We Were Socialists Once… and Young

The Deplorable Wing of the Internet — which is where I usually hang out — has been convulsing itself with mirth for the past couple of days over the shenanigans at the Democratic Socialists of America convention that was held last weekend in Atlanta.

If you watch enough footage from the event, it becomes clear that there is only one commandment in the Socialist catechism: “Thou shalt not trigger a comrade.” All other policies are simply elaborations on, extensions of, and footnotes to this woke mantra. Social justice stuff is what doesn’t trigger them, so that’s what they do. Anything that runs counter to it triggers the comrades to varying degrees, making them hightail it to their safe spaces to recover their composure.

It’s not surprising that the non-canonical use of gendered pronouns was a central preoccupation of the convention. See this Fox News report for more on this important topic.

Below are three videos with highlights and commentary on last weekend’s events in Atlanta. The first includes a selection of brief excerpts that provide an overview of what the policy wonks at the DSA consider really, really important:

The second clip contains an exhortation by a moderator about triggering, and how not to do it. Notice that just before the end he inadvertently uses the word “trump”, and then realizes the gravity of his error. That must have been a Category 5 triggering event for his audience:

Finally, watch this amusing discussion between Tucker Carlson and Mark Steyn about the DSA convention:

15 thoughts on “We Were Socialists Once… and Young

  1. Socialists are triggered by reality. Always. And. Every. Single. Time. What distinguishes them from normal people is that they never learn from these signals until they hit their final wall. If you let them, they take the entire boat down with them.

    There I thought the English language was largely immune to at least their gender-bending nonsense due to its unified article “the”, whereas in most other languages like German, French etc. the grammatical gender of every noun is in your face all the time and often doesn’t reflect reality or current political fashion. The moon is male in German, female in French and living (utrum) in Swedish. So there. After two or three millennia of their evolution and proof of being suitable codes of communication with all their quirks, these idiots come along. I’m just waiting for them to discover that gravity always ever pulls in one direction.

    What is a “point of personal privilege” anyways? I don’t understand the term. (Rhethorical question, please, I’m sure someone wrute a lengthy Wikipedia page about it and I could look it up. I don’t even want to.)

    • Arabic, which is taught in German and French schools today, is also very gender specific. Even worse than that: if there is a group of females and only one male between them, you respect the single male and use masculine pronoun to refer to the group. A “point of privilege” hidden to SJW. Linda Sarsour could tell them. A team consisting Linda Sarsour, feminists and SJWs should take the responsibility to make appropriate gender nonspecific changes to that language if they really want to do something useful for humanity.

  2. Mark Steyn is the best and I LOVE the term “Trust-afarians”. Just too perfect for these clowns at the meeting. The only problem is, as the Baron says, that there is a very real danger that these ignorant, insane young fools may someday be running things in our wonderful Country.

    Just look at Sandra AOC Cortez for example. It wasn’t too long ago that there was zero chance of anyone taking her seriously as she is just too stupid for words. But here she is-thanks to the Demon Rat party and their Satanic Masters in the main stream Media, sitting in Congress on a very important committee. How did this ever happen?

    Our children have been taken from us at an early age, now at infancy, to be indoctrinated by the State and Big Government in State controlled schools and daycare centers. My spouse and I are both strong conservatives, yet our adult children (who are wonderful people otherwise) are blathering liberal Dems. Not as bad as the young Social-Fascists in the video, but still, way too liberal for our taste.

    People say they’re worried that Trump will start a civil war in the USA. I have news for them- this Country is already at war and has been for some time. It couldn’t be clearer but now the Commie Leftists are blatant, out in the open with their hatred for the Conservative/Right/ Deplorables. There is already violence in the streets.

    It is a miracle that President Trump managed to overcome all that he did and how he has been able to survive the daily onslaught that he is subjected to. He is by far the best President we’ve had in many, many years and the only hope we have to stopping the destructive insanity that is being perpetrated by the Left/ Dems.

  3. I guess the most telling moment was when the master of ceremonies told the delegates to report it to a marshal if they saw another delegate talking to any police.

    So, we know already where these “Democratic” socialists are going to go: Stasi secret police, children informing on their parents, wives informing on their husbands, everyone informing on everyone else. One can only imagine the punishments in store for those people talking to the “wrong” people.

