No More White Knights

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

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I’m starting to get really tired of White Knights.

You’ve seen these gentlemen.  They rush in, when they perceive someone as being in danger, and pavane around with grandeur, proclaim their goodness and wonderfulness, and their willingness to defend the helpless.  And nine times out of ten, leave, full of honor and glory, leaving things worse than they found them.

Except the modern versions don’t ask you if you are helpless, they just assume.  And they don’t do anything except signal their virtue and their willingness to defend you.  Oh, they might take the opportunity to bash a few of their personal enemies, perhaps by claiming that they are your enemies too.

They’ve been all over recently.  Yes, sure, there are many minorities online, who, having fully imbibed the Kool-Aid, are now merrily calling everyone a Nazi on the slimmest of pretexts.  But most such offenders are in fact lily white and convinced of their own special wonderfulness.  It was a lily white and, if I had to guess, upper middle class young man who took it upon himself to tell me I should be grateful to Antifa for saving me from vile speech.

Well, this first generation, immigrant Latina is not grateful.  Do you know why she is not grateful?  Because no one asked you to defend me.  Certainly no one asked a communist front group with a frightening penchant for violence and vandalism to defend me.  And if I wanted to be defended it wouldn’t be from speech, vile or not.  It would be from active, physical aggression, which communists are at least as likely (and possibly more) to engage in than the crazy racists.

I’m no more acceptable to communists than I am to the Nazis.  The Nazis would reject me on account of my origins and the fact that I can tan really dark when I get out of the office and into the rays of the evil day star.  And Antifa would reject me because I think people who attack their fellow citizens are despicable and their theories of power and wealth are wrong and based on the crazy theories of Marx, the most overrated dead white man ever.  And because I’m tired of their trying to impose their ignorance and cultish beliefs on the rest of us.

I don’t want either side to defend me from the other.  I accept that both have the right to say whatever they please, and I hope they do it far away from me.  If they come to my attention, I am entitled to make fun of them by all means available.

Because you see, I’m not delicate, I’m not helpless, and I don’t need a white knight.

The implicit insult the white knight’s defense is the idea that those they are defending are in need of help.

My accent gets me very odd reactions in the US.  For a long while they ranged from the people who thought I’d come to the US to escape the direst poverty (well, maybe in US terms, but really!) to the people who thought I’d left my beautiful, traditional society to come here, as a ambassador of our peaceful and quaint ways.  Which means they know bloody nothing about Portuguese history, or American history.  Or any history, really.

Of the two, I prefer the first.  They listen.  When I point out that my family was middle class (granted for the village, where we were all as poor as Job) and that my degree probably would have got me a better material life than I have here, but I came here because I fell mad in love with America and the ideals it was founded on (yes, I fell mad in love with my husband too.  Still am, after 33 years, but you know, HE was willing to move to be with me) they tend to listen and understand.

The ones who despise America though, and who want me to be the ambassador of my peaceful and quaint culture don’t listen and don’t understand.  And they get really angry that someone from a country where people tan can insist that the US is better.  And they get REALLY upset when I tell them that no, the US doesn’t oppress me, and no, I don’t need their help.

Because you know, all those allies who come in “white knighting” it to defend women and minorities, don’t really want to defend women and minorities.

They most of all want to claim victimhood.  They think America and non-minorities are somehow evil.  And the only way they can wash off that evil is to identify with a minority and defend it tooth and nail.

Second, they want the glory and virtue that comes from being “enlightened” and “helping” minorities.

They want to be the voice for the voiceless and the strength for the weak.  But only if the voice says what they want to say and if the persona admires and endorses their strength.

In other words, they want to use people not like them to aggrandize themselves.  They want to impose beliefs and experiences they believe people of a different color or gender or orientation should have on those people.  They want to receive power and adulation from telling everyone how to live and from othering others.  They are ignorant of US history and virgin of world history, but they feel the need to tell you how everyone should feel, even people from other countries.

They are the privileged, coddled, praised products of self esteem education.  And they’ll trample anyone, demean anyone, destroy anyone, and bring down their own country in an effort to continue thinking of themselves as the best, the brightest and the kindest people who ever lived.

The expression behind the great, shining helm of the white knight is a smirk of superiority.

255 thoughts on “No More White Knights”

  1. One core identity statement about Americans in general I think applies here:
    “Americans want to save the world. (There is much disagreement on the best way to do that.)”

    This is separate from philosophical Americans (like you were before you even came here); this is more how people who live here (philosophical or not) are. Other countries wonder why we can’t mind our own business; this is a large part of it.

    1. I don’t really agree with that. I think most Americans just want to be left alone. As to other countries wondering why we can’t mind our own business, that’s not Americans, that’s the US government. And as to minding our own business, whenever we do they start screaming about why we’re not doing something about the problem du jour. Think about the Yugoslav civil war when at first we said, “European problem; you deal with it,” and went about our business.

      1. I think roughly half of America wants to be left alone. The other half wants to be left alone while enjoying the privilege of telling the other half what to do.

        As much as I’d love to see the US step off being World Police having seen what happens over the last 8 years when Obama was doing just that. . .not so sure it’s actually in the best interest of world stability.

        For some reason the last day or so I keep having the description ‘they make a vice of virtue’ popping into my head when I’m thinking of liberals and I can’t for the life of me remember where exactly that quote comes from.

        1. Well, that means pretty much everyone wants to be left alone, but half the folks believe that only they should be left alone while they have the right to not leave others alone. Basically, they want to put themselves into a ruling class, where the rest of us don’t accept the right of any such class to exist.

          1. Pretty much. They are already referring to themselves as the ‘elites’. Based on what I’m not sure. Getting into positions of power despite overwhelming incompetence and stupidity?

              1. Sure 🙂 Though I’m hoping tar and feathering stupid politicians comes back into fashion at some point. I’m more than willing to chip in for both. . .

                1. I have pine trees I can make the tar* from…

                  * We’ve talked about how it was pine tar back in Revolutionary times several times here, so I thought I would just start offering a source. Besides, if we used petroleum-based tar, we’d wind up having to pay for their burn treatments, anyway.

                  1. Works for me! For the most part I’d like to see them humiliated and not actually injured.

                    I think my Aunt still has chickens so should be able to get plenty of feathers.

