untethered

From Portland’s ABC affiliate KATU:

PORTLAND, Ore. — Just past the “Entering Oregon” sign on the Interstate 5 Bridge over the Columbia River is one of the first things people see, and it is not a very pleasant welcome to Oregon.

At the base of the Interstate Bridge on Hayden Island are two old military vessels — the Alert and the Sakarissa. Ownership issues have left the ships vulnerable. Within the past year both have been boarded, damaged and tagged by people living in a growing homeless camp on the shore next to the ships.

“You can kind of see the progress over the months. They’ve been completely vandalized. They’ve now been broken into. I can only imagine what has been taken and stolen from the insides,” said Sgt. Steve Dangler of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s River Patrol Unit.

His regular beat includes monitoring the vessels and the camp near them.

“Unfortunately, what we end up finding is a lot of debris in the water. We have drug use that occurs. We’ve actually had one drowning out here,” Dangler said.

Right after giving KATU News a tour of the problem, Dangler and his partner returned to the camp and found a stolen sailboat and a 15-year-old runaway.

Hayden Island residents and business owners have a name for the thieves.

“The Pirates of the Columbia,” said Carol Kersley whose boat was stolen, “because they steal anything that’s not nailed down.”

Coincidentally days before this article appeared I had a conversation with a friend who used to live aboard a boat near the above-described pirate’s cove. I remarked how bands of homeless sometimes resemble nomadic groups from the long past, with their improvised attire like animal skins and weapons strapped to their sides.

“No kidding. When I lived on the boat there were pirates. I mean, they looked like real pirates. I watched this guy steal two kayaks, very nice, expensive. He comes along rowing one and towing the other and uses our dock to climb out of the water.”

He laughs.

“I swear to God it was like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean. His face even: he’s got everything but the eye patch and knife between his teeth. His pants are stuffed into his boots and he’s got a massive Bowie knife strapped to his side. I watch him as he takes these expensive new kayaks and drags them up the rock bank–ruining them instantly–to wherever he’s going.”

What we have going on here in Portland, unappreciated, is a grand experiment demonstrating the effects of individual de-socialization on a mass scale. Our feral people are sorting themselves out spontaneously, developing sub-groups and cultures of their own in a natural process that plays out perversely under the influence of drugs in a “normal” world that is less normal every day.

The homeless are increasingly disconnected from us but not blind–they see the working world (which they reject or feel rejected them) failing, they see its confidence faltering, they see its most despised or troublesome aspects–for them–such as law and order, receding. Their contempt for us is palpable and maybe a little deserved.

And the Portland Lab is just getting started with this fascinating study.

Oregon’s first-in-the-nation 1987 “sanctuary” law shielding illegal immigrants from federal immigration law, the Sanctuary Promise Act, was expanded in 2021 allowing anyone to sue public officials for reporting immigration violations to federal authorities, providing “an option to hold accountable individuals and entities that violate this policy”.

That should not be read to include, just yet, private citizens, but would enter individual violators acting in a public capacity into a database maintained by the state’s Criminal Justice Commission, which has been tasked with recording and considering for investigation each and every complaint. Naturally the CJC is focused on “restorative” justice and limiting police authority to reduce incarceration.

Now Oregon’s Department of Justice has launched a telephone hotline where anyone, including illegal aliens themselves, can snitch on those who snitch to federal authorities:

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Oregon launched a statewide Sanctuary Promise Hotline this month for anyone to report suspected violations of Oregon sanctuary laws in any language.

According to a press release by Oregon’s Department of Justice, the Oregon Legislature recently provided funding for the DOJ to staff the hotline with culturally responsive and “trauma-informed” advocates. The department will investigate all allegations of sanctuary promise law violations.

“For the first time, any person in Oregon can report a sanctuary law violation to a hotline designed to support and meet our communities’ needs,” said Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum. “Our immigrants, refugees, and migrant workers are our friends, neighbors and co-workers, and they are a vital part of our social and economic fabric. Oregonians value fairness and dignity, and all people should feel safe in their communities.”

She added, “No one should feel like they cannot show up to work or school for fear of being arrested, detained or deported. We intend to follow up on every single call and urge all Oregonians to be aware of and use this new resource.”

