Paladin offers you a moment’s respite from the lunacy in DC to bring you a moment of lunacy from Portland, OR. That enlightened city, in its woke wisdom has decided to ban urinals in public buildings in order to strike a mighty blow against the Patriarchy. America’s most Stalinist Metropolis has declared: all Eloi and Morlocks must squat and drop samewise. Doubtless Portland’s legions of homeless nut–cutlets and junkies will be excused. Compliance is only for the potty-dependent bourgeoisie.
How many asinine wise cracks can one milk from this? Pop, Pop, Fizz–Fizz, oh what a relief it is. Assume the position. Thank you, Sir, may I have another?
To mangle Adam Smith: there’s a lot of ruin in a culture. And this bit of ruin didn’t start with Portland. Or Marcel Duchamp’ssilly readymade sculpture. And it didn’t even start in 1917 or World War One.
An exhausted Europe of faded empires killed off millions of its sons in Flanders and the eastern front, and soon became a cauldron of revolution. A crucible of bad impulses and worse ideas where the survivors of the recent conflict, both masses and an overprivileged elite rebelled at the button–down bourgeoise society who kept them fat, safe and entertained. And through revolution destroyed societies that flourished, brought forth wonderous civilization, fed the earth and gave each man a portion – yet still had enough Moloch left over to sacrifice their first, second and third born in endless sabre charges at machine gun positions. For this sin the old world was punished by the inheritors of the new.
Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain—from 1917— appearing as if by magic to scandalize and destroy norms better than any automatic rifle. Yet over time as all things must change, night becomes day and scandal becomes virtue. Scholar William Camfield: His (Duchamp’s) art was transformed from “a minor, aberrant phenomenon in the history of modern art to the most dynamic force in contemporary art.”
If you’re repelled or indifferent to contemporary art, credit the imbeciles who commanded WWI and credit Marcel Duchamp, a carbuncle protruding from a worn out combat boot. If you’reamused by lousy writing, note the three times Wiki uses the world “art” in one sentence.
Duchamp’s Wiki entry is fascinating for its lack of self-awareness – philosopher Stephen Hicks states the excrementally obvious “…Duchamp did not select just any ready-made object to display. In selecting the urinal, his message was clear: Art is something you piss on.” Thanks, Socrates.
As a culture we’ve been busy pissing on anything we could reach since before 1917. A conflict like WWI destroyed belief in many things, a whole Victorian Age of Empire, of true progressand growth, restraint, law and sanity – giving birth to nihilistic generations with whom we still contend. Antifa. Black Lives Matter. The Progressive Totalitarian Elite. Those congressional courtiers who turn a congressional committee urinal into a fountain of legal depravity.
Much like our goofball in: How to Use a Urinal who learns poorly and piddles poorer.
Mrs. Paladin noted of Portland, “All that’s going to do is make every toilet dirtier.” Hush Woman, you’re talking sense now. Paladin almost made a quip about women complaining about other women’s levitation acts in restrooms, but decided discretion was the better part of valor.
Or as Sonny says, in The Godfather, “I don’t want my brother coming out of the toilet with just his dick in his hands.”
Too late.
Featured photo used under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Paladin is an Entertainment/IP Warfare Rōnin and self-identifies as a Y-chromosome Victory Girl.
Paul L. Quandt says: Portland, OR is a lost cause. Someone should just nuke it ( as I live to the west of Portland, the fallout won’t bother me ).
Paul L. Quandt
Auger says: I’d call it in on my position if I could.
Paladin says: Old saying—when there’s blood in the streets, buy real estate.
Avocation Aviator says: I know a guy who thinks it public disobedience to use the non-gender toilet and pee on the seat while he stands. He thinks eventually the ladies, who must sit down, will eventually wise up and push for toiley separation again. We’ll see.
Slickwilly says: My thought exactly. At the toilet, in the voting booth: get quiet revenge where you can, while mouthing the words required to avoid persecution in public.
Paladin says: Very, very wise.
Paladin says: But I’ll never whizz the seat. (Been married too many times).
Yet another skirmish in the Long War. Rationality, objective perception and acceptance of reality, common esthetic norms, and overall decency have been pushed backward for a century and more by the “progressive” locomotive. We are nearing the point where we must either accept the total destruction of the West under the hammers of “progressive” nihilism and totalitarianism or must react decisively and violently to expunge the progressives and their allies once and for all.
Paladin says: The violence has already started, alas. Antifa and other Prog Borg storm troopers. The Blue City States are on the verge of collapse and it’s going up to us “Deplorables” to pick up the pieces.
Rick Caird says: Girls, be ready for wet toilet seats or be careful not to fall in because the seat i up.
Teslaca says: I immediately had the same thought as Mrs. Paladin. Bathrooms are going to be disgusting. They’re going to need a whole lot more sanitation staff. It won’t be long and even the most adventurous of women that at first give the “all-user” bathrooms a go, will be searching out a women-only room. How does giving men whole extra floors where there are no women’s bathrooms make the genders more equal?
And what about all that extra water needed? You can’t use a tiny plastic straw in your drink as it harms the environment irreparably, but it’s ok to flush millions of extra gallons of water down the toilet? May as well flush what’s left of the city with it.
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