Who else crawls out of sociability events with a profound feeling of joy that you won’t have to engage in any more sociability for at least a couple days?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate my sociability events, but boy, am I happy when they’re over.
For those who haven’t been following, leftists cropped out a snippet of a photo from the promotional campaign for Converse sneakers and accused the company of promoting the KKK.
Converse has been apologizing ever since.
I do feel bad for the pretty Korean model but I feel worse for the rest of us.
Imagine what these people will do if they come back to power. Are you completely sure you never posted anything that can be cropped creatively to get you accused of some atrocity? Are you sure you are ready for a reality where this isn’t simply what some morons online do but official government policy?
Think about this prospect and vote accordingly.
People bring up imperialism and colonialism to me like they are convinced I should consider both to be bad. But I don’t. It would be bizarre of me to do so, given that I’m only able to make a living the way I make my living, thanks to the existence of the Spanish Empire.
Or take the Roman Empire. Without it, there would be no Western civilization. Who can possibly argue that the great civilizing mission of the Roman Empire was historically a bad thing? Okay, I’m sure some woke loser can, but I’m talking among reasonable people.
This doesn’t mean that all imperialism is good. Of course it isn’t. It’s a complicated phenomenon that can be good, bad, or anything in between.
Both imperialism and colonialism, however, are concepts that belong to the past. We have sacrificed them to the idea of the nation-state. We have to stop trying to fit today’s reality into these outdated concepts. I understand, for example, the desire to view the EU as an imperial project. For instance, the desire to impose a uniform worldview on the indigenous populations to which this worldview is alien is, in fact, similar to what the Spanish Empire did in its Latin American colonies. But that similarity isn’t enough to make them the same thing. A goose and an airplane both have wings and fly, but that doesn’t turn an airplane into a type of bird.
What exists today is not the nation-state and what came before it, but the nation-state and what comes after it.
Nicole Hannah Jones, the founder of the 1619 Project, published a long article about the consequences of putting her daughter into a crappy school to prove a political point. As anybody with two functioning brain cells could have predicted, the result was atrocious. But the part of the article that attracted my attention is this:
Leaving aside the political aspects of the story, this sounds bizarrely neglectful for two educated, wealthy parents. How is it possible not to notice that your child can’t write or do basic math? Did these parents not spend any time with their own daughter at all?
I don’t check my daughter’s homework because I’m not a helicopter parent. But we spend a lot of time together. I observe her writing and doing long division for fun. If somebody in your family can’t write, how do you manage not to notice that? Are there any relatives, friends? Do these people exist in a vacuum?
It’s useful if you have spent your whole life knowing that you are weird and experiencing shame and secretiveness because of that weirdness. The knowledge that it is a thing that exists and that many other people have it can relieve the guilt and the anxiety. Once you get rid of the guilt and the anxiety, you can start looking for ways to mitigate certain manifestations and accept the rest of them.
If you’re already in a place where you don’t feel that you need to go to great lengths to conceal your weirdness from others, then I don’t see how it is useful. At a certain point in my life, it gave me enormous relief to find out about autism and realize that I have some form of it. I thought this was a character flaw, but it turned out that it was a neurological condition. Since then, I have mitigated some things and accepted others. I don’t think about the autism label anymore because I no longer need it.
You don’t owe anybody to put a label on yourself. If the label helps you in some way, then that’s fine.
I knew Cline was a literary genius when I read her novel The Guest. But you never know. What if a brilliant novel is a flash in the pan? What if there is nothing left in the well of the author’s talent? I was worried that Emma Cline’s new novel Switzy would underdeliver on the promise of The Guest. I shouldn’t have worried, though. Cline is a genius, and she proved it once again.
The Guest was about an indigent, declassé woman in her twenties. Cline is so confident in her talent that she went in the exact opposite direction and wrote her new novel about a wealthy, elderly, ultra-civilized man. Imagine how many ways there are to mess up something like this. Make it preachy and politicized. Scoff at the old man for being uncomfortable with technology, for being a remnant of “the patriarchy.” But Cline resists the temptation of writing for the self-indulgent. As always, her writing is completely controlled. The economy of artistic means she employs is extraordinary. She never tries to explain anything, make a point, or preach.
Switzy is the perfect counterpoint to The Guest in another way, as well. The Guest shows the chthonic horror that arises from the depths of the souls of self-indulgent, undisciplined people. Switzy is about people on the opposite end of the civilizational spectrum. Once again, Cline writes like it’s 1991 and wokeness never happened. The novel is about a rich elderly man on his way to be euthanized for dementia. But even though his mind is failing him and he often finds it hard to know where he is and why, he is still fully immersed in the civilizational order.
In my opinion, Cline is the best writer in the English language today. She is only 37, which, in writer years, means she’s a girl-child, but already she has come out with these two extraordinary novels that are completely different yet are undeniably written by the same author.
I have to warn potential readers that Switzy doesn’t have a plot in the way that The Guest had one. Its goal is not to depict events, but to go into the depths of a fracturing mind at the end of a life. It’s done in an extraordinarily talented way, but this is heavy reading.
Here is an even crazier story of successes of diversity than the one I published yesterday.