                  2. I have heard this argument and discussion numerous times over whether it was black tar or pine tar and how if the former it would lead to severe burns. I have seen some pictures online about people that have been tarred and feathered for various things. In the late 18th and early 19th century it probably would have been pine tar. Towards the end of the 19th and early 20th, black tar would probably have been used. Having seen it in use, it takes a fair amount of heat to melt it. Yet it is still sticky enough when it cools down to “comfortable” * temperatures that it could still be applied to offending miscreants for the feather treatment.
                    *for varying degrees of comfortable, and likely not too injurious to the recipient.

                    1. I’m betting the kind of mob that was willing to employ tar and feathers to start with wasn’t any too willing to wait while the tar cooled down.

                  3. Pine tar is green, too! So they can feel comfortable about using a renewable resource while you dunk them in the feathers. (Though the vegans will probably be upset about the exploitation of our fowl friends.)

              2. I think of them as the “eloi” – after all, they think we’re all a bunch of morlocks.

                1. I think most of the eloi too masculine to pose in red flannel footie pjs, sipping hot chocolate.

          2. It is only those who are sufficiently enlightened who do not need rules, those rules are for the unenlightened who would fall prey to bad thoughts were they not sufficiently enclosed by rules.

            I believe Thomas Sowell has aptly described this in his discussions of the Vision of the Anointed.

            2. “Let me take once again a rough parable. Suppose I advertised in the papers that I had a place for any one who was too stupid to be a clerk. Probably I should receive no replies; possibly one. Possibly also (nay, probably) it would be from the one man who was not stupid at all. But suppose I had advertised that I had a place for any one who was too clever to be a clerk. My office would be instantly besieged by all the most hopeless fools in the four kingdoms. To advertise for exceptions is simply to advertise for egoists. To advertise for egoists is to advertise for idiots. It is exactly the bore who does think that his case is interesting. It is precisely the really common person who does think that his case is uncommon. It is always the dull man who does think himself rather wild. To ask solely for strange experiences of the soul is simply to let loose all the imbecile asylums about one’s ears.” G.K. Chesterton

        2. Actually, Meade’s old groupings of Americans with respect to foreign policy is kind of useful: Jacksonian (leave us alone or else, key goal being the physical security and economic well being of American people), Jeffersonian (libertarian isolationists in foreign affairs), Hamiltonian (foreign policy’s primary goal is to aid commerce/economic growth; wars waged to maintain open oceans, secure critical raw materials or protect American investments), or Wilsonian (idealist, world’s policeman, spreading democracy and American social values, defending weak against genocide).

          Now, even Meade characterizes these as pure archtypes, but they are useful for thinking about the question. To put it another way, the Jacksonians are against US armed forces being the World’s Policeman unless someone threatens Americans (whereupon the gates of hell swing open and they believe in total war). The Jeffersonians also want to be left alone. The Hamiltonians and Wilsonians want intervention by the US, albeit for very different reasons and under different circumstances.

          1. Back in the day, when the internet was a shiny new and all to people like me (say, just before 9-11) I read Meade’s essay (on-line, of course) and realized that yes, I was a definite and unapologetic Jacksonian. Kind of solidified a lot of inchoate thinking about our foreign relations, especially as I had experienced it.

        2. Staying out works just fine until the day you wake up to surprise packages like Pearl Harbor or 9/11. And yes, I do realize that in both those examples the justification from the perpetrators was that their vile acts were retaliation for American meddling in foreign affairs.
          But the plain truth is that just our bare existence is held as an affront by many peoples, a combination of envy and hatred for freedoms they would deny their own people.
          Sure, we’ve meddled, sometimes with good intent, often purely from self interest, and often made huge mistakes. But our greatest crime, if statements by foreign dignitaries can be believed, is our all pervasive culture. Their children play our music, watch our films, wear our blue jeans, oh the humanity! We represent freedom, and a great many abroad, and far too many here at home hate us for it.

          1. Well, I for one refuse to apologize for being the envy of the world. If we weren’t the best, they wouldn’t want to have what we have, to be what we are. Stew in it, world.

          2. > surprise

            General Billy Mitchell went on a military tour of Japan in the 1920s, where variouspoliticians, generals, and admirals he talked to were quite open about their plans to attack the US.

            Washington very much didn’t want to hear that, so when Mitchell wouldn’t shut up, they court-martialed him.

            1. We have plans to invade Canada. Doesn’t mean we’re going to use them, just that they exist. Probably on a dusty back shelf in some Pentagon sub-basement, the result of some wild-haired ‘What if . . .” sessions by bored staffers.

            2. I find that rather hard to believe. In the 1920’s Pacific Fleet was based out of several west coast ports, well out of reach of the Japanese Navy. Pearl Harbor was nothing more than a logistics hub. FDR moved PACFLT to Pearl as part of an attempt to pressure Japan into backing off from China. By doing so he placed the fleet within the extreme range of the Japanese strike capability.

              I’m sure that Japan in the ’20’s had plans to go to war with the US, but they were along the lines of the contemporaneous US plans to go to war with Canada, largely training exercises that could be used as the basis for real plans if war came about.

          3. THIS.

            I was really, really lucky in college that my teachers liked the fact that I could very often take a pro-Western stance and argue my points with facts and logic. (Also lucky that my classmates, who were starting to soak up the very common anti-Western sentiments with feminist and communism leanings – no surprise given that some of the more indoctrinating teachers were flat out socialist – were willing to be rattled off their branches and think and try argue back, as opposed to getting angry and emotional.) We could have discussions.

            One particular exercise I remember doing was the class being presented with a statement, and we would have to stand on one side of the room or the other, being either ‘for’ or ‘against’ or ‘other/neither’ and we’d have to explain why. I argued in favor of having US military bases in the Philippines again (I was the only person on that side of the room) – noting national self-interest and mutual benefit, increased national security, our own lack of military might thanks to a persistent social-cultural meme of disarmament and ‘self defence is bad’ and ‘military is bad’, because that’s all kinds of leaving ourselves vulnerable to take over; followed by economic betterment in the local area and an improvement in local infrastructure of those areas where the bases were. Someone DID point out that the ‘only reason’ why the Japanese invaded was ‘because of the US presence here as a colonizer’ and I said “They were going to invade and take over, regardless of the presence of Americans. They invaded other countries too, and the main plan was the expansion of Japanese interests and economic resources.”

