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A Search for Ugliness

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Turns out that retirement-age men getting completely naked on the beach is a new trend here in San Sebastián. We saw another one today. He got so desperate that he started climbing gigantic boulders by the pier with the goal of towering over the bathers and ensuring that nobody failed to see him.

The overwhelming quantity of Palestinian flags now started to make sense. People don’t know what to do with themselves in the midst of unrelenting opulence and beauty, and they experiment with ugliness to break the monotony of placid enjoyment.

20 responses to “A Search for Ugliness”

  1. Avi Avatar
    Avi

    I’m surprised that a beach for families is now deemed to be clothing optional, though perhaps I shouldn’t be, considering the many social disasters brought about by the Sanchez government and its band of extreme social constructivists.

    One wouldn’t have thought it possible, but there you are. The horrors of progressivism are many, as in this case of nudismo para todos. Oops, big mistake there, it’s supposed to be “nudismo para todEs”, the current non-grammatical inclusive marker of Spanish Wokesters.

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  2. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “retirement-age men getting completely naked”

    Now I’m having flashbacks (and not nice ones) of the time I wandered by the clothing optional section of a beach in Bulgaria….. mostly frequented by people you really don’t want to see naked…. really….. you don’t…. and there they were…..

    But (western) Europe has always had more nudity or partial nudity than Eastern (or the US).

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  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Here we go again ascribing simple solidarity of raising flags to protest war and genocide to something totally unrelated.

    And yet I’m the one obsessed with a conflict thousands of miles away.

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  4. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    https://x.com/kylenabecker/status/1805763428243423552

    Speaking of ugly.

    “This is Christina Peterson, the highest paid judge in Georgia. Judge Peterson was just removed from the bench for striking a police officer. Something is seriously wrong in the State of Georgia.”

    Like I’ve said, the american dream is to be be prosperous enough to escape the consequences of the civil rights act.

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    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Pray tell, how is giving all Americans the right to vote something that one needs to “escape” from?

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I hope she’s gone for good. That woman has brought one scandal after another. What an absolute disgrace of a person.

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  5. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    Yeah, nobody’s criticizing that, nice try at this Motte and Bailey routine. “Giving all americans the right to vote” is a small part of the whole thing. You’re either being disingenuous or are truly uninformed. You don’t even have to google it. This blog, on which you seem to spend an inordinate amount of time, has tons of posts on disparate impact.

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    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      It’s always helpful to be specific so one is not misidentified as advocating for a return to inequality. Unless you’re saying that this is what the blogger has spent an inordinate amount of time advocating for — something I expect she’d vigorously deny (even if merely as a face-saving gesture). We like our bigotry obscured by flowery academic language and intentions, don’t we?

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      1. Stringer Bell Avatar
        Stringer Bell

        Man, I actually agree with you on some things and unlike other people here I don’t want to see you banned. But this passive-aggressive snarky way of posting is just so off-putting. You never argue in good faith. Here you’re insinuating that I and Clarissa would like black people to not have voting rights. How do you even argue with that? I mean, this is not 2011. Yelling “YOU’RE RACIST!” doesn’t win the argument anymore. It just makes you look like a fucking tool.

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        1. Avatar
          Anonymous

          Yea, but who in today’s world says they want to “escape the consequences of the civil rights act”, with no explanation, and expects to just be given the benefit of the doubt? Come on! You can criticize the action of one individual without assuming that all black people now deserve to be back in the early 1900s. Am I crazy?

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          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            You seem to be doing a lot of assuming.

            Maybe try stepping back from your priors and trying to figure out how that looks from the other side?

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            1. Avatar
              Anonymous

              I’ve tried, and I still haven’t read anything, either from you or the blogger, that explains what’s there to escape from in that law. The last time anyone told us that the law was terrible, it was Scalia, and it has only led to more legal disenfranchisement. Again, it pays to be specific to prevent misunderstandings.

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              1. methylethyl Avatar
                methylethyl

                OK, I’ll help you out: what might that sort of comment imply, if the person saying it was *not* a racist?

