Here’s the “official” definition of “passive-aggressive”:
Passive-aggressive behavior is characterized by a pattern of passive hostility and an avoidance of direct communication. Inaction where some action is socially customary is a typical passive-aggressive strategy (showing up late for functions, staying silent when a response is expected). Such behavior is sometimes protested by associates, evoking exasperation or confusion. People who are recipients of passive-aggressive behavior may experience anxiety due to the discordance between what they perceive and what the perpetrator is saying.
There’s definitely a lot of that going around, but it doesn’t describe the behavior of the apple polishers, or the people who have issued themselves the Asshole License. You know the ones I mean: SJWs, of course, but also CrossFitters, vegans, cyclists … basically, anyone who takes up a certain cause or lifestyle seemingly for the sole purpose of being an enormous douchebag about it in every possible social situation. Neither I nor anyone else would have a problem with vegans, say, if they really were doing it for their health, as they so often claim, because if they really were doing it for their health, they’d bring it up once, and then forever shut the fuck up about it.
But they don’t. Similarly, nobody would have a problem with bike riders if they’d just follow the goddamn rules of the road. But they don’t, and the more “cyclist” shit they own — the racing bikes made out of space station parts, the lycra bodysuits, the helmets that look like cranial jockstraps — the less the rules of the road apply to them. Spot one of those fuckers in full kit, and you’re guaranteed to see him weaving in and out of four lanes, turning abruptly without signaling, and blowing through stop signs at full speed, with nary a glance at cross traffic. They’re possessors of the Asshole License First Class, you see, so obviously the rules don’t apply when they’re doing their Official Asshole Thing.
See what I mean? That’s not “passive-aggressive”. But it’s not “active-aggressive” either. They’re not trying to pick a fight. It’s like virtue-signaling, in that you, the audience, are absolutely necessary, but unlike the standard virtue-signal, which is strictly an intra-Leftist competition, this one entails hostility towards the rest of the world, not just toward fellow Leftists …
Severian, “The Passive-Aggressive Society”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-07-24.
September 26, 2024
QotD: The Asshole License, First Class
September 25, 2024
The Korean War 014 – Breakout from the Perimeter! – September 24, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 24 Sept 2024Last week’s amphibious invasion of Incheon completely surprised the North Koreans, and there are now thousands of UN troops deep in their rear and their logistic system is totally compromised; on top of that, as this week begins in the south, the UN forces begin breaking out of the Pusan Perimeter, first in a trickle, but by the end of the week in a huge torrent of force, running through, around, and over the North Korean forces.
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Freddie deBoer on “deference politics”
In the first of a series of articles, Freddie deBoer discusses the phenomenon of “deference politics” practiced by many (most?) progressives in the United States (and equally in Canada):
When I talk about deference politics, I’m referring to the tendency of left-leaning people to substitute interpersonal obsequiousness towards “marginalized groups” for the actual material change those groups demand.
If you’ve lived in any left-aligned spaces in the past decade, you’ve encountered deference politics many times. A white person in a humanities seminar, an organizing meeting, an industry convention, a workplace gathering, etc., who makes the conscious decision to avoid engaging or to engage from a position of proactive apology towards various identity groups is engaged in deference politics. Someone who insists that members of “dominant groups” should censor themselves or speak softly or avoid speaking too much or defer to or otherwise “make space” for members of minority identities is advocating for deference politics; someone from a dominant group who tells others in that group that they should defer is practicing (self-aggrandizing) deference politics. “Maybe men should just shut up for awhile,” voiced by a man, is quintessential deference politics. “I sat my white ass down and listened” is deference politics. “Teach me how not to oppress you,” spoken at an academic conference by a straight person to LGBTQ people on a panel, is deference politics. Avoiding sharing a challenging opinion on an issue of controversy for fear of running afoul of the wrong kind of identity accusation is deference politics.