            It was a very fun discussion, and we went a good half hour over class time, that’s how fun and immersive it was.

            1. Yep. Japan wanted the oil and rubber in Java, and they weren’t going to leave any potential enemy strongholds astride their lines of communication.

        3. A lot of the world think Americans can save the world by staying out of it, so long as we just send money.

          2. Bingbingbing! Thus all this [stuff] about the Global North sending global warming reparation— er, remediation funds to the Global South. Except China is part of the Global South, for some reason. *shrug* I guess there is “whale geography” just like the NY publishers use “whale math.”*

            *Whale math is the term used at ThePassiveVoice for the mind-bogglingly wild numbers TradPub companies issue for sales and profits.

            1. Amazing how those whales will turn into minnows or vanish entirely when the focus turns to actual author compensation, ain’t it?

              1. Indeed. But these are the people who celebrate the demise of e-books because once they raised the prices on their e-books, fewer of them sold as compared to print. Thus the e-book is dead and hard-backs are the wave of the future and they have numbers to prove it!

                1. Funny thing about that is. . .About the only things I read now either come from Amazon Kindle store or directly from Baen. The stuff that I’m reading off Kindle Store is not traditional publisher stuff either. . . On a normal year I’ll usually read (buy) between 50 and 100 books.

                  1. With a few exceptions – Correia, Butcher, and Hoyt – I refuse to pay more than $10 for an ebook. Lots of publishers try to charge more, but since I know that the price will go down I am willing to wait.

                  2. I’m swiftly getting to that point. I still prefer dead tree format, but the amount of awesome authors I’ve been able to procure for free (e-format) has been eye opening. It does make me want to buy more of their stuff.

      3. You reminded me of a cartoon back when Bosnia was bleeding to death, in(I think) a German newspaper: guy reading the paper, big headline about the latest atrocity, and he says “This is horrible! Why don’t the Americans do something?”

        2. I think I saw pretty much the same cartoon in the Guardian.

          I’ve come to think that a good definition of a split second is that period of time between Euro-elites demanding that America do something about some crisis or other … and then when we do, whining about us sticking our nose everywhere.

          1. Or alternatively, the time between when we decide some crisis is not our problem and the time when the Euro-elites start whining that we’re awful people who just don’t care about our fellow man.

            1. I think a good part of my college was skewering that concept. “Make up your minds! Do you think Americans are good people who rush in to help and sacrifice their lives for people not their countrymen, or conquering assholes who don’t give a shit about the people whose countries they come into? Can’t have the military and people dying for you, and hating them at the same time, cowards!”

              (I think a lot of ’em came around to my reasoning later on.)

        4. This was once said in class, back when I was in college, and I said “Why should they?”

          Kind of kicked off a discussion that forced people to think. I rather miss those days. (Forced people to examine the inconsistency of wanting American military security but not wanting bases, because Filipino national pride!)

          1. Back when America was intervening in, hmm, I think it was Somalia during the Clinton presidency*… there was a lot of talk on the news about “We can’t be the world’s policeman.” I was a teenager at the time so I didn’t give it much thought, but since then I’ve thought, “Well… why not?” My argument rests on two premises: 1) Somebody needs to do it. 2) Nobody else is stepping up to the plate. (Nowadays, that second one isn’t entirely true, but the new version is “And we don’t want Russia to be the one doing it, at least not while Putin’s in charge.”)

            Does it benefit America to be the world’s policeman? In the short term, almost certainly not, with a few rare exceptions like North Korea (we have a vested self-interest in defending our allies, and South Korea has, AFAIK, been a good ally. Not to mention that North Korea is also in easy range of Japan, another close ally of ours). But in the long term, I think America would have been better off playing World Police a lot more than we actually did over the past two decades. So even from a pure “selfish realpolitik” analysis, I think the question “Should America be the world’s policeman?” can plausibly be answered in the affirmative.

            * Note the singular. 🙂

            1. As I’ve said before and will no doubt say again: some things you do because if you don’t, no one else will. And some things you do because if you don’t *someone else* will– and it will likely be in a way you don’t like. This is why the US does things like freedom of navigation ops and other “provocative” actions.

      4. The U.S. government is mostly made up of, and run by, people who have an innate need to order people around. Even the Founding Fathers understood that, which is why they tried to put enough checks and balances in so they’d be fighting each other and leave the rest of us alone.

      5. There are Interventionistas’ mental defects, yes.
        View at Medium.com
        But the reason why this can go anywhere beyond letters to the press is that “representation” is just talk and Phariseeism is the norm.
        If any attempt at “I am holier than thou” posture was met with contempt, time to “the King is naked!” would be zero and this won’t work.

  2. I much prefer the Black Knights, with their refusal to admit defeat. Or even the Knights who say “Ni!”

    I vaguely recall a story about a White Knight who constantly intervened and made everything worse by assuming what was the problem and who was the villain and who wanted rescue without ever bothering to ascertain the facts of the circumstances.

    Oh, wait a min – that was an article about Progressive Foreign Policies!

      1. Except Don Quixote left those around him better off. Thanks to him, lovers got married, a peasant became a better person, a depressed town had a reason to celebrate, etc.
        He was a fool, and he suffered for it.
        But he inadvertently did a lot of good, and his passing was mourned.

        If the story was just one of a madman who caused a lot of problems, it wouldn’t be remembered.

  3. The best response to them is laughter. The one thing they absolutely cannot accept is to not be taken seriously. They don’t mind being hated–it just proves, in their minds, the badness of all those who don’t idolize them. But to have people smile slightly, pat them on the head, and say distractedly, “That’s nice, dear,” just drives them up a wall.

    1. Unfortunately, while some take laughter as a sign that they should go find something else to do, others take it as a sign that they need to go more overboard the next time.

      1. It’s always important to remember that your audience isn’t the whacko you’re talking to, but those folks who are observing the both of you. If they go even more overboard, you’re winning. They usually don’t even notice that the normal folks who might have been persuaded by their rhetoric are turning away in distaste.

        1. Or even if not quite persuaded, pressured into support of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
          That’s enough for the “tailors”.

  4. I know a few white knights. In general, they are failed men at the bottom of their chosen social hierarchy (almost always that of the progressives) who don’t see any other way of raising their social status. I think some of them realize that white knighting doesn’t work, but they continue to do it to avoid being pushed further down the ladder.

