The Privilege Of Not Caring

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

So, recently I’ve been getting really tired of the word “privilege” mostly because it’s being twisted to mean things it never meant.

I’d even be more or less okay with the idea that “white privilege” is not having to define yourself according to a race/ethnicity stereotypes.  It’s a stupid idea, but it’s at least understandable how people got there.

They got there through a total lack of empathy, is how they got there.  They assume that the pressures put on them to fit the pictures in people’s heads only exist because they tan an interesting color, have female parts or whatever.

This is a stunning lack of empathy because in fact, the pictures in people’s heads are there because they’re human and the subject they are examining must fall into a pattern of heuristics that allows them to make a quick decision.

In other words, particularly when evaluating other humans, everyone has prejudices.

I’ve told before the story of how my husband and I went car shopping and took along our best friends, both taller, blue eyed, and one of them blond. Inevitably, at whichever dealership we landed in (this was a lazy Saturday pursuit. You know what I mean) the salesman gravitated towards our friends who a) weren’t shopping for a car. b) were far less financially solvent than we were.

Racism? Oh, heck no, heuristics. Dan might or might not be as white as advertised, but outwardly he’s all white (nickname Count Dracula due to his inability to tan.) (Well, maybe the eyes give some clue to other genetic origins as in Portugal everyone assumes he’s from Macau and some level of cross breed. Meh.) And I can pass provided I haven’t been outside in a couple of weeks and don’t open my mouth. So, racism was highly unlikely. But we’re both short, overweight, dark haired, and were dressed almost terminally relaxed. Our friends fit the “double income” couple look better than we did, so salesmen gravitated to them.

Privilege? No. We got the chance to poke around at cars while our friends distracted pushy salespeople. BUT prejudice? You bet. Even though the two couples were superficially “white” you bet the sales people had an image of what “affluent” or relatively affluent (it was used dealerships) looked like, and it wasn’t Dan or I.

Flip it around. Imagine you were born tall, blond, blue eyed. Are people not going to judge you as you go anywhere? Ah! I’ve noted a tendency to assume such people are wealthy patricians (I blame the media, since if this was ever true in America it was in the nineteenth century at the latest.) And that comes with a degree of hostility from everyone who isn’t, a degree of expectations from people who truly are racists, etc. All of which can be really annoying if your blond hair and blue eyes came via Scots-Irish from Appalachia, right?

Oh, and let’s go to another branch of “white privilege.” I confess to a minor perversion, other than my liking mathematicians. Dan isn’t perfect because he doesn’t have a Southern US accent. I go weak at the knees when a Southern male starts talking. It’s the world’s sexiest accent.

However I’ve realized long ago that a white southern male opens his mouth and most people place him in “dumb hick.” This happens even when he has multiple graduate degrees. Some white privilege, right?

So people who think that “White privilege” is never having to conform to a stereotype or never being judged are totally lacking in empathy and imagination.

They are also rather strange, since all you need to acquire the privilege of not thinking how you should be based on your color/gender is DECIDE you’re not going to think about it. I’m here to tell you it works. I’m aware a lot of people will judge me based on stupid stereotypes (really stupid. An old boss for instance thought Portugal was a city in Mexico. Marshall’s kindergarten teacher thought I and Dan (???!!!!) were first generation Russian immigrants. A couple of people have thought we were immigrants from Israel) but I don’t let that control me. I’m me. Yeah, some people will act stupid around me. Some people act stupid around everyone. And there, with that decision I free myself. You know, most people don’t even make a mention of the horrible accent. I’m sure they notice it, and heaven knows what they think about it. But they don’t mention it.

The ones who mention it prove the “importance” I should give their opinions by agglutinating Dan or the kids to wherever they think the accent is from. I.e. they HEAR my U.S. born and bred sons and husband speaking with the same accent I have. The latest one asked Robert if HIS accent was from Poland. (Rolls eyes.)

What in heck should you care for such peoples’ opinions? What say do they have in your life?

Then there are the charming SJWs (no, it’s not an insult. They called themselves Social Justice Warriors. They don’t get to escape the name when it turns out everyone knows how stupid it is) in my field who call me a race and gender traitor. Children are confused like that. How can you be a traitor to an allegiance that doesn’t exist and which you never swore fealty to.

Doesn’t exist, you say? But race! Gender! Well, they SAY gender is a social construct and as for race, I know enough history (if they don’t) to know it’s a cultural construct. In the nineteenth century they talked of “the Portuguese race” and the “British race.” I understand that under the microscope, absent some kind of marker like sickle cell, you can’t tell anyone’s skin color. You can, interestingly enough, at the cellular level, tell the sex of the cells. But the SJWs tell us it’s a social construct, and they are honorable women and girly men.

Actually what is a social construct are the archetypes they push into those things: females and other races as archetypal oppressed races. As a Samoan e-friend put it, her people weren’t oppressed by whites. They didn’t care what whites were doing. The Portuguese might have been oppressed by the whiter parts of Europe, kind of sort of. I mean, at various times English Literature referred to them as a vile race, the French did whatever the French were doing, and the Germans tried to organize the study of Portuguese literature (among other things.) But in the end, the Portuguese were too busy fighting their eternal enemies, the Portuguese, and occasionally distracted enough to fight the Spaniards, to care overmuch about more remote European countries.  They were rather busy not being eaten by Spain, as every other country in the Peninsula was.  (Well, technically not being eaten by Castile, but…)

Here do I get oppressed by non-Latin people? Meh. I’d like to see the idiot with enough gumption to try to oppress me. Sometimes they stereotype me and are rude to me, but I ignore them and that works.

So who am I betraying by not conforming to the baneful Marxist stereotype of who I should be? Oh, right, the SJWs. That’s okay, I’m fine betraying them. Or at least fighting them. Hard to betray what you never belonged to. And, you know, most of them, even those with exotic names and claiming exotic identities (rolls eyes) are pasty-assed white people with real privilege as defined by having money and having attended the best universities and hanging out with all the “right” people and having the “right” (left) opinions. If they knew the meaning of the word privilege, they’d see it all over themselves.

But there are more egregious definitions of privilege. You see “check your privilege” is a tool of would-be elite whites to keep competition and challengers in check, while riding to glory by defining themselves as champions of the downtrodden. (It’s an old game, in place at least since the French revolution, but it’s the only one they have. Remember they lack both empathy and imagination. And since they have more or less overtaken the press, no one on the street realizes how old and tired this “clever” gambit is.)

However, when that hits academia, it becomes something even more poisonous.

Recently I heard someone talk about a difficult (as in very poor, with two working, Asian immigrant parents barely scrabbling to get by) childhood and say that as they always had books and were pushed to succeed they had “tons of white privilege.”

This person was a graduate of an ivy league school. So, of course, he had internalized the definitions of “white privilege” as meaning “doing that which brings success.”

This is sort of a self-defeating thing. If you want to have a voice in politics, you avoid “white privilege” which means if you want to have a voice in politics, you must not display those traits which logically lead to success in the culture. (You see how this is a tool of the white overclass to avoid competition from anyone else.)

This poisonous, totally unwarranted view of privilege serves only one purpose: to keep everyone else floundering and mute while these not-very-competent, credentialed, correctly-connected, politics-as-a-social good, lacking in empathy, totally devoid of imagination, largely white would-be-aristos lord it over us.

Sigh. Hey, guys, privy-lege means “private law.” You know, private law which allows your not-very-competent asses to hold on to positions you’re not qualified for just because you make the right noises. Private law which means your politicians don’t get even rebuked for incompetence and malice that would crucify any one else. Private law means you can enrich yourself while playing at caring for the downtrodden. Private law means you can be an old woman with no accomplishments to your name except marrying the “right” man and then claim to speak for women and youth. Private law means you can play life on the easiest setting, while rebuking everyone with your melanin content (or more) for doing the same, whether you know what they’ve overcome or not.

Privilege means arrogating to yourself the right to judge others, not on behavior, not on their choices, not on their competence or their intelligence, but simply on whether they disagree with you. And to scream “off with their heads” if they don’t.

Privilege means the right to tell people what they should think or feel, and telling people whom they should blame for their plight, even if the people themselves disagree.

Privilege means voting yourself accolades, awards, encomiums, and then relying on your buddies in the press to make you smell like a rose, despite the garbage you roll around in.

Privilege means destroying people and gutting the culture for the privilege (ah!) of standing on top the smoking pyre, being king of the dunghill.

Privilege means being aristos unaware the masses are in pain and – like Antoinette never said – telling them to eat cake.

It’s short lived, though, this sort of privilege, because it destroys that which it feeds upon. And it’s even more short lived in a time when technological change undermines you.  For instance, I don’t think the press can shield these aristos much longer. It might last the bastions of the left until the present generation (older than I) retires. Those younger than I, though, banking on it are playing a mug’s game.  (Or are simply stupid and as we’ve said, lack both empathy and imagination.)

Long before they inherit, the inheritance will be ashes in the wind.

And the rest of us, the ones who understand the cold equations of economics and culture, of knowledge and power? We’ll be here.

Ça Ira.

327 thoughts on “The Privilege Of Not Caring”

      1. well, depending on whether we move there first or not and he continues to live with us,w hich is why everything is up in the air, which drives me nuts, but older son was accepted to Denver Medical School starting in August.

    2. Literally, “That’ll go”, idiomatically, “that’ll do it”. As in the revolutionary chant:
      “Ah ça ira, ça ira, ça ira / Les aristocrates à la lanterne”
      (Idiomatically: “Yeah, that’ll do, that’ll do just fine/Sticking the aristocrats’ heads on pikes”)

          1. I think Emily wants to eliminate the phrase “make a difference” like Sarah wants to eliminate the misuse of the term “privilege.”

            2. And let’s get rid of “raising awareness.” At the University where I work there is an event to “raise awareness” just about every week.

