Zombie at PJ Media offers a roundup called "Progressive Racism: The Hidden Motive Driving Modern Politics." Most of it is what any follower of such writers would expect: For example, progressives wish to "restrict access to guns as much as possible; ultimately ban and confiscate them all" because "white urban liberals are deathly afraid of black gangbangers with guns, but are ashamed to admit this publicly, so to mask their racist fears they try to ban guns for everyone, as a way of warding off the perception that their real goal is to target blacks specifically," which is why the notorious liberal Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford Act when the Black Panthers started walking around with loaded firearms.
And on and on. But there's one bit that deserves special attention:
PLASTIC BAG BANS
Progressive position:Strangely, Zombie doesn't have one for Obamacare. Which should be easy: Black people are always getting shot up at card games and contracting sickle-cell anemia, but liberals are so ashamed of their own racism that they're making everyone get health insurance.
Prohibit businesses from giving plastic bags to customers.
False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position:
Discarded plastic bags harm the environment and befoul the landscape; we should be kind to the Earth by using cloth or paper bags instead.
Conservatives’ inaccurate theory of progressives’ real intent:
Leftists have an illogical phobia about plastic, because to them it symbolizes artificiality and consumerism; they’re trying to outlaw an extremely useful invention simply to make shopping and capitalism more inconvenient.
The actual racist origins of the progressive stance:
White progressives specifically want to stop inner-city blacks from littering, but don’t want to be perceived as racists who further penalize the black community for its behavior, so rather than focus on whom they believe to be the actual perpetrators of littering, they remove from everyone‘s hands any objects which might potentially become litter.
UPDATE. Commenters want to play too! DocAmazing:
Progressive position:Plenty more where that came from (e.g. Warren_Terra: "Better Gas Mileage: Liberals are afraid of running out of gas in the wrong part of town. Carpool Lanes: Liberals want company in case they run out of gas in the wrong part of town," etc).
Proper dental hygiene and water fluoridation are necessary for community health.
False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position:
Poor dental hygiene leads to poor health overall.
Conservatives' inaccurate theory of progressives' intent:
Progressives just want to dictate every phase of life; elitist emphasis on having a full set of teeth.
The actual racist origins of the progressive stance:
Fearful white liberals want to be able to see approaching black people in the dark.
Also, textual analysis from Spaghetti Lee: "'I'm not racist; I have a black friend' has apparently evolved into 'I'm not racist; you have a black enemy.'"
Zombie is wrong, of course. Liberals aren't upset over plastic bags because they're racist. It's because they're Communists.
ReplyDeleteHe just doesn't have all the facts, you see. He doesn't know that in the People's Republic of China, most large grocery stores charge for bags. The amount is very small - perhaps three fen, not even a nickel - but they charge. You can see it when they ring up the order.* Now, there are any number of explanations, but the self-evident one is that they're a pack of socialist fascist collectivist corporatist Commies! No further explanation is needed. Hey, if Zombie can conclude that gun control is racist because more gun crime happens in cities, why do I need to offer any more proof?
*This part is actually true.
Wow! He's smarter than I thought. He figured out what voter-ID laws are all about.
ReplyDeleteSchool choice? Is that what they're calling public funding of private grifting these days?
ReplyDeleteThe actual racist origins of the progressive stance
ReplyDeleteWhite progressives are racist because Zombie thinks it's so obvious that black folks are racially predisposed to being litterbugs that we can't help but believe it?
This reminds me of a comedy book that described itself as "the most amazing load of ...facts ... ever published!"
ReplyDeleteEllipses were in the original.
ReplyDelete"White progressives specifically want to stop inner-city blacks from littering..."
ReplyDeleteFunny...around where I live it's the suburbs (the richer ones) who have outlawed plastic bags so now the retail stores charge you for their bags if you didn't bring your own.
This has to be performance art. Or a liberal mole. NOBODY can actually have such thought processes and not end up being forcibly committed.
ReplyDelete"What I'm actually afraid of...black people.
ReplyDeleteI mean liberals, dammit! Liberals are afraid of black people. What, you never had a slip of the tongue? Racist."
No, the Chinese are racists, too. Since they can't stop distribution of plastic bags in countries where lots of blahs live, they hide their racism by restricting plastic bags in China.
ReplyDeleteSee? It makes much more sense that way!
Progressive Position: This post is bullshit
ReplyDeleteFalse Public, etc.: Zombie's a blithering idiot.
Inaccurate Theory, etc.: Am not!
Actual Origins: "Zombie" is an Illuminati agent trying to destroy the ability to think logically, and his method is to make arguments with so many logical fallacies that the human brain can't comprehend them and shuts down.
Oooh, let me try one:
ReplyDeleteFOOD STAMPS
Progressive position: Give people without enough money to buy food...money to buy food.
False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position: Most people who get food stamps work but don't make enough money to buy food. Watching people starve is a real bummer and shameful in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. Masses of starving people lead to civil unrest.
Conservatives' inaccurate theory of progressives' real intent: Leftists are a bunch of bleeding hearts who don't understand that in capitalism, there have to be losers. Otherwise, it's no fun. Also they want to create a liberal plantation by making minorities reliant upon them for food.
The actual racist origins of the progressive stance: White progressives specifically want to ruin the health of inner-city blacks on food stamps by giving them just enough aid to buy crap food, instead of pushing to force the people they work for to pay them enough so they can buy food. If inner-city blacks got paid enough to buy food, they might eat healthier food and live longer, and also, they would no longer be on the liberal plantation and would be free to vote Republican.
So, as a racist progressive, my secret reaction to every Columbine, Newtown, Aurora, and Tucson is, "Well, that's actually fine, the way it went down, but can you imagine if the gunman had been black? What a dreadful way to die!"
ReplyDelete"I'm not racist; I have a black friend" has apparently evolved into "I'm not racist; you have a black enemy."
ReplyDeleteDo you think he puts his hand in a sock with some eyes painted on it and pretends it's his imaginary liberal talking?
ReplyDeleteProgressive position: Proper dental hygeine and water flouridation are necessary for community health.
ReplyDeleteFalse public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position: Poor dental hygeine leads to poor health overall.
