Safety Dance

There's a New Longhouse Warden In Town, and She's Policing New York Subway Discourse

From: https://nypost.com/2020/10/23/woman-shoved-onto-nyc-subway-tracks-in-unprovoked-attack/?tpcc=evening_update&mpweb=755-9136996-719864743

The New York Times just published a long article where they interviewed 12 random people on their political views. They asked them what their main issue was. One woman said, “Safety.”

Which triggered this hilarious interchange:

The Emilys must be stopped.

Not getting shot to death in school is the same as the right to your next abortion. It’s all about safety.

We need gun control, because safety.

We need to ban hate speech, because safety.

We need to encourage children to undergo surgical mutilation, because won’t you think of their safety!

The entire Covid theater of masks and vaccines was done in the name of safety. People would jog past me when I took walks, in their maks, and say “be safe!”

Two year olds forced into masks outside in the rain—to keep them safe.

Safety is everything!

Only, some safety is more equal than others.

A Longhouse Harridan Finds a New Enemy: You!

Former Gawker editor Elizabeth Spiers was mercilessly roasted on Twitter for bragging about how utterly safe she feels on the subway, and accuses those who have been assaulted on subways as paranoids suffering from racist delusions:

This exchange perfectly illustrated the ethos of the Longhouse Den Mother. Safety, to Elizabeth Spiers, has zero to do with safety from crime, but is instead safety from your wrong opinions.

The “Longhouse” essay by Lomez in First Things describes this “cult of Safetyism”:

Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, in their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, define Safetyism as “a culture or belief system in which safety has become a sacred value, which means that people are unwilling to make trade-offs demanded by other practical and moral concerns.”

While Haidt and Lukianoff focus their analysis on proto-woke novelties like “trigger warnings” and “microaggressions,” the cult of Safetyism is best exemplified in our response to the pandemic. Think of the litany of violations of our basic rights to personal freedom and choice over the last two years that were justified on the basis of harm reduction. The economy, our dying loved ones, our faith practices, our children's education, all of it served up on the altar of Safetyism. Think of the Covid Karen: Triple-masked. Quad-boosted. Self-confined for months on end. Hyperventilating in panic as she ventures to the grocery store for the first time in a year. Then scolding the rest of us for wanting to send our kids back to school, and demanding instead that we all abide by her hypochondria, on pain of punishment by the bureaucratic state. This person—who is as often male as female—is the avatar of the Longhouse.

(Bolded sections are mine.)

The replies to Spiers provide much mirth:

Only a racist or a white supremacist could possibly think New York has a crime problem. Who are you going to believe, Elizabeth Spiers or your own lying bruised eyes?

I had to chime in too, naturally:

As furiously as they enforce “safe spaces” and “safe speech” in sterilized environments like your office, your college campus, and your local family-friendly clothing-optional drag queen event, they somehow forget all about it in all the other places.

Safety, it seems, is a mask, too. One the cult members can slip on and off for pure political reasons.

If the Longhouse shield maidens cared about their unlonghoused neighbors, they would work to remove criminals from the cities, stop the flow of fentanyl and meth over our border, and support involuntary in-patient mental health care.

If feminists cared about safety, they would fight against putting male rapists in women’s prisons, against having men in womens’ bathrooms, and against releasing violent felons from prison early.

But they don’t — the only safety they want to enforce is their safety to tweet without pushback.

Today, Ms. Spiers finally decided she felt unsafe and called the cops on people who replied to her tweets.

No safety for thee in the streets, but safety for she/her in the tweets.

Glorious to witness a girlboss begging for the broad-shouldered security of the mythical FBI field officer! Dudley Do-right, you have been summoned to assist a fully empowered damsel in distress!

Ms. Spiers, may I suggest you simply get off Twitter? The people forced to commute on your magical subway don’t have this luxury, but you do!

Thanks for reading, folks.

—Peachy

P.S. My new book, “Domestic Extremist,” comes out in less than a month! If you haven’t pre-ordered it yet, please consider doing so! Or, call your library and request them to buy a copy. Either way, thank you so much for reading!