Child abuse is a distinctly un-festive topic. Nobody wants to think about it, nobody wants to read about it, I certainly don’t want to write about it. And this is precisely why it happens as often as it does. Predators thrive on our naivety, on our desire to look away, and in 2022, they can count on something else too; our “progressiveness”.
I read something recently that said it's not about the left vs right anymore but the authoritarian vs. tolerant. There are authoritarians on both sides of the political divide who are, for a variety of reasons, pushing for the extremes.
I'd like to think that a majority of us are sensible, down to earth people who want a better world and thought we were working for that by backing our usual side.
I for one have come to realize, in the last 6 months, how much I had been played by the people I thought were politically progressive, and that the caricature of the whacky people on the right was, just that, a ridiculous caricature meant to build my mistrust.
I sure hope that many more of us wake up to what's happening. Whether we are concerned about free speech, child safeguarding, women's rights, or another issue, it's going to be important for us to push for open debate and the coming back together of reasonable people who have had enough of the ridiculous.
Very well said. I think the reality deniers and the authoritarians are often one and the same because if you want to push an idea that's ridiculous or whose logic falls apart under the slightest scrutiny, you can't rely on tools like persuasion and debate. In fact, you have to silence those tools as quickly as possible so they aren't allowed to undermine your agenda.
You can't allow people to listen to "the other side," so you convince your side the they're evil and stupid. You can't acknowledge the strengths of the opposing arguments, so you rely on straw-men and lies. You can't afford dissent, so you silence people using emotional manipulation and intimidation.
I absolutely believe that most people are sensible and reasonable. As long as you can break down these filters first.
I think the left/right formulation has completely broken down. The traditional divisions on matters of culture and economics etc. have yielded to a warped system with different axes altogether. Take the "woke" movement, easily as rigid and uncompromising as the worst of MAGA; that they have few values in common does little to mitigate their complete inflexibility. You cannot hold a view on even the most absurd matters of gender identity on what we once called the left any more than you can believe Trump lost the 2020 election.
The right used to be about strong defense, fiscal restraint, now it's the right running up the biggest deficits in history. The left used to be about lending a helping hand to those who need it, a diversity of viewpoints; now it runs in terror from any conviction of any kind.
Red and blue doesn't really cover it either. It seems more geography than outlook.
I call myself a leftist; I am more of an environmentalist and communitarian than anything else; but I would welcome the most brutal authoritarianism if it would halt the eulogies of extinct species, as long as it could be trusted, but it can't be. I revile the "woke" with as much disgust as I do the MAGA crowd.
The right once included ideological leaders, men like Buckley and Goldwater whose ideas were horrible but were at least sincere and coherent; their descendants are just haters and nothing more than that.
Whatever we call them, there is no common ground to be found anymore.
"I think the left/right formulation has completely broken down."
Yep, agreed. Or rather, as you say, it doesn't mean what it used to mean. The divide used to be about policies. About sincere, albeit different, visions of how to create a better society. Increasingly, it's about which fictitious version of reality you want to pretend is real.
The reality deniers on both sides will cause untold, albeit different, damage if left unchecked. The reasonable people, who I believe are a silent majority, have a common enemy.
Really well articulated. I get where you’re coming from on the imperative for some sort of cooperation mechanism to deal with global environmental issues of existential importance. I was an enviro nonprofit lawyer for nearly 25 years.
But arguably more important to my current daily life and that of my children in the near future is the freedom to openly adhere to what your good faith version of shared truth. (Your “lived experience” is your own damn business.).
That freedom is what is at stake. Thanks for your really helpful and insightful thoughts.
When words have no standard meaning all things become ambiguous. People who think like what you just expressed are moving away from parties or labels they once proudly proclaimed as their tribe with words to the effect of, "The [X] has moved away from my values."
My MAGA buddy calls Republicans who don't support Trump RINOs. In my thinking, Trump is the RINO when thinking of what Republicans once stood for. When Trump first ran, I opined that as a life-long Democrat he was a shill who would destroy the Republican Party. I took considerable heat from his supporters for expressing that opinion. I was probably wrong about him being a shill with a mission to destroy the Republican Party. He now seems more of a narcissist with total disregard for the Republican party, though I was probably right about his destructive nature. His supporters have forgotten what Republicans once stood for.
JFK would probably be too conservative to be a Democrat today. The same could possibly be said for the young tough on crime Joe Biden. Barack Obama ran on "change." We got it good and hard where the change is a bit dystopian. Not entirely blaming him for that, I had high hopes for him. He was an inspiring candidate, perhaps more a disappointment than a villain.
It was not all that long ago that the Democrats embraced racism for the southern vote and there was a strong liberal wing in the Republican Party. Probably everyone reading here is aware of the pivot that came with LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act, though he was way off in his prediction of how long it was give the southern vote to the GOP.
The traditional conservative imperatives—strong defense, fiscal restraint, blah blah blah—are gone, Wm F. Buckley would be unwelcome and Goldwater's "shoot straight" would make him a pariah. What remains of the GOP is mostly crazy people and a few more who are not repelled enough by children in cages, or by Trump, to leave the party.