Conservatives' inaccurate theory of progressives' intent: Progressives just want to dictate every phase of life; elitist emphasis on having a full set of teeth.
The actual racist origins of the progressive stance: Fearful white liberals want to be able to see approaching black people in the dark.
It's not just racism. We're also homophobes.
ReplyDeleteProgressive position: The queers are not doing anything to the soil, Stuart.
False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position: Look at the soil around any large U.S. city with a big underground homosexual population. Des Moines, Iowa, perfect example. Look at the soil around Des Moines, Stuart. You CAN build on it, you can grow ANYthing in it.
Conservatives' inaccurate theory of progressives' intent: You know that carnival that comes to town every year? Well this year it came with a ride called the Mixer. The man said "Keep your head and arms inside the mixer at all times." But Democrats, they're daredevils, and they're going to get us all decapitated.
The actual homophobic origins of the progressive stance: It's the queers. They're in it with the aliens. They're building landing strips for gay Martians. I swear to God.
"Alright Mr. Zombie, what do you see in this ink-blot?"
ReplyDelete"Black people using welfare checks to get high!"
"And this one?"
"Black people playing the knockout game!"
And this one?"
"Black men going after white women!"
"Well, Mr. Zombie, it seems you have a certain... problem with black people."
"What are you talking about? You're the one with the racist pictures!"
I'm comfortable with buying every African American a gun. We should do it in alphabetical order starting with Alabama.
ReplyDeleteNot these days. There was a reason why Reagan emptied out the asylums, and it had nothing to do with patients' rights.
ReplyDeleteThere've got to be a million of these:
ReplyDeleteBetter Gas MileageLiberals are afraid of running out of gas in the wrong part of town.
Carpool LanesLiberals want company in case they run out of gas in the wrong part of town.
Commuter RailLiberals want to ride the train so they won't have to drive through the wrong part of town.
Higher Minimum WageLiberals want fewer people to be poor so there will be less "wrong part of town" in which they might run out of gas.
Zombie, the ur-Unskewed Polls guy (for the 2008 election). Couldn't he just do what the current Unskewed Polls guy does and spend his time writing about Hillary Clinton's lesbian sex coven or something he found off a right-wing chain e-mal?
ReplyDeleteIt's an old joke, but well-adapted, sir.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you hate the Black people of Wyoming so?
ReplyDeleteI think the corpse of George Wallace just reanimated.
ReplyDeleteAren't all Martians gay? Or am I to be disappointed again?
ReplyDelete"Zombie" has been at it for yrs. & yrs. And yrs. So yeah, either way should get some help/advice/pills.
ReplyDeleteAlternate explanation: Zombie works the midnight shift at a plastic bag plant, and his brain has liquified from years of putting plastic bags in bigger plastic bags for shipment.
ReplyDeleteReverse voter suppression?
ReplyDeleteEggzactly. Think of it as a Republican affirmative action program.
ReplyDeleteWhere do you think they found John Bolton?
a big underground homosexual population
ReplyDeleteThey've joined forces with the Mole-Men? We're done for.
Nope. The Arcturians are, though.
ReplyDeleteThis just started in the city of Los Angeles. (Where, incidentally, I am a living example of "white urban liberals are deathly afraid of black gangbangers with guns," in the no-man's land between Koreatown & Little Bangla Desh. What a racist jerk ol' Zombie is. No mention of 18th St. who scare me twice as much as black gangs. 2x0 = 0, of course. Not to mention the Koreans. Who, 30ish yrs. ago, would shoot black people as if there were de jure stand your ground in CA. But even they have mellowed. Not Zombie. It'll always be 1987 for him.)
ReplyDeleteSo, stores no longer have to shell out money for free bags, indeed are legally obliged to charge a nickel (US5¢) for a paper bag. Crony capitalism if I ever ...
The liberal secret is that w/ everyone carrying their own bags these United Snakes are becoming more like Europe or China. Uh, except is it ++socialism for every one to be responsible for their own damn bags?
Case in point. Camp or what?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.blackgate.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/arc1.jpg
"white urban liberals are deathly afraid of black gangbangers with guns, but are ashamed to admit this publicly, so to mask their racist fears they try to ban guns for everyone, as a way of warding off the perception that their real goal is to target blacks specifically"
ReplyDeleteWhite progressives specifically want to stop inner-city blacks from littering, but don’t want to be perceived as racists who further penalize the black community for its behavior, so rather than focus on whom they believe to be the actual perpetrators of littering, they remove from everyone‘s hands any objects which might potentially become litter.
Someone found a useful formulation.
I think that goes beyond gay.
ReplyDeleteWould this qualify as the "Inaccurate Theory" for Carpooling & Commuter Rail?
ReplyDeleteA lot of what's taught is standard conservative rhetoric-but always with a sinister twist.
Mass transit, for instance, is a mistake not because freeways are more cost-effective, but because it will allow the government to control the movement of its citizens. By getting rid of cars, "they'll be able to restrict where you go," director Bearly says.
How does that thing take off or land without any legs?
ReplyDeleteIt's a fascinating mindset, and the useful thing about the diehard right-wingers who don't pull down the big bucks on Fox News or elsewhere is they tend to be more honest in displaying their pathologies.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, here's proof that movement conservatives really don't get liberals. They insincerely pander, so they assume liberals' support for the whole social contract, social safety net thing must be an insincere pander. They're racist and pretend otherwise (and even convince themselves of it in their echo chamber), so they assume that liberals must be the real racists and bigots pretending otherwise. They're driven by spite, so they honestly cannot comprehend the whole enlightened self-interest thing (at best they mock it) let alone actual compassion, certainly not for anyone outside of the approved group. The idea of someone voluntarily surrendering an advantage, some privilege, on the grounds that it will make the system more fair overall, is utterly foreign to them. (Soshalism!) If they truly believed their successes were due to merit, the idea of a fair system wouldn't scare them so much, but of course they've bought the Nixon-Reagan-Ryan-Cruz line that everything was great until the unions, big gummint and Those People messed everything up.
I'm guessing he plays it all out with action figures.
ReplyDeleteLacks consistency with my theme.
