John Hinderaker finds it hilarious that community of fashion bouzhie poseurs will root enthusiastically for the Revolution, not realizing in the least that it’s coming for them, too, in the end.
There is nothing good about rioting, looting and burning, but these evils sometimes provide clarifying moments. Such as when progressives realize that the looters are coming for them, too. It shouldn’t be a news flash, but progressives are often surprised to learn that their support for left-wing causes, including criminal activity, doesn’t accord them any special status.
A case in point, from North Carolina’s Post Millenial: “Editor of progressive newspaper celebrated protestors—then they stormed and trashed her office.†The editor is named Leigh Tauss. She initially cheered on anti-police protesters.
53-year-old short, balding Alan Stanley tricked twenty-odd-years-younger Emma Perrier into an on-line romantic relationship by “catfishing,” i.e. presenting a false photo (a picture of a young, hunky Turkish model) and a false identity on an Internet matchmaking app called Zoosk.
Pathetic and despicable? Perhaps, but oddly enough, the old deceiver’s trick led to a happy ending (though not actually the one the reader is likely to expect).
Emma Perrier spent the summer of 2015 mending a broken heart, after a recent breakup. By September, the restaurant manager had grown tired of watching The Notebook alone in her apartment in Twickenham, a leafy suburb southwest of London, and decided it was time to get back out there. Despite the horror stories she’d heard about online dating, Emma, 33, downloaded a matchmaking app called Zoosk. The second “o†in the Zoosk logo looks like a diamond engagement ring, which suggested that its 38 million members were seeking more than the one-night stands offered by apps like Tinder.
To hear more feature stories, see our full list or get the Audm iPhone app.
She snapped the three selfies the app required to “verify her identity.†Emma, who is from a volcanic city near the French Alps, not far from the source of Perrier mineral water, is petite, and brunette. She found it difficult to meet men, especially as she avoided pubs and nightclubs, and worked such long hours at a coffee shop in the city’s financial district that she met only stockbrokers, who were mostly looking for cappuccinos, not love. …
As soon as her dating profile went live, Emma’s phone started to bleep and whistle with interest from strangers. The app allowed her to gaze at a vast assortment of suitors like cakes in a coffee-shop window, but not interact with them until she subscribed. That evening, a private message arrived in her inbox. It was from a dark-haired Italian named Ronaldo “Ronnie†Scicluna, who looked to Emma like a high-school crush. …
Ronnie seemed exciting, so she paid the £25 ($34) subscription to Zoosk.
Ronnie’s message materialized. It said: “You look beautiful.â€
A rally followed. Emma discovered that she and Ronnie were two lonely Europeans working blue-collar jobs in England. Charming Ronnie attempted a little French, but when Emma wrote to him in Italian, she was surprised that he didn’t speak it. His mother was English, Ronnie explained, his Italian father spoke English too, “except when he swears.â€
Their conversation moved from Zoosk onto WhatsApp, a free messaging app. Each morning on the train to work, Emma sat glued to her iPhone. She wondered how a guy like him was interested in her. “I’m very natural,†Emma said. “I mean, I’m nothing. I’m very simple you know … so I was flattered.†In her favorite photograph, Ronnie wore a leather jacket that made him look like a pop star. As a teenager, Emma had obsessed over the British boy band Take That. But Ronnie was the opposite of a celebrity; he was down-to-earth.
“You could easily have picked someone else,†Ronnie told her one day.
“No. You’re the only one I wanted to talk to … I paid because of you,†she replied.
“As soon as I saw your picture I wanted you,†he wrote.
“Makes me happy to know that,†Emma replied.
When four red heart emojis appeared on her screen, Emma was thrilled. Unlike her ex-boyfriend, Ronnie seemed mature and attentive. Ronnie was easy on the eyes, funny, and caring, but there was one problem: He did not exist.
Ronaldo Scicluna was a fictional character created by Alan Stanley, a short, balding, 53-year-old shop fitter—a decorator of retail stores. Alan lived alone in Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. Like one of the Bard’s shape-shifting characters, Alan used a disguise to fool women into romance, and to prevent himself from getting hurt. His alter ego “Ronnie†was a ladies’ man, charming, and attractive—everything Alan was not.
Yale students confront Silliman College Master Nicholas Christakis
Victor Davis Hanson tends to chuckle when he sees the Revolution devouring its own.
The West is ablaze with protests not just because of the failure of the Left in the cities, on campuses, and across Europe to offer a workable paradigm, but also because of the Left’s canonic assurances that it could and would.
Deans and mayors promised utopia. When it did not arrive, the only concession they had left was more failed efforts to achieve the unachievable. People turn on their own more violently than they turn on others, as if a liberal, paternal dean should be able to snap his fingers and make liberal students happy. When he so promises, his ensuing failure only makes things worse.
All the banned micro-aggressions, all the safe spaces, all the trigger warnings, and all the fired deans will not make today’s postmodern students happy, much less appreciative, any more than would mandating authentic ethnic cooks and more year-round hot-tubs. Like addicts, they believe one more cheap fix from a compliant supplier will finally do the trick. Don’t expect the addict to show gratitude to his dealer.
Leftist revolutionaries cannot be satisfied, because they have long ago been given all they asked for, and are now rebelling for the idea of rebelling against something, even if it is reduced to a micro-aggression or founded on a myth like “Hands up, don’t shoot.†Millions of inner-city youths are as furious as are elite students. They got the liberal city and the liberal university they wanted — only to rage that human nature is not liberal and that contentment cannot be found through mirror-image government, but only within themselves. How can you rebel against that age-old truth?
Obama Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew announced on Tuesday that in order “to honor our past and express our values” in 2020 in the course of celebrating the 19th Amendment (which gave women the right to vote) the Treasury Department is planning to demote Alexander Hamilton to a bit part on the ten dollar bill he has occupied for many years, replacing his central portrait with the image of some woman.
————————-
Well, if Jack Lew really wants to know exactly which values Americans really desire to express, Twitter makes it perfectly clear that Irony and Sarcasm come at the top of the list. The winner is none other than Caitlyn Jenner.
The German Savings Bank (Sparkasse) of Chemnitz in Saxony held a contest allowing customers to vote for an image to be used on its Mastercard.
Chemnitz used to be in the German Democratic Republic (aka East Germany), and the Communist regime renamed the city Karl-Marx-Stadt in 1953. The original name was restored when Communism fell in 1990.
Nostalgic Ostis evidently cast their votes for Karl Marx, proving ironically once again that Capitalism offers choices, even to those who don’t appreciate it.
Bill Ayers, co-founder of the terrorist Weather Underground, husband of terrorist Bernadine Dorhn, refers to Andrew Breitbart as “a grinning bomb-thrower of the radical right.”
I think we could have done without the heavy-handed music though.
Fellow Yale conservative John Brewer writes to a private email list:
How many of you remember the wacky column from ’08 that said inter alia:
“Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment.â€
Do I see some hands? It was pretty notorious at the time.
Well, in any event the very same columnist (Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle or at least its website) has now put out a column bitching and whining about totally unproductive ungrateful and unrealistic liberals who don’t understand how the world really works and ask annoying questions like “Why the hell can’t he step up and fix the entire planet in under 400 days like he promised he would, in my dreams and fantasies and impossible liberal grass-fed organic tofu greengasms?“