Aside: on the way home from the gym just now the traffic was backed up, one lane closed ... I thought it was some minor construction but then a grass mat over a lump in the road and a stream of blood coming out by a small hand. A dead child. Probably fallen off the back of a motorbike whose driver was playing too hard at "me first." Pardon if I have a touch of the horrors right now.
To your aside, yesterday I watched the internet news from Thailand with my wife. Severe flooding in the north. A capsized naval vessel with 31 missing sailors. Traffic carnage including a 14 year old boy killed on a motorcycle whose older brother died on a motorcycle two years ago. Horrors indeed.
I've been to Thailand. It is nothing like Vietnam. People drive sensibly, like a moving pattern of bikes maintaining the same distances and speed. In Vietnam it's all me first! Me first!; I even saw people zooming around dead bodies in the road, reckless as ever with the end result of such recklessness right in front of them.
In Thailand if you're walking toward someone on a sidewalk he will shift to one side. In Vietnam they don't; in America it would be a macho thing (YOU get out of MY way); in Vietnam it isn't, it's just a fundamental unconsciousness of cooperative order.
I was struck many times by the difference between behavior in the two countries.
The Lunar New Year (Tết) is coming soon; half the city will go visit relatives in villages, the other half will stay, get drunk, and drive craz[il]y. Great time to stay at home.
"Whether it’s the belief that Trump won the election, that humans can change their sex just by saying so, or that the COVID vaccine contains location-tracking microchips, there’s are growing contingent of people on the political left and right whose instinctive reaction when faced with facts they don’t like is to fabricate new ones.....
Increasingly, this is the only divide that matters."
What the political extremes share are reality-shattering ideologies. Full disclosure: I describe myself as a "committed anti-ideologue."
Sometimes I wonder whether there are certain traits that are hard-wired into people. There are some people who are comfortable with saying "I don't know," while others HAVE to have an explanation. There are some people who see conspiracies in everything, and others who shrug and say, "shit happens." Some are comfortable with moral ambiguity, while others have to have clarity and issue judgment accordingly. Some see the universe as unknowable and mysterious, while others see an "intelligent design."
I think the ideologues and the anti-ideologues crack along the same fissure. Beware of the former.
"There are some people who are comfortable with saying "I don't know," while others HAVE to have an explanation."
Yes, yes yes. This is at the root of so many flawed ways of thinking. Starting at the root, of course, which is religious fundamentalism.
The humility to say "I don't know" is pretty much entirely absent from discourse. And that's by necessity. Because for many people, any answer, even a bad one, is preferable to uncertainty. The people willing to say "I don't know" are drowned out by those who would rather die than admit the same.
Uncertainty is scary and complex and requires continuous attention to resolve. Simple, black and white ideologies are far more comforting. And allow you to focus all your energy on hating the "enemies" preventing your ideology from being implemented.
Vaccines with mind-control nanotechnology, Trump won, women with XY chromosomes ... this has nothing to do with ideology on any axis, this is psychosis.
It's a small part of an epistemological crisis, a collapse of belief in any distinction between truth and falsehood, a disdain for expertise, a distrust of education, a hatred of intelligence.
Most alarming of all, it is not limited to The Usual Suspects, the grade school dropouts and those whose lives have included serial institutionalizations. Freeman Dyson, he of the Sphere, who was with Einstein at the Princeton Institute, was an AGW denier. So was Michael Crichton, author of some of the most intelligent fiction of the last half century.
I personally know several people who would have been at the absolute end of any list of people I expected to catch this illness, but caught it they have.
And the timing could not be worse. We are heading into environmental collapse and need all hands to the pumps. Instead we have people whose ability to reason has fundamentally broken down, and we are too dedicated to diversity and inclusion to even think of doing anything about it.
Really well said. I have a (former( good friend whom I debated with for years. I would generally take the old liberal view and he the conservative.
But some years ago he just went off the ultra right deep end. Nothing is by accident any more.. And this guy is no red neck. He’s a public school Brit with a Cambridge mathematiics degree.
But he’s gone full MAGA with the big lie and everything. When he tried to dismiss Jan 6 I finally told him where to stick it.
I've seen several cases of this. My ex is one of the most jarring; he was sane and compassionate, once we bought a large live fish from a tank in a Chinese restaurant and released it into a lake.
Last time I talked to him he said he would take a bullet for Trump. That he was moving to Texas (he's Chinese) because they blocked mask mandates. Then he told me that COVID came from the vaccines; when I asked him why the vaccines were created in the first place (COVID preceded them) he ended the call.
He's very "spiritual" and has thrown his life away chasing rainbows and unicorn farts, so he was prone to that kind of manipulation. He's smart, hexalingual, but never had a real job.
Back around 2008 I ran across a former coworker who was down and out, he'd been kicked out of his apartment and his stuff placed outside to be hauled away by opportunists, including his CD collection; this was the guy who turned me on to Coil and started me buying music for the first time in 16 years, aside from classical and a few artists I followed.