ReplyDeleteHeck, I was tempted to include "Death Panels: Liberals want the sweet release of a painless demise, knowing it ensures that they won't run out of gas in the wrong part of town" - the only problem being that we don't actually want Death Panels.
These right wing clowns are like ants in a dish, endlessly circling and circling. They don't like being called racists anymore so they attack the opposition as racists.
ReplyDeleteBut soon afterwards Republican Ann Coulter will say it feels like "rape" to be surrounded by a growing American citizenry of non-whites. Or Republican gun nut Larry Pratt will advise African Americans to stop being "surly" and instead be "happy" like the Africans from Africa. And their cover is blown. Not that anyone really bought it.
The fact is Mitt Romney won 17% of nowhite voters in 2012. That says it all. No one is fooled other than a few Tea Rubes.
Hmm. We've known all along what's wrong with Coulter's mouth.
ReplyDeleteIt's connected to her brain.
For my sanity's sake, I'm going to go ahead and believe this is so much bullshit served up as a deliberate provocation; to either rile up the base or offend liberals by dint of being so fucking wrong.
ReplyDeleteWait...if that's true, then who are the rubes who actually believe this shit? Okay, belief #2: nobody who reads this actually takes it seriously. Nobody. You can't tell me otherwise!
Progressive position: Let's do this
ReplyDeleteFalse public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position: This will help people.
Conservatives' inaccurate theory of progressives' intent: Oh, so you think you're better than me? You think you can tell me what to do?
Actual origins of the progressive stance: Ooga-Booga! Ooga-BOOOOOGAAAAAAAAAAAH!
I'm an old person.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful!
ReplyDeleteI cannot believe that he failed to note that more trash means more large dump sites, and large dump sites create localized depressed property values, and black people need depressed property values in order to afford a place to live. Also, properties next to large dump sites are less prone to gentrification.
ReplyDeleteBrain? It's already gotten well past the point where the Creutzfeldt-Jakob is afflicted with Ann Coulter disease.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly fits in well with the cynical, self-serving cowardice of conservative racism. Is there any reason why these hypothetical urban liberals should not be equally afraid of gun wielding Latino gangbangers? Of course not. But here African Americans are singled out for abuse because not only do AAs represent liberals par excellence in the conservative mind, but conservatives also feel AAs are completely unobtainable and therefore open for insult without any consequences to the movement.
ReplyDeleteIt's almost amazing how easy this sort of thing is. And how dishonest. It reminds me a when Rick Santorum was gnashing his teeth about the tastelessness of modern culture a couple years back. He singled out a professional sport for criticism. Was it the biggest sport in the country he attacked? Was it the second biggest? Nope. He jumped all the way to the third biggest sport in the country as the peak of tastelessness. I'm sure I don't need to tell you it was the NBA. If Santorum were honest and had even half a testicle, he could have posed as a real cultural conservative and attacked the NFL for its tastelessness. Why not go for the top dog, right? But folks in Iowa like their football, so there was no way he was going to do that.
Or one of these Charles Murray-style yahoos I remember saying something like "Darwin would not be surprised which race invented rap." Yeah dude. And blues and jazz and rock. But don't mention that otherwise the Boston and Foreigner fans who read your shit will be pretty offended.
Theodore Adorno was an actual cultural conservative, and he wasn't afraid to say, "Sorry folks, syncopated music and cinema are complete trash". I'm sure that made it hard for him to reach younger people, but at least he had integrity. These guys like Zombie aren't even conservatives. They're just cowards and opportunists.
Now this is some biting satire!
ReplyDeleteOf course, Zombie isn't saying "progressives are the real racists;" he's saying "everyone is a racist, and progressives are just embarrassed about it."
ReplyDeleteAll the "actual reasons" Zombie claims progressives are in denial over (or are lying about) are things that conservatoids, in their commonsense wisdom, already believe.
I just wonder if he, or his target audience, knows that.
Like every conservatoid I've met (capable of articulate speech), he takes the arrogant position that everyone is tribal/racist/paranoid/superstitious/etc., and the only real difference between liberal and conservatoid is that the latter are honest and practical about it.
Every day that passes, I'm beginning to grok the view that human beings are just carriers for memes, which are fighting for survival in a changing environment. There can be no compromise in this conflict.
How depressing.
I like you, Gromet, you're not like the other people, here in the trailer park.
ReplyDeleteWell, the man who fell to Earth looked a little, um, androgynous.
ReplyDeleteBecause both of them are kinda obnoxious.
ReplyDeleteThis point used to be my "shut down the argument" line with my gun-toting, racist-in-denial bro-in-law, when he would start dagnabbing about the "libruhls" and their plans to take away all the guns.
ReplyDeleteHe, of course, felt it was perfectly fine to keep guns away from those "mexicans" (which meant anyone darker than his Irish descended ass).
It still works here.
ReplyDelete"That's a very old and rather feeble joke, Spasm."
ReplyDelete"I'm a very old and rather feeble butler, sir."
In branding progressives as 'racists', apparently Zombie believes that he isn't one and that 'racism' is bad. That's progress.
ReplyDeleteA thing which used to actually exist.
ReplyDeleteIts passengers have legs.
ReplyDeleteWhereas with SUVs, cunning conservatives are able to leap from building to building, using their enormous genitals as lariats.
ReplyDelete"Darwin would not be surprised which race invented rap."
ReplyDeleteWhile Darwin was certainly a racist inasmuch as he ascribed distinct characteristics to different races, I recall he spoke highly of "the Negro race" and thought it had quite the right stuff.
Not like those Portugese. Fuck those guys, Darwin figured.
Yes, this. These are the same people who in the Sixties and Seventies used to go on and on about "law and order" but never coupled it with "justice."
ReplyDelete"Liberals are afraid of black people because black people are secretly conservative."
ReplyDeleteFixed
Same reason they've pushed to destroy public education. More people who lack critical thinking skills = growing the Republican base.
ReplyDeleteI don't think so. I honestly believe that Zombie, and his ilk, don't think racism is bad at all.
ReplyDeleteThey think denying racism is what is bad. If we'd all just face the fact that white, christian American males are the top dogs, we could organize a functional society.
I'm afraid this is really the core ideology on the Right.
