Creacles -- Frustrated Underachievers, a new Lumpen Intelligencia

Limpenintelligancia is a  section of the intelligentsia regarded as making no useful contribution to society and which is in opposition to the current rulers, not because of the particular political program, but as a way to compensate their feeling of inferiority.  Highly educated individuals who fail to make a meaningful contribution to culture, knowledge or production of economic value.

Anksy’s attitude toward authority and property rights is the standard hostility of the lumpenintelligentsia. They are more prone to neo-fundandamentalist views.

A fish, say the Russians, rots from the head down; a culture, when its elite shows no discrimination, is debased. Those spoiled children of a consumer society for whom any real shortage is unthinkable, still have all the unexamined anticapitalist prejudices.  Here they are particularly hypocritical because, while maintaining that pose of hostility, they employs lawyers, own private companies, etc. Inside every rebel, goes the saying, there’s a dictator trying to get out.

Their hostility toward the police, however, is not without point in the USA and British context. The Discriminating Philistine- Banksy’s wit and talent don’t excuse his vandalism and juvenility. - City Journal

In one famous image of Banksy, a long, thin trail of white paint on the sidewalk leads to a wall, where we see a policeman on his knees, snorting cocaine. The message is that the police are corrupt, or at least wrongdoers indistinguishable from those whom they are pursuing. Alas, there is little doubt that the British police are degenerating in the direction of corruption. In more than a third of all British police forces, at least one of the two most senior officers is currently under investigation for corruption or other malfeasance. And when Banksy portrays the British police as semi-militarized, he is not entirely unjustified. Often, our police do indeed look like an occupying militia, rather than what they were traditionally, and what their founder, Sir Robert Peel, intended them to be: citizens in uniform. What Banksy omits to convey is that the police are simultaneously menacing and ineffectual, an unfortunate combination of qualities, and that the innocent and law-abiding therefore fear them more than the criminals do. Nor is there any awareness on Banksy’s part that the very hostility to authority and indifference to property rights that he lauds, which is now so widespread in Britain, might have played some part in the brutalization of British life.

But their cultural barbarism which remind barbarism of Red Guards during China Cultural revolution has zero justification:

A man with an exceptional understanding of this kind of cultural vandalism, this deliberate, ignorant, and barbaric destruction of an immemorial cultural inheritance, is Simon Leys, the great Belgian sinologist now living in Australia. During and just after the Cultural Revolution in China, Leys wrote books that explained how great a catastrophe the Revolution was and deplored, with excoriating wit that made you laugh out loud, the many idiocies of Western fellow travelers who claimed that the immolation of civilization represented some kind of progress.

Lumpenintelligentsia vs. Society - New Europe

The term “lumpenintelligentsia,” meaning pseudointellectuals, is a modified loan-word from Carl Marx definition of “lumpenproletariat,” deriving from the German word “lumpenproletarier.” Lumpen literally means “miscreant.” In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Luis Napoleon” (1852), Marx describes lumpenproletariat as decayed bourgeois, vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux (pimps), brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers and beggars.

In one word, what the French call “la bohème”.  With lumpenintelligentsia, we are not quite there, but metaphorically, we are close enough.


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[Oct 25, 2020] Navalny Goes Va Banque Part III

Notable quotes:
"... Vyacheslav Volodin, Speaker of the State Duma believes that Navalny has been too outspoken: "This guy is a competely shamless fraud." And pointing out how much was done to save his unworthy ass: From the pilots who emergency-landed the plane in Tomsk; to the doctors and nurses who fought ferociously to intubate him; to the President himself who personally gave permission to fly this recidivist to a prestigious German clinic Dante should have designed a special circle in Hell for such an ingrate, who now spits on the entire Russian nation. ..."
"... Putin's Press Secretary Peskov: "We should clarify that CIA specialists are working with Navalny, and give him various instructions. And moreover, this is not the first time, either." ..."
"... Navalny was upset by Peskov's words, he blustered back saying that Peskov is skating on very thin ice [little joke there], and said he planned to sue the man for libel: "He must prove that I actually have ties with American intelligence." Well, that's easy: Just ask Pompeo. ..."
"... Akopov himself believes that Navalny is more than just a "CIA project", he is more like a "joint venture" with all the Westie agencies. And this project also includes the Russian Neo-Liberal elite and the Westernizing section of the Oligarchy. ..."
"... Everybody who has studied Navalny and Navalniada, know what is actually going on here: Navalny and his neo-Liberal kreakle supporters represent that class of bourgeois intelligentsia who came along maybe 5 or 10 years too late to participate in the Yeltsinite plundering of the Russian people. ..."
"... They are only millionaires now, but they want to be billionaires. [yalensis: Although some evil tongues claim that Navalny has actually lost his fortune somehow and is fleeing from his creditors; hence the current crisis.] Putin stands in the way of the kreakles because he (and his caste of functionaries) have somewhat curbed the openly pirate proclivities of the Russian bourgeoisie; partially nationalized them, made them go to Church, and forced them to follow certain rules. ..."
Jan 01, 2020 | www.bunicuta.net

Navalny Goes Va Banque – Part III

Этот Германн, -- продолжал Томский, -- лицо истинно романическое: у него профиль Наполеона, а душа Мефистофеля. Я думаю, что на его совести по крайней мере три злодейства. Как вы побледнели!..

"This Hermann fellow," Tomsky continued, -- "a truly romantic-era personality, the profile of a Napoleon, and the soul of Mephistopheles. I believe that on his conscience lie at least three crimes.

Oh my, you just turned pale!" -- Pushkin, The Queen of Spades "And that's not even counting KirovLes!" Tomsky should have added.

Dear Readers: Today concluding my review of this piece by reporter/analyst Petr Akopov.

Where we left off, we saw that Navalny may have overstepped the line (just a tad) by directly accusing Putin of poisoning him.

According to my blog-commenter James, Navalny is now busy on the talk-show circuit, doing a full Ginsburg on all the imperialist propaganda media.

Describing what it feels like to be poisoned – "Ow! it hurt so much!" in full pathos.

And Westie Navalny Goes Va Banque – burghers no doubt lapping up this farce because it's more entertaining than the circus. –Meanwhile, back in Russia, members of the government are not very happy with Navalny's wild improvised performance.

Vyacheslav Volodin, Speaker of the State Duma believes that Navalny has been too outspoken: "This guy is a competely shamless fraud." And pointing out how much was done to save his unworthy ass: From the pilots who emergency-landed the plane in Tomsk; to the doctors and nurses who fought ferociously to intubate him; to the President himself who personally gave permission to fly this recidivist to a prestigious German clinic Dante should have designed a special circle in Hell for such an ingrate, who now spits on the entire Russian nation.

For 7 long days, Navalny lay in a fake-coma does that work for the 7 card? Furthermore, in a no-shit kind of epiphany, Volodin opines that this whole poisoning scenario was scripted by the Westies: "In order to create tension within Russia, and to prevent Belorussia from asserting its sovereignty." Captain Obvious concludes with: "Navalny himself clearly works with the special services and organs of goverments of [various] Western countries."

After such a shocking utterance, the Kremlin felt the need to clarify: Uh, it's not so much that Navalny works for the CIA; as the CIA works for him! Uh huh, that makes perfect sense. As comedian Yakov Smirnov might say: In America, Secret Agent works for CIA. But in Russia, CIA works for him!

Putin's Press Secretary Peskov: "We should clarify that CIA specialists are working with Navalny, and give him various instructions. And moreover, this is not the first time, either."

Navalny was upset by Peskov's words, he blustered back saying that Peskov is skating on very thin ice [little joke there], and said he planned to sue the man for libel: "He must prove that I actually have ties with American intelligence." Well, that's easy: Just ask Pompeo.

Akopov himself believes that Navalny is more than just a "CIA project", he is more like a "joint venture" with all the Westie agencies. And this project also includes the Russian Neo-Liberal elite and the Westernizing section of the Oligarchy.

They are all in this together as partners. [yalensis: And these knuckle-heads couldn't come up with anybody better than Navalny as their Leader?] Akopov would not even want to venture a guess, which one of these "partners" holds the "controlling interest" in Mr.

Navalny's person.

Although it is plausible that shares might be redistributed during Navalny's stay in Germany. The question du jour is whether or not Navalny will return to Russia. Gentlemen and Countesses, you are free to place your bets on this one. Akopov believes that, yes, Navalny not only will, but must, return to Russia. Why? To complete his Quest. What is his Quest? To change the internal political structure and geopolitical vector of Russia.

Here is how Navalny himself describes the pathos of the current situation: "A struggle is taking place between those who stand for Freedom, and those who wish to push us backwards. Into the Past, into that strange Orthodox imitation of the Soviet Union, only decorated with Capitalism and Oligarchs." "I win!" Hm I hate to admit it, but Navalny's words actually have a ring of truth to them, which is why, if they were to come out of the mouth of a real freedom-fighter, then they might bear some weight.

But you know what people say: If you want to sell a lie, then you have to sprinkle it with truth.

Everybody who has studied Navalny and Navalniada, know what is actually going on here: Navalny and his neo-Liberal kreakle supporters represent that class of bourgeois intelligentsia who came along maybe 5 or 10 years too late to participate in the Yeltsinite plundering of the Russian people.

They regret this, and wish for an opportunity to make their own fortunes, on the backs of said Russian people.

They are only millionaires now, but they want to be billionaires. [yalensis: Although some evil tongues claim that Navalny has actually lost his fortune somehow and is fleeing from his creditors; hence the current crisis.] Putin stands in the way of the kreakles because he (and his caste of functionaries) have somewhat curbed the openly pirate proclivities of the Russian bourgeoisie; partially nationalized them, made them go to Church, and forced them to follow certain rules.

This is what drives Navalny and his ilk crazy. They want it all, and they want it now! Putin, for his part, in his endless balancing act, trying to maintain two incompatible things, as Pushkin might have said (=capitalism and Russian patriotism) has scrambled to win the support of the patriotic bourgeoisie and the clergy, the two pillars of the Lost Russia he strives to re-build.

Navalny again:

"A part of society repeats Putin's rhetoric about how the country needs to follow its own path. They are talking about restoring a kind of monarchy, based on certain spiritual values. And against them stand such people as myself, who consider this to be a lie and hypocrisy, and who are convinced that Russia must develop only according to the European model."

Ah, Navalny! You had me at "monarchy" but lost me at "European model" – you wretch! "It's curtains for you, buster!"

Akopov, it goes without saying, is one of those intellectuals whom Navalny despises as supporting the "Putinite" model of Russian development: Rely on a strong Russian state (which Navalny mockingly calls an "imitation of the USSR"), lean on the Church, develop one's own geo-political vector, etc.

Navalny and his crowd regard these types as complete zombies, whose proposed model is worthless.

But the only thing that Navalny counter-punts are equally worn-out ideas of what Lenin would call "the highest stages of capitalism" and which would, in reality, demote Russia to the level of an American colony.

Same as the rest of Europe! Akopov concedes, however, that Navalny's "vision", if one could call it that, of a European Russia imbued with "democratic values" does, in fact, enjoy mass support -- among the Muscovite intelligentsia.

This kreakle mass [Akopov does not say, but there are estimates that the Navalnyite program enjoys as much as 30% support among the residents of Moscow, not so much in the rest of the country] believe in exactly the same things that Navalny does.

And have been "fighting" for this program (in one way or another) for the past 30 years.

This section of the Russian bourgeois intelligentsia punts against Putin's "national project" and now awaits eagerly for the return of their poisoned, and poisonous, hero. [THE END]

[Oct 25, 2020] Creacles THE CREATIVE CLASS - Digital Domostroi by Daria Shembel

Oct 25, 2020 | dh.dickinson.edu

Daria Shembel, San Diego State University

Creacl (креакл) is the latest addition to a list of existing euphemisms used to describe the phenomenon of a middle class in Russia. Other terms include creative class , network hamster ( setevoi khomiak) , office plankton (offisnyi plankton), moral elite (nravstvennaia elita).