The state’s long-standing sanctuary laws restrict state and local law enforcement as well as state and local government agencies from collecting, storing or sharing information about a person, said the DOJ.

This information can include national origin, immigration or citizenship status, for the purposes of enforcing federal immigration law. Examples of Sanctuary Law violations include civil arrest without judicial warrant or order from a court facility and arrests by federal immigration agents of a person on their way to or from court or while in court.

The state is tying the sanctuary hotline to their Bias Response Hotline, casting, say, a sheriff’s deputy in rural Oregon reporting a suspected rapist to ICE as akin to the proverbial and vanishingly rare skinhead committing a hate crime.

This isn’t the first hotline the department has created.

In January 2020, the Oregon Department of Justice launched the Bias Response Hotline, which has fielded over 3,000 reports of hate and bias occurring throughout Oregon, said the DOJ.

If you or someone you know was targeted in violation of Oregon’s Sanctuary Promise laws, you can call 1-844-924-7829 or the Spanish direct line 1-844-626-7276.

People can also call the hotline to receive support or be connected to resources. The DOJ says it may open an investigation into the violation, if reported.

Operators for the hotline are standing by 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday with interpreters in 240 languages.

Oregon bolstered the sanctuary law in 2017 in response to Trump’s nationwide immigration raids and turbocharged it in the riotous environment of 2021 with the lawsuit provision and the–increasingly and sinisterly standard with this type of legislation–database.

Of course being a sanctuary state costs Oregon–more when Trump was in office than now–and we’ll lose among other things federal funds compensating us for the many illegal aliens in our jails–but that’s only fair. We claim even the worst of them as “Oregonians”.

Many challenges to the neoliberal revolution from above–to “Globohomo“–have shown up confident in their logic and appeal only to end up absorbed in Globohomo’s vast and dense obtuseness like lost travelers in the Amazon. Consider the campaigns against CRT and “grooming”; heading into the midterm elections they’re winning–politically they’re irresistible–yet past experience suggests they’ll simply be outlasted, after Republican mid-term candidates and Fox News take advantage. Many a presumed breaking point has been passed along our way; many a bridge has proven not too far at all for Globohomo.

Globohomo succeeds in all its offensives and repulses all attacks, undefeated at home and away. But these wins are in ways fraudulent–logically unsound and popularly unappealing. So control of the media is essential. Team Globohomo gets to cheat because it holds the Megaphone.

No challenge was bigger than Trump’s election campaign and administration. From joyous optimism in 2016, through the disappointing slog of his administration, to the humiliating debacle of January 6–all with the effect of consolidating Globohomo’s power and ushering in our present endgame of censorship and repression–pessimism isn’t just understandable, it’s practically mandatory.

But Elon Musk’s challenge to Twitter by offering to buy it is cause for optimism. Despite underperforming for years now as it’s flailed about for a growth strategy (that doesn’t involve greater freedom of speech) and being the shrimp among the social media companies, Twitter’s influence, as an immediate global arena where anyone might reach anyone else, is immeasurable. Through content sharing on its platform Twitter is social media’s linchpin in a way her fat cat peers covet but can’t reproduce. Twitter practically is the Megaphone.

So Twitter being essential to Trump’s insurgency–with the added horror of Trump’s campaign enlivening the site and being very good for business–is a sin for which Twitter must atone. A belief shared by Twitter. The threat Trump revealed–of the site’s suitability for a genuine populist movement–remains, and Twitter is on notice, from within and without.

So “get woke go broke” isn’t necessarily untrue, it’s just irrelevant.

No one is trying to gauge how much censorship and its chilling effect is costing Twitter–justice knows nothing of opportunity costs. But the company’s refusal to consider Musk’s generous bid demonstrates Twitter is seen from within and without primarily as a speech moderating institution, not a profit-making venture. The company’s implied balance sheet in the economy of power is more important than their financials,

I think there’s an understanding within the company and board that Twitter will be given leeway–that shareholders won’t be roused by poor performance, for one thing–because of the company’s unique importance to the control of the media. Twitter is counting on something akin to the “Greenspan Put” indemnifying against losses; call it the Woke Put. But those pesky investors, like voters and citizens, remain out there.