    1. I dunno, Al Gore seems to have done quite well for himself by selling a pig in a poke. Of course that only goes on so long before someone demands a look in that poke. The abject failure of his dire predictions seems to be catching up quite nicely. Still, he’s become rather wealthy by it all.

      1. “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
        H. L. Mencken

      2. Al Gore isn’t a white knight. He’s a tribal leader. Failing to win the presidency by a dozen hanging chads isn’t failure at all. The man is in fact terrifyingly (and in my view inexplicably) successful. What I mean by “failed” is “all dreams broken, no relationship, severely underemployed, often no exclusive residence.”

        1. Makes sense. As Obama was the Sun King, the Lightbringer, and Trump is the antithesis of all things Obaman, he would have to destroy the sun, wouldn’t he? I just thought he’d wait until later to do so.

  5. Funny. I was just collecting images for a post on St. George and the Dragon . . .

    White knights are a pain. You notice, when you go read the medieval and earlier stories of slaying dragons, the hero sees a problem, asks about the problem, devises a solution after watching for a little bit, and then dispatches the problem. Or he has to go to an expert to have something made to solve the little wyrm problem. White knights just get under foot, if you’re lucky. If not, they summon bad dragons, demons, and other nasties.

      1. A white knight the villagers finally get annoyed enough with they hire a dragon to eat him?

        1. No, someone who is resentful of humans because he blames them for his own failings, and so he manipulates a situation to make it far worse in order to get even. He is an Asian-style dragon, one of many.

          1. As long as the dragon eats somebody it’s all good :O

            (Sorry, it’s been a very very very long week!)

    2. Yeah, the village depended on the dragon to bring in tourists, who spent freely and propped up the local economy. Now, dragon-less, the population will be back to selling extra children into slavery to feed the rest…

    3. I’ve have fun with dragons. “Dragon Slayer” is about slaying one, and “Dragonfire and Time” is about mollifying one about a would-be thief, and “The Dragon’s Cottage” is about outwitting one. (And the one in Madeleine And the Mists is a peril that does have to be slain.)

  6. Do you think it would help if we said, “No one asked you to come here, we don’t want your ‘help,’ get away from us!”?

    1. Or maybe, “You know what? Those folks over there are way more oppressed than we are. Why don’t you go help them; I’m sure they’ll be ever so grateful!”

      1. Hmm, depending on travel time and conditions that might be a good way to keep them busy for a while. Kind of like that old joke about keeping idiots busy by writing ‘turn over’ on both sides of a piece of paper.

          1. Every time I read about the Peace Corps, all the testimonials are from volunteers saying what a wonderful experience it was for them. I rarely read something from the reciepients of their largess talking about how the volunteers made a significant difference for them.

            I don’t doubt the sincerity of the motives of the Peace Corps, but I do wonder how much of it ultimately ends up being what Mark Steyn called “vacationing in someone else’s despair.”

            1. My husband, on watching me canning tomatoes the first time: “Why did the Peace Corps volunteers never teach us this?”

                1. You want canned tomatos, you go to the canned-goods aisle and put some in the shopping cart. Jeez, you people keep trying to make things more complicated than they need to be.

                  (a friend’s child went on a school trip to a dairy, where they got a lengthy tour of stainless-steel equipment and lectures on Pasteurization and so forth. When the kid got home, his father asked him where milk came from.

                  “From the milk truck!”

                  Raw milk was trucked in, processed milk trucked out. Cows were never mentioned as part of the process…)

                    1. Nobody’s that stupid, are they? I mean I’m very urban. I’ve lived my whole life in large and medium sized cities. But I always knew where food came from, even if I never saw livestock or farms in person.

                    2. I’d find the photo if I didn’t think WordPress would have issue. I’m sadly not exaggerating. Maybe it was a facetious paper but it would definitely not surprise me if true

                    3. When I lived in Louisville we’d sometimes drive by the slaughterhouse area and believe me, you couldn’t not know where meet came from.

                      Rocky Balboa also could’ve told ’em, and he was no super-genius..

                    4. Nobody’s that stupid, are they?

                      The quote has been verified, and is real. It did, however, come from a call-in to a specific newspaper’s “Speakout” phone line, one where there is a tradition of people calling in with sarcastic comments. Which means this is a delicious “The lady or the tiger?” situation, where you get to guess whether the caller was being sarcastic, or whether somebody really was that stupid.

            2. Off hand I know of only two Peace Corps volunteers who went on to later prominence in this world, Chris Matthews and Tony Snow.

              What that says about the experience I am unable to grasp.

              1. That it is intended as resume enhancer for certain circles just as any charity is. Especially the ones helping on the other side of the planet as you cry out for the working man to be wiped out.

              2. Dr. Guy Consolmagno, SJ, one of the world’s leading experts on meteorites, and Director of the Vatican Observatory. (Which is an actual research organization with a multimillion $ budget.) Dr. Consolmagno taught physics and astronomy in Kenya with the Peace Corps.

          2. You know, I’ve never been entirely sure what the Peace Corps. actually does. I only have a vague notion of bored 20 somethings going to “help the unfortunate”.
            Though the lack of knowledge and experience in your standard 20 year old leaves me wondering what good they can do?

            1. Perhaps they can help with the moral edification of the populace by providing themselves as bad examples?

              1. Given the timing, could a sufficiently jaded person make a case that the peace corps causes the subject population to hate America – maybe terrorism is caused by the Peace Corps? I am not sure if this is sarcasm or not – help?

                1. Well, if the Peace Corps is the only contact a people have with the US they could perhaps get an impression of Americans that isn’t representative of most of us. Another interesting question is how the Peace Corps personnel are viewed vis-a-vis various religious missions when both are present in a country. Which (if either) is more accepted, more desired, more invited?

                2. Probably sarcasm. Islamic terrorism is directed at targets in the Mid-East readily enough. Targeting the US is either a fundamental misunderstanding of US culture and internal politics, or reading it more profoundly than I do.

            2. I seem to recall reading a story about how the Peace Corps had a team go to some place in Laos, or Cambodia, and construct a palm-covered open sided pole barn as a communal gathering place. As if the people there couldn’t have done it themselves. On the other hand, maybe all those villagers were laughing up their non-existent sleeves at having gotten those stupid foreign white people to do the job for nothing for them.