The ironic term is an acronym of creative class (креативный класс) but also refers to Greek mythology: in Russian , creacl rhymes with Gerakl (Hercules). In one of its first appearances, the term was used by levsharansky2, a popular LiveJournal blog (which is believed to be run by pro-Kremlin bloggers) to describe the twelve labors of Creacl : brainstorming in the hipsters' cafe Jean-Jacques ; attending gay pride parades; taming lumpen supporters of the Putin regime; or purchasing a new i-Phone or i-Pad. [1]

If we look at the methods of creating humor in Russian satire, it often depends on the incongruity of applying a lofty style to describing a routine, e.g. Est' mnenie, chto nado pomyt' posudu (There is an opinion that you need to do the dishes). Here the jargon of the Soviet partocracy and propaganda is applied to a household chore thereby producing an ironic effect. Similarly, the term creacl appeared at the time when the definition creative class became a cliché overused in political polemics, while an unexpected connotation of grandeur, encrypted in the word form of creacl unmistakably brought about a humorous effect and assigned new meanings to the definition.

The term took on popular use in January 2013 in connection with Aleksei Kabanov's criminal case. Kabanov, a popular blogger and chef, was the co-founder of the Project O.G.I. (1998-2012) literary cafes in downtown Moscow that gathered Russia's bohemians, prominent writers, musicians, and humanities students. In January 2013, Aleksei Kabanov launched a Facebook campaign amongst his 1500 friends to help him search for his wife, Irina Cherska, who, according to him, went missing after a family quarrel. While volunteers and police searched for the woman, Kabanov kept updating his Facebook account with emotional posts: "Irka still missing" ("Irka ne nashlas'"). When investigators found body fragments of Cherska in a car that Kabanov borrowed from a friend a few days later, he confessed to committing the murder. He revealed that he strangled and then dismembered his wife, hoping to get rid of her body later. Kabanov was detained and faces up to 15 years in jail for murder. Irina Cherska was 39, and the mother of three young children.

Kabanov family' tragedy sparked a polemic about the controversial nature of the formation of the Russian middle class casting doubt on the very possibility of its existence. In a post that further promoted the usage of the term creacl, Pavel Prianikov noted that the Kabanovs were seen by many as model representatives of creative class : both were intellectuals, active participants in anti-Kremlin protests, prolific bloggers, and emerging small business owners. However, as Prianikov further suggested, what most people didn't see behind this façade, was a large family with three kids who rented a small studio apartment in the suburbs, barely had any income through scarce freelance journalist jobs, and went bankrupt in an attempt to open their own restaurant in Moscow. [2] The discussions surrounding Kabanov's crime centered on the deep sociocultural and economic problems that impede the normal functioning of the "middle class" in Putin's Russia at all levels, including property ownership, income, socioeconomic values, and stability. Many Putin supporters gloated over the opposition revealing its real face (especially after the protesters denounced the violence at the May 2012 Bolotnaya Square demonstrations, declaring themselves a peaceful group). The Kabanov tragedy should be understood not as an insight into the opposition, but as a structural absence of opportunities for a thriving middle class in Russia.

The phonetics of the word creacl further emphasizes this idea: based on the satirical device of the elevation of the low, the greatest irony of the term is that it might as well reveal the nature of something that in fact never existed.

Class Issue and Creacls in Recent Russian Cinema

Paradoxical as it might seem, recent Russian cinema has not clearly revealed class difference as a realistic aspect of Russian social fabric. Until recently (and especially in the films released in 2011), the class issue was, at best, replaced with the idea of generational conflict. Here the focus was either on a lost generation of those born in the 60s-70s and unable to adjust to a new social reality ( Gromozeka, 2011 ), or on post-Soviet Russians born in a country that no longer exists, who are eternally nostalgic for the totems of their youth, such as young pioneers, Moidodyr ( a magical creature from a 1923 Soviet poem by Kornei Chukovsky ) or medved'-kosmonavt (the Cosmounaut Bear) ( Chapiteau-Show, 2011 ).

When the issue of class difference finally began to appear in the films of 2011-12 -- Elena (2011), Kokoko (2012), Twilight Portrait (Portret v sumerkakh, 2011), The White Moor (Belyi Mavr, 2012), Dukhless (2012), An Office Romance: Our Time (Sluzhebnyi roman: Nashe Vremia, 2011) -- we can't help but notice that the representation of class in the majority of these films was reduced to the depiction of either lumpens from the city outskirts or the upper classes and minigarchs from the prestigious zones of the city. In the latter case, the directors and producers appeared to unequivocally accept that this group of people inhabiting Moscow's suburbs Rublevka and Zhukovka are numerous enough to represent a vast social phenomenon of the upper class in Russia. This stands true even for the films with a clearly articulated agenda of social awareness, such as Elena and Twilight Portrait. What was obviously lacking in the films mentioned above was a representation of a middle class: qualified specialists -- representatives of intellectual professions, or midlevel managers and small business owners.

Creacl5.jpg film screenshot Creacls of Kokoko at a political rally

Some serious reservations have been recently expressed by sociologists over the existence of a middle class in Russia (Samson, Krasil'nikova 2012), [3] who argue that generally accepted socioeconomic and ethical values of "middle class" that correspond to Western understanding of the concept have not been formed in contemporary Russia. The same hesitation is obvious in cinematic representations of the middle class. In fact, many contemporary Russian films are dealing with comical re-enactments of multiple euphemisms that exist in the rhetoric of the state today to describe the Russian middle class : creacls, office plankton, network hamsters, creatiff, etc. We may take a look at the entire gallery of cartoonish creacls presented in the symposium films to get this message: the inert, inactive, and almost extinct intelligentsia of Kokoko; representatives of the opposition or rather a group of idiots without a single clearly articulated political message in Dukhless; or the faceless office plankton floating in the background in An Office Romance: Our Time. Most of these films about the contemporary "middle class" share the narrative structure of a collage of loosely connected stories, e.g. Short Stories ( Rasskazy , 2012 ), Gromozeka, Chapiteau Show . Contrary to the Russian tradition of favoring longer narrative forms, such collage stylistics might also point to the fact that Russia lacks sufficient economic and socio-political grounds for singling out a unified group with an established collective identity that could be called "middle class."

Creacl3.jpg film screenshot Creacl4.jpg film screenshot The 1990s: Creacls in the making in Generation P

Generation P (2011) poignantly captures the lost optimism of the 90s, when the formation of middle class not only seemed a viable possibility for the Russian intelligentsia, but also a driving force behind social, economic and cultural transformations in post-Soviet Russia. "Kreatorom, eto tvortsom, esli perevesti?" asks Vladelen Tatarsky, the main protagonist of Generation P, his potential employer at the advertising agency. "Tvortsy nam zdes' na khui ne nuzhny! Kreatorom, Vovan, Kreatorom!" answers the agency director. The post-Soviet Russian intelligentsia aspired to create something significant and eternal, but instead were reduced to advertising canned pickles. The sad truth is that the contemporary creative class haven't given up on these aspirations and are still trying really hard to bring social and political changes to their country, however their prospects for democratic change become more and more doomed.

Creacl1.jpg film screenshot Creacl2.jpg film screenshot Creacles of Dukhless: a mock-up of political activity

September 2013

[1] Lev Sharansky, Dvenadtsat ' podvigov kreakla . http://lev-sharansky2.livejournal.com/163945.html . Accessed May 15, 2013.

[2] Pavel Prianikov, Nadvigaiuschaiasia tragedia dlia kreaklov na primere "dela Kabanova " http://ttolk.ru/?p=15269 . Accessed May 15, 2013.

[3] Samson, Ivan and Marina Krasil'nikova (2012), "The Middle Class in Russia: An Emerging Reality or an Old Myth?", Sociological Research 51.5: 3–25.

[Sep 15, 2020] Much of today's intelligentsia cannot think by George F. Will

Notable quotes:
"... Seeking to impose on others the conformity it enforces in its ranks, articulate only in a boilerplate of ritualized cant, today's lumpen intelligentsia consists of persons for whom a little learning is delightful. They consider themselves educated because they are credentialed, stamped with the approval of institutions of higher education that gave them three things: a smattering of historical information just sufficient to make the past seem depraved; a vocabulary of indignation about the failure of all previous historic actors, from Washington to Lincoln to Churchill , to match the virtues of the lumpen intelligentsia; and the belief that America's grossest injustice is the insufficient obeisance accorded to this intelligentsia. ..."
"... Today's cancel culture -- erasing history, ending careers -- is inflicted by people experiencing an orgy of positive feelings about themselves as they negate others. This culture is a steamy sauna of self-congratulation: "I, an adjunct professor of gender studies, am superior to U.S. Grant, so there." Grant promptly freed the slave he received from his father-in-law, and went on to pulverize the slavocracy. Nevertheless . . . ..."
"... Today's gruesome irony: A significant portion of the intelligentsia that is churned out by higher education does not acknowledge exacting standards of inquiry that could tug them toward tentativeness and constructive dissatisfaction with themselves. Rather, they come from campuses, cloaked in complacency. Instead of elevating, their education produces only expensively schooled versions of what José Ortega y Gasset called the "mass man." ..."
"... A barbarian is someone whose ideas are "nothing more than appetites in words," someone exercising "the right not to be reasonable," who "does not want to give reasons" but simply "to impose his opinions." ..."
"... The barbarians are not at America's gate. There is no gate. ..."
Jun 26, 2020 | www.washingtonpost.com

A nation's gravest problems are those it cannot discuss because it dare not state them. This nation's principal problem, which makes other serious problems intractable, is that much of today's intelligentsia is not intelligent.

One serious problem is that the political class is terrified of its constituents -- their infantile refusal to will the means (revenue) for the ends (government benefits) they demand. Another serious problem is family disintegration -- e.g., 40 percent of all births, and 69 percent of all African American births, to unmarried women. Families are the primary transmitters of social capital: the habits, dispositions and mores necessary for flourishing. Yet the subject of disorganized families has been entirely absent from current discussions -- actually, less discussions than virtue-signaling ventings -- about poverty, race and related matters.

Today's most serious problem, which annihilates thoughtfulness about all others, is that a significant portion of the intelligentsia -- the lumpen intelligentsia -- cannot think. Its torrent of talk is an ever-intensifying hurricane of hysteria about the endemic sickness of the nation since its founding in 1619 (don't ask). And the iniquities of historic figures mistakenly admired.

An admirable intelligentsia, inoculated by education against fashions and fads, would make thoughtful distinctions arising from historically informed empathy. It would be society's ballast against mob mentalities. Instead, much of America's intelligentsia has become a mob.

Seeking to impose on others the conformity it enforces in its ranks, articulate only in a boilerplate of ritualized cant, today's lumpen intelligentsia consists of persons for whom a little learning is delightful. They consider themselves educated because they are credentialed, stamped with the approval of institutions of higher education that gave them three things: a smattering of historical information just sufficient to make the past seem depraved; a vocabulary of indignation about the failure of all previous historic actors, from Washington to Lincoln to Churchill , to match the virtues of the lumpen intelligentsia; and the belief that America's grossest injustice is the insufficient obeisance accorded to this intelligentsia.

Its expansion tracks the expansion of colleges and universities -- most have, effectively, open admissions -- that have become intellectually monochrome purveyors of groupthink. Faculty are outnumbered by administrators, many of whom exist to administer uniformity concerning "sustainability," "diversity," "toxic masculinity" and the threat free speech poses to favored groups' entitlements to serenity.