Musk’s wealth has put him in a position to at least force Twitter to publicly impoverish its shareholders and–hopefully, if Musk mounts an investor revolt–to be seen fighting savagely (and I do expect that) against profitability.

Most of these “top” accounts tweet rarely and post very little content.

Is Twitter dying? https://t.co/lj9rRXfDHE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 9, 2022

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

No one has been more vociferous in opposing Musk’s meddling in Twitter and in defending censorship generally than The Washington Post, of course. Here’s an example:

Elon Musk’s vision for Twitter is a public town square where there few restrictions on what people can or can’t say on the Internet.

But the utopian ideal envisioned by the Tesla CEO ceased to exist long ago and doesn’t take into account what’s happening in the real world, tech executives, Twitter employees and Silicon Valley insiders say. As Musk seeks a $43 billion hostile takeover bid for Twitter, critics say his ambition for what the platform should be — a largely unpoliced space rid of censorship — is naive, would hurt the company’s growth prospects and would render the platform unsafe.

Typically this type of “but some say” article looking to shoot down something like Musk’s little adventure here is bogus, citing a few people in activist organizations who would be completely irrelevant if they weren’t quoted in such articles, but in this case the cited represent the mood of a good section of Twitter itself. The article quotes Musk:

“My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” he said.

That’s self evident enough to be a platitude. But hold on a second, The Post responds:

Some pro-free speech networks have been found by researchers to be havens for white supremacists and those who wished to harm society.

Perhaps it’s important to understand the censorship of “white supremacists” isn’t just about censoring white supremacists–we are few and powerless–but using the bogey of white supremacy to establish the principle that speech must be limited. White supremacy exists, ergo, the First Amendment is obsolete, is the argument.

White supremacy is not a real thing. The First Amendment is less and less a real thing–selectively applied any law becomes a lie–because of the bogey of white supremacy. And this is how one lie is made to produce another.

Elon Musk might get to Mars before we get to freedom–the former is a problem of physics, whereas the latter is a problem of evil. Physics problems have answers.

But today is a better day because of Musk’s crusade.

Portland’s downtown library is open to the public again, no mask requirement. There are no padded chairs or sofas, too inviting to homeless, just high backed wood chairs lining long narrow wood tables. They’re not too bad though; you can lean back and work in them in surprising comfort and there are plenty.

Across from me a young homeless man is telling his story to a young female librarian. Occasionally one of the librarians sweeps through wearing an N95 mask, grim and wraithlike. A homeless guy, obliviously voluminous, has convinced them to lend him the phone at the librarian’s desk in the high-ceilinged room–rose colored with great high arching wood vaulted windows flashing bands of cloud-traversed sky–and he’s well into a meandering conversation. Two librarians have joined one behind the counter to stand by miserably waiting for the right point to intervene.

I decide to browse the books and find social sciences well stocked with progressive tomes; a whole bank of black grievance kitsch beckons, obliviously condescending, histrionic, hectoring and humorless, an obtuse obelisk. At one of the tables nearby is a person; he’s wearing dolphin shorts and a tight girl-cut tee shirt with some sort of harness or belt around his fat middle. His pixie-cut hair is a pastel sea foam color. His enormous, girlish thighs are covered in a fine hair that doesn’t look right; my God, are they dyed? I refuse to look directly at him. I see him fidgeting about conspicuously in my peripheral vision, as if trying to get my, or anybody’s, attention. I move on, resisting the seductive leer of the latest Michael Eric Dyson.

In the lobby on the way out a frail masked librarian is solemnly shadowing the loud-talking phone-borrower; it seems she’s made progress in coaxing him toward the exit. This is the low-key method I’ve seen them use–from my few days haunting the place–to deal with the low-key harassment of the homeless. Low-key harassment and passive aggression have become trademarks of our parasitic class, taking advantage of our increasingly permissive stance.

I pass out the foyer and off to my right someone appears to be receiving counseling sitting at a sort of low ticket-window; he’s animated about something. The weather is as ugly as the city for a change I think as I take in the scene in the little bleak corner where the library is. It’s offensively cold and little hard drops of rain half-frozen pelt me as I squeeze past a construction crew fixing a section of sidewalk and the crazy black woman engaging them with low-key harassment.