              The idea that anyone involved can or should work to fix the problem is anathema to them–what they need to do is make someone else aware of the problem so that someone else can fix it for them.

              Who? They have no idea. But they are sure that there is some group of people other than them who can just snap their fingers and make all the problems go away, if they can only be made aware of them.

              “Sir, it turns out that rape is bad.”
              “Really? Are you sure?”
              “Absolutely. Just look at all these college students tweeting #RapeIsBad.”
              “That many hashtags? Well, it must be so. Technician Number Seven, turn the Big Red Rape Switch to Off.”
              “Aye, aye, Sir!”
              “Thank goodness for college students! We would have had no way to know, otherwise.”

              1. Nah, they just think that if you “raise awareness”, other people will spend their time and money to work on fixing the problem. They don’t care who, as long as they don’t have to do any real work for themselves. Mostly, they want to be seen as “making a difference”. They probably don’t really care if anything gets done or not.

                1. If they actually made a difference, they would fix problems. Then the problems wouldn’t be there next time. Why, they might have to settle down to a quotidian life, doing quotidian goodness. . . how are they supposed to feel morally superior doing that?

                  1. Some things in life aren’t problems to be solved, they are recurrent situations.

                    2. And that is a problem which must be solved.

                      There clearly need to be government studies to define the nature and extent of such problematic “recurring situations” and develop programs to address them. We can model it on the nation’s very successful boondoggles programs addressing poverty.

                      From The Great McGinty just as The Boss has informed McGinty he’s been elected governor:

                      [This … is rather notable, it being written in the midst of the Great Depression where people were subject to all sorts of public works projects conjured up by Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt.]

                      Boss: The roads, for instance. They’re in terrible condition. In case of war, we’d be at the mercy. We need a whole new highway system… Then we’ll need a new waterworks system, a state canal and… You’ll kiss me for this one. A new dam. I’m guessing from your expression you don’t know what a dam is. You think a dam is something you put a lot of water in. A dam is something you put a lot of concrete in. And it doesn’t matter how much you put in, there’s always room for more. And any time you’re afraid it’s finished, you find a crack in it and you put some more concrete in. It’s wonderful.

                      Governor McGinty: What’s the matter with the old dam?

                      Boss: It’s got a crack in it.
                      http://freemarketmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2010/07/great-mcginty.html

          2. you know eager young teen or college grad who says he wants to “make a difference in the world.” Seems vague to the point of meaninglessness. Does she want to be the next Mother Teresa? Does he want to be the next Robespierre? Either would fit “make a difference.”

            1. Hitler wanted to ‘make a difference’. Kind of like Obama’s ‘fundamentally transform America’, which I suppose means Obama wants to make a difference. It is just a value judgement of the difference being good, bad, or indifferent.

            2. Well, we’ve currently got a presidential advisor whose heroes are Mother Teresa and Mao Tse Tung. She’s equal opportunity, to her a difference is a difference, good or genocidal. Seems to be the default for most SJW types.

              1. Mother Teresa told at least one eager beaver who wanted to “make a difference” to go home and love their family. Odd how people who claim her as one of their heroes never listen to that advice….

            4. Most of the young idealists I’ve met (the ones who aren’t poisonous little vipers who want to ride the power train of good feelings of ‘make a difference’.) Have a very humble notion of ‘a difference’ even if it’s sometimes expansively couched. They want to end a little of the pain they see. They’ll often say ALL of it, but, again of the sampling I’ve dealt with, ‘all’ isn’t real to them. They want to be able to make whatever person exemplifies their ‘difference’ (some people it’s homeless, some people it’s fuzzy animals, some people it’s just lost and bewildered little college students away from home for the first time, that varies so I’m being deliberately vague.) and make things a little better for that person. Which is why they often stop at the superficial or get pushed into trying to fix everything all at once and failing miserably.

          3. How about adding, upon being exhorted to “make a difference” brightly replying: “Just like Hitler! Germany was never the same after he fought for change.”

            Stalin/Russia would be better, but your interlocutor would have to be better educated than usual.

            I’ve given up on “technology” as short-hand for “computer tech.” It’s a typical Americanism (rather like “America” itself. Heh.) but for some reason it still grates.

        1. Besides, why limit them to one location only? You might have no street lights in places where there are pikes, or vice versa. And there’s always fence posts to consider, as well. Rare is the place in America where once can’t find a fence post or a streetlight – and in those places, pikes would be good fallback option.

          1. The pikes want to cozy up to the Lanterns. You never know who or what a Lantern will want to be with in their off-duty time.

            1. Ah, Emily, friend, you might want to ease off on the mushroom pizza the next time you watch _Beauty and the Beast_. 😉

              1. You mean that the mushrooms are interacting with my prescription psychotropics? I usually get black olive and pineapple pizza.

                1. Well, if your nightlight starts humming “Be our Guest,” then I’d suspect yes, the mushrooms are cross-reacting.

      3. I strongly protest this advocacy of rank discrimination!!!!! (See how many exclamation points I used? That assures you of how serious i am.)

        Why should pikes get all the best heads? Why not swordfish, terrapin, sharks and aquatic life forms? Somebody is clearly in the pocket of the Pikety Protection Syndicate …

  3. Great rant, Sarah. A few comments:
    (a) If I didn’t know better before hearing your interview with Stephen Green, I’d have assumed you were either Russian or Polish based on your accents (except that I’d have been confused because you’d be the first such who didn’t either drop (in)definite articles or insert them where they don’t belong.)
    (b)Re: your car sales experience. I grew up mostly in Western Europe. There wasn’t a whole lot of ethnic “diversity” where I lived (and I can easily pass for Nordic myself), but you can bet your life that sales staff “profiled” on dress and demeanor. (This is perhaps one reason why I’m clothes-conscious to this day.)
    The way I look at it is this. (I’m sure the idea is not original.) When you have to transact quickly with people you don’t know and that you cannot learn to get to know in a short amount of time, you apply (consciously or otherwise) various sorts of heuristics (in plain English, something like search strategies) about what sort of person you are dealing with for that particular transaction. These grossly oversimplified mental models are what we call “prejudices”: the most obstinate and pernicious ones are actually not the completely false ones, but those that contain a grain of truth — just like a half-truth is typically much more pernicious than a whole lie.
    Where prejudice turns into bigotry is where the models become a substitute for reality, and no more allowance is made for individual variation.
    (c) They call themselves SJWs, I call them SJTs (Social Justice Tartuffes). In fact, they manage to make Molière’s Tartuffe character look forthright and wholesome in comparison. I so much wish he could be with us now to write a play about them. Hmmm, food for a future writing project — due to a time machine accident, the playwright ends up in the USA in the early 21st Century?
    (d) On a related note, somebody else (maybe VDH — I cannot remember) made a comparison between the courtiers at Versailles and the status seeking and signaling games of the New Class in general, and the SJTs in particular.

    1. PS to (a) [cannot edit]: I am literally swimming in Russian accents here at NCT Base East 🙂 but the few native Portuguese speakers around me are all from Brazil.

    2. They usually don’t call themselves SJWs. Nowadays one of their favorite tactics is to reject the term and along with it, the existence of the group it describes (But they are neither the Devil nor Keyser Soze, they can’t pull that trick off) . Sometimes they call themselves feminists. But what they usually do is call themselves the only decent, right-thinking people (a trait they share with puritanical conservatives, who they pretend are their arch enemy).

      Anyone who disagrees with them is an MRA or worse, a conservative, who is either suffering from “privilege blindness”, that they fear “losing their privilege”, or that they’re not merely blind actively out to preserve their undeserved advantage.

        1. I can’t imagine it was much of a game. I mean I’m sure there were no variable statistics relating to character creation/abilities, no linear plot, no conflict and no game over or win scenarios since all of those are kind of anathema to the SJW mindset.

          1. It’s a game you lose automatically the moment you start playing it.

            1. Most of the games SJWs play seem to be that way so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

          2. I’ll ask younger son what it was called. He said it was almost as good as Depression Quest and younger son thinks that was almost as good as the dinosaur abomination. I should mention that my kid is… well, my clone in male form and younger. But he’s more into games than I am. (Younger, duh.)

      2. “a trait they share with puritanical conservatives, who they pretend are their arch enemy”

        The thing is, they are archenemies, in the same way that Hitler and Stalin were archenemies–they both want to control the same space.

        1. …Hitler and Stalin were archemenies…

          And they behaved the same way to get there, which should be a caution to the current crowd. The SJW believers, the UN Climate Change “Fundamentally Transform Western Society” bureaucrats, and the Occupy folks who were so dissapointed that the masses did not rise up in support of their pooping on police cars all are really hoping to ride their true belief to their just and wise overlordship of the unenlightened masses. With no real awareness of history, they think they are hitching up to a sure thing.

          They only need to look to the fates of Leon Trotsky and Ernst Röhm for their most likely ends.

          2. Hell, all they have to look at for recent examples are how many followers 0bama and Billiary have thrown under the bus……

        2. All I’m going to say is that the cardboard cutouts SJWs have of “puritanical conservatives” and the actual flesh and blood conservative Christians bear only a passing resemblance to each other, and I would hate to see the Huns make the same mistake.

          1. I’m one of the latter, as it happens, so have no fear on that score.
            The cardboard types do exist, but they exist in about the same proportions as the self-parodying hardcore SJWs.

            1. You must be in a really nice area if there’s even a notable number. We’ve got about as many of the totalitarian Libertarians as the self-parody SJW, a few less big-L libertarians and I haven’t actually met anyone like the cut-out puritanical Conservative yet.

              1. I run around some of the comment boards at Focus on the Family, Douglas Wilson’s blog, and some of the Reformed websites.
                The internet is where the crazies come out to play.

                1. True story: One employer I had asked if I was a member of a Reformed church/ I almost blurted “Reformed from what?” before I saw the church sign as we drove into town. Turns out I’d landed in a pocket of Dutch culture, complete with five or six different “[something] Reformed Church” flavors. I felt like I was living in Germany again.

