Suspect in Chicago hospital shooting booted from fire academy for alleged aggressive acts toward women.

Why is that nearly every one of these gun-happy losers has a history of harming or hating women? It’s almost a 1:1 correlation. We need a #himtoo movement to put these nutterbutters on an island somewhere, far away from the rest of us.

One of the reasons I continue to read Clarissa’s Blog is that she’s one of the few who contemplates the new sexual and social norms other than reactively.

What I mean is that she analyzes what is occurring and its likely causes and effects as opposed to what people believe they are achieving. For instance, the good-intentioned #metoo movement is opposed to sexual harassment and exploitation. Good intentions, though, are not enough. Because it, like most everything else, is infected with and inflected with notions of neoliberal fluidity, it does more to enforce assortative mating and atomization than it does to combat actual harassment. Due to the cultural moment and weltanschauung in which it is embedded, it could hardly do anything else.

The new sexual mores and beliefs are leading to consumerism and consumer “choice” cannibalizing all else. Liberals use the excuse of “protection from harm” to enforce such strict sexual norms that the Victorians would’ve been shocked by their rigidity. Meanwhile, there is no place for a natural interaction as these are by default seen as déclassé, unconventional, or outright harassment no matter their harmlessness or intent.

The future is likely mediated interactions where you essentially choose mates from a serial list of algorithmically-collated choices and dating outside of this will be seen as extremely risky and very harmful in particular to women. I expect it to also lead to much stricter dress codes for both sexes, but of course being worse by far for women.

Hey America remember when your media spent two years telling you Russia is the most dangerous threat in the world and then one of your whole entire states caught fire because the planet is burning?

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) November 17, 2018

What are you talking about, Putin set those fires! I saw him running about the state with a flamethrower and cackling madly, as all super-villains must do by contract and custom.

Earlier, my partner reminded me of a quote from a book I read long ago, Neal Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. Writing well before the public internet, it still managed to presage much about our current situation.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that our fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.

Huxley was on the right side of his prognostication, except that we’ve become too prudish and isolated for “orgy porgies” to be something likely to occur. About distractions, though, he (and Postman) were completely on target.

I don’t understand how Walmart can sell three medium-size chocolate chip cookies for 98 cents that taste 80% as good as the cookies from Whole Foods that are $2.00 each. It’s almost three times as much cookie for half the price. It’s not like Whole Foods pays their people all that much more.

How is this possible? (Seriously, WMT’s “marketplace” chocolate chip cookies are pretty good.)