              1. I really started having doubts when a grad-student described his experience. His first station was in West Africa, and then he was moved to the Ukraine.

              1. Sadly, that would be typical for the demographic.
                I’ll stick with my religion’s habit of sending them out as missionaries instead. (I was never so much as offered a drink as a missionary, let alone drugs.)

      2. Not going to work. They want a meat-pedestal where convenient, not go somewhere and take real risks.
        In the same way, it’s hard to convince climate tourists to make a closer acquaintance with polar bears.

        1. No, it’s written on the inside of their helmet. It’s why they keep face planting so spectacularly, (metaphorically speaking.)

          1. The inside of your helmet is a bad place to store anything, especially brown recluse spiders.

        2. *dreamy sigh* I was introduced to Hammer’s Slammers while I was in High School. I had a serious crush on the hover tanks. Yes, I’m Odd.

      1. I had to re-watch that show a few years ago.

        “Trust me, I know what I’m doing” was pretty much our equivalent of “Hey ya’ll, watch this!”

  8. I think I was a bit of white knight at one point in my life. Good thing I grew up. Now I just want to do what’s best for me and mine. All the rest can go hang.

    1. I suspect the main difference between white knights and good people is that good people offer and provide help when it’s asked for, while white knights insist on providing ‘help’ even when it isn’t wanted.

        1. I thought John Cleese played Lancelot, and it was Michael Palin who played Galahad. Or are we not talking about Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

          PS: Please delete the duplicate comment under the andrews********e username. It’s me, but I was logged into my “professional” WP account instead of my “personal” one. Whoopie…

      2. Good People tend to take the time to provide the help that is needed, which is not always the hope that is requested. White Knights tend to provide the help they wish to, without regard to whether it alleviates or exacerbates the problem.

        Good People, unlike White Knights, understand the difference between the two.

        White Knight: I put out the fire in your barn!

        Farmer: I was Trying to get rid of the rats, you idiot!

        Good People: Would you be interested in a few cats, or perhaps a terrier or two?

        1. These modern windmills would turn Sir Don into little gobbets of flesh strewn across the landscape, indistinguishable from the other flying critters that ran into the vanes.

      2. Are you kidding? Windmills have become a plague upon the land! By all means send them out to… Oh. I forgot. Those are GOOD windmills; the white knights would prefer to tilt at nuclear power plants.

        1. But those windmills kill thousands of birds; can’t we persuade them of their evilness for that reason? Still, I prefer sawmills.

          1. Hush you, those birds all sacrificed their lives for the greater good.
            Much the same rationale as when it was found that PETA was euthanizing more pets than the animal control agencies. Don’t recall where it happened, but it was a big thing until the media lost interest, ie killed the story.

            1. But of course. PETA believes that pet owning is the same as slavery. Thus, surely it’s better to give those poor dogs a gentle and easy death than let them go back to a horrible life of chasing squirrels, napping on the couch, and getting tummy rubs.

              Yeah. PETA’s not getting anywhere near my dog.

              3. If they get near my puppy I’ll introduce them to my shotgun! I might do it just as a matter of nuisance abatement.

            2. Just added two kittens to the household. PETA will get them when they pry them out of my cold dead hands. Idiots, If I believed in reincarnation I’d want to come back as one of our house cats. Its a real good gig, sleep all day, lots of space to roam about in. Food, Shelter and health care all provided. I’d say it was a socialist paradise except I strongly doubt the cats see it that way. We are only providing what the superior species needs and the affection they provide back is merely noblesse oblige.

              1. Kili, the older cat, is often affectionately referred to as “the furry little socialist.” She very much believes “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine.”

                She also believes those with the ability should do for those with the need, or “Thumb-monkey! Open this door for me!”

                That said. it’s a voluntary association I assumed, and while she may be permanently stuck at a three-year-old’s reasoning level, she’s pretty darned temper tantrum free, and provides a lot of affection. And she’s decorative, and purry. (Unless you’re the vet. Then she’s a hellion.)

                1. Longer ago than I like to think – my daughter and I were on a camping trip through Northern CA – and at one of the campgrounds we stayed at, there was a campfire lecture about bats from a local biologist. She did a nice informative talk about bats – and as the finale to the talk, she brought out an orphan baby pipistrelle bat that she was hand-raising … from the front of her sweatshirt. The little bat was sheltered there, clinging to her bra-strap.
                  The kids at the lecture were enchanted – but the biologist did confess that her mother lived in fear of her being in an auto accident … and having to explain to the emergency room staff why she had a bat in her underwear…

                  1. “Why do you wear a bat? Were you raised by a vampire, or something like that?”

                    “Oh no, it’s just that they’re terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.”

  10. Examples of “The New Morality.”
    What was wrong with the Old Morality? It’s what our great nation was built on. This new crap will achieve nothing but tearing it down.

    1. Exactly! It wasn’t perfect, but it was far better than this. The 90s was almost perfect. Racism was almost completely gone. Then racist Obama came and ruined it all, bringing it all back to the 50’s, but with the racists being the blacks, sadly… Skin color doesn’t matter at all. I don’t know one person who thinks it does, yet they continue to pretend anyone that’s “white” is a racist.

      1. I keep wondering how much of this is about a generation that knows it will departing us soon and in order to keep feeling relevant they want to capture some of that passion from their youth which means race and sex issues are now a priority.

        You’re right. With a few exceptions the 90’s was a pretty peaceful decade and both racism and sexism seemed to be headed out the door. It was also in the mid-90’s that I remember first being exposed to multi-culturalism.

          1. Can we slip them some tranquilizers so they go out peacefully instead of inciting riots and ruining a significant portion of an entire generation?

      2. What did you expect? Old Barry was feeling useless because he didn’t have anything left to protest. So he had to create the problem.

        At least all the preppers in this country are a lot more ethical and honest than Mr. Obama. Had they done the same thing he did, we’d be starving and shivering in the middle of a nuclear winter they’d have cause to be able to prove they could survive it!

        1. That may give him too much credit. He may have drunk too much communism or smoked too much dope to the point that he honestly thought he was going to be able to live out his revolutionary fantasies.

      3. I ran across some advice for writers today that solemnly included, among characters that should not exist, the hero hater who is jealous or otherwise hates the hero because of his own flaws, not the hero’s.