                  1. So… I take it it’s some sort of Protestant protestant? The only instance I’m familiar with was with an already borderline cult group that just added “reformed” when they left their prior group.

                    1. They removed the Reformed from their name, if I’m thinking of the same near-cult you are thinking of. They now call themselves Community of Christ.
                      They believe that Jesus will return to earth not far from here – in St. Joseph, Missouri, and walk down the Interstate 29 to I-435 Corridor to Independence, Missouri.

                      Both churches have bought up tons of land in the area and the original one has built an incredibly ugly church that can be seen about halfway from St. Joe to Independence on Interstate 435.

                    2. Ours was very local, in California, but has all the “have no interaction with those who cross the cult leader” markers.

                    3. Reformed is the generic term for the Protestant churches that followed Calvin’s teachings. Today it is used primarily by that group you and Beth are thinking about, but also by American offshoots of the Dutch Kirk. Where I was, preachers were still referred to as “dominie” and two of the groups (Dutch Reformed and Netherlands Reformed) have Dutch-language services. As best I could gather, beliefs ranged from “not too far from Southern Baptist or Presbyterian” to full-out Synod of Dort T.U.L.I.P. teaching and partial withdrawal from the world. (I was warned to beware of Missouri Synod Lutherans because “they’re fast” i.e. engage in licentious behaviors.) Apparently Iowa and Michigan have large (relatively speaking) concentrations of Reformed congregations and Reformed colleges and seminaries.

                2. I don’t entirely trust what I see online, ran into too many people who can stay in character– and things like Yama demonstrate how far and wide a single individual can range, which would be hard to identify if he didn’t have such distinct quirks and obsessions– and overwhelming presence can be simulated by playing on folks’ manners.

              2. OK, I’ll bite – what’s a totalitarian Libertarian? Stalin reading Hayek aloud?

                1. You talk to them, they say they’re Libertarian, they’re against all drug and sex related laws, but they want to micro-manage pretty much everything else by laws exactly like a liberal.

                  I’ve been calling them “college Libertarians” but that tends to get people yelling at me, and the one I’m closest to (blood kin) hasn’t been in college for a decade.

                  You’ll find them at colleges, and “$15 now!” protests.

                    2. The correct technical term for that particular political demographic is The Incoherents.

                    3. Used to be a running joke at our college radio station. “Anarchists on Welfare: Smash the State, after the checks run out.”

    3. Re: c) – Write it please. Think of it as a more edgy “The Producers” with a play within a play.

    4. I had a plush fake-seal fur double breasted coat in college. After I graduated, and I was probably 50 pounds lighter, I still found the coat outstanding to wear when Christmas shopping. Since it seemed a little too big, a little to warm for our climate, and had big pockets on the outside. I would put 2-3 pennies in the pocket, and then go through the store ‘jingling’ them. Naturally, since the clerks thought I was shoplifting, I got fast and courteous service.

      2. My contribution is not funny like yours, but on the topic of getting better service, eat your meal at the bar in a sit-down restaurant. The bartender usually has time on his/her hands that table waitrons don’t have.

        1. We’ve done that a few times to get seated immediately, instead of a long wait for a regular seating.

        2. Only if the bar is rather less crowded than the restaurant. Plus, you’ll have to fend off a lot more people (including the bartender, betimes) who won’t leave you in peace to read.

          I sometimes travel for work.

    5. If I didn’t know better before hearing your interview with Stephen Green, I’d have assumed you were either Russian or Polish based on your accents (except that I’d have been confused because you’d be the first such who didn’t either drop (in)definite articles or insert them where they don’t belong.)

      She’s told the story about the guy who was FROM Russia who worked with her for an extended period, who was so sure she was Russian that he kept trying to catch her out. 😀

      1. She should have told him that she … was born Hungarian.
        Not only Hungarian, but of royal blood, she is a princess!”

        That would have served him for being a ruder pest.

  4. “But the SJWs tell us it’s a social construct, and they are honorable women and girly men.”

    The hell they are. They are so goofily without honor that that statement isn’t even good satire. They don’t even understand honor enough to fake it.

    Also;

    The way the “Privilege” concept goes septic in Academia is not an accident. The SJWs are TERRIFIED of success and achievement. If success and achievement were to regain their public popularity the satis quo, on which the SJWs and LIRPs depend for their existence and perceived superiority, would get VERY seasick.

    The Liberal Intellectual Radical Progressive establishment MUST suppress innovation, change, and achievement because no quality that they value promotes any of it. They depend on stagnation and mediocrity to make their plans (regulations, meddling) stay relevant, much less work.

    Their entire existence is a denial of the obvious:

    Top Men do not work for the Government, because they would be driven out by the drones.

    The Best And The Brightest do not become school teachers, because they have better things to do with their time and enthusiasm than pound basic education into the head of half civilized little apes. Not to mention, the drudges would hour them to death.

    Transgressive or ugly “Art” is not inspiring (unless inspiring with a desire to come back with a sledge hammer counts), it is annoying and tiresome.

    Privilege is what they want to wrap themselves in. Privilege based not on skin color but on holding the right ideas, mouthing the right slogans, wearing the right consumes. If you have LIRP privilege you are allowed to make up break the rules you enforce on everybody else. Al Gore is allowed to lecture on the necessity of shrinking our carbon footprint while operating a fleet of vehicles suitable for a small country. LIRPs are allowed to create hoaxes of racism, rape, and other crimes, and very seldom get jailed for it. Or even remembered for it. Other examples ail doubtless spring to mind.

    1. The good news is that in the end they will inevitably eat their own. It’s simply in their nature. Problem is it’s a very ugly process with much collateral damage to relatively innocent bystanders.

      1. The would-be elite ALWAYS eat their own. I think that’s why so many Pantheons are full of backbiting nitwits (if you meet Wonton on the road, don’t just kill him, sew the ground with salt. Same for Zeus).

        In my darker moments, I suspect that the reason the LIRPs are so militantly anti-Christian is that good Christians should celebrate the success and good fortune of their neighbors, and the LIRPs Just. Can’t. Do it.

    2. Al Gore is allowed to tell us we need to use less power etc etc, while his mansion home consumes as much power as seventeen average houses.

      1. Exactly. They are would-be aristocrats, telling the peasants how peasants should live. I would say Fuck ’em, but I’m picky about who I touch that way.

  5. Reblogged this on Starvin Larry and commented:
    Nice rant.
    When I heard you talk in the interview you linked to a while back-I would have placed your accent as Eastern European,then again,the only thing I had to go on as far as Portuguese is the large community of commercial fishermen around New Bedford Mass who are originally Portuguese,but after multiple generations-the accent is “Americanized”

    1. Portuguese sounds like Russian to most English speakers because of the way both languages pronounce gutturals and sibilants. Also, in both, the only vowels pronounced fully are the accented syllables. Especially O.

      1. I seem to recall hearing CapeVerde mentioned by a few of the older guys when I was there in the late 1980’s.
        The commercial fishermen all hang out at the same few bars-and most of us spent way to much of our hard earned $$ in said bars-there and on the docks are the only places I had conversations with those in the Portuguese community.
        The accent is way different than Sarah’s,closer to sounding like Spanish.

        1. I will say that, at least back in the ’70’s and ’80’s, when I was a young fool wandering aboit in the city, that the New Bedfordite Cape Verdeian Portugese are the salt of the earth. My mother was inclined to worry, because New Bedford was terribly run down even then (thank the Peoples’ Republic of Boston for that), but my cousin Ellen, who had experience of all kinds of bad neighborhoods (Army wife) told her that while it was possible for me to get myself knifed, I would REALLY have to work at it.

          1. I should add I have an odd accent to MY Portuguese. When I moved to the neighborhood we’re now moving away from, two streets over was a solid Cape Verdian neighborhood. (Younger son learned all the relevant Portuguese for Soccer from playing with kids there.) There were the standard 3 old men at the seven eleven, hanging out, that you find in any Portuguese neighborhood in the coffee shop/grocery store, whichever. As I came in on moving day to order a drink, they looked at me and said “Cape Verdian?” in Portuguese. I said, “uh, no. Porto.” They refused to believe me and thought I was joking.
            I called my dad to report this and he said, “Oh, wow. They’re right. That’s where your accent is from.” Since he worked in Cape Verde for six months back before I was born, he’s probably right…

    3. The east coast of America probably has a different accent for any 100 miles north or south. I give some ‘location by accent’ hobbyist fits because my Dad has an Appalachian accent, my Mom had a Central Virginia and then I was born and raised in Tidewater (Where house is not pronounced with the same vowel sound as housing). Out and about sound straight out of Central Canada, and only people from Massachusetts can even pronounce our England-derived place names. But it is all still a basic southern dialect, with vowel elision, just not as slow (or pretty) as the accent in Georgia. But I do understand what a baked potata is.

      1. In Ohio,where I am for now-all you have to do is drive 45 minutes south of Cleveland to get to a population with different accents-it goes from the Cleveland accent-which I have no idea how to explain-but it exists- to an Appalachian accent that fast.

        1. Back when I lived in central Ohio, I could tell what part of the county people were from by listening to them talk.

          Of course, we were still burning witches back then, and thought people from the other side of the creek were dangerously strange and foreign.

          1. Central Ohio,most likely meaning the Columbus area? Once you’re out of the city,it seems you get the Appalachian accent to the east,more of a midwestern accent to the west.
            At least that’s how it seems now-I’m currently in NE Ohio-between Akron and Cleveland.

      2. Every 10 or 20 miles in the NE Donald. In New York (city) there are variations within the city itself.

        1. Heck, there are accent differences in Texas. My West Texas twang is noticeably different from East/South/North Texas…

          Even though I’ve lived in Illinoisy for 18 years, I refuse to lose it. I WILL NOT adopt the flat nasal Northern Illinois variety of the Midwest accent…..

