couldn’t make this stuff up, and it was all so spontaneously done.

  • Stonyground

    Sorry to be OT but did anyone else see the BBC news were there was an interview with some talking head about the latest unemployment figures? It appeared to be a scripted effort to make out that having lots of foreign workers here was somehow the reason for the recent improvement in the figures. I couldn’t quite follow the guy’s logic but was rather bemused by the BBC’s desperation regarding any positive news after the EU Referendum.

  • Mr Ecks

    War –non-violent war–is needed against cultural Marxism and the well-off, middle/upper class, London/Washington Bubble scum who are its troops.

    The schools and unis must be purged both of leftist poison-peddlers but also of the young red guard scum they have created.

    The West will not survive without such actions. Cultural Marxism must have the taxpayers tit forcibly ripped out of its fetid gob.

  • PeterT

    Ultimately the left is full of the kind of people that you wouldn’t want to have on your side in a fight. As long as good people wake up and resist before it’s too late they don’t stand a chance. Problem is, once things return to ‘ok’ good people lose interest and return to their lives. We need the ‘anti-Obama’. Maybe this could be Trump.

    Anyway, looking forward to “2016 – the movie” coming out.

  • Runcie Balspune

    I love how Slithery mocked Trump in the last debate because he refused to unilaterally accept the outcome of the election before seeing how it would go down, saying that his behavior flies in the face of 200yrs of tradition, etc, blah-blah-blah, and then when SHE lost, she didn’t even have the integrity to give a concession speech, and her Media Matters paid for rioters are now ripping apart other people’s cities.

    You have to admit this was an awesome maneuver by Trump, it has literally shut down debate on the “stolen election”, it’s as if Trump had studied the aftermath of Bush 54/55, and if he is that kind of strategic thinker we are in for interesting times.

  • Paul Marks

    The solution to Identity Politics of the left is NOT Identity Politics of the right – that is where the “Alt Right” (and Dr Gabb down in Kent) are mistaken.

    The solution is less powerful government – government that, for example, does not have the power to order business owners about, and government that does not have the money to make universities (and so on) dependent upon it.

    No one favoured by government has a “right” to the money of the taxpayers – but they have got to mental stage where they think they have a right to the money.

    So much so, for example, that the Mayors of the “Sanctuary Cities” (for example New York, Chicago and San Francisco – with their 200% vote for Hillary Clinton) believe they have a “right” to endless Federal money (to cover their unfunded pensions and so) – even as they welcome ever more illegal immigrants (in defiance of Federal law) to claim benefits and “public services” and to commit crimes (such as murder and rape) – so that under “motor voter” and so on the illegal immigrants can vote Democrat.

    Now we shall see if Mr Trump is all talk – or whether he will really cut off taxpayer funds from the “Sanctuary Cities” and States.

  • Laird

    I think AndrewZ’s comment is spot-on. Sure, some of the “protesters” are paid plants, but some (especially university students) really are terrified. As he points out, that’s due to the atmosphere of paranoia in which they’ve been raised. They are now getting smacked with a good solid dose of reality, and when all their fears are proven to be unfounded perhaps it will cause them reexamine their beliefs. Perhaps. And that would be good both for them and for the country.

  • Fraser Orr

    > then when SHE lost, she didn’t even have the integrity to give a concession speech,

    I am no fan of HRC but I think that is pretty unfair. Certainly she didn’t give a concession speech that night, but the outcome was not 100% certain until pretty late, and apparently, and understandably she was a bit of an emotional wreck. She came out and conceded quite graciously the next morning, and encouraged her supporters to give Trump a chance to surprise them.

    She is a loathsome individual, but some have said her concession speech was the best of her campaign, and I think they may be right.

    > and her Media Matters paid for rioters are now ripping apart other people’s cities.

    I don’t know you can necessarily blame HRC for these riots, though certainly the accusation about “accepting the results” should resound in their ears while they use a Trump win as a pretext to steal a new flat screen TV.

    And, for the record, let me say that I don’t object to protesters protesting the election result. Nothing wrong with that, I know several people who did just that, and they are more expressing some very real fears they have for the future. Fears that I think are largely unfounded (though Trump is pretty unpredictable, so who knows) but have been so ginned up by the press it is not surprising that they have them.

