The Quotable James Bartholomew

He writes,

It’s noticeable how often virtue signalling consists of saying you hate things. It is camouflage. The emphasis on hate distracts from the fact you are really saying how good you are. If you were frank and said, ‘I care about the environment more than most people do’ or ‘I care about the poor more than others’, your vanity and self-aggrandisement would be obvious, as it is with Whole Foods. Anger and outrage disguise your boastfulness.

I think this is spot on. It may help explain some of the anger in political discussions.

9 thoughts on “The Quotable James Bartholomew

  1. Political correctness isn’t about saying things nicely, but dissembling. Not saying you don’t care about the environment or poor because that conflicts with the image you want to project and believe in.

  2. “We all hate poverty, war, and injustice,
    Unlike the rest of you squares. ” Tom Lehrer, 1965

      • In 1980, as a new comp sci guy at the University of Delaware, I was walking by a group of fellow-Quakers singing songs — but I was walking with an EE prof who responded by quietly singing that song, and this permanently changed my attitudes. I’d learned it in the 60s but I hadn’t really internalized it. (And I just now linked it with another memory of 1965: that of Norman Morrison, who immolated himself in front of the Pentagon that November 2nd. His wife was my First-Day School teacher at the time. Sometimes hating war etc. is very very very real.)

  3. He’s a little tough on Whole Foods. They’re only trying to sell products. And if they have to pretend like they’re saving the world while they’re doing it, well … all’s fair. No one actually takes them seriously, as opposed to the political virtue signalers.

  4. I wonder whether Bartholomew is aware that he is signaling his own superior virtue through his critique of the virtue-signaling of others.

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