  6. SJWs are either the most accomplished hypocrites ever, or they lack any shred of self-awareness. Or both. They’ll demand inclusiveness in the same sentence they’re demanding white people, men, or white men get out. They proclaim the necessity for empathy while belittling the pain of others.

    David Gerrold’s open letter to Brad Torgersen is a case in point:
    ‘[Worldcon] belongs to no one. It belongs to all of us, regardless of politics, regardless of skin color, regardless of who we love, regardless of gender. It belongs to all of us — in the traditional sense of the word “all” — with no one and nothing left out.’

    Later, in the same letter:
    “You have spoiled other people’s party.”

  7. I do love your rants. I had a lot of memories hit me hard when reading this.

    Years ago (before half your readers were born, probably) I was a jewelry salesperson. We were paid on a straight commission basis, so the other sales people did not want to waste time with anyone who did not appear to be loaded.
    I discovered that a lot of customers wearing overalls or jeans, or looking a little messy, had plenty of money. Especially if it was in the autumn, when farmers finally had money from a year’s worth of farming.
    The snooty salespeople would completely ignore them. ( What, no Brooks Brother’s suit? They can’t have money!)
    I treated them like royalty, and never did I have a farmer buying a beautiful bauble for his wife not pay cash.
    Meanwhile, my fellow salespeople would spend hours with a guy in an expensive suit, only to discover that he could not even get credit approval.

    I learned to never, ever judge anyone based on a first impression. Too bad more people don’t learn that lesson.

    1. Down here a lot of airplane salesmen learned that lesson the hard way, back in the 1950s-1980s. The guy in the scuffed boots and the battered hat kicking the tires on the big Cessna twin engine? Yeah, he owns half the county.

      1. Apparently this is common – there being a lot of wealthy but unpretentious people living in rural areas, and salespeople being too dumb to realize it. One of my anthropology professors (who’d spent a few decades in real estate before going back to school completing his PhD going back to academia) mentioned it having witnessed the phenomena fairly frequently.

    2. Yep – I learned that lesson in a brief stint in high-end retail selling fur coats. One just could not make assumptions about who could afford a very high-end something based on their dress, accent and general demeanor. (Generally though, those people who looked uncomfortable and uncertain in the fur salon were not out to spend serious cash … although there was the scruffy young Hispanic man who paid for a very high-end number with a roll of cash ,,, the first time in my life I ever laid eyes on a wad of bills that really could choke a horse…)
      Easier just to assume that anyone walking in the door had the wherewithal and treat them accordingly. I was pleasantly surprised three or four times when someone I had assumed was just bored and curious whipped out a credit card and said they’d take the coat they liked best,

    3. Totally happened to me and my wife when we went shopping for our wedding rings. Long story short, it was sort of an elopement with our families (I was back in the U.S. on a short vacation for my older brother’s wedding), and my fiancee (now wife) and I decided we should get the marriage license “just in case.” We dashed in to the county clerk’s office in Denver just as a summer afternoon downpour started. Still going when we got out, so we were drenched. We went to the nearby concentration of jewelry stores (aka Cherry Creek Mall) looking like young, drowned rats. In three stores they wouldn’t even look at us (except slantwise to try and will us to go away), but in the fourth one a very nice saleslady treated us very well. Guess where we bought our rings, and in cash?

    4. All of which goes to show that laws against discrimination are unnecessary at best, counterproductive at worst. Those who judge based on superficial characteristics will lose out on business and employment opportunities to those who do not. Unwarranted discrimination will tend to weed itself out of the economy. Forcing non-discrimination keeps bigots in business, while at the same time reinforcing their bigotry. After all, if $MINORITY$ weren’t actually inferior, why would they need laws to keep them in the business world?

      1. However, if an entire town’s business community agreed to not hire redheads, for example, the redheaded people, unless they had an entrepreneurial spirit, would have a hard time of it, and through no fault of their own.
        Being fully libertarian gives me some ethical problems that are hard to completely explain away.

        1. I think one of the proper roles of government is to prevent illegal collusion to form cartels (I admit it’s a dangerous power that is easy to abuse). Even absent that, assuming the town’t business community doesn’t employ force of arms, i.e. government, competitors from the next town over are likely to advertise their pro-ginger policies and even expand into the bigoted town. Not to mention all the people who have redheaded friends and/or family who would frown upon and boycott such discrimination. And of course – to take the example to crush depth – there is always hair dye.

          1. IRL: Illinois (Chicago) – “We’ll tax your business.”
            Wisconsin: puts up billboards at the border saying “Come to WI – Low business taxes!”
            And then IL complains about other states poaching corporations and jobs.

            1. Just like the bookstores used to complain about Barnes&Noble and Amazon, right up until they went out of business. I often want to respond to “Buy Local” propaganda with “Either cut your prices to match or offer me something worth the higher price. Neither you nor anyone else is entitled to my custom.”

            3. We saw a lot of similar complaints from states South of the Mason-Dixon line, although I gather they mostly stopped after 1865.

          2. But you are assuming that towns are close by – that is not true in many parts of flyover country. There can be many miles between one real town that actually has businesses and the next. It is nothing like the Northeast Corridor, where towns basically run into each other with no space between.

            1. I grew up in on the Front Range. Every summer we would drive to central Arkansas and northwest Iowa to visit grandparents. I’ve done the “do I get gas here or can I make it to the next town?” math. I understand how sparse towns can be. But they’re still close enough together that going to the next one over, while inconvenient, isn’t impossible.

              There’s also the factor of the town redheads, having to spend more time and money shopping out of town, have less to spend on the town’s economy. Rather quickly someone in town is going to realize that by breaking ranks he can capture 100% of the redhead market, and rake in profits.

              1. Exactly. And as long as the bigots can’t use government force to stop him from doing that, nor prevent him from accessing protection from them under the law, the government’s responsibility is over.

                1. I wouldn’t say the government’s responsibility is over. The collusion would be unstable, and would ultimately break up, but in the meantime the redheads would suffer substantially. That’s why I’m in favor of using government to prevent the formation of cartels – and that applies to labor unions (as they exist in the US today) as it does to merchants.

                  1. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act – which BTW, is still the law of the land, but has been ignored by the government for the last 50 years or so.

              2. I think you are being overly optimistic about people overcoming prejudices in order to make money.
                And here in Kansas, most towns don’t have any businesses left outside of old folks homes.

                1. History is full of people overcoming moral principles – and systemic prejudice is a moral principle, just not a good one – to make money. I don’t see bigotry as more likely to withstand that than any other.

                2. South Africa had residential regions that were legally all white and in reality minority white. Construction firms in those areas were supposed to be all white, which meant they had a front man to deal with the government.

                  1. I’m honestly not at all familiar with how South Africa was.
                    There are a lot of contractors doing business with the federal government here in the USA who have to have minority front men in order to get contracts, because the government has demanded that minority-owned businesses get a certain percentage of work.

            2. There is a strange coincidence in the South of many city streetcar systems going out of business within a year or two of enactment of Jim Crow laws regarding persons of a certain ethnicity to ride in the back of the trolley.

              Apparently, “No thanks, i’d rather walk” was not an option the lawmakers had anticipated.

        3. Ah…. No mad dogs and irishmen?

          It’s been tried. Repeatedly. It fails. Repeatedly, because there is no honor among businessmen thieves. Even when red hair is a reliable marker (20%) of cultural disfunction: drunkenness, illiteracy, violence; it **still** fails, because some crook of a Scots-Irish businessman figures out how to exploit the situation to make a profit, while the local red-headed community builds temperance leagues and self-improvement programmes. Then fanny’s your aunt and bob’s your uncle and some SJW is upbraiding you for red-headed privilege.

          The only time it doesn’t fail is when you get the gummint to support it with lawyers, guns, and money. Probably by convincing you that they need to save you from a cabal of corrupt Irish mobsters.

          Make it a reflex: whenever you hear someone tell you that they’re from the left and they’re here to save you, run screaming.

    5. I have a friend whose family business is producing industrial food production machinery. He’s one of those people who looks like they stopped aging at the age of 16, and looks like the stereotypical 90 pound skinny nerd. He goes around dressing in simple shirts and slacks; and gets entertainment out of being severely underestimated at food industry trade fairs.

      The second reason he doesn’t dress flashily is because it keeps him from getting kidnapped and held for ransom, or held up for money.

      He related a story where his father was entertaining several rich friends visiting from abroad. On a whim, they decided to pop out to the mall to wander around, perhaps leisurely do some shopping. They wore shirts and shorts, and went out wearing rubber flip-flops, since it suited the weather. They wandered into a store with an expensive European brand name and started looking around, and this snooty gay salesperson started hovering around them as if they were going to shoplift. When one of the men asked how much was a particular shirt, the salesperson replied that it was probably more than he could afford.

      My friend said he hung back to watch the show as the snubbed man pretended to remain ignorant of the insult, and asked questions about what it was like to work in the store. Finally he got around to asking if the salesperson earned through commissions, and upon hearing an affirmative, began to pick out clothes for his wife. He then pointed to a timid looking young sales girl at the far end of the store, and said “She’s the one who I want to assist me in this.”

      1. That’s great. I’d probably have done the same thing, if I had thought of it.

        The “being underestimated” thing can be fun. It happens to me sometimes, because I don’t look particularly bright, so when a subject comes up that is generally considered to be beyond the ken of “normal” people, and I can discuss it intelligently, there are occasional mild cases of whiplash nearby.

  8. Speaking of stupid, (ignorant, actually) we once had an outstanding tax bill. So when our address changed to Portugal, the helpful folks at the Internal Revenue ‘Service’ gave us the phone number of their office in San Juan.

    Re: Privilege, my Texas accent has to be discarded unless with friends, my Portuguese friends think it funny when pronouncing 5 iron ‘fav arn,’ Yankee friends not so much.