Er, isn't the liberal consensus usually that everyone is a racist (and a sexist, and a homophobe, and an ableist, and whatever other evils we're acknowledging today), and that the only question is whether you feel appropriately ashamed of it or not?*
ReplyDeleteNot sure about tribal, paranoid and superstitious, though. I guess most liberals would pride themselves on not being those, it's true...
Every day that passes, I'm beginning to grok the view that human beings
are just carriers for memes, which are fighting for survival in a
changing environment. There can be no compromise in this conflict.
Yeah... pretty much, I think.
* If I seem a little grumpy about this... well, let's just say that I am busy enough being ashamed of the ways that I am actually worse than other people. I just don't have the time or energy to take on some kind of collective shame also. :p
FYI, I think Zombie is actually a woman. She achieved internet fame by going to protests in SF and photo-nutpicking.
ReplyDeleteOr, "We whites are all racist and for good reason. You just won't admit it."
ReplyDelete"Used to be?" What, has he finally come up with a pithy answer? I mean something wittier than "AM NOT!!!"
ReplyDeleteIn comments, Zombie explains his/her methodology:
ReplyDeleteThe problem with this whole topic (secret motivations) is that the true progressive motivations are so deeply hidden that there is no "documentation" whatsoever because they have never enunciated their feelings even to themselves, much less in public or in writing. The only way to get to the truth is to observe and deduce. Which is what I have done, much more incisively than the childish false deductions the left attempts on a daily basis.
IOW, as Zombie has demonstrated, the great thing about "secret" motivations, racist or otherwise, is that they can be assumed about practically anything. Plastic bag bans? Hell, what about stop signs? These are clearly invented by racist progressives to keep inner-city blacks from running over their white children on their way to elite private schools.
What's more than a bit ironic is Zombie's rather, um, racist assumption that there are no black progressives.
Maybe a more sophisticated argument would be that getting rid of landfills in poor areas would make more room for oil refineries and unregulated chemical plants. Zombie clearly hasn't thought through the implications of his position.
ReplyDeleteThere's a well known principle of logic that, given a set of possible explanations, the one most likely to be correct is the one that lets you say the nastiest shit about black people
ReplyDeletePhilosophers call it Occam's Hood
Yep. It's always projection with these people.
ReplyDeleteWell, of COURSE the rich suburbs have outlawed bags and/or charge for them. This keeps the poors and the blahs from shopping there and littering.
ReplyDelete"Cars cannot actually do this." But wear your seatbelt if you're gonna try!
ReplyDeleteSo much effort to create such flimsy strawmen.
ReplyDeleteSo many words to express the tired old "No! YOU'RE the racist!" argument.
You know, in a way, articles like this can be seen as progress. Not that long ago, the racists on the Right wouldn't have bothered with arguments like these. They would proudly think and say (and do) racist things without a second thought. It never would have occurred to them to try to shift the blame.
Articles like this are an admission that racism is not a good thing. That's a step in the right direction.
I can't upvote SpagLee's comment enough.
ReplyDeleteThat's been their cry for a very long time. White Supremacists and NRO'niks have been arguing that white liberals already live in gated/safe communities and therefore don't know what blacks are "really" like or can avoid being in direct conflict with them for jobs and for public spaces. It goes all the way back to: South Boston got bussing and Cambridge and Brookline didn't. Which is true, of course. And its related to the previously discussed goldberg argument that all right thinking people hate and avoid public education because they are really racist and want to avoid black people so trying to put money into black people's schools is a form of hypocrisy.
ReplyDeleteTalk about damned if you do, damned if you don't. Which is the most Veblinian form of conspicuous consumption here?
ReplyDeleteThats death panel trucks.
ReplyDeleteWhat script is that. It kind of looks tamil or south indian to me but I think it might be something else?
ReplyDeleteTo a certain frame of mind, "I know you are but what am I" never, ever gets old.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things about real discrimination is that laws are passed that specifically affect one population, by race, rather than all populations equally. Since liberal antipathy towards litter is towards, well, litter (which is, of course, not the only form of problem with plastic bags, btw, since they are largely indestructible) and the new anti plastic bag regulations affect all racial groups equally its really hard to make the argument that a general law "masks" or covers a specific antipathy. Unless the right wing is willing to give up that old wheeze "We're not anti gay--a gay man has as much of a right to marry a woman as I do."
ReplyDeleteThey have said something important. Its like the breadcrumbs that are to lead hansel and gretel out of the woods, or the thread theseus uses to get out of the maze. It points towards something--something sad, something bitter, something ugly, and something stupid but something nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteFrom the climate change one, racist origins section:
ReplyDeleteThe civilizational “white guilt” motivating the voluntary wealth transfer to undeveloped nations derives from deep racist assumptions about the innate shortcomings of backward peoples.
That's pretty much the template for anything Zombie and his ilk want to dream up regarding their simultaneous projection of racism onto liberals and display of their own racism; you could swap out "the voluntary wealth transfer to undeveloped nations" for any number of things.
I always had him pegged as a deeply-closeted, self-hating gay man for his past obsession with photographing and posting pictures of the Folsom Street Fair (allegedly in protest of what the "children" might see).
ReplyDeleteHe ignores the voluntary transfer of wealth to OPEC nations.
ReplyDeleteThe crazy thing is that he's revealing some nasty, deep-seated racism in order to make the tenuous case that liberals are racist. The post fails miserably as minority outreach... Is it merely a cack-handed self congratulatory piece?
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't think thats the liberal consensus at all. Its my anthropological working assumption that people are a mixed bag of identities and motivations, not at all limited to gender identity, sexual orientation based identity, abelism, tribalism, or racial categories. For instance its perfectly possible to be heterosexual and be totally not homophobic. (Incredible!) Its possible to have a sexual identity or a gender identity and not be a sexist w/r/t other people. Its possible to have a racial identity and not be prejudiced against other races or even against your own. Its possible for other identities--such as national or religious--to trump these other categories.
ReplyDeleteMore importantly the liberal/multicultural attitude, if there is only one, is that private feelings are nobody's business but the carrier, what matters is not "being ashamed" but what you do in public and how you use or abuse the public/legislative sphere to make your group dominant.