        EXCEPT — if the hero belongs to an underprivileged group and the hero hater is a bigot. THAT is a meaningful message and will add to your story rather than detract from it.

    2. A Pharisee is supposedly holier than you are, and so you should obey him. But he is not alone. They have to compete each to be holier than the other.
      Hence the need for some way to be holier than the previous holier-than-thou. Then break all the ceilings.
      http://blog.jim.com/culture/history-interpreted-as-left-singularities/
      That’s why there’s no point to stop or back off just a little on this path: you’d argue with those stepping back half a step more or half a step less, and then a pink-haired postmodernist socialist will say you all are atavisms and he’s the next step after the next step, and will be right.
      The only way to escape is to leave this path completely, renounce and denounce all things Pharisee.

  11. “Othering”? Obviously a typo, but what should be there instead? Smothering? Ordering?

        1. You may also see “underserved communities” as jargon meaning “poor minorities.” Usually in academic writing and job notices.

          1. I’ve always wondered what exactly “underserved” means. It seems like a meaning-free PC term intended primarily to denote those on the “in” side vs. all the hoi polloi who just say “poor” when they mean “poor.”

            1. It’s supposed to mean that the community in question isn’t getting enough support from vague someones, which is supposed to be why it’s a poor neighborhood. Look for comments about “food deserts” (meaning that it’s difficult or impossible to buy non-junk food in the neighborhood, because supermarkets don’t want to build there), and the like.

              1. So they have some vague belief that services are provided to a neighborhood because they deserve those services in some way, eh? That’s not how the world works. Of course, you and I understand that, but actually thinking about how things are rather than how they’d like them to be appears to be too difficult for these folks.

            2. It’s a code for minority, especially Hispanic (at least in the specific job listings I’ve seen). “Must be able to demonstrate ability to reach out to members of previously underserved communities and adapt teaching to their needs,” was one example I saw. Translated, you have to be willing to do community service for minorities and to tailor your course to the sensibilities of ethnic activists. You will probably be ‘encouraged” to teach night classes at a local community center, or to “volunteer” in after-school programs for “underachieving students.”

              I’m all for volunteering. I loath being voluntold to do something as a condition of employment.

  12. “It was a lily white and, if I had to guess, upper middle class young man who took it upon himself to tell me I should be grateful to Antifa for saving me from vile speech.”

    Funny how rarely such twerps advise you just what form your gratitude ought take.

    Were it not so bleedin’ sad it would also be funny what they consider to be (and not be) “vile” language.

    For some reason this all reminds me of Lenny Bruce’s routine …

    Gratitude does not always take the form expected; sometimes it is an unnatural act.

    1. Should have asked him what kind of underwear he was wearing. And then told him you can’t accept help from anyone wearing that style and color.

      Confuses the hell out them.

    2. Fond nostalgia of a Charlotte theater that, in addition to classics and art movies, showed shorts like this and “Godzilla Vs. Bambi.”

        1. It’s interesting to be with a group, and notice which ones are crying over Bambi and which are cheering Godzilla…

              1. “He picks up a bus and he throws it back down
                As he wades through the buildings toward the center of town

                Oh no, they say he’s got to go
                Go, go Godzilla!
                Oh no, there goes Tok-y-o!
                Go, go Godzilla!”

                – Blue Oyster Cult

  13. Historically speaking the proper response to a knight is a bodkin point on a clothyard shaft fired from a good English yew longbow. Did quite well at a little St. Crispin’s Day party at Agincourt years back as I recall.

  14. You know, there are a number of organizations that in order to meet their ideals as members, you’re supposed to either be a White Knight, aspire to being a White Knight, or currently be in training to be one. The Masons, most fraternal orders, heck even Boy Scouts until they dropped the “morally straight”, all partake of White Knightism. What’s scary is that most of your White Supremacy organizations view themselves as literally White Knights; and as you note, far too many of these liberal progressive types do also.

    I’m not a White Knight. I’m not the Black Knight, or a Sith either. If anything, I’m a Grey Jedi, a shade of purple-grey wizard, the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none. I’m your fully capable grizzled senior NCO, not a rank ignorant recruit, nor the driven commissioned officer. That’s probably why I’m not a member of most organizations with a plethora of principles the require their members to follow. If someone asks me for help, I’ll consider the circumstances, the person, and my capabilities and responsibilities and usually jump in then, although on occasion I’ll apologize and say no. but I’m not going to make it my life’s work to run around righting what I perceive to be all the wrongs of the world.

    I will however, spend considerable time eliminating the wrongs done TO me by the world, or those portions thereof that bear malice toward me and mine. And I’m just persnickety enough to put my foot on the butt of any knight in shining armor who rudely jumps in front of me to save me from the dragon I’m talking to, and propel him into being said dragon’s next snack.

      1. Only David Gerrold would write a book just to get that pun in.
        Fortunately the rest was enjoyable enough to justify it 🙂

    2. As a Scout, I’d note that we’re supposed to make sure that what we do is actually helpful and would be of benefit to the entity we’re helping. But yes, that mentality is very easy to turn to meddling.

    4. Sometimes, just sometimes, folks need help and they don’t know it, won’t admit it or don’t even think of asking for it. In situations like that, occasionally being a White Knight as defined could be a good thing – provided the White Knight listens where appropriate. When my last remaining grandparent insists she doesn’t need an arm just then, sometimes I listen, other times I just continue to offer, and occasionally I insist (usually with the line that if she falls while with me, I’d never hear the end of it from my mom)…

      More generally, I had enough Boy Scout time and training (back when moral was part of the code) to hope I’ll do the right thing – whatever the right thing is for those people provided I can do so consistent with my own values. Maybe that is being a knight, not a White Knight — but I’d far rather not discourage men from becoming a knight for fear they would end up as a White Knight.

  16. This post has sent me down all sorts of rabbit trails of quandaries, none of them directly related to the post itself. Yes, I get the post, and don’t argue with it, and one of the rabbit trails was implied consent, something that comes up in rescue work called implied consent and may vary from state to state (comes up in our utility CPR recertifications). Implied consent is when someone is unable to respond, such as unconscious following a heart attack.

    No, I’m not saying it’s applicable to the post and it’s not> an argument; it’s nothing more than a rabbit trail.