The infamous image above, of Democratic leaders wrapped in kente cloth and taking a knee in memory of George Floyd, actually preceded a meaningful attempt at material change, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. While that bill would not have been a sufficient overhaul of America’s criminal justice system — it’s hard to use the federal government to reform policing, which tends to be governed by state policies and influenced by local conditions — it would have been a good start. The Democrats, sadly, were not able to pass the bill in two tries, though perhaps it could still be revived. That the party simply didn’t have the votes to make the bill law isn’t something that we should be particularly hard on the Democrats about, but the contrast between its failure and the theatrics that attended its announcement is deference politics in its essential form: at a moment of mass discontent over the state of race and policing, Black Americans got the absurd performance from Congressional leaders but not the substance of better policy. And this is core to the critique of deference politics; the point is not that the good intentions of the people who practice them are worthless but that the people who practice deference politics never seem to recognize that all of the deferring never makes positive action more likely. Like many great political crimes, deference politics privileges the communicative and the emotional over the material and the actual.
It’s important to point out that many Black activists and writers recoiled at the deference politics practiced after George Floyd’s death and pointed out that they had never asked for such theatrics.
Is “deference politics” just a way to say “woke”?
No. Deference politics could conceivably be practice or demanded in any given political context and by members of any given political tendency. Conservatives do occasionally advocate for deference politics, such as when they insist that only veterans should comment on issues of war and peace. Nor do woke people assertively practice deference politics all the time; in fact, for various demographic reasons most people practicing social justice politics are themselves members of dominant groups, and they have a tendency to assert their own superior right to speak rather than to defer to others. The term “deference politics” should likewise not be used to refer to all cringey elements of “allyship”, which involves a diverse suite of questionable tactics and attitudes, but certainly deference politics are core to the behavior of the modern ally. The practice epitomizes the modern liberal obsession with defining politics as a matter of interpersonal niceties rather than as the systems through which human values are expressed in material terms in the real world.
September 23, 2024
Forgotten War Ep3 – Death in the Arakan
HardThrasher
Published 18 Sept 2024Please consider donations of any size to the Burma Star Memorial Fund who aim to ensure remembrance of those who fought with, in and against 14th Army 1941–1945 — https://burmastarmemorial.org/
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What Food was Served at Wild West Saloons?
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published Jun 11, 2024Baked beans made with molasses and salt pork
City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1886One of the definitions for a saloon is a place that serves food and drink, but makes most of its money from drink. This certainly was the case in the Old West, where a lot of saloons served a free lunch as long as you bought a drink. Just because it was free, didn’t mean it was low quality food. In fact, many saloons, especially those in larger cities with more competition, served fancier and fancier meals to draw in patrons.
These beans aren’t the French cuisine that some saloons served, but they are delicious. Even without the onions and spices that some recipes used, they’re so flavorful and much better than canned versions.
Baked Pork and Beans
Wash and pick over a large heaping cupful of navy beans and steep them in water over night. Put them on next morning with fresh water to more than cover, and baking soda the size of a bean and let boil about an hour. Then carry them to the sink, pour all into a colander letting the water run away and put back into the saucepan with cold water enough to come up to a level. Boil again and in a few minutes they will be soft. Season with a little salt and tablespoon of molasses. Put them into four pint bowls or tin pans, lay an ounce slice of salt pork on each and bake half an hour.
— Cooking for Profit by Jessup Whitehead, 1886
September 22, 2024
Canada’s latest moral preening on the international stage includes a partial arms embargo against … the USA?
In the National Post, Conrad Black points out that the Canadian government’s tedious and never-ending virtue signalling has reached a new and barely believable low:
It is the usual pious and cowardly humbug that causes Ottawa to announce it is suspending the sales of some non-lethal military equipment to Israel because it has the effrontery to opine that the Israeli Defense forces are insufficiently protective of the lives of civilian Palestinians in Gaza. But it is breathtaking that Canada should include in this practically irrelevant step an embargo on some equipment to the United States that it suspects the Americans might pass on to Israel. This initiative is a trifecta of fatuous error. First, it is clear from thoroughly available evidence that Israel has achieved an unprecedentedly low ratio of civilian to authentic military casualties for modern urban counter-guerrilla warfare. This is especially difficult as the enemy in this case, Hamas, proudly states that civilian casualties are useful to its propaganda campaign (which has brainwashed our foreign policy-makers), and which habitually embeds its terrorist cadres in and near schools, hospitals, and places of worship to incite as much collateral damage on its own population as possible.