Just take the case of the Catholic Church and its anti homosexual dogma and marriage tradition. Absolutely nobody is arguing that the Catholic Church should have to marry gays if it doesn't want to. No legislation has ever been introduced, or ever will be introduced, forcing the CC to change its stance on ordaining women, or marrying gays, or marrying divorced people, or trying to get it to marry catholics to non catholics. But the Catholic Church has intervened publicly and politically on the side of legislation which has been introduced forbidding *other* churches and individuals from permitting gays to marry. There's a not unsubtle difference between the two stances and it has nothing to do with shame/not shame.
But we all know it's really poor black people who do all the littering. We just won't admit it because of The Cathedral.
ReplyDeleteThe only way to get to the truth is to observe and deduce.
ReplyDeleteNoticing a superfluous 'd' in that last word.
Fuckin' liberals, buncha fuckin' killjoys with our whining environmentalism. It's so inconvenient!
ReplyDeleteI think that's it. It's not much more than "we're better than they are." Back-handed self congratulations.
ReplyDeleteBut if Zombie & Co. WERE sincere in this strange denial of racism, it would be better than the unapologetic racism that we used to see from the Right.
As a Liberal, I would willingly accept being despised and misunderstood, if it meant that the Right became willing to accept all races as equal to themselves.
The sock is too stiff,IYKNwiMAITYD
ReplyDeleteJust so we're all clear, Zombie is actually employing the Marxist critique of false consciousness in order to describe the hidden motivations of liberals when it comes to race.
ReplyDeleteAs in Karl Marx, father of all that is unholy to wingnuts.
It's not clear whether he knows he's doing this or not, and I'm guessing from his childish and uninformed writing style he doesn't, but it is certainly fascinating to watch him describe liberals as a sort of lumpenproletariat who need to throw off the shackles of equal treatment for all and advance the revolution of racism and white power for the betterment of society.
Yeah, they are pretty explicit about this. If we white liberals would stop hypocritically denying our own fears and hatreds and join the rest of the white supremacists in the shallow end of the gene pool then we could finally climb back on top as a race. The implicit Zombie argument is that we liberals know the real problem is blacks, but won't admit it even to ourselves and so our "solutions" to real world problems can't be effective.
ReplyDeleteOn this point I just made the mistake of reading the online comments below the breaking story of the two houses that blew up in NYC in East Harlem. Both apartments are described as rented out, one above a piano builder and one above a storefront church. In the article the landlord is interviewed and gives a detailed account of the lives of the tenants, some of whom are missing. The pastor of the church says she smelled gas the night before and alerted the shop owners in the area.
But the comment thread immiediatly insists that the "buildings were abandoned" and that "crack heads" or a "meth lab" were responsible because black people, amirite?
I can't tell if anyone actually believes it.
ReplyDeleteBut here's one thing I'm pretty sure of: there are conservative readers of his article who are memorizing those talking points in order to have argumentative ammo against liberals on the internet.
Marx or Freud?
ReplyDeleteWhite progressives believe that black people are too dumb to make
ReplyDeleterational decisions on their own and too uncouth to behave civilly.
I am offended by the presumption that I do not believe white people are too dumb to make rational decisions on their own and too uncouth to behave civilly. I have decades of experience as a white person to back this up.
You are overthinking it only in this: the obvious solution to Zombie and his ilk is to pass specifically racist laws denying blacks the right to own guns and then enforcing those laws strictly. Zombie and his friends in the NRA are committed to a version in which all white on white gun violence is an accident or doesn't happen, all accidents are acts fo god and can't be prevented, suicide by gun is irrelevant, and white on black shootings are all justified. But they would be perfectly happy with laws that reinstituted laws against blacks (and hispanics) getting gun lisences. Because they believe as an article of faith that these laws shouldn't touch "law abiding second amendment supporters" in the white/suburban and rural community.
ReplyDeleteWhite liberal anti racism is a problem because it causes white liberals to paint with too broad a brush. Its kind of the same argument they make with respect to abortion, btw "my abortion was for a good reason, your abortion was an immoral murder.." Similarly, when black people own guns its to commit crimes, when white people own guns it is to protect themselves from black people's crimes.
Kinda makes you want to be reincarnated as a social psychologist in the 21st century (given, yes: "Damn, not again!").
ReplyDeleteDissertation topics for all!
I'd be curious to know that myself.
ReplyDeleteI found a page that compares Grantha, Malayalam, Sinhalese, and Tamil scripts, but it doesn't seem exactly like any one of those.
http://scriptsource.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=entry_detail&uid=cys4syktxt
It's Thai.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to be contrary, but are you sure?
ReplyDeleteThat was my first guess, but I Google Image searched for Thai alphabets and couldn't find letters that matched these.
In fact, it still does exist. Colgate-Palmolive has owned the company that makes it since 1985. They were forced, around 1989, to change the name because of, principally, complaints from U.S. shareholders, and for C-P, it was an apparently arduous process, because they would be on the hook for losses originating from brand confusion.
ReplyDeleteIt's now called "Darlie." So, they changed one letter in the name, and the logo is now a person of "ambiguous" race in top hat and tuxedo. It's marketed across Asia, so it could be Thai.
Yup.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if its Armenian?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_alphabet
ReplyDeleteOh, thanks!
ReplyDeleteSchwing!
ReplyDeleteIt's a very Western-style script, but yeah, it looks to be Thai.
ReplyDeleteMore affluence means more effluence. Everybody knows that.
ReplyDeleteDr. Hunky is right: it's Thai. I've seen it sold in Thailand. My Thai wife can confirm it. :)
ReplyDeleteBut how are her teeth?
ReplyDeleteThey're not to be trifled with!
ReplyDeleteCalifornians were all for gun freedom, until the Black Panthers started claiming the same rights as white folks, and started carrying loaded guns around.
ReplyDeleteAnd, then, suddenly, the legislature--at Reagan's urgings--passed the Mulford Act, making it illegal.
You want effective gun control? Get brown people with guns to act just like white people with guns.
Thai. Transliteration of the big letters: Dah-kee. It's tough with that third figure, because it's an r sound (in kid talk, "raw-rua" or in upcountry Isan, "law-lua"), but Thais don't do r's at the end of syllables very well (it's only there because of the r that's there in English; the diacritical mark above it says "don't pronounce this like you would normally"). Sometimes you'll see it at the end of a syllable transliterated as an n, which would make this "dan-kee," which is how some Thais would probably pronounce it.