Today's cancel culture -- erasing history, ending careers -- is inflicted by people experiencing an orgy of positive feelings about themselves as they negate others. This culture is a steamy sauna of self-congratulation: "I, an adjunct professor of gender studies, am superior to U.S. Grant, so there." Grant promptly freed the slave he received from his father-in-law, and went on to pulverize the slavocracy. Nevertheless . . .

The cancelers need just enough learning to know, vaguely, that there was a Lincoln who lived when Americans, sunk in primitivism, thought they were confronted with vexing constitutional constraints and moral ambiguities. : Too much learning might immobilize the topplers with doubts about how they would have behaved in the contexts in which the statues' subjects lived.

The cancelers are reverse Rumpelstiltskins , spinning problems that merit the gold of complex ideas and nuanced judgments into the straw of slogans. Someone anticipated something like this.

Today's gruesome irony: A significant portion of the intelligentsia that is churned out by higher education does not acknowledge exacting standards of inquiry that could tug them toward tentativeness and constructive dissatisfaction with themselves. Rather, they come from campuses, cloaked in complacency. Instead of elevating, their education produces only expensively schooled versions of what José Ortega y Gasset called the "mass man."

In 1932's " The Revolt of the Masses ," the Spanish philosopher said this creature does not " appeal from his own to any authority outside him . He is satisfied with himself exactly as he is. . . . He will tend to consider and affirm as good everything he finds within himself: opinions, appetites, preferences, tastes." (Emphasis is Ortega's.)

Much education now spreads the disease that education should cure, the disease of repudiating, without understanding, the national principles that could pull the nation toward its noble aspirations. The result is barbarism, as Ortega defined it, "the absence of standards to which appeal can be made."

A barbarian is someone whose ideas are "nothing more than appetites in words," someone exercising "the right not to be reasonable," who "does not want to give reasons" but simply "to impose his opinions."

The barbarians are not at America's gate. There is no gate.

Read more from George F. Will's archive or follow him on Facebook .

Read more :

Read letters in response to this piece: This is an inflection point for America

Gary Abernathy: What matters more, white apologies or real change?

Alexandra Petri: If we'd just given up on other things the way we have on the coronavirus

Megan McArdle: Where do we draw the line in tearing down statues?

[Sep 15, 2020] Les Indig nes du Royaume- Lumpen-intelligentsia

Google translation
Notable quotes:
"... despite her pretensions, she is not the holder of either science or wealth or belonging to a lineage. She is a commoner, a half-scientist and lives on emoluments. She dreams of oligarchy, but she only has the power of " henchman " ; she is auxiliary, Lackey, second-rate, she serves soup infinitely ... as a good shepherd dog, she admonishes, sermons, reprimands, everything she considers to be at the bottom of the scale ..."
"... This caste of half-educated, false scholars, "fast thinker", "little whites of culture" serves to exorcise "the power of those who have no more title to govern than to be governed". ..."
"... Published by Le Bougnoulosophe at 2/05/2013 ..."
May 02, 2013 | bougnoulosophe.blogspot.com

Special dedication to Caroline Fourest, cheerleader of the "superstructure" and the dominant order...

A new caste was born. One would have to be blind not to notice its emergence. It aspires to the outsourcing of "pastoral power". And the flock is the people. This caste does not appreciate popular claims: of poujadism. She does not like too "tanned" manifestations: communitarianism and Islamism. She is outraged when one criticizes Israel or the United States: of anti-Semitism and " conspirationism ".

Faithful to her masters, she cannot stand criticism of the powerful: envy and resentment. She does not like the internet: "freaks, maniacs, fanatics, megalomaniacs, paranoiacs, nazis, informants, who find there a way to spread their delusions, their hatreds, or their obsessions worldwide.". She hates democracy, in its noble sense ; to put it simply, she hates it. She is, most often without announcing the color, Zionist, Atlantist and a little Islamophobic. If, rather, it is found in the media, it is flexible and adapts to all contexts. It is one and at the same time multiple. Within it we observe all the nuances, history to occupy all niches, way to interest all sensibilities.

Despite her great airs, despite her pretensions, she is not the holder of either science or wealth or belonging to a lineage. She is a commoner, a half-scientist and lives on emoluments. She dreams of oligarchy, but she only has the power of " henchman " ; she is auxiliary, Lackey, second-rate, she serves soup infinitely ... as a good shepherd dog, she admonishes, sermons, reprimands, everything she considers to be at the bottom of the scale ... neither scribe, nor prophet, nor Mandarin, she likes to illuminate with her "false lights".

She demands that we listen carefully. She orders that we obey her. It does not tolerate contradiction or debate. Its mission in the end: to allow the oligarchy to rule in the name of the people and to establish this society that regulates the power of the commodity. This caste of half-educated, false scholars, "fast thinker", "little whites of culture" serves to exorcise "the power of those who have no more title to govern than to be governed". But she is more and more helpless as her strings are big and her intellectual means limited

Published by Le Bougnoulosophe at 2/05/2013

[Sep 14, 2020] Jonathan Parry What's the big idea- The Origins of Our Decline LRB 30 November 2017

Notable quotes:
"... The triumph of Brexit is the clearest example of the conquest of Conservatism by an idea which, whatever one thinks of it, is not primarily justified by a reasoned economic calculation. It is instead a moralist's statement of how the world ought to be. Britain ought to be a sovereign country; it ought to have an independent weight in the world; its historic values equip it to thrive; they need to be liberated. ..."
"... the underlying point is that the political class as a whole, across all parties, is now infected with the same tendency. ..."
"... Politics has been hollowed out into a war of words, now that a parliamentary career has become less attractive to men and women from other walks of life. It currently attracts in disproportionate numbers what used to be called the lumpenintelligentsia: earnest types who enthuse about ideas, simplify them and believe fervently that their crude and wholesale application will solve complex social problems. ..."
Sep 14, 2020 | lrb.co.uk

The Age of Decadence: Britain 1880 to 1914
by Simon Heffer .
Random House, 912 pp., £30, September 2017, 978 1 84794 742 0

... ... ...

Only rarely since then has the vision of a disinterested Millite clerisy directing national counsels gained political traction. Some have suggested that Asquith's government was beholden to an ideology of 'New Liberalism', but this is dewy-eyed: like 'New Labour', it was a political triangulation strategy rather than an intellectual endeavour. For most of the 20 th century, abstract ideas were kept in their place. Within parties, and particularly within the Labour Party, policy-making was delegated to committees, which were rarely temples of high-mindedness. Keith Middlemas described the politics of industrial society as a battle of economic interests – capital and labour – that became bureaucratised and accommodated within the processes and institutions of government. Parties appealed to voters mostly in straightforward terms – talk of jobs, wages, living standards and social services – and there was a continuing subsidiary role for ethical appeals to various kinds of loyalty, moral respectability and aspiration loosely based on traditional ideas of patriotism, religion or class solidarity. As Morgan Phillips observed, the Labour Party owed more to Methodism than to Marxism. Large swathes of the Conservative Party continued to deprecate ideas, and to prioritise pragmatism even when applying the ideas they recognised, such as free market economics. The party's main claim on voters' loyalties was its basic offer of economic competence and stability.

The process ​ by which the Conservative Party has become addicted to ideas is one of the most significant and least studied political developments of the last quarter-century. It clearly owes something to the legacy of Thatcher and the appeal of free market ideology, bolstered by the process of globalisation.

But the craving for an ideas-driven Conservatism can't be explained simply in terms of the triumph of a particular economic worldview. On the contrary, it could be argued that at no time since 1914 has the Conservative Party demonstrated less concern with economic competence than it does now. This can be attributed to a range of pressures: the unattractive economic choices imposed by post-2008 austerity politics; the dependence on a particular unproductive vested interest, old age pensioners; and, above all, the allure of Brexit.

The triumph of Brexit is the clearest example of the conquest of Conservatism by an idea which, whatever one thinks of it, is not primarily justified by a reasoned economic calculation. It is instead a moralist's statement of how the world ought to be. Britain ought to be a sovereign country; it ought to have an independent weight in the world; its historic values equip it to thrive; they need to be liberated.

This is the language of newspaper columnists who in a thousand words must put the world to rights. It is the language of Heffer himself, when writing about Brexit, and it is the language of Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, who both spent their whole pre-political careers as journalists. Yet Brexit is merely the most striking example of the way in which the press – and some quasi-intellectual policy advisers in the mould of Oliver Letwin – have remoralised the Conservative offering. Gove's attack as education secretary on 'the blob', his term for the forces in charge of school education, was shaped by years of indignant columns about the barriers to excellence and competitiveness imposed by school bureaucracy and political correctness. George Osborne's abolition of the 50p tax rate in 2012, which in one month knocked six points off the Conservative share of the vote in the opinion polls, owed more to pro-Laffer-curve journalism than to conclusive Treasury data on the subject. This is now a world in which Osborne, for six years the second most powerful man in Britain, can think that the best means of resisting Brexit is the editorship of a London freesheet. And it is a world in which leading Conservative political columnists – Tim Montgomerie, Matthew d'Ancona, Iain Martin – respond to the party's current parlous position by urging a turn to 'new ideas', as if the current ones hadn't done damage enough.

Abandoning hard-headed economic realism allied to the sceptical rebuttal of utopian moralism, and replacing it with something approaching its opposite, is a course that seems at best electorally retrograde and in all likelihood completely suicidal. Yet the underlying point is that the political class as a whole, across all parties, is now infected with the same tendency.

Politics has been hollowed out into a war of words, now that a parliamentary career has become less attractive to men and women from other walks of life. It currently attracts in disproportionate numbers what used to be called the lumpenintelligentsia: earnest types who enthuse about ideas, simplify them and believe fervently that their crude and wholesale application will solve complex social problems.

Hence, among other consequences, the paradox that Brexit appeals to resurgent Corbynites on the grounds that it might one day bring about socialism in one country and to Conservative free marketeers for the opposite reason. Clearly both can't be right, and almost certainly neither will get as far as they hope towards implementing their vision. But it is ironic that 150 years after Carlyle and Mill fretted about how best to secure the rule of the high-minded in an era awash with money, the ideas men – and it is perhaps telling that they are nearly all men – have finally taken over politics. Though Heffer may disagree, I have a feeling that neither of those venerable sages would think our new political class quite up to it.