                If you can’t stretch that far, it’s OK we understand. Logic, impartial intellectual inquiry, good faith discourse in the presence of disagreement, and all that sort of thing are all racist habits of old dead white men now and may violate progressive conscience (is conscience racist? I lose track…). We would, of course, not ask you to violate conscience.

                But what you’re basically saying is: “You’re a racist! Defend yourself against this evidence-free accusation or everyone will know you’re a racist!” which places all the burden of explanation on others, while requiring no work on your part. It’s a classic low-effort derailing technique.

                Let’s try it in reverse:

                You hate children. Your comments reveal it: no reasonable person could interpret what you’ve said any other way! Explain yourself immediately! Failure to respond to my bombastic accusations with undeniable proof of a completely clean track record of non-kid-hating means everyone– including the silent majority of non-commenting readers– will know the truth about your child-hatred!

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              2. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/roots-partisan-divide/

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              3. Avatar
                Anonymous

                Meth,

                Yea, no, that’s not how it works.

                If I came to this blog to say some action in DC makes me want to escape “the consequences of the declaration of independence”, you would — with reason ask for clarification, unless you already know what I mean. My very first comment did that of the poster: ask what was there to escape from.

                You’ve written how many comments since then criticising me without one answer to the question. If you know what Stinger Bell meant, please say so. If not, don’t question my “misunderstanding” of it — if that’s what it is.

                Sometimes (read, most times), ambiguity is deliberately deployed in the service of certain mischief. See “stand back and stand by”. See: “good people on both sides”. See: Netanyahu’s “Amalek”. See conservatives’ “Soros money”, See Obama’s “guns and religion”, see Reagan’s “Welfare queens”, etc.

                If the generally accepted inference is wrong, would you be so mad as to clarify? At the moment, the gentlemen (and ladies) doth protest too much.

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              4. methylethyl Avatar
                methylethyl

                Clarissa provided and extremely helpful article, which explains the problem far more eloquently than I could.

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        2. methylethyl Avatar
          methylethyl

          I think the idea is that we all run away scared, cower and apologize out of abject fear of being perceived as racist by the faceless internet masses. It’s a strategy that’s worked pretty well for left-activists over the last few years, so why not?

          It’s pretty stale now, but I don’t think they’ve noticed yet that it doesn’t get the flustered, train-of-thought-derailing reaction it used to. It’s become… some version of calling each other “retard” on the playground when we were kids. Did anybody take that seriously? Did we scramble to tell everyone our grades and our IQ, to ‘prove’ that we were not actually a retard? No. It was never a serious accusation, had no real consequences, and did not call for a serious answer other than a series of armpit farts, or shouting “Oh yeah? Well so’s your Mama!”. You’re racist. I’m racist. Hamsters are racist. Cheese is racist. And so’s your Mama.

          The funny part is, now I’m seeing articles about how being on time is racist, hiking is racist, the outdoors is racist, national parks are racist, fitness is racist, personal integrity is racist, treating everybody the same is racist, logic is racist, high academic performance is racist, good grammar is racist, police are racist, careful budgeting is racist, *gardening* is racist… if that’s how we’re gonna define racism now, then hot diggity dog, let’s all be racists! The alternative seems pretty dire…

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            This morning I saw a video that informed us that saying “good morning” is racist because it’s somehow about slavery. It’s useless to argue and offer evidence to the contrary because these statements aren’t made in good faith. It’s like in the USSR anybody who wanted to have a minimal level of comfort in life was called “small bourgeois.” I was called that more times than I could remember. One reason was that my family put carpets on the floors instead of on the walls. You must be rich if you trample on carpets with feet. Small bourgeois! Anti-revolutionary! I stopped caring about this name-calling when I was 11.

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            1. methylethyl Avatar
              methylethyl

              Well, good morning to you, too!

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            2. methylethyl Avatar
              methylethyl

              …this reminds me, vaguely, that when we were children, and it became obvious that none of us were going to be anywhere near average height, my dad was concerned that we might get made fun of. His solution? He went and bought a recording of “Short People” by Randy Newman:

              We played it all the time, learned all the words, and thought it was hilarious. And it totally worked: we could not be emotionally hustled by anyone mentioning that we were short, even if they were trying to get a rise out of us.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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