ReplyDeleteIt became "common knowledge" that we had to invade Iraq and bail out banks because we didn't fight back hard enough. Men saw a chance to get rich and paid heavily for a propaganda campaign that achieved their goals. There was no comparable campaign to gain progressive goals.
ReplyDeleteTo successfully counteract a propaganda campaign you must disseminate an alternate scenario, which will confuse the targets and neutralize the effect of the propaganda. If you do not fight you will not win, or at least come out even.
Someone always says we should ignore them and they'll go away (more or less) but they never do go away, do they?
"'I'm not racist; I have a black friend' has apparently evolved into 'I'm not racist; you have a black enemy.'"
ReplyDeleteWonderful. Possibly the newest iteration of "I'm not racist, these are just the scientific facts!" I hear a lot.
Zeppo?
ReplyDeleteI think it's Thai in the second line from the bottom of the image, the last line is definitely not Thai.
ReplyDelete"Isn't that Occam's Hoodie?"
ReplyDeleteIt is now, and will ever remain so. at least in my wardrobe.
Well, maybe I am overthinking it, or giving Zombie and his ilk too much credit, but I do think s/he and they realize that a law that comes right out and says "white people get to own guns, black people and Hispanics don't," is not going to get passed, never mind pass muster with the courts. If anything, you would think that they would like the efforts of the liberal, urban gun banners. They ban guns in their cities and States, which means no guns for lots of Blacks and Hispanics, while the rural regions and farm States don't ban guns, which means whites get to keep their guns. All without any troublesome racially non neutral laws.
ReplyDeleteAnd, really, the disconnect here goes beyond the usual conservative "my abortion was for a good reason, your abortion was because you are a whore and a murderer" dichotomy. Here, the conervaperson is actually claiming that the liberal person has a valid reason for his policy position, only the lib is afraid to admit the reason because, I guess (I am extrapolating here, trying to square the circle in Zombie's behalf), that appears to be, or could be seen as, racist. Well, in that case, the only real problem, again as Zombie sees it, is with the refusal to, er call a spade a spade. The libs, one would think, have every right to want to protect themselves (even if gun control is not the preferred way to do it), and their only mistake/fault/area of dishonesty, is their failure to admit that it is Black gun users that they are afraid of. In other words, it simple "PC" denial, not "racism," no matter how you strain to define it, that is at play and that is no good. The libs purport to fear guns generally, when all they really fear is Black folks with guns. And they should therefore come out and say it.
"So many words ..." Well, the man probably does have a word quota to meet.
ReplyDeleteSo after Thailand, and Malaysia and Indonesia, no one comes up with Javascript?
ReplyDeleteI am disappoint.
And don't forget, at the bottom of it is their delusion about civil rights: They believe that civil rights, and the legislation or litigation which engenders it, is a zero-sum thing, in which one group can be advantaged over another, not that rights can be guaranteed and effected for all.
ReplyDeleteOnce you think that way, every civil right somebody else gets must have been pried from your cold, dead, hands.
I'm a bit younger than Jeff, I remember seeing Danny Kaye on Broadway.
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned, my wife has already threatened to leave and marry a man.
ReplyDeleteHe stopped listening to me, and I stopped talking to him.
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't think many people are very logical--in other words "this wouldn't pass constitutional muster" does not seem to be a metric at all on the right side of the aisle. Often laws are "passed" or even just filed without getting a vote, with the objective of letting people stake their claim to being one kind of person or another (good or totallly evil, of course, being the only two choices.)
ReplyDeleteI see the Zombie charge (as it were) a being part of the generic "magic words" accusation that it matters what words President Obama says (Terrorist! only, please--all caps if possible--, no weasiling around with "terrorism.) This is also related to Governor Perry's famous floundering incomprehension during the discussion of abstinence only education. He could not understand how you would introduce metrics like "number of teenage pregnancies" into a discussion of "teaching abstinence only sex ed." Why? Because utility, real world events, the constitution etc... are not as important as how people feel about things, or that the right words be spoken. And this, in turn, relates (I think) to the particular form of US christianism in which professing to believe in Jesus and to accept him as your personal savior is more important than any actual good works a person might do. Its magical words and protestations of faith in certain solutions that matter, not whether they are approved by the (ugh) majority or liberals and black people.
This is very, very, good. But, of course when guns are criminalized only criminals will have guns! So, given that all black people are natural criminals, ipso facto, QED, the end.
ReplyDeleteThis explains why I can't see Zombie's head.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I guess you're right. It is all about getting to use the magic word "racist" although it makes no sense at all, even accepting everything else the Zombie has to say. And, with "racist," you get double the bennies, because not only is it a bad thing, but it is a thing that the libs accuse conservatives of.
ReplyDeleteRove used to do this all the time---jump on an accusation that actually fit his boy more than his opponent, which put the opponent in the position of sputtering in rage when his counter accusation, which actually was accurate, was dismissed as merely duplication of what was said about him. Zombie has no practical application for the tactic, no election to win, like Rove did. No, for him/her, it is just the satisfaction of having used a magic word against the liberals, and one of their own favorite ones at that. Preempting their mojo, as it were.
White progressives believe that black people are too dumb to make
ReplyDeleterational decisions on their own and too uncouth to behave civilly.
Which means that black people must leave the Democrat "plantation", instanter.
Oh, not exactly what I meant. The magic word isn't "racist"--they want Liberals to join them in saying the magic words "black people are the real problem." Only when liberals admit this basic, foundational, truth can we all achieve clarity.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, uh lick you, blog.
ReplyDeleteProgressive/liberal: Let's tax the ultra-rich a few percentage points more.
ReplyDeleteFalse public rationsle: Its for the benefit of the starving poor, and to help maintain our country's infrastructure which helped the rich GET rich!
Actual Origins: Liberals hate teh Rich because: (Benghazi! Monica Lewinsky! Chappaquiddick! Obamacare!)
To compliment Obama's "11 dimensional chess", the right has developed "11
ReplyDeletedimensional logical consistently" so they can attack from 11 directions on every fucking issue.