[Sep 14, 2020] While We're at It by R. R. Reno

Notable quotes:
"... On the strength of Adrian Vermeule's review last month (" Liturgy of Liberalism ," January 2017), I picked up Ryszard Legutko's The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies . Legutko sees many parallels between the communism that dominated the Poland of his youth and the political-social outlook now treated as obligatory by Eurocrats and dominant in America, which he calls "[neo]liberal democracy." ..."
"... One parallel struck me as especially important: "Communism and [neo]liberal democracy are related by a similarly paradoxical approach to politics: both promised to reduce the role of politics in human life, yet induced politicization on a scale unknown in previous history." We're aware of the totalitarian dimension of communism. But liberalism? Isn't it supposed to be neutral with respect to substantive outlooks, endorsing only the constitutional and legal frameworks for free and fair political debate? Actually, no. Liberals always assert that liberalism is the view of politics, society, and morality "most adequate of and for modern times." ..."
"... [Neo]Liberalism, Legutko points out, is committed to dualism, not pluralism. He gives the example of Isaiah Berlin, who made a great deal out of the importance of the pluralism of the liberal spirit. Yet "Berlin himself, a superbly educated man, knew very well and admitted quite frankly that the most important and most valuable fruits of Western philosophy were monistic in nature." This means that liberalism, as Berlin defines it, must classify nearly the entire history of Western thought (and that of other cultures as well) as "nonliberal." Thus, "the effect of this supposed liberal pluralism" is not a welcoming, open society in which a wide range of substantive thought flourishes, but "a gigantic purge of Western philosophy, bringing an inevitable degradation of the human mind." ..."
"... The purge mentality has a political dimension. Since 1989, European politics has shifted away from a left vs. right framework toward "mainstream" vs. "extremist." This is a telling feature of [neo]liberal democracy as an ideology. "The tricky side of 'mainstream' politics is that it does not tolerate any political 'tributaries' and denies that they should have any legitimate existence. Those outside the mainstream are believed to be either mavericks and as such not deserving to be treated seriously, or fascists who should be politically eliminated." ..."
"... Lumpenproletariat ..."
"... Legutko speaks of "lumpenintellectuals." These are the professors and journalists who buttress the status quo by rehearsing ideological catechisms and exposing heretics. We certainly have a lumpenintelligentsia ..."
"... I regularly read two lumpenintellectuals in order to understand the orthodoxies of our political mainstream: Tom Friedman over at the New York Times and Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal . The former is a cheerleader for today's globalist orthodoxies, complete with ritual expressions of misgivings. The latter eagerly plays the role of Leninist enforcer of those orthodoxies ..."
"... Weekly Standard ..."
"... The Weekly Standard ..."
Sep 14, 2020 | www.firstthings.com

♦ Boys and girls are different. There, I've said it, a heresy of our time. We're not supposed to suggest that a woman shouldn't fight in combat, or that an athletic girl doesn't have a right to play on the boys' football team -- or that a young woman doesn't run a greater risk than a young man when binge drinking. We are not supposed to reject the conceit that the sexes are interchangeable, and therefore a man can become a "woman" and use the ladies' bathroom.

Male and female God created us. I commend this heresy to readers. Remind people that boys in girls' bathrooms put girls at risk, and that Obergefell is a grotesque distortion of the Constitution. True -- and don't miss the opportunity to say, in public, that men and women are different. This is the deepest reason why gender ideology is perverse. As Peter Hitchens observes in this issue (" The Fantasy of Addiction "), there's a great liberation that comes when, against the spirit of the age, one blurts out what one knows to be true.


♦ Great Britain recently announced regulatory approval for scientists to introduce third-party DNA into the reproductive process. The technological innovation that allows for interventions into the most fundamental dimensions of reproduction and human identity is sure to accelerate. Which is a good reason for incoming President Trump to revive the President's Council on Bioethics. (It existed under President Obama, but was told to do and say nothing.) We need sober reflection on the coming revolution in reproductive technology. Trump should appoint Princeton professor Robert P. George to head the Bioethics Commission. He has the expertise in legal and moral philosophy, and he knows what's at stake. (See " Gnostic Liberalism ," December 2016.)


On the strength of Adrian Vermeule's review last month (" Liturgy of Liberalism ," January 2017), I picked up Ryszard Legutko's The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies . Legutko sees many parallels between the communism that dominated the Poland of his youth and the political-social outlook now treated as obligatory by Eurocrats and dominant in America, which he calls "[neo]liberal democracy."

One parallel struck me as especially important: "Communism and [neo]liberal democracy are related by a similarly paradoxical approach to politics: both promised to reduce the role of politics in human life, yet induced politicization on a scale unknown in previous history." We're aware of the totalitarian dimension of communism. But liberalism? Isn't it supposed to be neutral with respect to substantive outlooks, endorsing only the constitutional and legal frameworks for free and fair political debate? Actually, no. Liberals always assert that liberalism is the view of politics, society, and morality "most adequate of and for modern times."

This gives [neo]liberalism a partisan spirit all the more powerful because it is denied.

Although such words as "dialogue" and "pluralism" appear among its favorite motifs, as do "tolerance" and other similarly hospitable notions, this overtly generous rhetorical orchestration covers up something entirely different. In its essence, liberalism is unabashedly aggressive because it is determined to hunt down all nonliberal agents and ideas, which it treats as a threat to itself and to humanity.

[Neo]Liberalism, Legutko points out, is committed to dualism, not pluralism. He gives the example of Isaiah Berlin, who made a great deal out of the importance of the pluralism of the liberal spirit. Yet "Berlin himself, a superbly educated man, knew very well and admitted quite frankly that the most important and most valuable fruits of Western philosophy were monistic in nature." This means that liberalism, as Berlin defines it, must classify nearly the entire history of Western thought (and that of other cultures as well) as "nonliberal." Thus, "the effect of this supposed liberal pluralism" is not a welcoming, open society in which a wide range of substantive thought flourishes, but "a gigantic purge of Western philosophy, bringing an inevitable degradation of the human mind."


The purge mentality has a political dimension. Since 1989, European politics has shifted away from a left vs. right framework toward "mainstream" vs. "extremist." This is a telling feature of [neo]liberal democracy as an ideology. "The tricky side of 'mainstream' politics is that it does not tolerate any political 'tributaries' and denies that they should have any legitimate existence. Those outside the mainstream are believed to be either mavericks and as such not deserving to be treated seriously, or fascists who should be politically eliminated."


♦ Karl Marx coined the term Lumpenproletariat . Lumpen means "rag" in German, and its colloquial meanings include someone who is down-and-out. According to Marx, this underclass has counter-revolutionary tendencies. These people can be riled up by demagogues and deployed in street gangs to stymie the efforts of the true proletariat to topple the dominant class.

Legutko speaks of "lumpenintellectuals." These are the professors and journalists who buttress the status quo by rehearsing ideological catechisms and exposing heretics. We certainly have a lumpenintelligentsia , left and right: tenured professors, columnists, think tank apparatchiks, and human resources directors.


I regularly read two lumpenintellectuals in order to understand the orthodoxies of our political mainstream: Tom Friedman over at the New York Times and Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal . The former is a cheerleader for today's globalist orthodoxies, complete with ritual expressions of misgivings. The latter eagerly plays the role of Leninist enforcer of those orthodoxies.


♦ Bill Kristol recently stepped down as day-to-day editor at the Weekly Standard . .... As he put it with characteristic humor, "Here at The Weekly Standard , we've always been for regime change."...


[Sep 14, 2020] Op-Ed- On Modern Russian Culture- Part V - Awful Avalanche

Notable quotes:
"... Shcharansky earned his chops by popularizing words and expressions suitable for flaying the Soviet and now Russian dissident intelligentsia, aka "The Scorpions in the Nest" ™. In Russian the word is Рукопожатный (ruko-po-zhat-ny), from "ruka" ("hand") and "po-zhat" ("to press"). This "internet meme" of the "handshakeable person" is defined as "a person to whom the Russian liberal Opposition is inclined to shake hands with". ..."
"... Since XIX century the so-called liberal intelligentsia in Russia was fashionably in opposition to the Regime – and it was the first to crawl begging said regime to suppress the revolting masses, which more than anything else had frightened them. ..."
Sep 14, 2020 | awfulavalanche.wordpress.com

Op-Ed: On Modern Russian Culture: Part V Posted on November 21, 2016 by yalensis

Dear Readers:

You and I have wandered together on this long journey through the Inferno of Lyttenburgh's brain. We reached the epicenter of Russian cultural Hell, where a Satanic Gerontocracy ™ of handshakeable kreakles impose their pornographic "Visions" of High Art upon a mouth-breathing bydlo who only want to see trite spectacles, and who are incapable of appreciating the True Genius of the Artistic Mind.

A singing dancing porno Jesus? A kangaroo eating jelly at the Last Supper? Why not!?

Which reminds me, I should probably explain those terms up there which I put in italics. For those not in the know, " handshakeable " is another of those winged words invented by, probably, dissident blogger Lev Shcharansky . Who, as I mentioned before, has exerted more influence over the modern Russian language (well, at least its Internet version) than Ilf, Petrov, Griboedov, and Pushkin combined.

Shcharansky earned his chops by popularizing words and expressions suitable for flaying the Soviet and now Russian dissident intelligentsia, aka "The Scorpions in the Nest" ™. In Russian the word is Рукопожатный (ruko-po-zhat-ny), from "ruka" ("hand") and "po-zhat" ("to press"). This "internet meme" of the "handshakeable person" is defined as "a person to whom the Russian liberal Opposition is inclined to shake hands with". Quite simple, no?

As for "bydlo", that is an ancient Slavic, and even Indo-European word. The ancient Indo-European root was something like *bʰuH , and it meant "to be". As in Hamlet's "to be or not to be". Russian and all Slavic not to mention most European languages use the same verb, namely, "byt". In West Slavic languages, such as Polish and Czech, a derived word "bydlo" came to mean a place where people settled. Then the meaning shifted from "place" to "property or stuff", like household stuff, and from there to "domestic animals". In this sense of the meaning, the word was borrowed from West Slavic into Russian . Russians, always on the lookout for new ways to insult their friends and neighbors, were, like, "We need a word just like that to describe our domestic animals, and also certain persons who look and behave like domestic animals". Hence, bydlo .

With that bit of house-keeping out of the way, let us return to Lyttenburgh. Having passed the epicenter of Inferno, we are now in the field of reverse gravity. What seems up is down, and vice versa. Who knows, we may yet emerge, popping out of some volcanic crater in Iceland or New Zealand, or somewhere like that.

Part V

Senseless and Merciless

"The skies gonna open
People going pray and crawl
It's gonna rain down fire
It's gonna burn us all"

– Christian Kane, "L.A. song"

This happened a year and a half ago. As time will tell us – no one learned anything from this earlier incident. Maybe because at the moment of its eruption in February-March of 2015 there were plenty of other issues closer to home to occupy the general discourse of Russian people. Hence a scandal in the cultural sphere just failed to generate a significant resonance at the time to produce a serious discussion within society.

All sides of the conflict were dissatisfied with its resolution. The artistic intelligentsia warped the whole story into the now well-known myth about "creeping censorship" and continued to enjoy their Fronde . The people were dissatisfied that they were ignored, scoffed at and offended by the self-proclaimed new High Priesthood of the Art. Real members of the real world religions made their views on the scandal abundantly clear. This also raised the ire of the kreakls, who saw no controversy in demanding a limit to the clergy's right of freedom of speech. With the conflict not resolved, with tensions still high and simmering just beneath the surface of deceiving calm, with lessons unlearned and the State aloof and unresponsive to its role as the keeper of peace and high arbiter, new scandals and conflicts were bound to happen.

When the people don't have a voice they tend to lash out. This is a fact of life, a fact of history and a fact of the present day, as a lot of exalted alien beings inhabiting safe spaces of Facebook, Tumblr and politically correct hangouts found to their stupefied dismay only recently, and who, probably, will keep finding it in the future till they learn the lesson and change some of their dearly held preconceptions. Lashing out in question is always an ugly, destructive affair. Revolting peasants of the Jacquerie, German Peasant War, Khmelnitsky's uprising and Pugachev's rebellion committed uncountable number of violent crimes and atrocities. They were criminals by anyone's standards, and the Powers That Be had to suppress them. Yet, dismissing them outright without recognizing both the pressing issues that made people rise up and the fact, that they were denied any say in legally addressing their grievances, puts these events out of context.

Desperate people are prone to desperate measures. Lacking a clear moral authority to lead them and rein in the worst expressions of violent urges, then something else entirely, something less benevolent and more unhinged is bound to attempt to ride this tiger of an awakened, self-conscious and angry population. Some con artists, fanatics, goofballs and demagogues are bound to appear and attempt to hijack the legitimate protest or even try to discredit it while overstepping the law.

Bydlo Fight Back

Due to the all-prevailing narrative, which places squarely all possible and impossible crimes against humanity on Stalin; and to the generally cherished ignorance of history -- people forget that it was in the reign of the "Dear and Beloved" Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev that the atheist and anti-religious propaganda reached an exorbitant and all penetrating level in the Soviet Union. This is all part of our history, which is always better to know than pretend it never happened.