Second, it departs completely from any real concept of the nature of war. The invasion of Israel on October 7 and the slaughter of more than a thousand Israeli, mostly civilians, was intended and received as an act of war. Wars are not fought by dropping pamphlets or posturing with trivial gestures. As General Douglas MacArthur famously said during the Korean War, “In war there is no substitute for victory”. This is particularly the case in the current war in Gaza as Hamas has made it clear that it will never accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. As long as that condition prevails, there can be no peace and Israel’s pledge to exterminate Hamas as a terrorist force enables it accurately to be described in the Wilsonian phrase: “a war to end war”. Canada’s government is engaged in a contemptible assertion of moral relativism between the heroic and democratic state of the long wronged Jewish people and a ragtag of vicious terrorists happy to be the cannon fodder of the principal terrorism-promoting state in the world — the primitive racist totalitarian theocracy of Iran.
Finally in the trifecta, in the bankruptcy of their imagination, our foreign policy makers have taken up the trite evasion of the outgoing Biden administration, that “Israel has a right to defend itself”, but we reserve the right to coach it on how to do that and this effectively limits self-defence to the expulsion of invaders but muffled and insulated retaliation against the invaders after they have been evicted from Israel. This is a formula for perpetual conflict and is a moral and military under-reaction to the enormity of Hamas’ provocation. What our government imagines it is accomplishing with this pallid, torpid, and ludicrous gesture surely escapes the imagination of all interested parties.
It must slightly bemuse the United States government that it is boycotted by Canada, which has benefited from an American guarantee of our security since President Franklin D. Roosevelt, speaking at Queen’s University in Kingston in 1938, said that the United States would not “stand idly by” if Canada were invaded by any power from another continent.
September 21, 2024
The Dramatic Birth of Two Korean States
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 20 Sep 2024The United Nations plan is to reunite the divided Korean peninsula into a single state. But soon the USA and USSR have installed their own leaders, neither of whom are willing to compromise. By the end of 1948 Kim Il-Sung and Syngman Rhee stand at the head of separate North and South Korean states.
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M1911A1: America’s Definitive World War Two Pistol
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jun 12, 2024The United States adopted the M1911 pistol just in time for the First World War, and between Colt and Springfield Arsenal some 643,000 of these pistols were made by the end of 1918. During that production and the gun’s field service in France, a number of potential improvements were recognized. They were put together in a batch of 10,000 new pistols ordered from Colt in 1924, but not officially designated until years later. A second batch of 10,000 was ordered from Colt in 1938. These were the first guns officially designated M1911A1. The changes were all about improving user handling, with a reshaped mainspring housing, larger sights, longer grip tang, and shorter reach to the trigger.
In 1939 the government put out a tender for M1911A1 education contracts. These contracts were for production of just 500 pistols, and they were intended to pay a company to build the a complete set of production line tooling and then store it in case of future need (similar contracts were also issued for rifles and machine guns). Two companies were granted such contracts – Harrington & Richardson and the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Singer produced a quite satisfactory batch of pistols, but ended up making higher-priority material like artillery sights. H&R was unable to complete its contract, which was cancelled in the spring of 1942.
When the US entered the war, pistols were needed in large number, and three companies were given contracts to produce the M1911A1: Remington-Rand, Ithaca, and Union Switch & Signal. These three new contractors, along with existing production lines at Colt and Springfield, produced 1.9 million new pistols during World War Two, enough to fully supply all branches of the US military until 1985 when the 1911 was replaced by the Beretta 92.