Later I’m on the other side of town and I see him: he’s running with his arms crossed tightly in front of him–it’s the gender-strange guy with the sea foam hair–and, my God, what is it he’s got under one elbow? Is that a small dog? I wonder with alarm, because whatever it is, its head is slapping back and forth violently–obscenely–as he skip-runs along in exaggerated female fashion. He’s running at an angle across the empty intersection, and the few other people on the street take no notice of this giant–that’s it, I realize, that’s the aesthetic he’s going for!–Raggedy Ann skipping across a downtown street in the middle of the day, barely dressed in forty degrees.

Then I noticed what it was he held, tightly between his arms crossed in front of him–deliberately mimicking the way of a young girl: a Raggedy Ann doll.

Well that’s a relief. At least no animals were hurt in the making of this madness.

The Daily Mail asks:

Why did take more than 29 hours to find and arrest James? 

As recently as Wednesday morning, James got on the train again at 9:15am in Park Slope and traveled into Manhattan, right under the noses of the doubled number of cops on trains.

It wasn’t until a member of the public noticed him in a McDonald’s and called police that he was finally arrested at 1:42pm at St Marks Place and First Avenue. 

Photos taken earlier that were posted on social media show him strolling around in a hat, mask and dark clothing.

James has a long rap sheet with charges in New York and New Jersey dating back to the 1990s for possessing burglary tools, criminal sex acts, criminal tampering, trespassing, larceny and disorderly conduct.

It’s still unclear why it took 24 hours to apprehend James, and how he was able to seemingly walk around in plain sight. 

The article goes on to portray the general ineptitude of New York’s authorities and its failing infrastructure–people locked in subway cars, security cameras not working–and the understaffing of subway cops.

So with all the incompetence presided over by an appropriately inept black mayor sheltering in his basement with Covid, it’s hard to answer the Daily Mail’s question. But here’s a possible contributing factor from Steve Sailer:

But do New York Times readers, many of whom live in New York and need to be on the look out for this dangerous maniac on the run, know that? You’d have to read pretty deep into the NYT’s coverage to find a picture of the shooter.

Here are all the images that the NYT has posted higher up in their coverage than the picture of the wanted desperado.

After one scrolls a yard or so down the NYT article through photos of everything but the black power terrorist on the run, if he doesn’t get bored and move on:

And then, finally after 1,563 words, 8 photos, 2 videos, and 1 custom-made map, we get a picture of the shooter on the loose:

Perhaps the earnest wokals at the NYT can make themselves feel better about enhancing public safety if they just lose the reverential capitalization of “black” when describing dangerous lunatics on the loose. They can justify it with a version of the No True Scotsman fallacy–No True Negro would shoot up a subway station.

Note how the shooter incorporated the Ukraine narrative into his analysis. Everyone one of us now is his own little narrate-o-matic.

update:

One fact you may want to add: the perp reported his location to Crime Stoppers the next day, and it still took that guy to point him out to the cops.

— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) April 14, 2022

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

I resist the urge to dismiss any public figure as an idiot, because it’s too easy, too tempting for me, anonymous nobody; also, holding a high perch in the scrum of American public life, however stupid that life has become, must be the product of at the least uncommon cunning. In all honesty, the Right Stuff for success in today’s world, much like yesterday’s, appears to me like technology appears to a primitive. It might as well be magic. So I resist opining on it. But it gets hard.

The old saw never attribute to malice what which is adequately explained by stupidity feels not so wise now and a little subversive, letting the malicious bastards off the hook. Let us turn that bit of folk wisdom from a more innocent time on its head, because of all the malice we abound in, if nothing else.

Still, condescension, malice’s unctuous representative, is inherently stupid, and here’s Robert Reich being condescending in The Guardian, explaining how Elon Musk threatening to establish free speech on Twitter is actually a threat to free speech:

The Russian people know little about Putin’s war on Ukraine because Putin has blocked their access to the truth, substituting propaganda and lies.

This is line one, and we see how Putin has been made into an avatar for virtue-seeking malice just like Trump, and the war in Ukraine a proxy in the war on populism.