See also: even paranoids have real enemies. This is just a version of that "Even racists are right some of the time" seems to be the gist of it.
ReplyDeleteDC has had this in place for a while, and there was a measurable drop in the amount of bags they had to clean out of the Potomac after it went into effect.
ReplyDeleteYou aren't the only one who confuses the two.
ReplyDeleteAnd oddly enough, "Thai Town" & "Little Armenia" are adjacent/overlapping in East Hollywood.
IYKWIMAITYDTTDOSOTL.
ReplyDelete(I am dismayed that I know what you mean.)
That's actually believable.
ReplyDeleteYour description reminds me of the gleeful depictions of the horrors of the PC lefties in Lillejahmmer, the Netflix tv show following Mafia guy (played by Steve vanZandt) to Norway where he settles himself comfortably and starts kicking ass.
ReplyDeleteI await Zombie's explanation of the racist motivations behind the liberal idea that disordered, obsessive paranoid ideation can be treated with antipsychotic drugs.
ReplyDeleteTough crowd.
ReplyDeleteIts like the breadcrumbs that are to lead hansel and gretel out of the woods
ReplyDeleteSomething I have wondered: If finding the way out of the wood was so difficult, then how come H & G's parents could do it each time??
You don't have children, do you?
ReplyDelete"The magic word isn't 'racist'--they want Liberals to join them in saying the magic words 'black people are the real problem.' Only when liberals admit this basic, foundational, truth can we all achieve clarity."
ReplyDeleteRight. I see what you're saying now, and the Berg thing fits in perfectly.
But, not to belabor, Zombie says this:
"The actual racist origins of the progressive stance:
"White urban liberals are deathly afraid of black gangbangers with guns, but are ashamed to admit this publicly, so to mask their racist fears they try to ban guns for everyone, as a way of warding off the perception that their real goal is to target blacks specifically."
Twice explicitly ("actual racist origin" and "racist fears") and once by clear implication ("their real goal is to target blacks specifically"), he accuse the white liberal urban gun control enthusiasts of racism. If what Zombie says is true, then the liberals are already racist, and, that is what he is supposedly taking them to task for. So, it is hard for me to see how the liberals simply admitting to racism (or, at a minimum, racialism) would bring us to "clarity."
Really, he is saying that the Progs are closet racists. Well, coming out of the closet won't make them any less racist. Or more racist.
Under your theory, the whole thing makes even less sense...Zombie: liberal white gun control enthusiasts are closet racists, and that is bad, bad, bad...but racism is good. And the liberals should be racists too.....even though they already are....but they should admit to it...then their racism would be not only OK, but laudable...
Huh?
So can blog posts
ReplyDeleteLikewise right-wing columnist Ron Hart proclaimed a few years ago that Republican rich people are classy and sophisticated while rich rap stars and people who appear on "Pimp my Ride" are all tacky and therefore Democrats
ReplyDeleteToday's Republicans believe that the only thing worse than racism is calling somebody a racist. Even if they actually, provably are racist. Being called a racist is so much more hurtful than merely lynching somebody or denying them the right to vote.
ReplyDeleteWe still have the Doktorling* -- she kept finding her way out of the woods.
ReplyDelete* Actually she's left home now for her first year at varsity.
What you say is true, but it doesn't make any sense to me.
ReplyDeleteIt is entirely possible that you have just won the entire concept.
ReplyDeleteI think to get the full logic of any of this you have to read across a lot of Zombie's writings, which I'm not willing to do. I'm just hypothesizing. But there really isn't anything too idiosyncratic or unusual about the accusation that Liberals are the real racists, or the real nazis, or the real eugenicists, or really hate the poor. Those are all pretty standard tropes on the right and invariably, when you dig down into what the author really wants to have happen, its for Liberals to stop posing and faking it. I don't think that just because Zombie, arguendo, seems to be taking a "racism is bad" perspective in this piece of writing that Zombie really thinks that black people don't deserve it. S/he pretty clearly does think they deserver the bad name they supposedly have with liberals since s/he is arguing that blacks are, in fact, dangerous and litterbugs to boot.
ReplyDeleteMy offspring is about to make the jump. We don't know where yet. And we still have one to kick around. But I'm not able to get my head around the idea that the eldest won't be around next year and, as I understand it, g-d willing, will never live with us again.
ReplyDeleteAnd it brings in about $2 million a year for river clean-up.
ReplyDeleteI'd vote for that.
ReplyDeleteBoomerang kids, Aimai. She'll be back (I did it at 37 while in grad school!)
ReplyDeleteYeah. I know. I didn't really have a permanent non family home until around age 30, myself. I mean, I considered my parents home my real home, or my home during summers when my apartment rental lapsed, or when I came back from fieldwork. But I feel like its unseemly to be hoping my daughter has as much trouble setting up her own home and family as I did. Even though I know its very much in the cards for this generation to be peripatetic and also tied to their natal home for quite some time. But, of course, since I studied a joint family system I'm secretely gung ho to have daughters and grandchildren living with us permanently. I need to take a chill pill.
ReplyDeleteIt is so awesome that multiple people on this blog are able not only to identify, but also translate Thai.
ReplyDeleteMy blog cup runneth over. <3
OT: I once had a college roommate from Veblen, SD. The town was named after good ol' Thorstein hisself.
ReplyDeleteThis is all satire, right?
ReplyDeleteThis is not the far left. The far left is so far out in the weeds they might as well not exist for all the attention they get. What you are describing is the academic left after 30 or so years of mostly failing at being able to teach the humanities in any functional way.
ReplyDeleteThe actual racist origins of the progressive stance:
ReplyDeleteWhite progressives specifically want to stop inner-city blacks from
littering, but don’t want to be perceived as racists who further
penalize the black community for its behavior, so rather than focus on
whom they believe to be the actual perpetrators of littering, they
remove from everyone‘s hands any objects which might potentially become litter.
Sounds like it to me. I can't conceive of anyone, NRObot or not, being serious with this shit. I smell Poe...
I believe I've pass my probationary period here, and can now ask The Stupid Newbie Question. How's Alicubi.com's surgery going?