Look out! Enteo is out of his cage!

It's anyone's guess what were the driving imperatives of the people, organizing the exhibition in Manezh expo-hall in Moscow in August 2015, when they decided to feature mainly "sculptures" on religious themes of the so-called nonconformist artists from 1954-68. The exhibition was attacked by one man freak show Dmitry Tsorionov aka Enteo . Former liberast, proponent of the alternative spiritual practices (read: sects and cults) and a connoisseur of mind-expanding ingredients (read: drugs) Enteo is the violent, always angry born again self-proclaimed zealot of the true Christianity in the form of his organization "God's Will". The official Church and the authorities showed him their silent and tacit support, while his group was disrupting attempts to hold gay-prides (not that it would require a lot of manpower or effort), but what he did at Manezh clearly shocked and dismayed them. Enteo and his own cultists entered the hall where the exhibition was taking place, screeched out their displeasure with what they saw and attempted to deface the objects of "art".

Thankfully, like virtually anything produced in the USSR back then, said "statues" proved to be nigh indestructible, so Enteo and Co succeed only in smashing an Ikea made plate, on which one of the "exhibits" was standing. Security did absolutely nothing to stop them.

As the result of this escapade Tsorionov lost even the tacit support of the officials, and the public opinion of him and his vigilantes became much more negative. Manezh expo-hall filed an official request to the police , accusing Enteo of vandalism and hooliganism. One month later, he was found guilty of petty hooliganism and sentenced to 10 days of arrest. Same people, who deemed Pussy Riot's and "artist" Pavlensky's escapades a form of "creative protest" and "modern art-events", while bemoaning any attempts of the state to characterize their actions as unlawful, were less forgiving in Enteo's case with his very own "happening" and "performance". But, as said Dmitriy Anatolyevich Medvedev in his capacity as then president of Russia (and as was aptly demonstrated in cases of Enteo, Pavlensky and the former art-director Mezdrich, who won't answer for the mysterious disappearance of the state funds in his opera) – "The System must learn how to forgive".

Again – nothing came out of that, sides of the conflict exchanged volleys of accusations and no lessons were learned. Again everyone had been left guessing when and what will explode next time. Surely enough, something exploded, riling up two clearly incomparable in numbers sides even more in their non-acceptance of each other.

Dmitry Zakharov protests against art depicting Ukrainian National Guard as heroes

In September 2016 a group of Byelarussian members of the artistic intelligentsia (and local Fronde to bat'ka Lukashenko) held a photo-exhibition at the Sakharov Center, Moscow, depicting "Heroes of Donbass". In their version – members of the so-called volunteer battalions of the National Guard were these heroes. People, killing their former countrymen, women, children and elderly – depicted as smiling, nice, hearty persons. This most "balanced" and "neutral" exhibition proclaimed them as the people, fighting against the "Separatists" – all in accordance to the Vision of the Artist. Needless to say, that such interpretation was met with most loud protests from the people of Russia. Equally unnecessary would be pointing out, that we are talking about an "event" sanctioned by our always shy and hands-off Ministry of Culture in their own building. It turned ugly very soon – photos were sprayed with red paint by one of the enraged visitors – an artist himself.

Sergeii Lukashevsky: Always fair and balanced.

Most progressive intelligentsia of Russia deemed these actions of protest "barbarous", once again confirming everyone's suspicions about whose side they were supporting in the Ukrainian civil war. [yalensis hint: Russia's "progressive intelligentsia" mostly supports the Ukrainian government side in that war, although they won't always admit it out loud.] Art-Director of the Sakharov Center Sergey Lukashevsky admitted that he knew what kind of reaction such an exhibition could produce. Still, he decided to stage it, arguing that last year his center produced a similar exhibition, only from the People's Republics side – he was just striving for "balance" and "neutrality".

More Scandals Involving Children And Animals

At the same time, another scandal was in full swing, once again polarizing society into two numerically unequal camps. Again, it was because of yet another example of the generous permissiveness of our Ministry of Culture. Photo exhibition of Jock Sturges "art" drew a proverbial tsunami of people's wrath. The artistic intelligentsia couldn't just deny itself the pleasure of prodding a tiger, safely locked behind bars. While pointing out that from a purely judicial point of view the exhibit was not violating any Russian laws. The people answered with stating the obvious – there are underage completely nude girls on this photo exhibition. How can any normal, non-pervert person claim that taking photos of them and then making their photos available for "appreciation" among the connoisseurs of such things is normal? Kreakls answered with wailing, gnashing of teeth and condemnation of the "spiritual paupers", incapable of seeing and understating the Art. In their opinion, it was the Regime's guilt. If only it could cough up more money and make the "appreciation of culture" taught at schools then the people will grow up as highly-artistic persons, with broad views on reality at large and new sets of values. These suggestions were made live, on state owned "Kremlin-controlled" TV channels with no ill consequences to the members of artistic intelligentsia. What is more important, IMO, is that no one dared to ask these fine specimens and results of countless generations of "progress" and "higher culture", how do they suggest an underage kid would be taught to appreciate the "positive artistic eroticism" of photos of equally underage kids.

Jock Sturges art photography

Again the Ministry of Culture stood aloof, again nothing was done on the official level – because Russia, no matter what the detractors say, has no censorship. Some people staged one-person protest against the exhibit – to the apparent displeasure of the so-called Russian liberals. Others went much far and beyond the law. A group calling itself "The Union of Russian Officers" (with no official status or even real officers among their numbers) organized a picket at the entrance of the expo-hall, and one of their number entered the accursed placed armed with a can full of urine, to consecrate the exhibits with its content. He succeeded in this endeavor, which later translated into his detainment and arrest. Aristocrats of the Spirit responsible for this scandal wallowed (and enjoyed!) in their newly acquired status of Victims of the Regime – because how else can you explain their decision to have no security on site, or that they did not call the police the first moment they saw trouble brewing on the horizon?

It was exactly against this that Konstantin Raikin decided to raise his voice. Being a member of the Aristocracy of the Spirit he and the likes of him never doubted for a moment that all protests against the sacred Art were fake, staged, paid by the Regime, which uses these fake protestors as cat's-paws in its quest to squash already threatened Freedom of Expression in This Country. The idea that there is such thing as self-aware narod , instead of a silent quietly mewling herd of mostly stupid and submissive bydlo never crossed his or other's minds. For them it is all old "The Artist vs the State" struggle, and the people, public, society, spectators – they do not fit into the narrative. Since XIX century the so-called liberal intelligentsia in Russia was fashionably in opposition to the Regime – and it was the first to crawl begging said regime to suppress the revolting masses, which more than anything else had frightened them.

"Ladies and gentlemen: On your right is an Old Master painting. On your left, a stuffed dog wearing a birthday cap."

A Ministry of Culture self-contradictory passive, all permissiveness and unable to defend their own official program, an ossified if not degenerative modus Vivendi of the vast majority of representatives of the so-called creative classes and the un-diminishing anger and rejection of both the "post-modern values" and the legislation, paradoxically protecting it, by the people deprived of any say, would mean only one thing – such scandals will happen more and more in the future. Just to demonstrate that even the nearly universal condemnation of Raikin's haughtiness by the common people is not a big deal to the Aristocracy of the Spirit, yet another scandal erupted last week . Russian society, still reeling after the criminal affair featuring girl-students from Khabarovsk mutilating animals on-line , now was not prepared for a state-sanctioned, highly artistic dead-animal mutilating fete – in the Hermitage, Saint-Petersburg, of all places! The Hermitage is ruled by a true Aristocrat – the infamous M.B. Piotrovsky , who, literally, inherited the title of the head of one of (if not the) most important museums of Russia from his father. No scandal or accusation ever harmed his handshakable status or deprived him from the favour of the Ministry of Culture. Surely, a person who allowed enormous graft and theft of objects of art in Hermitage in the past will survive the present day scandal unscathed, while accusing all those opposing this most wondrous exhibition as "hired slanderers".

[Sep 14, 2020] Russia -- The Revolt of "Net Hamsters" by by Alexey Sidorenko

Notable quotes:
"... This post is part of our special coverage Russia Elections 2011 . ..."
"... This post is part of our special coverage Russia Elections 2011 . ..."
Dec 05, 2011 | globalvoices.org

This post is part of our special coverage Russia Elections 2011 .

The day after the elections , Russians got together to rally against election fraud. Even though the United Russia party, according to preliminary results, is to lose some 77 seats compared to the previous Duma, most of the protesters considered the election to be neither fair, nor free (see our previous reports on the web crackdown and massive violation reports).

After the polls closed on Dec. 4, Solidarnost movement invited protesters to Chistye Prudy metro station in Moscow, while the Communists, also unhappy with the election results, organized their rally at Pushkinskaya square. Solidarnost movement represenatives, most of whom have no political arena except street actions and the blogosphere, managed to bring thousands of people together (while crowd estimates vary significantly, the most balanced assessment seems to be from 8,000 to 10,000 people).

Chistye Prudy

People began gathering for the Solidarnost event at around 19:00 MSK. Georgiy Alburov posted a picture of the line to the site of the rally:

Line to the Chistye Prudy rally. Photo by Georgiy Alburov

Line to the Chistye Prudy rally. Photo by Georgiy Alburov

British journalist Shaun Walker tweeted [ru]:

Thousands out in cold/rain baying for free elections, Putin to be sent to prison. Never seen anything on this scale. Definite change of mood

The overall coverage was chaotic as the mobile Internet stopped working in the area and people couldn't upload videos and pictures. LiveJournal kept the chronology of the events here [ru].

Only later in the evening people were able to upload videos [ru] from the rally and particularly the speech [ru] by Alexey Navalny, who was among the most popular politicians of the event. His speech probably best describes the essence of the current events:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Cd_yYhqU_SA?feature=oembed

Alexey Navalny shouted:

"We have our voices. We exist. Do we exist?"

The crowd replied: "Yes!"

And then: "They can call us microbloggers or net hamsters. I am a net hamster! And I'll bite [these bastards' heads off.] We'll all do it together! Because we do exist! [ ] We will not forget, we will not forgive"

The reference to 'net hamsters' (a pejorative term for politically-engaged Internet commenters) and their political will to change the country has destroyed the myth of the slacktivist nature of political engagement online. Navalny has specifically emphasized 'forgetting/forgiving' to show that netizens do not necessarily have a short attention span often ascribed to them.

On to Lubyanka

After several speeches made by the opposition politicians, the crowd moved on towards Lubyanka Square, where the head office of the Federal Security Service is located. The video [ru] uploaded by user bigvane depicts Muscovites moving to Lubyanka and chanting "Free elections":

https://www.youtube.com/embed/1_NMbJTGCk8?feature=oembed

Most of the activists, however, were soon stopped on their way. Ilya Barabanov tweeted a picture of the blocked road:

Blocked road. Photo by Ilya Barabanov

Blocked road. Photo by Ilya Barabanov

Twenty minutes after the aforementioned photo was made, Alexey Navalny was detained by the police. Ilya Barabanov was detained three minutes after Navalny. (See this great photo report made by ridus.ru correspondents here [ru].)

But even the detention didn't break the rebellious and quite positive spirit of the protesters. Navalny, while sitting in a police bus together with other activists, shared an instagram photo of the cheerful detained protesters:

'I'm sitting in a police bus with all the guys. They all say hi.' Photo by Alexey Navalny

'I'm sitting in a police bus with all the guys. They all say hi.' Photo by Alexey Navalny

Another video , also shot inside a police bus, showed protesters discussing the salaries of police officers, laughing a lot.