    So yeah, we have to decide to discard prejudices. And it does work when we do. If we keep deciding affirmatively every day. Sometimes you have to pull them out and stomp on them, though. Too bad so few do.

    1. Kind of like the media gave Bush h*ll for ‘nuclear’, even though I considered it a perfectly acceptable pronunciation?
      The four things that touch the road in your car are ‘tars’.

      1. I pronounce or pronounced it that way, and when the fuss was kicked up, I probably had a better background in that area of phenomena than all the liberal arts majors who knew the correct pronunciation.

      3. I began college as a physics major (calculus had different ideas for me), and two of my major professors had been part of the Manhattan Project, and had subsequently worked in nuclear engineering for a couple decades after.

        One grew up in West Virginia, and pronounced the word “nucular”. Still one of the most intelligent people I have had the good fortune to know. He took altogether too much delight in having people underestimate him because of his accent. Fortunately, he also lacked the smallest fragment of malice to him.

  9. I’ve told before the story of how my husband and I went car shopping and took along our best friends, both taller, blue eyed, and one of them blond. Inevitably, at whichever dealership we landed in (this was a lazy Saturday pursuit. You know what I mean) the salesman gravitated towards our friends who a) weren’t shopping for a car. b) were far less financially solvent than we were.
    Buddy used to work in a large Dodge dealer. old farmer still in muck boots and stained jeans smelling of a barn came in, and drove of in “as much Dodge Dually as you can buy” so he asked the sales guy “His credit was approved for that much?” answer was “No, he paid cash.”
    They looked him up from the registration and he was worth big money from raising Tennessee Walking Horses and owned major acres of land.

    Oh, and let’s go to another branch of “white privilege.” I confess to a minor perversion, other than my liking mathematicians. Dan isn’t perfect because he doesn’t have a Southern US accent. I go weak at the knees when a Southern male starts talking. It’s the world’s sexiest accent.

    Jeff Foxworthy and his beloved “you might be a redneck …” What was he doing before making money in comedy and TV by talking about being raised in the south and playing up his accent? He was an engineer for IBM, and has a few degrees … not as many as our favorite Rocket City Redneck Doc Travis Taylor, but as he mentions in “You Don’t Know Dixie” one doesn’t want to hear their brain surgeon say “What we’re gonna do is, crack open your skull, and root around in there until we find the problem.”(said in an exaggerated southern accent)

      1. Should also have added the great uncle (well, step uncle) who is a Yooper ya know eh? think Sarah Palin/Fargo style accent if you’ve not seen Jeff Daniels’ “Escanaba In Da Moonlight” or any Da Yoopers songs.
        Oh, yeah, he was also a Physicist and does large math in his head.

    3. Jeff Foxworthy and his beloved “you might be a redneck …” What was he doing before making money in comedy and TV by talking about being raised in the south and playing up his accent?

      Explains where he got the idea.

      The head of the intel shop on ship had a thick accent from somewhere in the South. It got a lot thicker when people started talking down to him….

      (This guy was not only scary smart, but also sensible. Thank goodness he’s on our side.)

      1. This reminds me of a story about St. Louis Cardinal pitching and broadcasting great Dizzy Dean, in response to complaints about his poor on-air grammar and especially the contraction “ain’t” replied:
        “Let the teachers teach English and I will teach baseball. There is a lot of people in the United States who say isn’t, and they ain’t eating.”

  10. So, we now know why Libertycon is one of your favorites.
    Note to LC staff, do not allow Ms. Sarah to be along in a room with Doc Travis Taylor. His Huntspatch brogue would likely melt her into a puddle.

    1. Mrs. Dave has already sworn to NOT use this knowledge for awesome. Oldest Son #3 By Adoption? Hasn’t sworn a damn thing (except for that little one, there) . . .

      1. Pardon, pardon, Wife Edit: “I did NOT swear to not use it for awesome; I swore to not use it for ILL. BIG difference.”

  11. …”I’ve realized long ago that a white southern male opens his mouth and most people place him in “dumb hick.” This happens even when he has multiple graduate degrees. Some white privilege, right?”…

    There are white southern males who personify the term “dumb hick” and/or “redneck”. To some, it’s a point of pride. There are also rednecks and hicks in Maine, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Vermont, New Jersey, etc., If anything, they just seem to be a little more reticent about advertising it than their southern cousins.

    On the other hand, some of the smartest, shrewdest weasels that have ever tried to hold me down and screw me over have been languid Southern drawlers. The rest weren’t. So what? Educated people are where you find them. So are wise people. So are good people. Too often, they’re not one and the same.

    We really need to end the obsession with aggrandizing the inherent value of all college degrees. In my experience, education in no way enhances the character and integrity of people who have little of either. If anything, today’s higher education pushes people on the cusp of being “ethically ambiguous” in the wrong direction.

    If we’re going to insist on having a measuring contest, we need to find another way. Education (in it’s current format) isn’t making it.

    Other than that, loved the post. Thank you.

    1. Before it became acceptable to blame all white males for all the ills of society, the southern white male was a favorite whipping boy, and always acceptable to portray as a bigoted ignorant inbred creature.

      1. Ask my husband (born and bred at least 3 generations) Southern Gentleman what my best friend thought of my moving to Montgomery, AL from NYC.

        1. Briefly, her friends and family thought the Klan would be waiting for the plane.

          This same friend was surprised by her own admission that an NRA member wasn’t actually that bad a fellow; she’d never knowingly been in the same house with a gun, either.

          1. I truly think my in-laws were more comfortable before Beloved Spouse gave up Buddhism (“I finally couldn’t handle the burden of guilt karma.”) for Christianity in the South.

            Although never directly expressed I was certain they were concerned about handling of snakes.

            Reportedly they even inquired of my mother whether the Grandaughtorial Unit was being taught to hate Jews. My mother expressed having seen no evidence of it. (OTOH, when visiting there one year for Christmas Saturnalia, father-in-law insisted we observe Channukkah in our room.) 🙂

            Just think how bad things would have been had they not been so open-minded and tolerant!

      1. nah, know too many with scores way higher than they should be. Mine used to be. (the fools preapproved me for a loan with payments as high as 3 of my paychecks … before taxes)
        I also know folks who’s rating is always low and they cannot get a loan … so they pay their wife a salary and she gets the loans and leases. Owning two businesses and several rental properties was not enough.

  12. It always amazed me that, out here in the land of the billionaires in torn jeans and a t-shirts, walking in to the local BMW dealership dressed identically to Jobs or Zuckerberg gets one passed over for the well dressed salesunit from the local Nordstroms shoe department.

      1. Don’t know about billionaires, personally, but I worked with a couple-three millionaires at various times in Silicon Valley. (An odd lot; one in particular proclaimed himself a socialist. And drove a Ferrari 308 GTS. Never did figure out whether he was serious or not.)

        More often than not, they tended to dress like well-to-do garbage collectors on their day off.

        1. I expect that well-to-do garbage collectors dress very well on their day off, if only a) for the change and b) to demonstrate they can.

    2. I learned a long time ago that a guy can get much better service if he is wearing slacks and a dress shirt.

      2. And I learned that I can happily write a letter to the company when I’ve been shunned because I’m a chubby, old, gray-haired lady in blue jeans.

        Years ago, not one salesperson in a Nissan Dealership would allow me to test drive a car because my spouse was not with me.

        I went to the Toyota dealership next door, drove a car and bought it. Then I drove over the Nissan dealership and showed them my new car.

        I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever buy anything made by Nissan because of that slight.

        1. my sister is the same way about toyota… not buying, I mean. Though they did talk to her they tried to pull a fast one on the young kid and she and my other sister who was with her walked out.

          1. That Nissan incident happened about 25 years ago. I hold a grudge for a really long time. I would not buy a Toyota at this point, either, they really don’t make a pick-up that is tough enough for farm use.

            But yeah, car salesmen can be really judgmental. Your sister was lucky you were there.

            1. I like old Toyota small trucks. I’ve got a 98 Nissan, but only because that was what my preferred used dealer had that was in the best condition (As I put near 70,000 on it after I got it I guess they were right), and something I could buy on short notice. It’s okay, and they do last well, but it gets a whopping 17 to 19 mpg If I needed a full size, I’d go Ford. and if I had to get another small truck it’d be either a Toyota, or a Ford, and a far third a Mitsu/Dodge because I know the drive trains. For cars my pref is old rear drive Dodge Colts (had 3, 2 @ ’76 models and 1 ’73), or old Toyota rear drives (hemi Corollas first, Celicas second) and Honda for front drives (I never should have gotten rid of my Accord). Now days I would get stuck with another Accord or something … rear drives are hens teeth.

              1. We bought a Ford F-150 with 4 wheel drive when we moved here 8 years ago. It’s a bare bones truck, no fancy crew cab, but I can haul my flatbed trailer full of hay with it, and it does have A/C.
                That will probably be the last brand new vehicle we ever purchase. I can’t see paying half as much as a house for a car or truck.

            2. [eyes pair of Ford trucks in the driveway, still goin’ strong despite a collective total of 500,000 miles and 61 years doin’ seriously hard work]

                1. Most of the ranch pickups I know that are still running are from the 50s and 60s old– old enough to be worked on by the folks who own them. “New” pickups are from the 70s.

                  Know of several cases where they bought a relatively new used pickup (late 80s) and it didn’t make it to 20 years.

                3. I’m driving a 75 Cherokee. Wife drives an 82 mercedes 240d.
                  79 Bronco for a farm truck. The old ones are easy to keep going.

                  1. What’s the oldest farm truck you’ve ever seen? Any from the 30’s or 40’s?

                    1. There is some old stuff around for sure, mostly semi-retired. Some guys have barns full of stuff. Sadly, the scrapping frenzy made a big dent in the population. We’ve got a yard full of 60’s Fords and managed to resist.