    It is making me think about all forms of assistance, and, coming from a rural environment where such was expected in genuine emergencies, it also has me going along cultural lines. I don’t know, and I’m not arguing anything. Just thinking about it.

    When someone mentioned the Peace Corp, it reminded me of a story told by a missionary. He was in an African country, IIRC, where millet was a common crop. Some helpful soul with the US government gave him some high yield millet seed that was supposed to be a benefit. It was shorter, so there was more energy placed in seed production and there wasn’t as much waste. The missionary planted the millet thinking it was best to show by doing, and the millet did produce high yields, as claimed.

    It also became the subject of local jokes. The point missed by the helpful soul in the US government was that they manually harvested millet. That made short stalked millet a pain. They also used the plant itself as fodder, so short stalked millet meant less feed. Had someone bothered to ask what was needed, the missionary never would have planted the millet in the first place. Which, IIRC, was sort of his point, knowing the needs of people in order to minister to them.

    Another rabbit trail was a WIP, which centers around, well, not so much white knights as dingy knights and a damsel in distress who really needs help. But they do ask first.

    1. You’ve done a great job of summing up my issues with letting government provide any ‘help’. I got my first taste of how ‘helpful’ government involvement was back in the 80’s when I was applying to go to college (the 1st time).

      My parents made just enough money that I didn’t qualify for any assistance. However they didn’t actually make enough money to afford to send me to anything beyond the small local college in town.

      I’ve seen little that has lead me to trust that Government will come up with even a working or affordable solution.

  17. They claim to be the defenders of minorities, but watch how fast their inner racist shows when anyone with too much melanin dares to step out of the mental plantation.

    1. It’s always interesting how fast racial slurs come out at that point and how little backlash there is for the culprit. It’s almost like there is a vicious double-standard at play. . .

    3. Pretty much. It’s amazing the amount of nasty words a prog will employ against an “oppressed” person who doesn’t appreciate the prog’s “helpful” guidance.

      1. As with the Hugo a-holes, they have proven their willingness to destroy any institution which does not recognize their superiority. Power To The (Right) People! has long been their motto.

        Bend the knee or bend the neck (on the chopping block) — no other options are offered.

  19. Sarah, I have to disagree that “They most of all want to claim victimhood.”

    IMO, I think that most of all, they want that shivery, excited feeling / headrush of self-righteousness. That feeling that – like some make-believe Hollywood hero – they’re in some kind of desperate struggle against powerful, horrific, deadly enemies.
    I think that’s one of the drivers of the proggies constant portrayal of the right as uncaring, inhuman, actually evil, and so on. They’re building up the stature of their enemy so that by ‘defeating him’, they thereby raise the “glory” of their own deeds.
    Effectively, it’s all done so that they can be the hero in their own minds – rather than having to accept the reality of being small-minded, mean-spirited, people with banal little lives that don’t matter in the slightest.

    Add in the feeling that they’re safe from any/all forms of physical retribution via the internet, and you have a recipe for some markedly obnoxious behaviors all in service to making them feel good about themselves…

    And FWIW, I think you have nicely described the difference between wanting to help because it’s the compassionate / right thing to do, versus white-knighting (AKA some nasty clot of virtue-signaling and attempts at building their self-esteem…)

    Not going to claim it’s the end all/be all answer to why we get white knights and why they do what they do, but I’d argue it over a beer with friends…

  20. The difference between real knights and ‘white knights’. Real knights do. White Knights pretend to do.

    I’m put in mind of a story from a young lady from Africa, whom I met in basic training. She came to the country as a refugee. Her village had been beset by someone. She never did say exactly who. But it was bad enough that they were running for their lives while their village burned behind them the bad guys, whoever they were, in hot pursuit. They had enough lead time that they weren’t just gunned down but the bad guys were gaining, you see, they had all the villages children with them. Everyone who could run, was. Everyone who was carrying a child who couldn’t run (or run well enough), was. This meant they were slower than their pursuers. She never said who stayed behind buying them time. She just said that when the bad guys were gaining, and they started getting shot at again someone in an American army uniform popped up out of the grass and started shooting the bad guys then popped back down in the grass. Every time the bad guys would start shooting at them again, a guy or two in American Army uniforms would pop out of the grass and start shooting. They got away. She never discovered who, exactly those men were. Just that they were Americans.

    This is what the “Wight Knights” are trying to fake.

    2. I get the feeling some special forces team was in the area with orders to observe and they modified their orders a bit.

      1. You know how it is; sometimes you do passive observation, sometimes you do active. Proper observation requires you see how they react, doesn’t it?

        1. That or their OPs just happened to be in the line of retreat of the refugees and they had permission to fire upon threats to break contact. 🙂

  21. David Eddings was (still is, but he’s dead) a guilty pleasure of mine. Not a great writer, nor a particularly original storyteller, but he was consistently amusing.

    One of his supporting characters was a self-appointed ‘revolutionary’ who went about “Wronging rights, depressing the oppressed, and generally having thoroughly good time”

    I think of that often when the SJWs go on a tear.

    1. Which book was that? I’ve read the Belgariad multiple times and I can’t think of a character like that so much be one of his others.

        1. Thank you! Looks like I’ll have to bite the bullet and get the paper edition. Sadly not much of his work seems to have gone digital.

    2. That selfsame character is the literary idiot composing ‘ode to blue’ that reminded me of the literary pretensions of certain trolls here, except Eddings’ example was capable of stringing sentences together that made some sense.

      I got the inkling later on that the character was Eddings’ mockery of the entire ‘literary’ pretentiousness that was getting rather popular at the time, and of the ‘university revolutionary.’

      I love his stuff, and am trying to track down hardcovers of the Belgariad and Malloreon simply because my paperbacks have fallen apart from re-reads (and I’m introducing my son to them.)

      1. The same for my wife. She has read and reread Eddings fantasy so many times that I’ll just buy her new paperbacks, whether the last one has fallen apart or not.
        Of course, she’s constantly giving them away to friends as well. “First taste is free.” And the second and possibly the third. You get the idea.

  23. “She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can tell the others by their hunted expression.”
    -C. S. Lewis

    I can’t hunt it down, but I believe he also wrote a tombstone inscription along these lines:
    Erected by the sorrowing brothers of Martha Fay
    She lived he life for others; now she has peace.
    And so have they.