    The “Democratic” Socialists, Bernie and AOC especially, are simply Stalinists in drag. Bernie tries to keep a lid on the fact he is an admirer of the Russian KGB and its methods of suppression. I don’t believe AOC goes to any trouble to maintain deniability. She’s quite openly totalitarian and openly supports the police state.

    I’m reminded of a story of when the walls came down from East Germany, the government became free, and the Stasi records were opened. At least one wife found out her husband had been informing on her. Interestingly enough, she stayed with him. I guess life with a committed leftist is pretty much the same whether or not they are openly informing against you. You can’t talk to leftists anyway, so why give up having someone to pick up the groceries or shovel the sidewalk?

    • Ronald – If I may interrupt to pick up our conversation about mice, men and natural selection…

      I think I have a partial explanation for the current morbid state of Western populations which is analogous to your one about the accumulation of harmful genetic adaptations. It does involve natural selection but applies to culture not biology and memes (Dawkins’ kind not pictures with captions) rather than genes, and perhaps it helps to account for our transformation from heroic to effete in just three generations.

      I recently watched a TV programme about birds of paradise. What is it about their habitat that allows the evolutionary luxury of their decidedly non-aerodynamic plumage to survive over time? Apparently there are two factors which have allowed for such excess, an abundance of easy food and a lack of predators.

      It occurred to me that we in the West have also enjoyed those two factors for the last three generations allowing exotic and maladaptive memes to proliferate in our culture….postcolonial guilt, human rights, pathological altruism, diversity, globalism, Islamophobia etc etc. For sure they are encouraged by those who wish to destroy Western civilisation but they wouldn’t be given time of day in more challenging environments.

      To compare two Western countries:

      Sweden, the self-styled humanitarian superpower, in the safest part of the world, seems to be furthest along the path to being subsumed by a more agressive culture. Perhaps this is because the Swedes have enjoyed the two factors mentioned above for even longer than everyone else, having avoided WWII and therefore collected more maladaptive memes, or at least ingested them more thoroughly. Here are Swedish men displaying symptoms of one such meme:


      On the other hand Israel, in one of the most dangerous parts of the world, surrounded by genocidal enemies for the last 70 years, seems as willing and able to defend itself as the Allies were in 1942. Perhaps this is because in their situation they cannot afford to indulge the self-destructive memes that have so enfeebled the rest of the West.

      Perhaps “decadence” is just another name for the accumulation of these memes which look great for display but which render the population concerned unfit to fight off predators should they ever need to do so.

      One melancholy implication of this view, if correct, is that we should never expect to enjoy a steady state of peaceful contentment without periodic wars to shake out harmful memes.

      What do you think?

      • I agree completely. I would add, that frontiers are also great sorters of harmful memes in both men and women. Stupid people and stupid ideologies do not survive long on the frontier. We have not had a real war or any remaining frontiers to depart to in many generations.

        If cheap access to space ever becomes a reality, there will be a short window in which everyone who is unhappy with life in the collective, will depart for a life of extreme danger, hard work, and freedom among the stars. There, one will not find africans, muslims, socialists, rapists, or self loathing white apologists amongst the group that migrates off-planet. Life will be too tough and dangerous for such types, and death as close as the nearest airlock and easily found for those who cause trouble.

        After several generations of such separation, those who leave earth and those who stay behind will be two distinct species physically, mentally, and in outlook. It will be looked at in hindsight as the Great Sorting, and each successive outmigration to colonize first the planets and asteroid belt, the Oort and Kuiper Belts, the interstellar distances between the stars, and then the stars themselves, will result in a further sorting and refining of humankind.

        If I only had a lifetime of ten thousand years to see it all…

        • “Great Sorting” sounds like Heinlein, but I can’t help thinking of the “sorting hat” in “Harry Potter”!

      • For ECAW

        It is extremely satisfying to be carrying on a debate with you. We don’t agree in ideas, but we agree in civil discourse.

        You’re proposing a course of cultural evolution, rather than genetic. Let me point out at the outset that “Moon is a harsh Mistress” says he agrees with you, but in fact talks about the exact opposite. Moon describes an environmental stress, harsh outer space, where the weak and non-productive cannot survive. This is individual selection on a genetic level.