                    2. Dad had a 46 Ford before he died. The hopped up 36 he used for on the milk route was gone before I came along.

                    3. I’m not sure how you’d be able to tell, unless you know pickups really well– I know the Internationals are all really old, but it appears they did make pickups in the 50s.

                    4. I hadn’t really thought of it until you mentioned it, but I don’t think I have seen an old cornbinder pickup since I moved to Idaho. They used to be a fairly common old farm truck where I grew up. But now that I think about it, I’m not sure that I ever saw a four wheel drive one, and a two wheel drive truck, even an old one, is a real rarity here.

                4. I got a new truck recently; it’s only 18 years old. The other truck is 31. The cars are 26 and 35, respectively.

                  Yeah, old cars occasionally need a little work. But the annual maintenance for the entire CarFleet ™ is less than most people pay for a single month’s car payment.

                  1. You all have got to be from places that don’t think roads should be made of salt in the winter, or that consider potholes to be some sort of protected species.

                    1. Not much snow in Dallas. We have some potholes but they get fixed on a regular basis.

            3. While their toughness and off-roadability has gone seriously downhill since their older pickups the smaller Toyotas are still more reliable than about any of their competition. My dad has a 05 with 340,000 on it, and the grand total of the work done to it is the alternator has been replaced twice, and a u-joint. The AC quit, but he simply didn’t fix that, and he upgraded the springs shortly after buying it (Toyota suspension has always been their weak point, I have put aftermarket springs under every Toyota I have ever owned).
              I currently have a 2000 and an 89 Toyota, while the 89 has relatively few miles on it (165,000) I had to rebuild the motor last year, only Toyota I have ever had to do that to, but since I bought the truck at an insurance auction I don’t know what had been done to it previously. It had obviously been taken excellent care of physically, and never been used offroad, but I spun a rod within 10,000 miles. The 2000 has had the alternator replaced last winter, and I had to replace an injector last summer, now the valve covers are starting to leak a little oil, and when I changed the oil in it the other day I saw that the tranny is starting to leak a little, so I’ll have to tear into that probably shortly. But other than standard maintenance like the timing belt, spark plugs (my dad’s truck mentioned above is still running the originals 🙂 ) and brakes, (I hate automatics, that 2000 goes through brakes over twice as fast as all my manuals) it has had very little work done to if for a truck that rolled over 350,000 a few months ago. I may maintain my trucks better than the average farmer (I’ve worked on farms, there is a reason that “farmerize” is a word) but I also use and abuse them more than the average farmer. I wouldn’t buy a newer Toyota like my dad’s for that sort of use, but as far as a highway rig, with four wheel drive for snow and the occasional dirt road use, it has proven very reliable.

              On the other hand, I have a Ford Powerstroke that has just over 200,000 on it, and I’ve sworn I’ll never buy another one. That truck has been nothing but one constant repair since the day I bought it. My uncle bought it new, so I know it hadn’t been abused before I got it, and I had driven several of them as company vehicles and really liked them, but once I owned one and actually realized the level of constant repairs to keep it on the road, I quickly fell out of love.

    3. I was mildly amused when the gents at the place where I got my pick-up looked offended when they started discussing payment plans and I whipped out my checkbook and said, “That’s nice, give me the total, please, I have an appointment in half an hour.” And got borderline testy when I didn’t buy the argument about “if you finance, you’ll have more money to spend.” (I’d been saving ever since I’d paid off the last vehicle, and had gotten a very, very nice cash award for my dissertation.)

      Clothes? Twill A-line skirt, hunting boots, button-down blouse, cowboy hat.

      1. We did that when we bought our last pick-up. They did get testy. They had made us an offer based on our using Ford credit. Ha. We did get a deal.

      2. Two (three?) cars back, the salesman REALLY wanted to sell me on a lease. I kept telling him “No.” and he kept second-efforting me. Finally I said, “Look. I plan to keep this car for about ten years, because I don’t see the point in pounding tends of thousands of dollars down a rathole every three years. On top of that, my Father-in-law is CFO of a company of consulting actuaries. A Leas makes good sense for a cooperation, because of the way tax law is structured. It makes SOME sense for somebody who will be getting a new car in three or four years. It makes NO sense for me; it would be additional headache and const me money. Stop. Selling. Me. The. Lease.

        Sell me the car.”

        He looked kind of stunned for the rest of our interaction, but he sold me the car (a Ford Escort Wagon, BTW. Decent little car.)

      3. Car dealers make more money on the financing than they do on the car. Same reason GE-Capital was one of the largest profit centers for GE. If you want people to buy your washers and dryers, good financing terms may make the sale.

        1. Yep, a friend of mine was buying a new, used truck a couple of years ago and was flabbergasted to have the dealer refuse to accept cash.

            1. That is my thoughts, but they refused, just like some stores refuse to take MasterCard. I’m not sure that it was legal for them to refuse, but I’m not sure what you would do about it, either. Hire a lawyer and try and force them to accept cash?

              1. As to MasterCard, not all stores are willing to pay their fees (typically, a flat monthly rate and 2.25% of purchases submitted) for infrequent sales and, having not contracted with MasterCard, are unable to submit items for reimbursement.

                There is also the problem of fraudulent cards with the vendor bearing the loss.

              1. Do you know what a bank will do to you if want to deposit> $10,000? Not at all pleasant.

                2. You know, I hear that all the time, but I’ve never had the bank blink at me over it. I did get very irate though, when I deposited a twenty thousand dollar check, night drop, and when I called and checked the next day the teller told me it was in my account, so I wrote a check for a new four wheeler, and then had it bounce because they held the check I deposited.

                  After the chewing out I gave them, over that incident, I’ve never had a word said over any deposits, regardless of amount, cash or check.

                3. When we sold our house on the west coast and moved to Minnesota, we intended to open an account with a local credit union and deposit the sale proceeds therein. It was to be our building fund for the house we’re working on now (when it’s not raining cats and dogs).

                  The credit union rep just about went nonlinear, and began demanding all sorts of curious documentation before they’d do business with us, and barely stopped short of stamping her little foot. And would not clearly tell us why.

                  We took our business elsewhere, to another credit union down the street. No problem then, or since.

                  The first CU also prohibits CCW in their bidness, so that was another strike against them.

                  1. I use a fairly localized credit union (about ten branches, all in the northern half of the state) and they don’t blink about deposits of large amounts of cash. (relatively speaking, I suspect they might blink at deposits in the hundreds of thousands, but a deposit in just then tens of thousands is treated identically to a deposit of fifty bucks.)

            3. Until the offer to purchase is accepted there is no debt existent.

              Any contract for purchase ought to have a buy-out clause, allowing the contract to be liquidated in payment of balance due. Thus you could agree to a loan for purchase and then immediately pay it off.

              Dealers who refuse to accept cash purchase deserve to lose all the business they can. OTOH, given the current regime’s rules governing transfer of large amounts of cash I can sympathize with a vendor’s disinclination to accept such a transaction.

            1. That is what I said, and why even though I am currently looking for a truck, I haven’t bothered to glance at that particular dealers ads.

              Oh, that particular friend is a bit paranoid, and doesn’t trust banks, he deals strictly in cash (occasionally has to take a check from certain large companies he deals with, but always takes them directly to the bank and cashes them immediately) doesn’t have a bank account or credit card.

      4. I like the argument, “But you can get a zero-interest payment plan!”

        Sha. Yeah, and you’ll add all the finance charges to the total, up front. How about telling me what it REALLY costs, huh?

    4. We always shop at the same dealer these days. We have actually gone in there and bought two cars at the same time (more than once).
      So now if we call up and ask if they have any of ‘X’ on the lot (like when the BRZ came out, first month it was at the dealers) they go and take the mark-ups off the cars because they were afraid we might go somewhere else.
      Either one of us walks into that dealership and EVERY salesman wants to be our friend. I often wonder if our pictures are on file now.

          1. Well, it sounds like an abortion of a car … A Toyota and Subaru co op with Flat 4 engine manual trans with rear drive. But it’s a “sports car” that is not one of those glued to the road and so fast you’ll never get within 10% of its capabilities, ever. For instance it uses the tire from the Prius, not noted for being glued to the road rubber, and it handles well balanced so it is easy to control. I seen comparisons with it, and although the Scion/Scooby/Toyota was often the lowest powered, it was the one most people enjoyed driving the most.
            Kinda like a Miata/MX5 but in a coupe instead of roadster.

          2. Relatively cheap (for a sports car), high quality, extremely good handling, very safe, high gas mileage, 6 spd 200 hp rear wheel drive (comes in automatic as well).
            It’s actually very light, so has a good hp to lbs ratio, and is easy to modify for even more power. The car comes normally aspirated (no turbo) which is why it gets great gas mileage.

              1. Is that an actual requirement for it to run properly, or just a warranty requirement? I ask because there are a number of newer snowmobiles that “require” premium gas. Some run just as well on 87 octane, while others won’t hardly run on it at all. But regardless many of the dealers in Alaska won’t warranty any of them sold to people out in the bush, because they know the only gas available at most of the villages is 87 octane. Locally here people can run whatever gas they prefer, and because all the pumps have both available, the dealerships don’t know what has been ran in the sled, so warranty work isn’t an issue.

                1. The engine is a higher compression, so it needs better gas to keep from knocking. In most states these days, that means premium, because they’ve significantly CUT the octane in a lot of the states that the EPA has forced designer fuels on. Used to just be CA, but I know they forced Nevada into this recently as well.
                  One of the reasons the EPA must go.

        2. I like Subarus. I can see over the dashboard AND reach the pedals. Sadly, the Subaru I was eying didn’t have the room I was planning for Family.