The Hamster Revolution

The most interesting part of the post-election rebellion is not its peaceful manner (also an important feature compared to violent nationalist riots), but its new demographics. Tvrain.ru field reporter said that the crowd consisted mainly of the "intelligentsia, hipsters, and young people." "It is a fashionable rally," said the reporter. Later, these observations were added: the age of the protesters was between 16 and 33 and for many of those who were detained this was the first street action experience. As Vera Kichanova tweeted :

Lyosha Nikitin writes that he is the only one of the 16 people in the police bus who had been detained before. Others were taking part in a rally for the first time!

***

Meanwhile, levada.ru, the site of Levada Center polling and sociological research organization, has been DDoSed [ru] and the contents of epic-hero.ru were removed [ru] by the hosting provider.

This post is part of our special coverage Russia Elections 2011 .

[Sep 14, 2020] These Rich White Kids Were Arrested For Rioting. Here s A Look At Their Violent -Revolutionary Strategy by Daisy Luther

Brainwashed net hamsters are typical foot soldiers of any color revolution. Nothing new here.
Notable quotes:
"... Meet Clara Kraebber, who was arrested for felony rioting and misdemeanor possession of graffiti instruments after being identified as one of the people causing more than $100,000 worth of damage during an early September window-smashing spree. ..."
"... Kraebber, aged 20, is a history major at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She's the daughter of an architect and a child psychologist and comes from a family so wealthy that they own a 1.8 million dollar co-op with river views on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, as well as a country home built in the 1730s in exclusive Litchfield County, Connecticut. ..."
"... Kraebber's mother, Virginia Kindred, runs Kindred Arch.Works, a Manhattan architect firm that has designed spaces for Columbia University and NYU, and worked on numerous school and business spaces throughout the city. ..."
"... Her father is Markus Kraebber, an Upper East Side child and adolescent psychiatrist who teaches at the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry. ( source ) ..."
"... She seems to be a prime example of a person who drank the Koolaid of the kind of misguided indoctrination many young people are facing right now. ..."
"... So we have more brainwashed, privileged kids touting communism who will one day hold positions of power. Kids with these backgrounds will be on boards of directors. They'll hold corporate jobs. They'll handle funds. ..."
Sep 12, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden Sat, 09/12/2020 - 15:05 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

When you hear about Black Lives Matter protests taking place in New York City, you might expect those taking lead roles to be Black people.

It appears this isn't necessarily the case, and some of the worst damage and most violent ideologies are instead the products of privileged white kids who are rampaging in the streets.

Meet Clara Kraebber, who was arrested for felony rioting and misdemeanor possession of graffiti instruments after being identified as one of the people causing more than $100,000 worth of damage during an early September window-smashing spree.

Kraebber, aged 20, is a history major at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She's the daughter of an architect and a child psychologist and comes from a family so wealthy that they own a 1.8 million dollar co-op with river views on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, as well as a country home built in the 1730s in exclusive Litchfield County, Connecticut.

Kraebber's mother, Virginia Kindred, runs Kindred Arch.Works, a Manhattan architect firm that has designed spaces for Columbia University and NYU, and worked on numerous school and business spaces throughout the city.

Her father is Markus Kraebber, an Upper East Side child and adolescent psychiatrist who teaches at the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry. ( source )

She seems to be a prime example of a person who drank the Koolaid of the kind of misguided indoctrination many young people are facing right now.

What police found in her belongings

When Kraebber was arrested, police found dozens of handwritten pages of plans to "redistribute wealth" in what she called a "revolutionary strategy that appears to have been inspired by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin – whose totalitarian government has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repressions , ethnic cleansing, deportations , hundreds of thousands of executions, and famines that killed millions ( source ) – and Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. From a NY Post report, here are some of the writings found in her handwritten manifesto.

In her notes, Kraebber pointed to the "HUGE number of empty units" in "white flight apts, new luxury buildings" that and include the instruction to "study tactics of clearing buildings."

There are repeated references to "scouts" to find vacant apartments and locksmiths to help break in, as well as the need to "prep for SWAT-style eviction efforts" through the use of movable "barricades" and "bricks on roofs as weapons," sources said.

A page titled "Revolutionary Strategy" and dated Aug. 21 includes notes that say "Stalin -- defend USSR at all costs" and "Trotsky -- United front of all working class but don't let capitalists in," sources said.

There are repeated references to the Spanish Civil War, including an assertion that the failure of the Spanish revolution of 1936 was a "failure of leadership," sources said.

"Some think actual revolution will be lead by more deliberate leadership," Kraebber wrote.

Kraebber also faulted the protests over the police killing of George Floyd, writing, "Minneapolis -- lots of spontaneous radical energy but no leadership."

Her notes contain multiple mentions of "Abolition Park" -- or "AP" -- which refer to the anti-cop encampment that activists set up outside City Hall during the recent battle to defund the NYPD, which resulted in a total $1.5 billion in cuts to its operating and capital budgets.

"All cops are bad because they work for a system that thrives off the oppression of marginalized communities. Asking 'what about the 'good' cops?' is like asking what about the good slave masters," according to the Abolition Park website. ( source )

So to be clear, this rich kid wants to find vacant apartments and also forcibly evict residents to give the homes to others she feels are more worthy of living in them. She wants to defend this violently and has already been arrested for destroying property. And she's awaiting trial in her family's luxurious second home.

Her notes led the NYPD to issue a warning to police officers.

Kraebber's violent plans led the NYPD to issue a warning to police officers about possible tactics that could be used against them.

The discovery of Kraebber's notes led the NYPD to warn cops in a Wednesday email that they could face future incidents during which anarchists blend in with peaceful protesters to incite violence before changing into all-black clothing, sources said.

The "Officer Safety Alert" also said that anarchists could listen in on police communications and stash rocks on rooftops to hurl at cops.

In addition, the NYPD said that the homes of police brass could be targeted. ( source )

During the riot, hundreds of people chanted, "Every city, every town, burn the precinct to the ground."

She's not the only wealthy kid who was arrested.

Several of Kraebber's "comrades" also come from privileged backgrounds.

Fox News reported:

The hypocrisy of these people wanting to redistribute the wealth of others is simply mind-boggling.

There's a pattern here.

Earlier this summer, Toby Cowern wrote about how the change of names from CHAZ to CHOP was extremely significant. I think we're seeing the same pattern with these young people as we did with the Occupy Wall Street protestors.

Think back to 2009-2011 – this was the real peak of the Occupy movement. We're now in 2020. We're nine years on.

So those young, idyllic people that were the main rank and file of that movement are 10 years older now. Those who were quite high profile students from good universities were getting behind this, what positions are they in nowadays? They're going to be sitting at mid, or high-level management in major corporations. They're going to have a whole other sphere of influence.

Or they might be on the city council.

A Seattle City Council member, Kshama Sawant, was part of the original Occupy Wall Street protests and is also part of this one.

While the protest does have some loose leadership, there are few formal structures. Sawant compares the space to the "Night of 500 tents" during the Occupy Wall Street movement in Seattle in October 2011, of which she was a part. Back then, Occupy protesters were able to drive police from their space before police returned and cleared out the area where the protests took place.

Already, said Sawant, CHOP has outlasted what they were able to achieve with that Occupy action, which only lasted three days. But she said she expects police to clear the area sometime in the near future. "I don't think that we can in any way assume that the police will not come back and specifically attack this space," she said. "I think we should expect that that could happen at any moment, because that's exactly what happened in Occupy." ( source )

No longer is this about wearing a funny t-shirt and waving a flag on the street and feeling the reward of being 'part of the crowd' anymore. These people have progressed into places that they have major corporate clout.

And that leads to funding. ( source )

So we have more brainwashed, privileged kids touting communism who will one day hold positions of power. Kids with these backgrounds will be on boards of directors. They'll hold corporate jobs. They'll handle funds.

But I'd be willing to bet they won't be turning over the keys to their own Upper East Side co-ops if the opportunity rolls around to reallocate property. They'll just be coming after everyone else's hard-earned property in the name of "revolutionary strategy."

dogismycopilot , 8 hours ago

These aren't kids. They are adults who have accepted the rights of being an American without accepting the responsibilities. These people need to be punished by the Federal government. If they are released I can promise you it will only burnish their credentials and feed their insanity.

This is a Communist Insurrection. The Communists have hijacked the Democratic party.

If Joe Biden were to win, he will not be in control. The Communists will. The first thing they will do is eliminate the filibuster. Then they will pack the supreme court by adding more judges. The electoral college would go bye bye. They will redistribute senators based on population – imagine California with 30 sentators. Illegal immigrants and residents will be given voting rights.

This election is not a Democrat v Republican. This is about a radical left progressive party (communist-democrats) who wish to fundamentally alter the US. They want to erase 1776 and they want to go for a Jacobian French revolution complete with guillatins.

These people need to be punished severely.

Yen Cross , 7 hours ago

I digress, these adults have the mental acuity of a 15 year old child 75 years ago. When I was 20, I was running a business out of my garage.

TBT or not TBT , 6 hours ago

Colonial America was balkanized into various Protestant Christian variants. So balkanized that even after the 1st amendment was ratified various states maintained state recognized state religions. Fully constitutionally by the way, as the Establishment Clause only applied to Congress, not the states. Any brand of Protestant Christianity could be and was recognized by state and local government.

Roger Casement , 5 hours ago

...Commiefornia gangsters have been openly criminally discriminating against white American citizens since the 70s. 30% of the students in their publicly funded colleges are white while over half their population is/was white. That's some massive, blatant, anti-American discrimination and racist RICO theft. The gangsters are getting away with this everywhere since the Clintons.

https://calmatters.org/education/2020/08/prop-16-racial-equity-university-faculty/

Kill all the gangsters.

[Oct. 12, 2013] 9 причин, по которым креаклы не любят Россию

Айтишники находятся в зоне риска. Во-первых, их профессия связана с постоянным стрессом - оплошность программиста или системного администратора с зарплатой в 50 тысяч рублей часто может вызвать миллионные убытки. Осознание этого факта постоянно давит на психику.

( Collapse )

Кроме того, сама работа айтишников предполагает постоянную борьбу с ошибками, поломками и поджимающими сроками. Неприятные неожиданности подстерегают айтишника на каждом шагу, и далеко не все имеют достаточно толстую шкуру, чтобы сохранять в условиях рушащихся ежедневно планов олимпийское спокойствие.

Масла в огонь подливают и пользователи/клиенты/начальство, которые зачастую общаются в стиле Антона Уральского: эмоционально и с надрывом.

Конечно, при идеально организованной работе все эти проблемы могут быть сведены к минимуму… однако такого рода идеал встречается в реальной жизни нечасто.

Во-вторых, айтишники постоянно вынуждены заниматься вопросами, в которых они мало что понимают. Даже если айтишник будет по 12 часов в день читать мануалы и форумы по своей специальности, у него всё равно останутся огромные пробелы в профессиональных знаниях. А принимать решения, кроить код и настраивать новое оборудование надо прямо сейчас. Волей-неволей приходится действовать "вслепую", опираясь на запавшие в память обрывки информации.

Это плохая привычка, которая деформирует психику. Многие айтишники начинают считать себя крутыми специалистами по всем вопросам, по которым они хоть что-то слышали краем уха.

Наконец, айтишники варятся в густейшем информационном поле. В этом плане их профессия похожа на работу таксистов: с той только разницей, что таксисты впитывают в себя только слухи, а айтишники до кучи ещё и пожирают массу новостей из разных уголков интернета.

Все эти факторы вместе зачастую ломают характер айтишника, делая из него хронического циника-пессимиста - который свято верит, будто мир вокруг него соткан из скорби и нечистот.

Надо отметить, что особенно сильно рискуют в этом плане разработчики, которые весь рабочий день варятся в своём профессиональном кругу. В коллективах айтишников депрессия и уныние распространяются как чума.