But one idiocy at a time. Even taking for granted effective state censorship in the post-Soviet Union, one has to wonder if the average Russian gets a more or less distorted view of the war than we do. For one thing, Russian media is blocked here, so how would we, or Reich, who would never deign read it, know? It’s an open question as to whether Russian state censorship is more effective than our very effective private sector version.

It’s no longer obvious the average citizen in the US lives in a more open society, and clearly in many ways he lives in a society that is less open. And who is censoring, private or public, is far less important than what is being censored. In Russia you can’t criticize the government too much. In America you can’t criticize Drag Queen Story Hour, at all.

Russia doesn’t have classes of citizens acting as social media minutemen, always scanning the field and ready to mobilize–no need to summon them–to chase off wrong-speak; Russia doesn’t have the equivalent of the woke cadres within social media companies forcing censorship; Russia, presumably, doesn’t have mobs in its best law schools shutting down panels on free speech. Russia has state-controlled media and we have media controlled by a vaster power, superseding the state; its apologists invoke plausible deniability of its control by virtue of it being more complex, decentralized and disordered–and “private”. Most importantly, Russian propaganda–ironically enough–is not revolutionary, deliberately upending society in fundamental and disastrous ways.

That strange sound you heard when news of Musk’s Twitter stake hit was the “it’s a private company” excuse for censorship choking in the collective throat of woke America.

Here we censor thought, explicitly to prevent future dissent as if to pull it out by the root, explicitly to prevent further thought. The relative freedom of Russian and Western internet is meaningless to us of course–people who want you angry about Russian censorship, like Reich, don’t give a damn really about Russian censorship, and neither should you.

From Freedom House:

In March 2021, the [Russian government] communications regulator throttled access to Twitter after the company refused to block “prohibited content,” with the government claiming that the content in question included material related to drug use and suicide. This marked the first time that deep packet inspection (DPI) equipment installed under the scope of the 2019 Sovereign Runet Law was applied to block a global online platform.

The government issued fines and passed several laws in an attempt to exercise control over the content moderation policies of popular online platforms, culminating in the introduction of a law on local representatives. The law, adopted after the coverage period in July 2021, will require these companies to establish in-country offices that liaise with the federal agency responsible for censoring content.

During the mass protests in support of Navalny that began in late January 2021, the authorities limited the space for online mobilization, arresting individuals who promoted the protests and raiding the office of a student-run online media outlet.

In a departure from their strategy in previous years, Russian authorities did not shut down internet service during protests (see A3).

Cue the Soviet-era Russian accent: in Russia, government throttles Twitter; in America Twitter throttles you.

Freedom House says its 2016 ranking of Russia’s internet as “not free” came after five years of Putin ratcheting down on dissent–coinciding with the period of our ratcheting up the pressure on Putin with Maidan and Navalny.

Here’s Robert sounding like Kamala Harris explaining Ukraine to black people:

Years ago, pundits assumed the internet would open a new era of democracy, giving everyone access to the truth. But dictators like Putin and demagogues like Trump have demonstrated how naive that assumption was.

Pundits like Reich assume above all their right to control the public’s access to information, and their naïveté was only in thinking the internet wouldn’t get in the way of that. But note how Reich argues the internet must be controlled–by his tribe–because it’s threatened by dictators at one end and populists at the other.

At least the US responded to Trump’s lies. Trump had 88 million Twitter followers before Twitter took him off its platform – just two days after the attack on the Capitol, which he provoked, in part, with his tweets. (Trump’s social media accounts were also suspended on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch and TikTok.)

These moves were necessary to protect American democracy. But Elon Musk – the richest man in the world, with 80 million Twitter followers – wasn’t pleased. Musk tweeted that US tech companies shouldn’t be acting “as the de facto arbiter of free speech”.

It’s astounding to me the January 6 riot at the Capitol isn’t understood in its proper context, as the culmination of the season of anarchist rioting kicked off by the George Floyd protests. The far less organized and politically sophisticated right wingers were adopting the methods and mayhem they’d been watching antifa and BLM get away with for months.

But then we get to the real offense:

Musk continues to tell his 80 million followers all sorts of things. I disagree with many of his positions, but ever since I posted a tweet two years ago criticizing him for how he treated his Tesla workers he has blocked me – so I can’t view or post criticisms of his tweets to his followers.