          Got myself a lovely supercomfy Mazda that fits everybody, and has legroom for all of us. Plus room in the boot =) (and yes, I can reach the pedals AND see over the dash)

          1. a few of my aunts and my grandma had the sight issue too. Gran was and my Aunt Max is about 4′ 6″ or so, and Aunts Kathy and Pat are 5 foot or so. My sister is 4′ 11.5″ as well.
            I come from a long line of short people (bur I R 5′ 7″ or so)

  13. “Imagine you were born tall, blond, blue eyed.”

    I wasn’t born tall, but I am blond and blue-eyed; in my freshman undergraduate year at U of T, I attended the Catholic college of St. Michael’s and got tapped for the usual University College Frosh Week scavenger hunt as one of the prizes — one of their typical items is, I kid you not, “A blond-haired blue-eyed virgin from St. Mike’s.” (At the time, I even fit the third criterion too.)

    It’s kind of hard to object to prejudice when it’s spot-on.

    1. We keep our vehicles for so many years that a lot of dealerships we have bought from no longer exist. It’s lovely to never have a car payment.

  14. Dear Ms. Sarah! You are a jewel in the Crown of America! I am a Southron Gentleman from Kentucky, over six feet tall, blue-eyed and imbued with all of the traits ascribed to us of this ilk. I am slow to anger, but ultimately do not suffer fools gladly. I have raised two extremely brilliant children of whom I am quite proud of, and I am Quite happy with who, and where I am. Those who seek to demean you are the vile scum of the lefty little people who are not worth consideration because they are failed as humans, and they know it! Therefore they attack any that they perceive as being better than them. OK, they squeal and wiggle when you put your hook in them, but they are like bait, and are not real people, IMHO!

  16. This. And did I say, This? The “check your privilege” tagline is one of very few things someone could say to me that can make me angry. The first time someone tried to use it on me, I said, “I’ll check my privilege if you’ll chuck yours.” He had no idea what I meant, and I had to explain it to him. Since then I just say, “I checked my privilege last time I flew to Chicago, and United lost it. Damn, it had a tag on it and everything.”

    1. I say, “Yes, I checked it and I’m a quart low – next time you’re at the privilege store can you spot me a quart?”

    2. My response: “I did. Not being an idiot is awesome. You should try it some time.” Oddly enough, I don’t get told to check my privilege very often.

    3. “I did. It seems less of a privilege and more of a way to claim that anything that goes wrong is somehow my fault. So I don’t bother anymore.”

  17. In regards to your sons and your accent, I have caught mine copying my husband’s variant of English. (There are a couple phrasings he uses where one word is defined differently enough from how it’s defined in American English that it grates.) If someone told me they heard my kids speaking with my husband’s accent rather than mine I’d believe that they’d picked up enough features of his that it stood out by comparison. Since we live where I grew up, mine is nearly inaudible to locals. It wouldn’t take much difference to sound foreign.

  18. In re sans-culottes and lampposts….

    In, oh, 1915 or so, Herr Arthur Zimmermann (he of subsequent telegraphic infamy) bellowed at US Ambassador Gerard, “The United States does not dare to do anything against Germany! We have five hundred thousand German reservists in America who will rise in arms against your government if your government should dare to take any action against Germany!”

    American ambassadors were made of sterner metal in those days than in the Age of Obama. Ambassador Gerard looked him in the eye, and said, quietly, “And we have five hundred and one thousand lampposts in America to hang them from.”

    Ah, those were the days….

      1. Possibly; but if so, only distantly, and probably not on this side of the Pond. (There’s a right smart of us back in the West Country. From Devon and Dorset through to Hampshire, you can hardly chuck a rock without hitting a Pyle or Pile, and especially in Wiltshire and around Salisbury.)

        Ernie’s people in Indiana seem to have come through Philly and the Delaware Valley – Howard Pyle’s country – which is where the side of the family who became Quakers back in the West Country of England went.

        There was a second bunch who, intermarrying as we commonly did with the Ludlows back in Wiltshire, became Parliamentarians and sometimes even Puritans, some moderate and some very much not; these tended to end up in New England, which was Ludlow country, although a saner subset went to Virginia and got right with God and the House of Stuart.

        And then there was my crew, C of E and Cavalier (I’m afraid it really is all too like the movies), who came through Virginia, married the occasional Markham or Carter, and – like the Markhams especially, and John Marshall’s family as a subset of the Markhams’ relations – drifted West through Kentucky to fetch up in Missouri and Texas and Points West.

        I’m afraid that I, as a Southerner and a Texan, do tend to prove Ms Paulk’s point in her latest post: I’m a democratic republican as a matter of principle, but, temperamentally, I am in fact tribal as all get out.

        1. Where in TX do you live? A fair number of the Huns and Hoydens are Texans. I live in the DFW metroplex.

            1. Cool! Hope you don’t have to evacuate. We’re soggy in Collin County but
              as far as I know, neither the Trinity River nor Collin Creek are rising.

              1. ‘lawd willin that the creek don’t rise’ isn’t an idle expression to some of us.

                1. Someone told me earlier today that originally that meant the Creek Indians, but the wording makes it sound unlikely to me. Anyone know? I found both explanations out there on the Interwebz.

                  1. http://www.aboutnorthgeorgia.com/ang/God_Willing_and_the_creek_don't_rise

                    Even has the original source for the line being the water-sort.

                    According to the Straight Dope message boards, it’s also strengthened by the Creek having not risen at all. One band went and joined in some fighting against the US with other tribes, murdered some settlers on the way back, and when the rest of the tribe found out about it (by US gov’t demands for them being turned over) they executed the murderers themselves.

                    2. I heard it a great deal as well. Most of my family lived around/along water (Chattanooga, Tampa, Houston, New Orleans).

  19. It seems that according to the theory of social privilege, I’m responsible not only for the deeds and misdeeds of my ancestors at least five generations back, but those of their distant cousins, next-door neighbors, and their enemies, too. Bah. It’s all I can do to take responsibility for my own deeds and misdeeds.
    It seems to me that much of the talk of “privilege” consists of inverted snobbery games, with the prize going to whoever can claim to be the worst victim. I decline to either participate in the events or judge the contests.

    1. No, it’s the skin color and sexual organs. Witness that Holocaust survivors have “white privilege”. Your great-grandfather was a slave is a dreadful burden to a black, but actually having been a slave, a white can shrug off.

      1. Well, short of following after John Howard Griffin or being surgically mutilated (neither of which I have any interest in doing) there’s not a great deal I can do about my melanin content or my plumbing. So I will grant anyone the right to claim moral superiority on the basis of conditions they were born with (instead of what they have chosen to make of those conditions) and reserve the right to consider them fools. Anyone who is going about for looking for excuses to be offended will certainly find them and most likely deserves to be.

        There was also Nora Vincent, who actually tried going “undercover” as a man for a year and found that male privilege isn’t quite all it’s cracked up to be.

    2. The theory of privilege, whereby the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the seventh generation, has its obvious antecedents. It is precisely the same, morally and logically, as the claim that Jews are “guilty of deicide” – as a people, mind you – and deserve persecution, and precisely the same, morally and syllogistically, as the old antebellum argument that Blacks (and as a people, mind you) suffer under the “Curse of Ham” and have been destined by God to bondage because Ham laughed at Noah when the old man got plastered.

      It astounds me that people have the toxic combination of breathtaking gall and breathtaking stupidity to advance these arguments, it really does.

  20. What, you’re married to Count Dracula? Guess you really are a succubus.

    Makes the existence of your sons slightly problematic, though.

        1. Apparently Cambions are the offspring of a devil and a human woman. Note, one source has the woman dying upon giving birth to the cambion.

            1. Dhampyrs are human/vampire hybrids.

              Tieflings are a core race (generally human) with some evil outsider (devil or demon) ancestry that shows up as a deformation and gives some bonuses.

                1. The deformity is pure flavour – something indicating their heritage (cloven hooves, horns, etc). The bonuses are +2 to intelligence and dexterity, -2 to charisma.

                  The scale is 3-18, where 10 is average, and 18 is human max (sans magical boosts). So yeah, it would explain much, eh?.

              2. Dhampyrs are supposedly very difficult to produce, I believe the vampire has to be a male and turned recently enough that his sperm has not yet died, and is still viable, in order to impregnate the human female. It also usually involves ritualistic rape and potions made out of all sorts of difficult to obtain materials; and is sometimes rumored to cause the death of the vampiric father.

  21. Okay, don’t know how, don’t know why, but— I get up from my computer to go feed our outside cats before the rain hits. Come back and our newest inside cat, who has decided I am the only living thing in the house he has yet to dominate, is sitting on my desk with my headphones on his flea-bitten ass.

    Talk about putting a bug in your ear…

  22. You know, most people don’t even make a mention of the horrible accent. I’m sure they notice it, and heaven knows what they think about it. But they don’t mention it.

    My friend from Peru, who I hardly ever see anymore, since they moved her to a different office location, once told me that the thing that irritated her the most was other people getting upset if she had to ask them to repeat themselves, even though they did it all the time to her, because of her accent. Other than that, she doesn’t have much trouble.

    2. Only person who ever asked me to repeat myself — unless i’m in one of my days of tripping over my tongue, which is usually when a story is loud in my head — was my MIL. So we stopped talking to each other except through Dan. 😉

      1. Oh man, me too, but it wasn’t my accent (which I don’t have) I think it may have been my honesty. Oops.

    3. I run into that a lot.

      Many people think they’re speaking English, but they’re just blurting out sentence fragments, leaving out words, eliding vowels, using the wrong consonants, or otherwise blithering noise. Running all the words together into a continuous m-m-m-m-m stream is also common.

      Also, a lot of people simply open their mouths and babble. Their mouth is running on automatic. When you interrupt to ask them to repeat themselves, they get angry because they have no idea what they just said.

      1. Also, a lot of people simply open their mouths and babble. Their mouth is running on automatic. When you interrupt to ask them to repeat themselves, they get angry because they have no idea what they just said.

        I never considered that. That might at least partially explain why older son frequently refuses to repeat something that he has mumbled at me.