The example we are looking at today is a Remington-Rand, manufactured in April 1945. Remington-Rand received its first contract in May 1942, and delivered its final pistols in July 1945. In total, it made 877,751, in the following serial number blocks:
916405 – 1041404
1279699 – 1441430
1471431 – 1609528
1743847 – 1816641
1890504 – 2075103
2164404 – 2244803
2380014 – 2619013 (the last one made was 2465139)
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QotD: Progressivism
What it seeks is not, however, goodness, or security, or higher living standards, or even better health care. What it seeks is the celebration of its own brilliance. “Smug” is a small word that perfectly captures the nature of the progressive mind.
This gnostic trait is the source of all of the damage liberalism has wrought for more than 300 years. From the French Revolution to the Third Reich, from Stalinism to North Korea, liberalism has brought with it repression of liberty, death camps, and executions on a mass scale. What’s often not well understood is the fact that violence and repression are inevitable because liberalism seeks to change what does not wish to change – and it does so not for the purpose of making things better, but as an attempt to confirm the superiority of the liberal mind and its ability to manage society.
Most Americans find this conception of existence repulsive. They follow the true path of love, marriage, childbirth, hard work, and faith in God and country. Liberals actively seek to destroy this conception of existence because it rejects their mission of transforming society. It’s either the true path or liberalism. Both cannot be true.
To succeed, liberalism must acquire and retain clients in need of change. It is not in the interest of the liberal to solve problems. What the liberal needs is continually to discover new problems and hold them up as in need of solution. The fate of the “DREAMers”, held in limbo by generations of liberals, is one example. The “downtrodden”, as they were once called, are indeed the pawns of liberal politicians.
Jeffrey Folks, “Leftists versus the People”, American Thinker, 2018-02-24.
September 19, 2024
D-Day Tanks: Operation Overlord’s Strangest Tanks
The Tank Museum
Published Jun 7, 2024An opposed beach landing is the most difficult and dangerous military operation it is possible to undertake. Anticipating massive casualties in the Normandy Landings, the British Army devised a series of highly specialized tanks to solve some of the problems – Hobart’s Funnies.
Named after General Sir Percy Hobart, commander of their parent unit, 79th Armoured Division, the Funnies included a mine clearing tank – the Sherman Crab, a flamethrower – the Churchill Crocodile and the AVRE – Assault Vehicle Royal Engineers which could lay bridges and trackways, blow up fortifications and much else besides.
In this video, Chris Copson looks at surviving examples of the Funnies and assesses their effectiveness on D Day and after.
00:00 | Introduction
01:24 | Operation Overlord
03:02 | Lessons from the Dieppe Raid
05:31 | The Sherman DD
07:21 | Exercise Smash
14:38 | Sherman Crab
17:38 | The AVRE
19:47 | Churchill Crocodile
23:15 | Did the Funnies Work?
28:49 | ConclusionThis video features archive footage courtesy of British Pathé.
#tankmuseum #d-day #operationoverlord
September 18, 2024
The Korean War 013 – 70,000 UN Troops Head for Incheon – September 17, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 17 Sep 2024[NR: For some unknown reason, YT decided to restrict the original release of this video, so I’m replacing it with the “Censored” version posted a couple of days later.]
This week sees the UN forces execute Operation Chromite, the amphibious invasion of the port of Incheon, far behind enemy lines. There are many hurdles to clear before this can happen, including the physical one of one of the world’s largest tidal ranges, which leaves many kilometers of mud flats in the approaches. There is also a UN counterattack at the same time, designed to perhaps break out of the Pusan Perimeter, or at least tie down big chunks of the enemy in the south.
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D-Day 80th Anniversary Special, Part 1: Paratroopers, with firearms expert Jonathan Ferguson
Royal Armouries
Published Jun 5, 2024This year marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of France which took place on 6th June 1944. From landing on the beaches of Normandy, the Allies would push the Nazi war machine and breach Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.
To commemorate this, we’re collaborating with Imperial War Museums to release a special two-part episode as Jonathan will look at some of the weapons that influenced and shaped this historic moment in history.
Part 1 is all about the “tip of the spear”, the Paratroopers.