В качестве иллюстрации сделаю разбор классической статьи молодой дамы, которую зовут Виктория и которая, как ясно из текста, работает системным администратором. Статья была опубликована ещё в 2011 году, а сейчас она активно перепащивается в блогосфере. Статья называется "девять причин, по которым я уезжаю из России":

http://www.gazeta.ru/realty/2011/08/17_e_3735725.shtml

1. Безопасность

Её нет. Милицию переименовали в полицию, военным пообещали большие зарплаты, всех силовиков переодевают в новехонькую с иголочки форму. Дало ли это эффект? Нет, если по-прежнему при виде полицейского хочется перейти на другую сторону улицы. Нет, если жены в день зарплаты инспектируют мужей, как не быть ограбленному полицией.

Нет, если водитель держит в паспорте несколько сотенных купюр на случай внезапной взятки инспектору. Нет, если человек в форме заходит в супермаркет и расстреливает людей.

Милицию переименовали в полицию для того, чтобы можно было провести глобальную кадровую чистку. Это достаточно стандартный приём: с управленческой точки зрения гораздо эффективнее не увольнять негодных сотрудников, а заново набирать на работу годных. Виктория этого просто не знает и думает, будто переименование не имело смысла.

Несколько сотенных купюр "на случай внезапной взятки" нормальные водители не держат. Если человек не нарушает, взятку с него никто не будет вымогать. А если водитель нарушает сознательно и постоянно, то взятка "внезапной" уже не будет - это будет его личное решение нарушителя.

Затем, даже идейные нарушители обычно всё же держат в запасе не несколько сотен рублей, а сумму побольше. Так как сейчас не девяностые года, от сколько-нибудь серьёзных нарушений такой мелочью уже не откупиться. Проще говоря, дама пересказывает перевранные слухи.

Наконец, алкаш Евсюков был задержан не кем-нибудь, а другими сотрудниками полиции, после чего успешно получил пожизненный срок. Бояться расстрела в супермаркете из-за единичного Евсюкова нелепо - куда как большую опасность для дамы представляют как раз те её друзья, которые нарушают правила ПДД и суют взятки инспекторам ДПС.

2. Здоровье

У меня есть медицинская страховка и есть деньги на то, что в эту самую страховку не входит, например, на стоматологию. Однако для того, чтобы пойти к врачу мне необходимо долго консультироваться с друзьями и знакомыми, дабы не попасть к неспециалисту.

Я до сих пор с ужасом вспоминаю одну московскую клинику, где работают "врачи", не имеющие права на медицинскую деятельность. И клинику никто и не думает закрывать!

Стоматолог как-то раз нашел у меня кариес в имплантанте.

Чудес не бывает. Медицина как наука пока что очень далека от совершенства: если человечество научилось с грехом пополам справляться с острыми состояниями (типа пулевых ранений или холеры), то вот с хроническими заболеваниями сделать можно не так уж много. Зачастую самым эффективным способом лечения является гиппократовское "не навреди".

Однако конкретно стоматология в России сейчас очень хороша. Это советская стоматология была настолько чудовищна, что многие жертвы стоматологов тех лет до сих пор до дрожи в коленках боятся посещать врачей. Сейчас же все процедуры делаются легко и безболезненно.

При этом хоть на Западе качество стоматологии тоже обычно неплохое, цены там абсолютно асоциальные. Один мой знакомый, например, несколько раз летал из США в Петербург делать зубы. Разницу в цене была настолько велика, что стоимость трансатлантического перелёта укладывалась в неё с большим запасом. Подробнее об этом я уже писал вот здесь:

http://fritzmorgen.livejournal.com/508323.html

В общем, именно на стоматологии преимущества нашей медицины видны особенно ярко. Про другую же, нестоматологическую медицину подробно рассказывала недавно sharla_tanka:

http://fritzmorgen.livejournal.com/627815.html

Я не говорю, что в Европе и в Америке всё плохо. Там есть масса замечательных вещей, которым я искренне завидую. Но вот конкретно претензии к нашей медицине основываются обычно на банальном незнании зарубежных реалий.

И, да, врачам не надо доверяться со вздохом "ах, доктор, я ничего не понимаю, обманывай меня полностью". Надо непременно уточнять, что у вас нашли, что это значит, и как это планируют лечить. При этом если вопрос серьёзный, законом не запрещено провести повторное исследование в другой клинике.

Особый юмор, кстати, в том, что ровно такой же подход надо применять при заказе IT-услуг.

3. Образование

То, что уровень образования падает, ни для кого не секрет. Родители отправляют детей учиться в иностранные ВУЗы, а я прихожу в ужас, когда друзья-студенты рассказывают о том, чему их пытаются учить. Рефераты скачиваются из интернета, заплатил за курс - получил диплом.

Слова "ни для кого не секрет" обычно переводятся как "я сама в вопросе не разбираюсь, но слухи такие ходят".

К сожалению, уровень образования сложно замерить. Наша система образования имеет массу серьёзнейших недостатков - это факт. Но из того, что сейчас многие студенты покупают дипломы не следует, что во времена СССР учили лучше: там в образовании были свои проблемы, начиная от банального дефицита учебных материалов и заканчивая меньшей доступностью высшего образования.

Что касается западных стран, кстати, там дела обстоят не ахти:

http://fritzmorgen.livejournal.com/394146.html

Особо отмечу, что в случае с IT-специальностями существует масса вполне доступных по цене курсов самого высокого уровня. И если человек реально хочет стать специалистом, все условия для этого у него есть.

4. Непрофессионализм

Напрямую следует из предыдущего пункта. Мы вступили в эру непрофессионализма во всех областях, начиная от медицины и заканчивая прачечными. Люди разучились писать деловые письма. Просьба прочитать текст с экрана вызывает панику.

Следующий пример поймут не только айтишники, но и просто люди, знающие английский язык. Системный администратор одного из московских аэропортов (с красным дипломом одного из известнейших московских технических вузов) доказывал моему другу, тоже админу, что есть разница между статической маршрутизацией и статическим роутингом.

Несомненно, тут дама права. Непрофессионализм есть везде. Например, одним из характернейших симптомов непрофессионализма системного администратора является смакование историй про "ламеров", которые не знают точного значения какого-то термина.

Однако раньше непрофессионалов было ничуть не меньше. И уверяю вас - если мы попросим прочесть текст с экрана сотню двадцатилетних и сотню пятидесятилетних взятых наугад граждан, двадцатилетние справятся с этой задачей лучше. Несмотря на мифическое падение качества образования.

Средний уровень образования был низким всегда. Наш мир несовершенен - это печальный факт, с которым надо смириться. И, кстати, не далее как пару дней назад я разбирал сочащийся непрофессионализмом рейтинг швейцарских банкиров:

http://ruxpert.ru/Рейтинги:Global_Wealth_Report_от_банка_Credit_Suisse

Этот рейтинг на полном серьёзе перепостили как достоверный "эксперты" из Wall Street Journal - одного из главных деловых изданий планеты:

http://www.inosmi.ru/russia/20131010/213759819.html

Как видите, эксперты, которые получают за свою работу шестизначные суммы в долларах, не стесняются демонстрировать своё невежество на весь мир. Это неплохо характеризует средний уровень профессионализма на нашей грешной земле…

Впрочем, это не значит, что всё плохо и надо идти плакать в угол. Профессионалов никогда не было много: ситуация сейчас, пожалуй, даже лучше, чем 20 лет назад.

5. Недвижимость

Отсутствие возможности купить жильё в своём городе. Непомерно завышенные цены на квартиры.

Не так давно один человек подсчитал, что если продаст свою убогую хрущевку на окраине Москвы, находящуюся в практически аварийном доме, то сможет купить замок в Чехии.

При этом, даже имея жильё, ты не застрахован от того, что завтра не начнётся строительство очередной Олимпиады (или чего угодно), когда твой дом будет оставлен под снос.

Опять-таки, мы наблюдаем тут невежество и слухи. Квартиру в своём городе купить вполне возможно: другой вопрос, что это довольно дорого. Однако по количеству квартир в собственности Россия очень неплохо смотрится на фоне, скажем, Германии или Англии, где многие доживают до пенсии с ипотекой и умирают в долгах.

Конечно, каждому молодому айтишнику хочется сразу трёшку в хорошем районе Москвы, другие варианты он не рассматривает. Но Москва перенаселена - из-за этого цены на жильё там не вполне адекватны. А вот, скажем, едущим в село врачам или учителям государство даёт миллион рублей подъёмных, на которые сразу можно купить нормальный дом.

В Петербурге, где жильё также весьма дорого, мои знакомые иногородние айтишники пользуются ипотекой - и как-то умудряются обзавестись жильём за 5-10 лет. Виктории 25 лет: но если она останется в России, уверен, к 30-35 годам большая часть её знакомых жильём так или иначе обзаведётся.

Что касается замков в Европе, тут обман в стоимости обслуживания. Эти замки охраняются государством, перестраивать и осовременивать их нельзя. Поэтому можно купить огромный замок хоть за 1 доллар - но жить из-за средневековых сквозняков там будет невозможно, а на содержание замка будет уходить несколько десятков тысяч долларов в месяц. При этом за каждую малейшую небрежность и нерасторопность государство будет карать владельца суровыми штрафами.

Наконец, проблемы со сносом жилья и определением компенсации за этот снос тоже есть везде. Наберите в поиске "Марвин Химейер", чтобы вспомнить одну из самых грустных историй на эту тему.

6. Коррупция

Правило "не подмажешь - не поедешь". Вы умеете давать взятки? Я не умею. Однако взяточничество везде, повсюду, везде надо "сунуть", "дать", "поблагодарить". Компания IKEA сворачивает свой бизнес в России, расширения больше не будет, потому что IKEA тоже не умеет давать взятки.

Если дама не умеет давать взятки - как она вообще ещё не умерла от голода в нашей стране? Как ей удалось без взятки устроиться на работу, вылечить без взятки свой больной зуб?

Ответ очевиден - про взятки дама знает из охотничьих рассказов разного жулья и из либеральной прессы. Суровая правда жизни заключается в том, что взятка является способом влезть куда-либо без очереди, "спрямить маршрут". В России совершенно спокойно можно жить безо всяких взяток: если, конечно, вы не ездите пьяным за рулём и не разводите крыс на кухне своего ресторана.

Что касается IKEA, эта шведская компания вымогает взятки только так:

http://www.rbcdaily.ru/market/562949982336132

Крупный розничный бизнес в современной экономике аморален по своей сути. Если у IKEA хватает совести торговать разваливающимися в руках дровами по цене мебели, будьте уверены, хватает у неё совести и на взятки.

Вообще, меня забавляет это умиление западными монстрами типа IKEA, МакДональдса и Кока-Колы. "Мы помогаем африканским детишкам, а наши гамбургеры сделаны из нежного мяса цветных пони". Ага, ага.

7. Низкое качество всей продукции

Именно всей, я не ошиблась, начиная от йогурта и заканчивая автомобилями. Про российский автопром можно много чего говорить, но ограничимся тем, что уже сказано. В общем, не самый хороший у нас автопром. А если говорить о продуктах питания, об одежде, то тут просто песня.

Цены тоже поразительные. Один и тот же товар у нас и в Финляндии стоит по разному.

Слова "именно всей, я не ошиблась" выдают недюжинный фанатизм.

На самом деле, цены на автомобили у нас значительно ниже, чем в Финляндии. Цены на бензин - и вовсе в два раза ниже. Выбор одежды, да, гораздо хуже, тут не поспорить. С продуктами же особой разницы нет, с продуктами работает эффект плацебо.

