But I Digress...

Virtue Signaling

There's never any shortage of things to write about, only an occasional shortage in the motivation to write about anything at all. When my Muse is on vacation, it can be a real grind some days...

"Stop whining and get back to work. And don't call me here again..."

Thanks so much...

Anyway, I had intended to write about something entirely different today, but it will have to wait. My ire has been stirred this morning by a fairly preposterous outbreak of what has come to be called "virtue signaling."  As someone who has spent a lifetime studying and teaching human communication, this is the kind of thing I have a hard time passing up.

"Virtue signaling" is just a clever way of describing a very familiar phenomenon: Someone does or says something which is intended to indicate that they are morally superior to most of the rest of us. One common manifestation of this kind of preening takes the form of the sanctimonious t-shirt:

But you "don't mind" if I do, right? Funny, I don't remember asking for your permission...

If someone makes an
"I don't give a shit about what you eat" t-shirt, please send me the link...

You've obviously never seen the South Park episode about this sort of thing...









I'm sure you have your own favorite examples. I'm also sure you grasp the fact that eschewing alcohol, or going vegan, or driving a hybrid, or any of the other behaviors these twits want to make sure we know they engage in will not make anyone else's life any better. Doing such things doesn't make you morally or ethically superior to others. Believing otherwise is a form of mental illness, really.

Now, if this were just about silly narcissists advertising their imagined moral superiority over the rest of us, it would hardly rate a mention here. But this sort of magical thinking isn't just limited to trivial matters.

Quite a lot of people support policies (and, derivatively, the politicians associated with those policies) that are proven to be ineffective, and even downright counterproductive, because of the way supporting those policies (and politicians) makes them feel.

One example of this kind of thing is the Head Start program. People support it because it makes them feel good to support "the school readiness of young children from low-income families." When people like me point out that the program doesn't actually work, supporters of the program ignore the facts and claim that we "hate poor children." We've spent 50 years and billions of dollars on moral preening, when we might have tried other approaches that could have, you know, helped people. That isn't a trivial error.

A similar dynamic plays out whenever the subject of the minimum wage bubbles to the surface of public policy discussions. Supporters of significant increases in the legally mandated minimum wage ignore the evidence that such increases destroy jobs and that the harmful effects impact the very people the increases are supposed to help most. But again, the facts don't matter, only the emotional high supporters get from advocating for increases...

As with birds, self-righteous nitwits of a feather flock together.

If you think that any of the folks holding those signs are interested in examining the actual facts about the issue, then you're the one engaged in magical thinking. And this particular non-trivial error is one that we seem intent on making over and over again, regardless of the evidence.

So, what is the current yardstick for gauging our moral worth that has me so wound up? What has all the moral peacocks strutting around like idiots? This. Swear to God.

It ain't easy being an advocate for truth these days, believe me...

Easier said than done, John...

Things That Make Me Happy: Gratitude Edition

My beloved Kansas City Royals got blown out 12-1 yesterday by the Cleveland Indians at Progressive Field, and the less said about that game the better. Now it's on to the Rogers Centre in Toronto for a four-game series with the Blue Jays starting tonight. The most exciting part of this series will be the Royals debut of Johnny Cueto, scheduled for tomorrow...

In the meantime, though, a tip of the cap to Royals General Manager Dayton Moore, who showed his gratitude for the contributions pitcher Joe Blanton made to the team this year by trading him to the Pittsburgh Pirates, a likely National League playoff team. Joe had been designated for assignment because of the Cueto acquisition, and few would have noticed or cared if the Royals had simply decided after a few days to give him an outright release and left him to fend for himself. Making sure Joe landed on a contending team took time and effort, but it was a nice going-away gift. You're a class act, Dayton...

"Anyone ever tell you you're a sentimental softie, Shu?"

It has come up a few times, yeah...

Today's Life Pro Tip

From the inimitable B. Kliban...

Until Next Time...

In that weird way that such things often happen, I was reading something yesterday and chanced upon a reference to a musical group I hadn't given a thought to in probably 45 years: Pentangle. I had been quite fond of them during my period of being intensely interested in "folk" music (roughly 1967-69), and became a fan of guitarists Bert Jansch (who passed away in 2011) and John Renbourn (who passed away just a few months ago). It probably helped that I first heard the group right around the time I was reading The Lord of The Rings books for the first time. As a result of that chance encounter, I tracked down and listened to some of their music again for the first time in decades, and found it enthralling.

Today's send-off is one of the group's performances on the BBC sometime in 1970. Enjoy...