ReplyDeleteWhen I was living in the Caribbean I would occasionally be accosted by American as holes who marveled that these countries were not making better use of all the aid the American taxpayer was sending there. I would just keep repeating "There is No. Aid." They got a little gas money to fight the War on Drugs was about all the free money they got. Everything else had been loans for years and years. But those fuckers wouldn't believe it.
ReplyDeleteSearch me! I just use the tongue depressors.
ReplyDeleteHey, it's nice to see PJ Media going full neoreactionary. Here's Michael Anissimov, part of the intellectual wing of that bunch: "High IQ, high-earning whites with mild temperaments, who make up the majority of the readership of blogs like mine and [a critic's], have a very sheltered view on crime. They advocate policies that have grave effects for the lower-middle and lower classes, such as open borders, because they are insulated from the increased crime and violence that these foreigners bring with them."
ReplyDeleteI think this argument sounded better in "The Blues Brothers" anyway.
Also, as a footnote, I think Zombie is a she, but they're pretty anonymous, so who knows?
That occurred to me too but, reading the diatribe (which hurt my brain like cheap drugs, and not the good kind of cheap drugs either) I can only conclude that the writer is both (i) nuts and (ii) serious.
ReplyDelete"Serious" at least in the sense that s/he is not satirising, but not necessarily serious in the sense that s/he actually believes a word s/he wrote. I think it's highly likely that the author had an idea, started writing and, when the ridiculousness of the propositions became (as they surely must have at some point - plasic bags being a glaring example) undeniable, s/he was by that stage simply too invested and just plunged on.
And, like Jonah Shartberg obviously understands, these wingnut propagandists must know their audience doesn't really give a fuck what the hacks write, so long as it's formula includes hypnotic repetitions of "liberals/agenda/gay/oooga-booga", and gives them a fresh comments box into which they can shit out the same old stale "yeah lieberals really are poopy-haids" canards again and again and again.
Odd people, they find being daily enraged, soothing. Somehow.
.
Like all sensible people, I try to avoid discussing political opinions with people I do business with. But I find it impossible to let some things pass, so I've had to learn how to express a counter opinion without being overtly political. I had a customer a couple of months back railing about people on food stamps, so I let her carry on and then said, I don't want anyone to go hungry, and most of the people on food stamps work, they just aren't paid enough to afford food. If they cut food stamps, those people are going to have to go to work hungry, and I don't want that. And she agreed.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, things need to be called out, though not so much "called out" as gently rebuked. At least if you want to get the people who believe those awful things to consider how they might be wrong. They never get there if you start out with "you're wrong." And sadly, a lot of them won't get there no matter what you say or how you say it. But a few of them can get it.
Or the next dinner party...
ReplyDeleteCanberra (Australia's capital city) banned disposable plastic shopping bags a few years ago. Guns are very regulated and 'concealed carry' prohibited. Abortion is freely available (kids over 16 don't need parental approval for contaception or other reporoductive medical assistance and there's a vigourous debate about removing even that limit). There is a reasonably generous welfare safety net, and probably most or all of the other crap "Zombie" drooled out in his/her excruciatingly over-argued Turd-Opus exist there too.
ReplyDeleteBut there are very few black folk.
So I wonder (not really) what contortions of logic (for want of a better word) Zombie believes explains the "actual racist origins" of that most progressive city's progressive stance on these matters?
Could it be (surely not!) that Zombie's masterwork is, in fact, utter horseshit?
.
Yes, they do. When I was doing my missionary work over at the NRO comment section I found they needed something every day to dial up the outrage-O-meter to 11.
ReplyDeletei don't think late stage syphilis is treatable.
ReplyDeleteI once had a wingnut tell me that the US would have a great economy if we didn't send all that aid to France and Germany every year.
ReplyDeleteIts overall gestalt suggests both male and female genitalia, in ways I'm going to try and put out of my mind.
ReplyDeleteTreatable but not curable -- GPI can be stopped but not reversed.
ReplyDeleteIt's still very popular all across South-East Asia and here in Taiwan. I was living in Hong Kong when the stir about the name was on; most locals didn't understand the fuss- "It's not saying anything bad about black people; it's complimenting them on having great teeth".
ReplyDeleteWhen the offensiveness was explained, a common answer was "Because you white people were horrible to the black people, now you're calling us racists".
Oh right, I try to avoid politics (and religion) at work as well.
ReplyDeleteI was talking about online discussions.
Of course. It is just that the two ideas are in total contradiction, no matter what Zombie has to say elsewhere and no matter how far down you dig.
ReplyDeleteThat was kinda my point to begin with.....On the one hand, liberals are the real racists for thinking that Blacks are dangerous! Bad liberals! On the other hand, Black folks really are dangerous, so much so that that danger is what is really motivating liberal gun control efforts, no matter how much the PC liberals try to cover it up. Bad Black people!
My view is that Zombie simply wants to say something bad about liberals, and "racist" hurts them double because the liberals themselves think racism is bad. But then he doesn't notice that at the same time he is either giving liberals an "out" from the charge of racism or endorsing the same racism he accuses them of having. Yes, in the end, Zombie is a racist who thinks Black people "deserve it" (with "it" being nothing good). But, in the end, just as much, he is an idiot who doesn't get that he has to be at least minimally consistent in his characterization of the real world issue for his accusation against liberals to have any credibility at all.
Zombie COULD have, consistently, claimed that liberals are right to fear Black people, but are too "PC" to admit it. Or, he COULD have said that Black people are not really extra dangerous, and liberals therefore are the "real racists" for thinking otherwise (and that otherwise thinking is demonstrated by their desire to ban guns). What he can't do is combine both notions and make any sense. But he does it anyway, because, as you say, there is no way in hell he is going to NOT claim that Black people are bad and deserve whatever they get, and because, as I say, there is no way in hell he is going to even moderate his attacks on liberals, and choose only one of the two logically mutually exclusive accusations to hurl at them (too PC AND real racist).
"So many colored folks there without an Occam's razor fight... 'Twas a great surprise to me."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.perfessorbill.com/lyrics/lyragdnc.htm
I hope that some psychologists have taken the opportunity to embed themselves in the Tea Party, a la Festinger.
ReplyDelete