    As to students walking out of class, I think it is hysterical. As if them not going to class is going to be a burden on anyone except themselves. I guess though people need a mechanism to vent their frustration, fear and anger, and if yelling about it with your friends and smoking a little dope does it for you then good for you.

  • Phil B

    @Frazer Orr,

    No – I do not think that it was unfair to The Hildebeast. THIS links to an article that claims she had a temper tantrum with a further link to the source.

    The blogger postulates that the way the human brain works can be divided into K and r types. he has blogged repeatedly in the run up to the election about how The Hildebeast has displayed classic signs of irrationality, mental instability and mental illness.

  • Laird

    Frazer Orr, I agree with Phil B: that claim is not in the least unfair to HRC. True, the election wasn’t 100% known until late (although nowhere near as late as Bush’s win in 2000), but when the time came to throw in the towel she sent John Podesta to do it for her. That was a pretty crummy thing to do to all those hard-core supporters who had worked so tirelessly for her, and who had waited all night for the celebration which never happened. And it was reported that she had already written both an acceptance and a concession speech, so it’s not like she was unprepared to say something; she just didn’t want to do so. (Or she was too drunk to do so; there have been rumors that she has a drinking problem.) Gracious as her concession speech may have been the following day (and even that was delayed several times before it was actually delivered), it doesn’t make up for her utter lack of class that night. But it really shouldn’t have surprised anyone; the Clintons are well known for being totally classless, with Hillary being the worse of the two.

    And as for those “Media Matters” riots, perhaps we can’t blame HRC for them, but we most certainly can fault her (and Obama) for studiously avoiding any criticism of them, and for failing to call for them to cease. She may not be their sponsor but she is an enabler. Criticism for that is entirely warranted.

  • Laird

    Frazer, to follow up on my last comment, here’s a link to an article about Hillary’s tantrum on election night and why she didn’t put in the expected (indeed, obligatory) appearance. That woman is mentally unstable, and probably borderline insane. People fret about Trump having access to the nuclear codes, but in my opinion it would be far riskier for her to have them.

    Frankly, I think we dodged a bullet in this election.

  • Slartibartfarst

    @Laird: If true, then what you mention might explain why Bill Clinton has been looking so ghastly – as though ill – on his recent TV appearances. I have seen cases where it has been an intolerable strain for a spouse who has had to live day-to-day with someone who has been progressively lost to madness/dementia. It’s much the same for people living with a deteriorating alcoholic, where the person one knew is absent a lot of the time, often spasmodically replaced by a monster, in a Jekyll-and-Hyde sort of transition.
    Or maybe he is just that – ill.

  • Alisa

    That may well be the case, Starti – or, one could conversely imagine that any woman having been married to Billy for so long, would eventually go nuts one way or another. Whatever the case may be though, Laird is probably right in that we seem to have dodged a bullet.

    That said, we now seem to be on the way to having a CIA chief who thinks that the NSA and its meta-data-collection scheme are wonderful (and that Snowden should face the death sentence), and an AG who loves the DEA and civil-forfeiture laws. To be fair to both, they are probably no different in this from many other (if not most) politicians previously holding or having been suggested for these positions – or for that matter, from any other politician, period. Though I am now debating whether the fact that they express these views openly and even enthusiastically is a good or a bad thing in the longer run…

  • Laird

    Bill C certainly does seem to be declining fast, but I won’t speculate on the cause. I will suggest, though, that being relieved of the strain of his wife’s 2-year campaign, and of playing along with her long-running pay-to-play scheme (and I have absolutely no doubt that it was her scheme, not his), and possibly also of the need to continue living with that harpy, will probably do wonders for his health. I don’t wish the man ill; I just want him (and especially her!) to go away for good.

    I agree with Alisa’s second paragraph at 11:35 AM. For the most part I have been OK with (if not wildly enthusiastic over) Trump’s high-level appointments (technically, nominees), but that one is indeed troubling. And it will no doubt win easy confirmation.

  • Alisa

    and I have absolutely no doubt that it was her scheme, not his

    Why? Mind you, if it is just a hunch, I tend to agree.

  • Laird

    Alisa, no proof, just 24+ years of experience with the two of them.

  • Alisa

    Well yes, like I said – I feel the same way.

    I now wonder if these two are going to go away (being old and defeated), or has Chelsea been primed to keep the legacy.