Seems like an odd move for someone who describes himself as a “free speech absolutist”. Musk advocates free speech but in reality it’s just about power.

Is it about power? Vanity, certainly. If Musk wants to white night on behalf of freedom of speech I approve. But power? Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post and making it his mouthpiece is about power. Does anyone think Musk intends that for Twitter? That Twitter is the best vehicle for that? That he’s going to go in there and re-jigger the algorithms so they censor on his behalf?

Must we block Musk to avenge Reich? Seriously, I think a Reich so misunderstands a Musk, so misunderstands anyone who hasn’t spent their life in the orbit of state power, that he cannot fathom Musk’s move other than as a power play. He cannot fathom a man engaged in an honest crusade: he must want more, he must want to take over control, not end it. But it doesn’t matter; the honest crusade is enough:

Power compelled Musk to buy $2.64bn of Twitter stock, making him the largest individual shareholder. Last week, Twitter announced that Musk would be joining Twitter’s board of directors, prompting Musk to promise “significant improvements” in the platform.

Sunday evening, though, it was announced that Musk would not be joining Twitter’s board. No reason was given but it’s probably part of a bargaining kabuki dance.

Musk wouldn’t have plopped down $2.64bn for nothing. If he is not on Twitter’s board, he’s not bound by a “standstill” agreement in which he pledged to buy no more than 14.9% of Twitter’s stock. Musk now faces no limit on how much of Twitter’s stock he can buy. He’ll buy as much as he needs to gain total control.

What “improvements” does Musk have in mind for Twitter? Will he use his clout over Twitter to prevent users with tens of millions of followers from blocking people who criticize them? I doubt it.

Will Musk use his clout to let Trump back on? I fear he will.

Keeping Trump off Twitter is very important to people like Reich right now.

Musk has long advocated a libertarian vision of an “uncontrolled” internet. That vision is dangerous rubbish. There’s no such animal, and there never will be.

Not if little Robert Reich has anything to do with it.

“Just a couple of kids necking.”

“Boys or girls?”

–Dirty Harry

At the moment it’s unseasonably cold in Portland; snow on the ground this morning. Slush falls now as the temperature rises, and occasionally a clump of snow loses its grip in the trees outside my window and falls with woeful grace to the ground.

Days ago it seemed spring was here in full. I was outside, enjoying the light, and even I couldn’t help but take a good picture. As every year it seemed as if more women flooded the streets overnight, released from some subterranean place, blossoming in delightful variation, as the clothes lightened up with the weather.

This favorable aspect of spring was in effect and lifting, along with the light, the air of our battered downtown. But the people are fewer, still, than before the one-two punch of Covid and the post-Floyd racial reckoning set in place our new order, maturing into its third season, and even fewer are the best fauna of spring, young heterosexual women not yet ruined. With despair I look back over the last decade to see this species is on the wane, giving way to the invasive: sluts, lesbians, asexuals, trans “men”.

Fashion in female dress is fracturing around social identities, from sluts who can’t dress provocatively enough to young women who can’t dress far enough down. This latter category I think I’ve seen increasing over recent years–young women who may or may not be straight, aren’t obviously gender-confused, and dress like adolescent boys. I’ve developed my own half-assed theory: this is an adaptation, like much gender confusion, to the ruthless nature of the sexual revolution in its maturity, existing at one end of a spectrum from its polar opposite, the half-dressed slut. One embraces and the other recoils from our sexual free market and its hierarchies. The sexually absented now–young men and women living lonely lives isolated from one another, incels male and female–choose quiet poverty over repeated ruin in a sexual free market that values them little.

I have a hard time accepting that under the purple hair and nose rings and rashes of tattoos, that walking arm-in-arm with their same-sex different-race “partners” (boyfriends and girlfriends are passé) are the same women who a generation ago would have been normal and–God forbid!–available to their respective racial, heterosexual male counterparts (and note how vastly more women have been changed by the sexual revolution than men); but it’s true. We lost our women and thus lost our world.

But there’s a new seasonal invasive I noticed when spring did its little head-fake last week; not a degenerated female but a fake one (I can’t help but recall one summer in boyhood when Japanese beetles just showed up out of nowhere, a brand new pest; glossy green flying monsters, buzzing sinisterly, that I found terrifying and would bat over the back fence into a rival’s yard with an old tennis racket).

