My friend Ingrid Carlqvist, whom I had the great pleasure to see during my trip to Copenhagen for the Motoon anniversary, provides a round-up from Sweden of a month in multiculturalism. Scandinavia is much admired by Bernie Sanders and other liberal progressives as the natural end-point of civilized societies. Sanders et al neglect the most salient feature of these Nordic boutique states: They are highly developed societies with a small population (Sweden has just under ten million people, Denmark about five million) that until very recently was racially and culturally homogeneous and with the necessary high degree of social solidarity to sustain a welfare state. Importing large numbers of young men from the most institutionally misogynist societies on earth to live among blonde Swedish totty would be an unlikely recipe for social stability, but that's no reason not to give it a go. Ingrid reports:
The Swedish Immigration Service sent out a press release, saying that it had hired close to a thousand additional employees since June. The Immigration Service now has over 7,000 employees, including hourly workers and consultants -- double the 3,350 employees who worked there in 2012. Most of the new recruits work with the legal processing of asylum applications, but the units dealing with receiving migrants and filing their initial applications have also expanded considerably. As if the record influx of migrants this autumn were not crushing enough, the Immigration Service also had trouble retaining its staff.
What do the Swedish people get for doubling the size of their immigration service? Well, a lot of bonnie, bouncing, bearded infants:
Whistleblower Merit Wager revealed on her blog that administrators at the Immigration Service had all been ordered to "accept the claim that an applicant is a child, if he does not look as if he is over 40."
This matters because, in most EU countries, a "child" gets a firmer grip on the public teat than a mere "refugee" adult does. A 17-year-old "refugee" is entitled to the same treatment in law as a 17-year-old child citizen. So every refugee is now 17 going on 18. In Jule Styne's great show Gypsy, the aging child star is asked how old she is:
BABY JUNE: Nine, going on ten.CRATCHITT: How long has that been going on?
In Sweden, tens of thousands of strapping Muslim men can keep it going on until they're 39 going on 40. With all these kiddies running around, the playground is getting a little livelier than usual. Miss Carlqvist again:
The Syrian reportedly also spit her in face and said, "I'm going to f--k you, little Swedish girl." The men, who lived at the same asylum house, denied knowing each other when questioned by the police.
Fortunately, in these cross-cultural encounters, some "little Swedish girls" manage to maintain their sympathy for the underdog even when he's looming over them:
Sometime during the night, she was awakened by the Iraqi as he raped her. The woman managed to break free and locate a train attendant. To the attendant's surprise, the woman did not immediately want to press charges. The court documents state: "The train attendant asked if he should call the police. At first, the woman did not want him to do so, because she did not want to put N.N., an asylum seeker, in a tough spot. She felt sorry for him... and was afraid he would be deported back to Iraq."
Lie back, and think of Sweden - and the warm glow you feel from having admitted more "refugees" per capita than anywhere in Europe. One more?
Bobel Barqasho, a 31-year-old Syrian, was sentenced by Sweden's Supreme Court to 14 years in prison. Before his case reached the Supreme Court... In February 2013, Barqasho threw his wife off a sixth-floor balcony.
Why are these young men so excitable? Oh, c'mon. Everyone knows it's the Jews' fault. Just ask
"Yes, of course we haveareason to be worried not only here in Sweden but around the world, because there are so many who are being radicalized. Here again, you come back to situations like that in the Middle East, where not least the Palestinians see that there isn't any future for us [the Palestinians], we either have to accept a desperate situation or resort to violence."
President Obama said the other day that fears of ISIS were overblown because it's not an "existential" threat to the United States. Maybe not to America, not yet. But the convulsions set in motion by ISIS and Obama may well prove an existential threat to Sweden. I wouldn't be surprised to see it entirely implode under the weight of its delusions. And where then will Bernie Sanders look for his societal role models?
~Brendan O'Neill has a thoughtful essay on "identity politics and the death of the individual". The Caitlyn Jenner story was one of the most important of 2015 - not because one member of a professional reality-show family choosing to get breast implants and female hormone shots is a big deal in and of itself, but because even supposed "right-wing" outlets such as Fox News felt obliged to treat the occasion as cause for celebration, and those few individuals who rained on the parade (Tom Cruise's son) were soon clubbed into submission. As I said back in June, there was something "coercive and authoritarian in the uniformity of the mandatory jubilation". Mr O'Neill writes:
That everyone from the Passport Office to Smith College now nods dutifully along as a man tells them 'I am a woman' confirms that the cult of self-identification cannot be put down to crazy individuals claiming to be things they aren't, or obsessing over the most narrow, least interesting things that they are: black, gay, whatever. Rather, society itself is complicit in this process, and as such it inflames it. Incapable of reconstituting the old validation of people for what they did, or for who they became through achievement, work, discussion, interaction and other social and political accomplishments, society instead gives the green light to the celebration of people for their 'traits', or for their narrow cultural or biological identity, or, increasingly, for who they claim to be, with little in the way of objective reasoning.