    1. Erected by her sorrowing brothers
      In memory of Martha Clay.
      Here lies one who lived for others.
      Now she has peace. And so have they.

  24. “The expression behind the great, shining helm of the white knight is a smirk of superiority.”

    Unjustified superiority fueled by unearned resentment in the cause of unjustified retribution with the hopes that they’ll be eaten last.

  25. > But most such offenders are in fact lily white and convinced of their own special wonderfulness. It was a lily white and, if I had to guess, upper middle class young man who
    Yup. Always from the outside. Always usurpation.
    In first person speech things would necessarily sound very differently. Besides, they’d have to share chairs and soap boxes.

    > They most of all want to claim victimhood. They think America and non-minorities are somehow evil. And the only way they can wash off that evil
    No, that’s incidental. If they really thought this, these teams won’t almost invariably consist of a small crowd that has nothing to do with the “protected” party, plus 1-2 tokens. Like the Marvel Milkshake club.
    The same deal was with “proletariat”: it surely needs protection from evil exploiters, but also guidance of… someone else, enlightened enough to tell it what it needs.
    The other talking points in package vary as opportunism commands, since they are bells and whistles, or at most specific pretexts for usurpation.

  26. Actual news headline on a story about The Beatles in my local freebie newspaper: “Remember When Young White Guys Used to Say ‘All You Need is Love?'”

    I got nothin’.

    2. William Morris wrote a poem “Love Is Enough.”

      Someone gave it a two word review: “It isn’t.”

  27. I just absolutely love these upper middle class kids still living off of mommy and daddy’s money (and often, mommy and daddy are my age or a few years older) tell me me i am racist, sexist and homophobic and have ‘white privilege’ as they drive better cars than me (thanks to mommy and daddy) live in better housing have newer… everything…

    ok, i was going to keep ranting but y’all get the point. i hate anyone passing judgement on anyone else and these fools are a prime example.

    1. What you have to remember is that “White Privilege” is weaponized “White Liberal Guilt.”

  29. Hmmmmmmm. Interesting article by some libertarian chick. Somebody ought to link to it. But I won’t. I won’t. The Hell I won’t:

    Strange Days In America
    By Sarah Hoyt
    So, about the last week….

    Yeah, I saw what you just did. You lowered your head and pinched the bridge of your nose. Yeah. I know. I get it too. Though in my case we’ve come to downing Vitamin I by the fistful and to being too angry to write about what infuriates me for PJMedia. No, seriously.

    Again, let’s keep the country and its size in perspective. Not just geographical size, which frankly, unless you’ve driven it, you probably haven’t internalized. I have driven about a fourth of it once. I don’t think it’s possible even for those Americans born and raised here who aren’t long distance truckers to keep that in mind. We’re VAST. It’s harder when the news creates the illusion that the other side of the country is right here, in our laps.

    Then let’s keep the population in perspective. Allegedly there are three hundred million of us. There probably are. Yeah, they’ve been making up “uncountables” in the big cities for decades, but that’s just vote rigging, same as it ever was, and is probably balanced by all the people in the boonies who refuse to give their info to the census.

    I read a number yesterday, and I’m not sure how it was derived, but I’m going to pass it on for what it’s worth. Officials estimate there are 20k white supremacists in the US. Btw, because this term has been watered down and in the last few days anyone who isn’t a fan of Antifa has been called a Nazi and a white supremacist, including myself and half a dozen JEWISH, OBSERVANT friends: A white supremacist is someone who believes not just that whites are superior, but that whites should be in charge/have more legal rights than other races. They also usually define white very narrowly as “Northern European”.

    People who simply believe that people with the least melanin are the bestest people in the world are common variety racists, no different from those who believe the black race is the bestest.

    Then there are people who believe whites are as good as anyone else, aka, sane.

    [END EXCERPT]

    1. I’m slow. I’ve just noticed that Charlottesville seems to have directly implicated the Clinton machine in these riots for the first time. Which means that the simularities to Tulsa, 1921 and Elaine, 1919 are no longer as defendable as coincidences.

    2. I’m slow. I’ve just noticed that Charlottesville seems to have directly implicated the Clinton machine in these riots for the first time. Which means that the similarities to Tulsa, 1921 and Elaine, 1919 are no longer as defendable as coincidences.

      1. Do I believe the Riot was a Democrat-run false flag operation? No. I have no evidence to make that connection. Do I believe it could have been? I have ample cause to suspect it might be.

        It is possible that such stench may merely mean the baby has passed gas, but it is prudent to check the nappy all the same.

        1. Leslie Fish, who’s far more of a professional at this than anyone else I know, had a serious list of reasons why she thought it might have been on her Facebook page…. which is what got her listed as a Nazi-lover…..

          Yes: Jewish Wobbly Anarchist = Nazi.

          Yet another in the steadily growing pile of reasons why a civil society can’t live with these people.

    3. Love the John Wayne reference.
      And I have driven from Southern California to Florida. It’s a beautiful drive. Also from Phoenix to Indiana, with additional doglegs to Los Angeles and D.C.
      And I’ve pulled over to talk to people along the way. You wanna talk about diversity? That’s diversity! Not this pap the progressives are trying to push.
      Too often, it feels like real people are being left out of the conversation.
      Of course, real people are just trying to get by, without the time to engage much.

    2. Well, someone vandalized the statue of St. Jean d’ Arc in New Orleans, so apparently no Dixie Chick, or French Chick, is safe.

  31. Anyone else first read Sarah’s title and start hearing Tina Turner’s “We Don’t Need Another Hero” on their mental stereo?

    2. That song always annoyed me.

      “All the children say,
      We don’t need another hero,”

      As far as I was concerned they weren’t in a position to be real picky. Maybe Max Rockatansky wasn’t Superman, but I didn’t see Superman dropping in to help.

      “Looking for something we can rely on
      There’s got to be something better out there.”
      ..
      Yeah, well, it doesn’t sound like you’re all *that* unhappy with your lot, then…

      “We don’t need another hero…”

      Yeah, yeah, I got that already. I was just passing through anyway.

  32. Sarah, if you ever need a for-real white knight, I and a bunch of my friends and family (people who’ve met you at Libertycon) who would be more than happy to volunteer! Dragons slain by request, only.

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