This morning Paul K. sent me an email with this link and the following comment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance
What grabbed me as I read this is the relevance to the culture of violent riots. Portland in particular is working very hard to serve as a test case for this phenomenon, normalizing political deviance for months on end.
In a follow-up discussion in the thread with others Jacob F. pointed out:
It’s similar to the idea of the Overton Window. Changing the framing of what is acceptable by mainstream culture.
This was incredibly timely because last night I ran across an interview with the author of the book In Defense of Looting. Here are some quotes from that article (emphasis added):
When I use the word looting, I mean the mass expropriation of property, mass shoplifting during a moment of upheaval or riot. That’s the thing I’m defending. I’m not defending any situation in which property is stolen by force. It’s not a home invasion, either. It’s about a certain kind of action that’s taken during protests and riots.
…
It gets people what they need for free immediately, which means that they are capable of living and reproducing their lives without having to rely on jobs or a wage—which, during COVID times, is widely unreliable or, particularly in these communities is often not available, or it comes at great risk. That’s looting’s most basic tactical power as a political mode of action.
It also attacks the very way in which food and things are distributed. It attacks the idea of property, and it attacks the idea that in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss, in order to buy things that people just like them somewhere else in the world had to make under the same conditions. It points to the way in which that’s unjust. And the reason that the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories. So you get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free.
…
Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police. It gets to the very root of the way those three things are interconnected. And also it provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine a world that could be. And I think that’s a part of it that doesn’t really get talked about—that riots and looting are experienced as sort of joyous and liberatory.
…
We have to be willing to do things that scare us and that we wouldn’t do in normal, “peaceful” times, because we need to get free.
“Without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free.” Just as Lyle has frequently said something to the effect of, “They seek the freedom to do wrong.” And Solzhenitsyn had things to say that align closely with this. And even more directly he wrote of how the thieves “were allies in the building of communism”.
Wow! Just wow! How can the agenda of this crowd be made any more clear? How can it be demonstrated to be more evil? Do people need to wait for the Gulags and death camps?
Normalization of deviance is right.
Isn’t the author of this book transgendered as well as economically transgressive? I think I’ve seen a photo of him/her/it/zim/xer/es over on The Other McCaine website.
And, having read the excerpts you kindly included above, I conclude that I WILL have to wear brown shoe polish if I am to avail myself of these ideas that are consistent with my economic station in life, rather than my skin color.
Sheesh!
At least the times are smoking these people out of their disguises.
We just have to remember who they are when the great reckoning comes for us all.
“We have to be willing to do things that scare us and that we wouldn’t do in normal, “peaceful” times, because we need to get free.”
She/he/It is really not going to enjoy what some of us are scared to do, that we wouldn’t do in normal times, but will do in order to “get free” of their fellow travlers.
Thanks Randy. Your right, no one is going to enjoy the way we get free.
The ignorant bitches mommies never told them? Nothing free was worth having.
How very true. I was thinking exactly the same thing, as I look over in the corner at my suppressed carbine.
I am all in for expropriating Bezos. Much more lucrative than looting a convenience store. Besides, karma.
It’s a form of collective insanity. And, like any disease, it’s spreading.
And, in mentioning a departure from normal times;
Who will be our Pinochet?
Jeff B.
How moronic to write such a thing. See what happens when we take bullies out of schools? I mean how many times do you get beat up and your lunch money stolen before you realize violence and theft are not a good thing?
So look who wants to be bullies now?
I got two words for the Maoist snowflakes bitches. Kenosha Kid!
Nothing more than Marxist propaganda. While propaganda may be laughably wrong to intelligent, educated people, it will be welcomed by people who are not as intelligent, or educated, who are looking for nothing more than an excuse to do whatever they want. In that sense, it’s perfectly reasonable.
It’s also a great target indicator. Anyone who agrees with it has declared themselves an enemy of Western Civilization and the rule of law; act accordingly.
“without state oppression we can have things for free”.
For which definition of “free”?
1. Without spending money? Perhaps; sufficiently primitive societies do not have such a thing as “money”.
2. Without either (a) personal effort or (b) exchange of something of value with another person who has the thing you want? Um, not a chance. Not in any society. Consider Robinson Crusoe, who certainly did not have a state to contend with, and he certainly did not have to spend “money” to get things. But he most definitely had to spend labor and brainpower.
Yeah, I’m laughing at the thought of these nitwits even understanding which end of a carrot comes out of the ground, or how to gut a deer (assuming they know what a deer is.). Also, in the primitive societies she/it/what envisions, I’m pretty sure they aren’t foraging around for Saks 5th Ave purses, Samsung flat screens, and Nike shoes.
This level of personally chosen insanity is beyond comprehension! How is it possible that anyone cannot see the wholesale fallacy in such reasoning. Does milk, eggs and bread (or for that matter, big screen TVs and Nike shoes) spontaneously generate inside the grocery stores? Me thinks it is time to return for a season to the “no work, no eat” paradigm. It will quickly thin out this herd of mental and emotional misfits. Farmer’s Almanac is predicting an unusually cold and snowy winter this year for North America. If the economy really tanks, we may find out pretty quickly how nature can help restore a rational balance.
here is the new left in it’s unwitting ‘brilliance’:
first property; then personal safety…then life.
Not on my watch.