Smith College, for non-Americans, is a famous ladies' college. By which I mean:
In its recently rewritten mission statement, Smith College, one of America's best-known women's universities, says it is 'absolutely' still a women's institution. But it also says that 'applicants who were assigned male at birth but identify as women are eligible for admission'. How does Smith decide who is a woman? It doesn't. It says: 'With regard to admission, Smith relies upon the information provided by each student applicant... Smith's policy is one of self-identification. To be considered for admission, applicants must select "female" on the Common Application.' So a man can get into Smith by self-identifying as a woman. That makes him a woman. That Smith can say it is 'absolutely still a women's college' while accepting students with penises shows how utterly subjective even the idea of womanhood has become. Even this identity, infused with biological and social experience, underpinned by historical import, informed by the longstanding cultural identities of sister, daughter, mother, can be adopted by others as if it were an item of clothing, and no doubt discarded just as easily. 'I don't know whom I will identify as in the future...'
This is, as O'Neill notes, one of the biggest stories of our time:
What we are faced with in the 21st century is the very serious situation where all the objective underpinnings of human identity have frayed or died. All those things individuals once defined themselves through – nation, church, work, family – have corroded in recent decades... The foundation stones on which identity was built for decades, the national flags, religious faith, workplace meaning or class feeling through which we constructed a sense of ourselves, through which we discovered or defined ourselves, are gone – or are at least shaky, insecure, withering. And in such circumstances, our sense of self can become weak; we cultivate new identities that feel unfounded, unanchored, changeable rather than convincing.
Which is what connects this story to what's happening in Sweden. As I wrote in that week of Caitlyn:
What happened this week was a strange mix of Huxley and Orwell, Brave New World and 1984, hedonism and totalitarianism, sexual diversity and ruthless conformity in everything else - a stiletto heel stamping on a human face, forever.Or until the mullahs take over.
~I've been very touched to wake up to letters like these:
Love, love, love Feline Groovy. Also gave as a gift to my cat's veterinarian who owns Nine Lives Cat Clinic.My husband and I had the pleasure of attending your performance in Mansfield, Ohio two years ago. Totally enjoy your references to European society and royalty.Donna Lillo
Thanks for that. Don't forget, my cat album includes a brand new song called "Nine Lives" - available from Amazon and iTunes.
On the other hand, Gary Pollak writes:
Mark,You are the best. I never miss a column. Enough with the nonsensical furry cat comments. I forward almost all your articles to my friends, however, I am embarrassed to do so with these ridiculous endings. They diminish your great insight.
Golly, I'm so sorry for your embarrassment. As you're emailing them around to your friends, perhaps you could avail yourself of the easy and convenient "Cut" button on your keyboard and simply excise the "ridiculous ending".
There are some things worse than embarrassment. One of them is being caught in a half-decade long multi-million-dollar lawsuit not of one's choosing in the filthy choked toilet of American "justice". As I wrote the other day:
Less discerning types than Snuggles have demanded to know what I'm doing releasing a cat album. Well, one reason for doing it is that I'm being sued for a sum in the high seven figures by global warming "hockey stick" inventor and self-conferred Nobel Laureate Michael E Mann, and the case is now well into its fourth year in the choked septic tank of the District of Columbia "justice" system. So one is obliged to be a little inventive just to keep oneself afloat.
I try not to be bitter about this case, and its complete waste of my time and money - and the difference between the widespread outrage against my suit in Canada, and the near total silence this time round from conservative media in America. Self-pity is an unattractive quality, and one must stay chipper, and thus my cat album is important not just to my bottom line but to my psychological health. In the most basic sense, the "ridiculous endings" subsidize the "great insight". Without the former, there will be no more of the latter - and, if I lose this suit (or even fail to remain flush enough to fight it), it will be over for me. If you find that "embarrassing", well, I hope you never find yourself in a case that's already racked up seven-figure legal bills with the trial no nearer than it was on Day One.