0:00 Intro
0:55 STEN MK V
1:40 History of the Sten
3:00 Mark V Details
6:23 Usage in D-Day
8:38 M1A1 Carbine
10:38 M1A1 Details
14:09 Usage in D-Day
15:01 ACME ‘Cricket’ Clicker
17:31 The Longest Day
19:30 Outro[NR: I’m glad Jonathan discussed that bloody clicker scene in The Longest Day … it bugged me the very first time I watched the movie as a young army cadet in the mid-1970s.]
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September 16, 2024
Anger sells – “Words like ‘wrong’, ‘bad’, ‘awful’, ‘hate’, ‘sick’, ‘fight’, and ‘scary’ each predict a 2.3% increase in click-through rates”
Rob Henderson explains the incentives that lead to provoking as much anger as possible among readers (and especially voters):
It seems like people are angrier than ever. According to a poll by CBS News, 84 percent of Americans believe we are angrier than previous generations. Another survey recently found that nine in ten Americans can name either a recent news event or something about American politics that made them angry, while only half could identify a recent news event or something about American politics that made them proud.
What explains this feeling of rage? One noteworthy reason is that exploiting anger is politically convenient.
The strategic use of anger in politics has transformed it from a natural human emotion into a weapon of division, with far-reaching consequences for our social cohesion and democratic governance.
According to Steven Webster, author of “American Rage: How Anger Shapes Our Politics” and assistant professor of political science at Indiana University, “Anger provides ample benefits to those politicians who are able to use it most skillfully”.
Indeed, across political settings, angry people are more likely to vote than those who are not angry. In other words, politicians who can stoke anger can use it to motivate their base. The angrier voters are at the opposing party, the more likely they are to show up to the polls to support their own party. As Webster puts it, “angry voters are loyal voters”.
Political anger has consequences that extend beyond how Americans view their governing institutions or the opposing political party. When American voters are angry about politics, they are inclined to avoid social interactions or social events where they are likely to come into contact with those whose political leanings differ from their own.
In a chapter titled “Emotions in Politics” published last year, the psychologists Florian van Leeuwen and Michael Bang Peterson suggest that along with other emotions, anger “seems to be a distinct strategy for increasing what one is entitled to in the minds of others”.
Provoking rage against selected groups is an effective way to promote unity in politics. Today, many Americans across the political spectrum are encouraged to feel they are being victimized. It’s no coincidence that one of Donald Trump’s go-to lines on the campaign trail is “They’re laughing at us”. Being laughed at induces humiliation, which often quickly transforms into rage.
In a notable historical illustration of a political movement using anger as a limitless source of ideological fuel, consider the case of the “Recalling Bitterness” campaign in Maoist China. In the 1960s, the communist dictator Mao Zedong grew worried that ordinary Chinese citizens were developing lukewarm attitudes about the socialist revolution. In response, the regime forced people into rituals in which they publicly announced how bad life was before they had been liberated. Mao ordered writers and artists to rewrite history through the lens of class struggle to suit the needs of his political agenda. Regime officials held meetings encouraging peasants to describe how much better life was now compared to pre-liberation, hoping to convince them that the revolution’s successes outnumbered its failures. The “devils” here were reactionaries, landlords, rich farmers, and counterrevolutionaries. Documenting the rituals of the Recalling Bitterness campaign, the historian Guo Wu has written, “Only poor peasants were allowed to speak; former landlords and rich peasants were silenced”.
Who Really Won The Korean War?
Real Time History
Published May 17, 2024Only five years after the end of WW2, the major nations of the world are once again up in arms. A global UN coalition and an emerging Chinese juggernaut are fighting it out in a war that will see both sides approach the brink of victory — and defeat.
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September 15, 2024
The Occupation of Japan Begins – a WW2 Epilogue Special
World War Two
Published 14 Sep 2024The war is over and the occupation of Japan has begun. The country has largely been destroyed by Allied bombs, and shall be rebuilt, physically, economically, and even governmentally. But what will the new government be? What shall become of the Emperor? Who is to actually do the occupation? Today we look at all this and more.
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