        Your argument is that it is cultural memes that evolve and affect the ability of a society to protect itself. You give the example of Sweden, which didn’t fight in World War II. My first thought is to present England, France, Germany, and Holland. All of these countries did fight in World War II and all have opened themselves up to Islamic invasion through internal migration policy. So, the participation in wars does not necessarily guarantee the determination of a culture to protect itself.

        In fact, Dymphna pointed out in one of her articles on this site, that modern war was actually dysgenic. In other words, modern war tends to lower the IQ and fitness of the population. Consider that only fit men are selected for military induction, and the fittest become officers. The casualty rate for officers is higher than enlisted men, as officers are expected to lead charges. Edward Dutton, who runs the “Jolly Heretic” YouTube site (until he gets deplatformed) mentioned that British military units at the beginning of World War II tested with higher IQ scores than they did at the end. The reason was that the officers were more systematically killed.

        I would argue that large governments are more prone to dysfunction than smaller ones. The issue is debated thoroughly in the anti-Federalist Papers, as well as in the Jefferson versus Hamilton and Lincoln debates prior to and during the Civil War.

        By the way, I don’t think a future of constant struggle is necessarily a bad future. Nature itself can be pretty horrible. Dutton and his colleage Woodley, in their book
        detail the very high rate of infant death and criminal executions in the Britain prior to the onset of the industrial revolution.

        But, without going into too much detail here, it seems possible to maintain the quality of a population through limiting breeding to genetically fit individuals. The non-fit individuals don’t have to die a horrible death; they just need to not have children.

        As far as maintaining survival memes, in your term my references above imply that the size and responsiveness of governments have a lot to do with that. The Civil War was really a test of a true confederation of independent states versus a massive, national power, and the North won that by force of arms.

        • Thank you for your reply Ronald.

          I do not deny the effect of genetic natural selection. For animals that’s all there is but for humans there is also culture and meme competition which I find a plausible way of looking at massive changes in populations which happen in the blink of an eye in genetic evolutionary timespans. How can we account for Western populations’ transformation from heroic to effete (which I think you do not dispute) in just three generations?

          Firstly, individual wars may result in a lowering of IQ because of the “better men lost” aspect you cite. But this is surely only temporary. Regression to the mean will kick in and the staus quo will reassert itself. If this was not so then Swedes should have a higher average IQ than Britons since (as I now find out) Sweden has not been involved in warfare since Napoleonic times whereas Britain never lets a decade go by without a decent war, and this has been going on forever. Swedish and British IQ levels are on a level I believe so I discount any dysgenic effect of war as an explanation of what has happened to us in the last 75 years.

          Secondly you say this:


          My point was that we have had 75 years of easy times since WWII which allowed harmful memes to accumulate in the cultures of the countries you mention but I think Sweden supports my view. The Swedes have had easy times for the last 200 years and their culture is quite a lot more enfeebled than the others and even closer to cultural (and demographic) suicide. The Baron has said elsewhere that after studying Sweden for years he simply cannot understand Swedes. Perhaps this is the key to unlock the mystery.

          Thirdly, I would tend to agree that large governments are more prone to being dysfunctional than small ones. The EU is a prime example. We don’t stand a chance of restoring sanity until it implodes and the individual member states remember what their borders are for. Fortunately I am sure this will happen after Britain leaves and they find they can’t do without one of the few net contributors.

          Lastly, I know nothing at all about the US Civil War and its participants and their debates so I won’t comment on that.

          By the way, why do Americans say England when they mean Britain?

          • Because that’s what it was called when we became a colony. It wasn’t “Britain” until much later; you probably know the exact date. Calling it “England” is an old, old American habit, predating that change.

            The language bifurcated in the mid-17th century. That’s why so many terms for technological innovations are different in Brit and Yank; the vocabularies for everything that was invented after 1650 developed in parallel. Some terms were borrowed; others not.

            The same goes for items of clothing, actually.

          • And a bad habit, I am sure you will agree, just as it would be if Britons referred to America as it was known in the 17th century, ie “the colonies”.

          • But that’s what my Brit friends call it: “the colonies”. And they call us “colonists”!


    “If you do see someone talking to [their] cops, let the marshals [our cops] know.”

    Oh, dear. You can’t make this stuff up.

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