Sixteen Volts

When I read the Times news article "1 in 4 abused women may be locked in a cycle of violence" that wonders why many battered women in Britain keep repeating the pattern of bad selection of men and just can't understand why this happens, I immediately thought of Theodore Dalrymple's essay "Tough Love" that reveals the elephant in this living room. These "one in four abused women" are simply those who belong to the underclass, and the underclass is violent and brutal to an animalistic extent that us middle-class normos can't even begin to imagine. For starters, its men tend to be somewhat lacking in their knowledge and understanding of the finer nuances of "Woman Hating" or "The Feminine Mystique". Money quote:

The belief in the inevitability of male jealousy is one of the main reasons my violently abused women patients do not leave the men who abuse them. These women have experienced three or four such men in succession, and it hardly makes sense to exchange one for another. Better the abuse you know than the abuse you don't. When I ask whether they'd be better off without any man at all than with a male tormentor, they reply that a single woman in their neighborhood is seen as an easy prey to all men, and, without her designated, if violent, protector, she would suffer more violence, not less.

I have enthusiastically linked to the good doctor's writings many times, but today I could address a common theme of his that also Panu often writes about, namely the way that underclass values and mannerisms have become totally mainstream. (Panu, isn't it about time to write a whole column or three about this?) Of Dalrymple, the essays "Uncouth Chic", "Trash, Violence, and Versace: But Is It Art?", "Free to Choose", "Zero Intolerance" and "All Sex, All The Time" sum it up. I wrote about this in my old post "Just living in the moment like a real human being", which now that I read again, actually says many things that I wanted to say here. (Damn, I have written too much when I can't even remember what points I have already made. But there is no harm in repeating yourself in the infinity of cyberspace!)

Perhaps it is not that bad if some young middle class woman with college education and a good steady job gets a lower back tattoo, listens to punk rock or pees and throws up on the street after a hard drinking Saturday night. For her, that is. It's just that this issue is an important part of the invisible and merciless war between the upper and lower halves of the Bell Curve that has been silently raging for several decades now. The higher-ups want more freedom, goofy anti-authoritarian anarchy of "nothing really matters", thrills of rock'n'roll pseudo-rebellion and exciting liberation from all constrictive rules of reality for themselves, with nary of thought of what this "let the good times roll" attitude will do to those who are not as equipped to treat these ideas as just postmodern games but who have to live through their stark reality. Single motherhood might be fun for Madonna, but some teenage mom on welfare might not find it "empowering" and "exciting", despite the promises of feminists.

As for a practical example of this phenomenon, I can vividly remember when the NBA bigwigs decided that the players who are not actually in the lineup should wear suits on the courtside, how it was the white leftists who loudly and haughtily complained about this. I wonder what some black single mom who works two jobs and constantly has to be afraid of losing her teenage son who might be close to flunking out of high school to gangs and crime would say about this. You know, I just don't think that that woman really considers "gangsta rap" that amusing or authentic, to borrow the favourite leftist word. But oh well, who cares? Those rebellious black bucks look always so exciting on the big screen plasma TV.

We should also remember Panu's observation that even though many middle class people may believe that they only mimic underclass behaviour "ironically", for them it is actually totally serious. As Panu puts it, a woman can be a total alcoholic or druggie and yet explain that she is just experimenting expressing her natural freedom to drink as much booze as she wants, and any attempt to prevent her from doing this is just patriarchal oppression. If you look at the people who "challenge" the "traditional marriage" and "capitalism" the loudest, in reality they tend to be losers whose lives have spun out of control a long time ago. It is certainly no wonder why these people advocate the idea that everything is essentially random and that no lifestyle choices are better than any other lifestyle choices, since things can go well or wrong either way. (Come to think of it, prenumerate thinking with no understanding of probabilities is also typical to the underclass.)

The society can endure an occasional lower back tattoo for its members who keep it running, but it simply cannot stand these people adopting underclass values, for example, the idea that nobody ever really produces anything but that all wealth is ultimately stolen from somebody else, or just sheer luck. You can see this attitude constantly expressed by leftists who demand that rich people should "pay back" to society for being so wealthy. Widespread adoption of underclass values will lead to misery so unimaginable that living in the average Third World country with traditional values would be a picnic compared to it.

And when you think about it, just remember that the public schools have for decades now been the main spreaders of the underclass values and thinking. This is mainly because of the social hierarchy that is allowed to freely form among the students themselves, with the end result being a value system and a hiearchy that is no different to that of the worst career criminals. Just think of what the expression "get a life" really means and you can see how deep the underclass values have already ensconced in the modern teen culture, to end this post with a tommian observation.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Saturday, July 15, 2006 at 10:28 AM