  23. I understand that under the microscope, absent some kind of marker like sickle cell, you can’t tell anyone’s skin color.

    Not then, either. There’s a REASON the Navy spends so much money on checking people for sickle cell– the guy doing the blood tests warned us he’d had a lot of blue eyed pale faces that found out they had the trait, and it can be a big shock to your self-concept.

    1. “There’s a REASON the Navy spends so much money on checking people for sickle cell–” Why is that? Found out I have SCtrait when I was in college, long long ago. They thought I’d be shocked. nope Creek blood.

      Curious why the navy cares, the army never checked.

      1. The Army now checks everyone for G6PD deficiency though, which tends to clump along the same ethnic lines as Sickle Cell. That’s got a simple explanation though, certain anti-malarial drug have some nasty side-effects on folks with G6PD deficiency so you need to use different (non-quinine based) prophylaxis when those Soldiers deploy to endemic areas.

        The SCD screenings for the Navy may have some similar purpose. The trait alone can (rarely) cause exercise intolerance (as well as other milder manifestations than the full blown two-copies-of-the-bad-allele disease), I saw that in a fellow basic trainee many years ago who had to be dropped from training as a result of the symptoms that arose when her body was put under that degree of exertional stress.

        1. “The trait alone can (rarely) cause exercise intolerance ”
          Oh boy. All I needed was another excuse. :o)

      2. It looks really bad when people keel over dead during Battle Stations; if they know that someone has the trait, they make sure they drink an extra couple of jugs of water a day.

        1. I can see I need to look into this further. Some of my issues may be related. Thanks

          1. Welcome! Honestly never occurred to me that someone might be told they have it and not why it’s a possible problem.

            1. It was 1978, in Boston and the girl (research asst?) telling me seemed pretty freaked out. You’d never know by looking.

  24. On the issue of your accent, it’s interesting to note that the wife of an old shipmate of mine has an accent that sounds, to this semi trained ear, identical. She was born in what’s now Herzegovina or Montenegro (not sure where the line is) and grew up on merchant ships plying the med (daddy was a merchant marine Captain). So, short form other end of europe, damn near into the whole Turkish/ Greek thing and solidly part of the old Ottoman empire…

  25. As a Samoan e-friend put it, her people weren’t oppressed by whites. They didn’t care what whites were doing.

    Er… the Samoan 10 year olds I know are bigger than I am…. that would take a LOT of oppressing!
    (There’s a reason the Samoan usher is the one that deals with “trouble,” even though I think he’s in his 80s. Ain’t nobody crossing HIM!)

    1. I remember talking to my sister about how Samoans are portrayed in fiction (she hangs around tumblr way too much), and mentioning that the first time I saw one was in the Legacy of the Aldenata series.
      And that he was awesome.

          2. I’ve got an evil plan somewhere in the back of my mind that involves getting a bunch of Samoans to join an Irish SCA type group. About the only thing that’s stopped me is that there’s about 600 miles between our parish and my uncle’s group, which I know would be a perfect fit….

            It sounds like it’s the setup for a joke about kilts, fights and drinking, but I’m serious. It would be an absolute blast for any group that follows the Saint Patrick’s theory of joining a Celtic club. (“Everyone is Irish on Saint Patrick’s day.” The in-joke being that, of course, the famous Saint himself was not of Irish stock.)

  26. “… it was used dealerships”

    Might it be that the erroneous assumption made was “which of these two couples seems most likely to buy a lemon?

  27. “…people who think that “White privilege” is never having to conform to a stereotype or never being judged are totally lacking in empathy and imagination.”

    You know what else they are? They are not from West Virginia. Years of speech coaching (a tendency toward Elmer Fudd Syndrome) gave me a British accent (more accurately, what most Americans interpret as a British accent.) Yet as soon as I confessed to being from West Virginia their eyes would flick down to check my feet.

    Never mind that West Virginia was the first state where they figured out how to cheat on computer voting machines, even the denizens of Flyover Country (except Louisianans) automatically assume we’re all ignorant hillbillies going barefoot and sleeping with siblings.

    Chuck Yeager held onto his home state accent as a way of sticking a thumb into the eye of the so-called intelligentsia.

    OTOH, here in North Carolina there are thousands of tales of super-genius Yankees who visit our Western mountain ranges and swindle some poor ignorant back-country hick out of a slope that has been in his family for generations without anybody having the brains to make a ski-resort out of it.

    Tell ya what those poor ignorant back-country hicks aren’t so dumb as to do, and that is buy a “ski slope” without first checking the average annual snowfall records.

  28. “…they SAY gender is a social construct”

    They forgot the -ist suffix. Dang! They is ALWAYS doin’ thet!

    Apparently the SJWs are in favor of conscription, as they keep drafting people into their imagined constructs. Next time an SJW calls you a [fillintheblank] traitor demand to know when you was drafted as you sure never enlisted in their damn whatever.

  29. When the offensively offended deny their racism on the grounds that only white men can be racist because power structure, history and what bulls leave iin pastures — the logical translation is that their defense against the charge of racism is that they are bigots.

    Google:

    a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions.

    Merriam-Webster:

    a person who strongly and unfairly dislikes other people, ideas, etc.

    Dictionary.com

    a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.

    Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary

    a person who has strong, unreasonable ideas, esp. about race or religion, and who thinks anyone who does not have the same beliefs is wrong.

    I guess if that’s the shoe they’re comfortable in they should be allowed to wear it, but I would prefer going barefoot over donning that particular shoe.

  30. Privileged Hollywood Actor tell’s students “Get Over it.”

    Actor Matthew McConaughey receives standing ovation from grads: Don’t be a victim, life’s not fair
    By Barbara Boland | May 18, 2015
    “Congratulations class of 2015,” Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey told the graduating class at the University of Houston Friday. “Life’s not fair. It never was, isn’t now and won’t ever be. Do not fall into the entitled trap of feeling like you’re a victim. You are not.”

    “Get over it and get on with it,” he said. “Yes, most things are more rewarding when you break a sweat to get them.”
    – – –
    Read the whole thing.

    1. Wonderful!! This is the secret of success is lots of hard work. A little planning is good too. The phrase I grew up with was: Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

      Qualities for success(not exclusive these are just some)
      Hard Work
      Good Attitude (Faking it when necessary)
      Showing up
      Listening
      Working on your flaws.
      Learning from Others
      Thick Skin.
      Sense of Humor
      Keeping in touch with people
      Networking
      Keep on keepin’ on.
      Good family
      Good Friends.

          1. It is I who ought apologise — I got the spelling wrong. It should have been Alright Alright Alright.

            I had too much “L”.

    2. As “sex” and “gender” are linguistic items and language is a social construct, asserting the terms to be social constructs is a valid if jejune and derivative argument.

      People making that argument are engaging in banal yet pretentious discussion, confusing expression with the underlying substance.

      1. I think bibliolatry is the curse of every advanced civilization. People start mistaking the writing for the reality. In this case it’s more Epeolatry, though — confusing the word for the thing. Or as I’ve said the problem with people who want dozens of genders if that they think the label is the person and so everyone needs a detailed label. If they started thinking of behaviors as not controlled by what’s between your legs to the nth degree, then they’d realize a word for sex “woman” or “Man” describes a range of behaviors/aptitudes/ideas with some broad statistic commonalities.
        But then they’d have to think of humans as individuals, not widgets and as we’ve determined they lack both the empathy and the imagination to do so.

        1. What baffles me is when people try to use chromosomal disease as the exception to prove that something outside of biological sexual binary is somehow not abnormal. “This person is sick with a highly particular genetic malady that affects a minute fraction of the population, ergo humans are not sexually binary and the binary nature of sexuality cannot be said to be the norm!”

          While L Sprague de Camp may have illustrated for us the unreasonableness of a truly Aristotelian universe, what we’ve ended up with is a Chinese Encyclopedia of identity.

    4. So, if it’s just a social construction, and it’s supposedly a “Bad” thing, then why aren’t they crusading for an end to sex-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms?

      Or hell, where do Feminists get off saying that “Men” do this or that?

      1. They are; they’re just disguising it as “allowing gender confused people to pick based on the gender they feel like today.”

  32. Reblogged this on Cirsova and commented:
    I don’t always have time to read Sarah Hoyt’s blog, but when I do, I’m always glad I did. Sorry my Castilian ancestors were always trying to eat your Portuguese ancestors!

      1. My Spanish guilt is much heavier than the average hipster’s white guilt. We actually did all the stuff to the Americas that the Anglos get blamed for. 😮

        1. But it makes no sense for anyone living now to feel guilty about anything their ancestors did ever. It’s a crazy idea to blame children for their parents or grandparents transgressions.
          That’s why all this privilege stuff is so ridiculous.
          I blame Ancestry.com.

          1. I joke about my “guilt”, of course. But I do enjoy throwing a wrench in someone’s progressive stack every now and then.

          3. Hey. I use Ancestry.com to help me write histories of my ancestors. If you don’t know even know who your great grandparents were and what kind of privilege you inherited from them, how can you properly claim credit for their noble deeds?

            2. “I met a lizard who told me that on his mother’s side, he’s a Brontosaurus”. [Evil Grin]

              ::Stole from RAH::

              1. Before the 20th century? I read more time-travel stories from pedigrees submitted there than are published in SF magazines in a year.

        3. Yeah! If you hadn’t left all them horses behind the Cheyenne could never ride in circles around our wagon trains and forts!

          My wife is Delaware and Cherokee. Not usually an issue except she laughs in ALL the wrong places during They Died With Their Boots On…

    1. White Privilege conveys much less benefit than they imagine, as the term “White Trash” indicates. What really conveys highest levels of privilege is “head not up your butt” privilege, which has been proven to improve vision and avoid septic thinking.

  38. Right, It can only give them a sub-conscious feeling of safety because they are both naive and haven’t thought it all the way through.

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