Metropolitan Police officer Cliff Mitchell, previously investigated for raping a child in 2017, was initially rejected in 2020 vetting but approved by a diversity-focused panel to boost ethnic minority recruitment.
Mitchell joined the force in 2021 and was later convicted in 2024 of 13 rapes—including six against a child under 13—plus kidnap, while serving as a constable, leading to a life sentence with a minimum term of around 13-18 years.
A 2026 Met Police review found the now-abolished vetting panel overturned 114 rejections, with 25 of those hires later committing crimes or misconduct because of pressure to meet diversity goals.
A pedophile rapist was hired to serve as a police officer because this boosted diversity numbers. He used his role as a constable to rape more people, including children.
Wokes always give the game away:
They think that black people are like insects. And they are unable to recognize that angry mobs of their leftist brethren would be eviscerating them for such posts if Trump hadn’t won the 2024 election.
Remember our discussion regarding the school requirement for volunteer hours? We now routinely get clarifications on how to calculate volunteering hours. The clarifications look like this:
I shrank the email so that it can fit into the post. I’m not going to read it because I’ll never get that assimilated. Besides, there is going to be a fresh one soon, so why bother with this one?
I’m not sure if you can see it but there is a lot of passive-aggressive underlining and italicizing.
Yes, it’s nearly impossible to deport him. It’s just so, so, so impossible. Trump would have sent him to Africa and been done with it, but everywhere else, there are a million excuses to keep a five-time rapist around so that he can terrorize the native population.
Trump’s many defects are completely outweighed by his decisive immigration policy.
A conservative literary critic and college professor
“Everything feels very weird” Very often, difficult people leave behind people who are shell-shocked and/or dazed and confused….
“not all Japanese folks” Why are all your examples 80 years old? Policies based on WWII or earlier won’t work…
I’d had so many bad experiences with doctors and nurses from hell that I reflexively distrust anyone in the profession,…
“So… you’re answer is a or b…” I think you’re looking for “your answer is a or b,” Big Guy.…
Those are my favorite kind of books.
I really hoped you enjoy it!
I have downloaded a copy, and it’s next in line.
I strongly believe that this one novel by W.B. Maxwell is better than either of these authors. I know it…
It’s also reportedly great for hangovers. As well as the liquid from pickled cucumbers
You’ve not read Thackery? Or Kipling?
“difference between a fraud problem and an immigration problem” So… you’re answer is a or b. There should be no…
Cliff, I’ve lived a long freaking time. Probably a shade longer than I would have liked. But one thing I…
“Let’s take letting everyone in and out all wlly nilly as rather bad from an inclusion standpoint.” Immigration policy is,…
“Kapustka is, of course, pickled cabbage” Do you drink the juice from it? If you think you might be coming…
“Bad Day at Black Rock is a laughable…” Walnut, you absolutely need what Spencer Tracy gave to Ernest Borgnine in…
As my child often says, “Mommy, can I eat this cabbage with kapustka on the side?” Kapustka is, of course,…
“There is no Trump in Russia…” I can only assume you’re taking the piss with me now. But in case…
OT: The Eastern European food pyramid. https://x.com/Jpod_art/status/2113965774641484010
To continue— Immigration, mass migration, etc. Come a little closer. Let me whisper in your ear. It’s a problem. It’s…
There is no Trump in Russia. Is Russia a good nation-state? No Trump in Haiti. Is that a good one?…
This was all outweighed by one really amazing and professional male nurse who should be shown to everybody else at…
“Define what you mean…” Jeez, nothing but imperious commands and demands…again. Are we allergic to courtesy on this blog? Well,…
Jfc. Very sorry you experienced this.
Sounds like one of the many projects supported by the Soviets.
Sorry, just one more story so that people understand what I’m talking about. When my mother died and I finally…
I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the Montreal Jewish Hospital in the past year. As my mother’s illness…
Bad Day at Blackrock is a laughable, leftist wet dream in which the FDR Democrat left and Hollywood get to…
“who would you prefer to attend to you in a retirement home” All things considered, probably a Filipina… they seem…
Every Spanish government since the mid-1980s has contributed to fostering the obsession with the Civil War as a way of…
Let’s place bets on the probability of the answer being that a good nation-state lets everybody in who wants to…
“I want to bring back the GOOD nation state” Define what you mean by that. Extra challenge: Do so in…
There’s no nation-state without borders. You cannot be for nation-state + welfare and simultaneously for mass migration.
“I can’t respond to the rest…” I’m ALL FOR the nation state. I think I was pretty clear about that.…
I can’t respond to the rest of the comment because I haven’t watched the movie. As for dismantling the welfare…
“I just want to mention that I’m not the one…” So noted. And I’m not the one who chose to…
I just want to mention that I’m not the one who sexualized the content.
Okay, I can cop to condescension and possibly a smirk (also making a classic masturbatory gesture with one hand while…
LOL, I think that downvoting without explanation within a political blog is completely teats-useless, the equivalent of an empty-headed frown.…
Modern left: winning hearts and minds through condescension; replacing clarity and policy with smirking.
Brandon hasn’t been a thing for a better part of a decade. My kid was still in diapers during Brandon.…