Помню, читал забавную историю. Мужчина выбирал себе в овощном отделе апельсины. Роется в ящике, а апельсины все какие-то грязные и побитые. Вдруг замечает краем глаза, что в соседнем лотке копается какой-то другой покупатель, а у него апельсины как на подбор: круглые, сочные, жёлтые. Наш герой решил взять апельсины из того лотка, ждёт, пока сосед выберет себе апельсинов и уйдёт. А тот никак не уходит, всё перебирает и перебирает. Наконец, мужчина не выдержал, оборачивается к соседнему лотку… а там зеркало.

В соседнем лотке апельсины всегда вкуснее: таково свойство человеческой натуры. Я уже давно не спорю с любителями возить Fairy из Финляндии. Если они в верят в волшебное финское качество - пусть получают удовольствие от шоппинга. Или от фотографий Кашпировского. Или от чудодейственных биоактивных добавок.

Вот когда кто-нибудь проведёт нормальное лабораторное сравнение наших и финских продуктов - будет предмет для разговора. А пока что это больше похоже на советскую веру в волшебство всего заграничного, чем на реальный аргумент.

8. Полное неуважение прав и свобод личности

Не буду долго расписывать этот пункт, ограничусь только словами о том, что "советский суд самый гуманный суд в мире". Основная причина пункта 8 в следующем пункте.

Здесь, опять-таки, мы снова имеем бездумный пересказ бреда из оппозиционных бложиков. "Девушка мирно метала камни в омоновцев, а её грубо схватили и швырнули в автозак". Оставлю просто пару ссылок в качестве иллюстрации настоящего неуважения прав и свобод:

* Полицейские в Страсбурге выбили глаз резиновой пулей рабочему
* Старушку (84 года) обработали перечным газом
* Подборка гифок с подвигами западной полиции
* Разгон мирной демонстрации в Окленде, США
* Американский полицейский, на которого брызнули водой, могучим ударом в лицо сбил с ног случайную девушку
* Мирных студентов в США залили перечным газом
* Немецкие полицейские выбили глаза протестовавшему против строительства вокзала пожилому инженеру

9. А вот сейчас тот пункт, который перевешивает все предыдущие

Именно этот пункт, а не предыдущие заставляет задумываться о переезде в другую страну. Что это такое? Это так называемый синдром вахтёра, это неуважение к другим людям, это нетерпимость, порой граничащая с фашизмом.

Представьте себе на секунду, что вот так случилось и всё правительство, все чиновники трагически погибли в один день. Что будет через неделю, через месяц? Будут те же самые рожи и на тех же самых местах. Почему? Потому что люди не меняются, потому что по каким-то не вполне понятным мне причинам у нас такие люди.

Соглашусь с дамой. Нет, можно было бы сказать, что нетерпимости хватает и в других странах тоже, и зачастую она принимает совсем чудовищные формы. Но про синдром вахтёра она права, она очень права.

Другой вопрос, что этот синдром вовсю демонстрирует как раз креативная публика типа самой Виктории. Просто посмотрите комментарии к видео и постам.

Депутат проголосовал за закон, который не нравится несистемной оппозиции? Это вор и подлец последнего сорта, подонок, который не заслуживает ничего, кроме плевков.

Женщина накричала на ребёнка и дала ему подзатыльник? Забить суку до смерти бейсбольными битами. Мразь! Какая же она мразь! Выдавить глаза стамеской и бить утюгом, пока из рта не пойдёт кровавая пена!

Новичок неправильно задал вопрос на форуме? Урод, тупой дебил, отвлекающий серьёзных людей от важных дел. Убей себя об стену, ничтожество!

Ну, вы уже поняли идею. Каждый представитель креативного класса типа Виктории считает, будто у него есть полное право жестоко и безапелляционно судить всех и вся - не обладая даже минимумом знаний по обсуждаемому предмету. Полицейские - убийцы. Врачи - шарлатаны. Бизнесмены - взяточники, халтурщики и рвачи. За мелкие ошибки надо бить, за серьёзные - сажать в тюрьму или убивать.

Привычку видеть везде смертельных врагов надо всё же постепенно оставлять. Надо учиться не пересказывать бездумно прочитанные в зомбобложиках ужасы, а включать свою голову. Тогда, возможно, мысли о бегстве на благословенный Запад рассосутся сами собой. Потому что окажется, что реалистам весьма неплохо живётся и в своём родном городе на болотах

Интеллигенция окончательно креакнулась

January 10, 2014, nstarikov.livejournal.com

Источник: Новые Ведомости

"Креативный класс" окончательно заменил собой интеллигенцию.

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К этому выводу пришли социологи, проанализировав структуру российского общества. Теперь место "высоколобых", которые рассуждают в соцсетях, а иногда и на площадях о судьбах России, привилегия нового социального слоя - "креативного класса".

Интеллектуалы "третьего сорта"

О появлении креативного класса в России всерьез заговорили после первых митингов. Как еще назвать людей разного материального достатка, положения, возраста и профессий, но объединенных любовью к Фейсбуку и желанием сделать мир лучше? Средний класс не подходит - уровень достатка разный, интеллигенция тоже - не все защитили диссертации. И термин "креативный класс" пришелся как нельзя кстати.

Фонд Общественного мнения провел опрос среди россиян, знают ли они о существовании "креативного класса" и кто, по их мнению, может быть к нему причислен. Результаты подтвердили устоявшуюся за годы перестройки закономерность. О том, что происходит в умах московской интеллектуальной элиты, не знает более 80% россиян. 15% - "что-то слышал", и только 2%, которые, очевидно сами себя к нему причисляют, дают довольно расплывчатое определение этой новой социальной прослойке.

Чаще всего россияне под креативным классом понимают творческих людей, с нестандартным мышлением. Нередко креативный класс выделяют по экономическим и политическим основаниям: "наиболее влиятельные люди", "богатые люди", "это успешные люди, например из шоу-бизнеса". Отличительным качеством этого класса, по мнению некоторых, является стремление к улучшению и модернизации. Но встречалось и негативное отношение: "раковая опухоль государства, которая ничего не производит", "это люди третьего сорта".

Однако, если обратиться к определению, которое дал создатель термина Ричард Флорида, к "кретативному классу" относятся все трудящиеся, чей способ производства основывается на комплексных знаниях и самостоятельных решениях. Меньшая их часть – те, кто "полностью вовлечен в творческий процесс": люди искусства, инженеры, ученые, сотрудники медиа, словом, все те, для кого инновации составляют самую суть производства. Большая часть – те, кто нуждается в знаниях и создает смыслы, но не всегда является инноватором. Это врачи, учителя, юристы, финансисты и управленцы. В общей сложности, к креативному классу Флорида относит не менее 30% трудящихся США по состоянию на 2011 год.

В России же определение и признаки "креативного класса", как, в общем-то, и среднего класса у нас крайне расплывчаты. Но за 5 последние лет, социологи умудрились описать портрет типичного "креативщика". В России представители креативного класса живут в основном в мегаполисах, их средний возраст от 20 до 45 лет. Это материально благоустроенные люди с высоким уровнем образования. Как правило, они заняты в сфере интеллектуального труда, отличаются высокой интернет-активностью и имеют достаточно свободного времени, которое посвящают образованию или культурному досугу. Данные о доле "креативного класса" разнятся от считанных процентов, если считать принадлежность к творческой специальности обязательной, и до 14%, к коим может отнести себя любой дизайнер, блогер, копирайтер, пиарщик и другие люди неопределенных, но красиво звучащих занятий теперь являют собой интеллектуальную элиту общества.

Был интеллигент, да весь вышел

А вот говорить об интеллигенции, куда традиционно входили ученые, врачи, инженеры, учителя - бессмысленно. Основные функции интеллигенции: просветительская и культурная миссия упразднены за "неликвидностью товара". И те, кто в советское время считались интеллигенцией, теперь такой же народ, живущий на копейки и изредка получающий от государства сахарную косточку. Это больше не лидеры мнения, это обычные чернорабочие, тянущие не страну к звездам, а ярмо до очередной получки.

"У нас была прослойка особая, единственная как прослойка. Не интеллекту­алы, потому что интеллектуалы – одиночки. А прослойка – интеллигенция – на всем пространстве страны, - рассуждает народный артист РСФСР, режиссер Сергей Юрский. - Интеллигенция – это была бы смазка между колесами, которые крутятся между этими слоями. И так как смазки не стало, то, я убежден, что эти колеса друг об друга обломаются. Теперь этого слоя нет. Сейчас социальные группы, в основном, различаются не по происхождению, а по количеству денег – то есть, устроенности, – эти в порядке, эти меньше, эти не в порядке".

Однако социологи уверены, что появлению креативного класса в России послужили не экономические, а политические причины. Ведь для многих "креативный класс" после Болотной площади стал синонимом либеральной оппозиции. Именно тогда стало ясно, что на смену интеллигенции с ее мессианскими чувствами и желанием сделать что-то для простых людей пришел новый класс "креативщиков", которые не только еще сильнее оторваны от народа, но и встают к нему в оппозицию.

"Сегодняшние "креативщики" - это продукт кредитной накачки, становится неудивительным, что они встали на сторону тех, кто отрицает наше право на наш государственный суверенитет. Даже если они это не понимают и отрицают, это не меняет сути происходящего, - считает публицист, лидер общественной организации "Профсоюз граждан России". Николай Стариков. - Они не работают, они зарабатывают. Они не трудятся – они оказывают услуги. Они не чувствуют себя частью общего русского мира,

Родина у них там, где им больше платят. Они гордятся своим знанием английского, не задумываясь о том, что ещё 25 лет назад полмира говорило по-русски. Они гордятся иностранными названиями своих профессий. Они любят отстаивать свои права, но считают нормой избежать своих обязанностей.

В общем, их нужно пожалеть потому, что они формировались во времена кривой экономики и во времена кривых отношений и сами они получились такие же… кривые".

наш креативный класс самоидентифицируется не через креативное производство, а через креативное потребление

qwerty2011

August 8th, 4:26

  • Оригинал взят у krylov в Ещё о креаклах и хипстерне: в чём её сила

    Маша Сергеева в фейсбученьке пишет про страдания по моцарелле и хамону:

    Истерика креативного класса, кстати, очень понятна и объяснима. Дело в том, что наш креативный класс самоидентифицируется не через креативное производство, а через креативное потребление. Мы не делаем крутых фильмов и сериалов, не придумываем медиа нового формата, не жжем глаголом сердца людей. Наши креаклы бесплодны, их не цитируют, не учат наизусть, не раскупают миллионными тиражами, не переводят на другие языки. Единственное, в чем креаклы могут отличиться и в чем собственно проявляют креатив - оригинальное потребление. Одежда, путешествия, еда. Не "петелинку" в Ашане, а пармезан в Азбуке вкуса. Не в Тайланд с Тунисом на две недели в отель, а велосипедный тур по Румынии. Для них гастрономические кафе, модные оправы очков и демократичная, но обязательно не продающаяся у нас марка одежды - это основа их личности.

    Отними камамбер, так они не смогут объяснить, чем от "ширнармассы" отличаются. Вася, лабающий сценарии для сериала "Менты-3", это не креакл, а стареющий и спивающийся бесталанный неудачник. А вот творческий человек Василий в амберкромби энд фитче, покупающий исключительно французский козий сыр, знающий, где лучшие в городе капкейки, и да, пишущий серии для "Ментов-3", но ведь вы понимаете, виноват кровавый режим, он бы не писал, он артхаус хочет делать, но не дают реализовывать... О, такой Василий не неудачник, он - свободный художник и интеллектуальная элита.

    Собственно, поэтому у тех, кто к еде относится просто как к вкусной, но еде - истерики нет. Я и про противников этих санкций тоже сейчас - есть спокойный анализ, мысли о том, как и по кому это ударит, но не истерика. А вот панику, как будто завтра с голода умрем, демонстрируют те, кто самовыражается путем поглощения хамона.

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