The new species are young trans “women” appropriating the role of the spring girl described above. I realize I’ve seen plenty of ladyboys walking about at night, but not in the day–not that they’re not there, but they don’t register as much because, I think, they don’t dress up in the day. But this year I noticed several, bravely and awkwardly offering their various interpretations of femininity with a newfound boldness in dress–determined or emboldened more than ever to “pass” as women. All of a sudden they’re here–this is one day’s impression, so perhaps I’m being silly–and the sight of a pair of spindly boys in heels and hot pants, their hip-less male outlines giving them away at a distance, undiluted by the crisp spring sunlight, is jarring for its novelty–novelty I fear will be worn away by familiarity.

It seems there’s nothing the new order can’t ruin.

From Covid-19 and the Global Predators:

Decades ago, In Crowds and Power, Nobel Prize Winner in Literature, Elias Canetti, wrote astonishing passages about the negative effects of wearing masks in general:

People’s attitude to this play of the features varies. In some civilizations the freedom of the face is largely restricted; it is thought improper to show pain and pleasure openly; a man shuts them away inside himself and his face remains calm. The real reason for this attitude is the desire for personal autonomy: no intrusion on oneself is permitted, nor does one intrude on anyone else. A man is supposed to have the strength to stand alone and the strength to remain himself. The two things go hand in hand, for it is the influence of one man upon another which stimulates the unending succession of transformations. They are expressed in gestures and the movements of the face and, where these are suppressed, all transformation becomes difficult and, in the end, impossible.

The different cultural attitudes toward masks between East and West have been noted and it’s hard to resist seeing in them the very different role personality plays in our respective societies. When I was more of a Western chauvinist I used to like to say the West invented personality with the novel and, especially, cinema. Transferring onto the silver screen the close-up–what an innovation in idolatrous human objectification!–wherein the most subtle human expression is made, dare I say, god-like, is one of the vectors by which modernity and technology have altered us. For better or worse the West made a thing of the objectification of personality.

But this invention is no accident and an expression of the individualism, and attendant egotism, of Western man. Witnessing the extent to which many came to and still embrace masks makes me wonder what element of that embrace goes beyond social signaling and genuine fear, and to what extent people are choosing masks to check out of an American society wherein personality is more objectified and commodified than ever; where even facial expressions are monetized, along with oversized asses and abs. This seems a sacrilege: the face expresses the soul.

With sympathy I suspect there’s a desire to want to preserve one’s psyche by pulling out of a society that feels like continual competition and humiliation. The endless images of people better-looking and happier come as an affront to one’s self-image. In particular I imagine this is hard for young people still forming adult personalities in the madness of present day America. America is a psychic charnel house. I think the appeal of becoming “gender non-conforming” for many young people is an escape from the carnage of the sexual market.

But that’s the sympathetic take. The mask also shields from view facial expressions–and facial expressions can “give us away”. There is a fundamental dishonesty in the mask, from the Western point of view; it conceals and assists in lying. Imagine the absurdity of any negotiation conducted behind masks (and I imagine our present elites doing just that)! The mask is a barrier to understanding that serves both the timid and the untrustworthy. Canneti:

A little experience of the inflexibility of such unnatural “stoics” soon leads one to understand the general significance of the mask: it is a conclusion; into it flows all the ferment of the yet unclear and uncompleted metamorphoses which the natural human face so miraculously expresses, and there it ends. Once the mask is in position there can be no more beginnings, no groping towards something new. The mask is clear-cut; it expresses something which is quite definite, and neither more nor less than this. It is fixed; the thing it expresses cannot change. …

A mask expresses much but hides even more. Above all, it separates.

That separation isn’t just the political one we see around masks. It’s also the individual, worn-down but still constantly assailed by a culture of comparison, endless comparison, who seeks to separate himself from a society that is disintegrating.

“Woke Drill Instructor”

Marine Corps Boot Camp, Parris Island, 2025:
“Private, do you acknowledge your role in upholding the patriarchy?!”
“Sir?”
“DID YOU JUST MISGENDER ME?!!!”