I should have seen red flags a lot sooner.
He kept talking about child abuse, child rape, crazier and crazier stories, finally passing the point where it was possible to believe him at all. Everyone he had ever known or trusted had raped him, our boss had raped him (I doubt this boss could screw his own hand), his parents had farmed him out thousands of times ... then came this tale of a rollercoaster at Disneyland (he was ALWAYS talking about Disneyland) that took a secret turn and delivered its passengers to a room where people including Janet Reno used them in kinky sex.
He was psychotic.
He got a job at Microsoft and emailed public figures about his crazy obsession from his MS email account and you an guess where that led.
In the end I had the cops take him out of my house and had nothing more to do with him.
Now we talk on Facebook; I've had to tell him that if he ever brings up child rape or anything connected with his obsession ever again I will block him, who knows if Vietnamese cops are reading my FB pages and maybe getting confused about who's who.
He is on some kind of psych disability but decades later he is still preoccupied with child abuse. I bet there are people who prey on kids who think about it a lot less than he does.
One of the weirder entries in my gallery of oddballs.
"One of the weirder entries in my gallery of oddballs."
Yikes! Yeah, there's this horribly unfortunate tension between recognising abnormal behaviour and being seen as (and even seeing yourself as) small-minded or unkind.
I don't think there's a way to get this balance completely correct. There is, obviously, such a thing as a person who is weird but not bad. But the main reason we miss red flags is that we get the balance badly wrong.
One of the many things we have to thank critical theory and postmodernism for is the erosion and stigmatisation of our concept of "normal." As I wrote recently, normal should be as broad a category as we can reasonably make it. But it desperately needs limits. For everybody's sake.
The reason I had the cops take him out, aside from the fact that he refused to leave and locked his bedroom door (in my house), was because I no longer felt safe with him in the house. He wasn't violent but he was manipulative; for example he told the cop that I'd threatened him with "physical violence" because I told him I intended to "kick" him out.
There was one time I just snapped; I had a package delivery while away and he refused to accept it. "It might contain DRUGS!" That was a turning point.
I paid my crazy dues with a schizophrenic roommate who nearly murdered me one night and broke my arm. I wasn't paying again.
' those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” So true!
Thank you, Steve, for being out there plowing the fields of truth through the wilderness of media and news. May you find time to breathe deeply and renew your being in a space of peace.
The only thing that amazes me more than how defensive the alphabet soup gang gets when you point out how much fetishism, including an unhealthy fetishism centred around kids is how blind so-called 'feminists' are to this shit and why *we're* the enemies when we call bullshit on this stuff.
I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. We couldn't get arsed enough about Sandy Hook to do anything about guns, nor about the horribly mishandled Uvalde case, so maybe it's to be expected that people are as okay with grooming kids for pedophilia as they are with splashing them across a classroom.
I apologize if I came across with excessive harshness. I have this thing about demonization of those with opposing views. I've made my reason why clear in the past. Peace
I understand, Dave, and I'm not upset with you. You have always been pretty restrained even when you disagree with folks here. I do hear what you're saying about demonization and I know I can be guilty of it. But sometimes stereotypes exist for a *reason*. The gun obsession is primarily on the right, and when ideology is involved (when we know of it, we don't always), it's almost always someone screaming about blacks or Jews or some damn right-wing bogeyman. There are a few exceptions - I remember one exception of a liberal engaging in a mass shooting:
If you know of others let me know. The 'non-binary' guy who shot up the gay nightclub was less 'non-binary' than advertised (it was fairly recent) and he also came from a right-wing family, fucked up for reasons arguably other than ideology (substance abuse, emotional abuse, Dad was a porn actor). Some, like the Las Vegas shooter, we STILL don't know what his motive was. Some simply share some elements of 'traditional' thinking without necessarily being terribly political (like the incels going after women who won't have sex with them because they feel so entitled, plus there's the love affair with violence, killing, guns, weapons, etc.)
It's interesting that liberals are way under-represented in mass shooters, along with women. The exceptions exist, but they're pretty small. (One liberal I can name so far, and four women).
Other than the guy who shot up the Republicans at the practice for a charity ball game which was obviously about politics, I'm not certain about the degree of political influence on shootings. Disgruntled teenagers who shoot up a school are probably not politically motivated since at that age they are likely oblivious to partisan politics. I have some very Democrat friends who are highly anti-gay. People tend to look for political connections in such things to support the demonization process.
Does our fascination with violent movies and video games play into it? I think it does. How many people, left and right, have paid money to watch a war or police/crime movie that is all about violence? Perhaps most people. Where is huge sums of money spent making movies? Violent scenes. That fascination is for the most part apolitical.
In Steve's most recent commentary he mentioned people fearing different things. I don't fear firearms, probably because they have been a presence for my entire life. I'll confess that I fear the potential tyranny of governments. No individual nutjob can come within orders of magnitude of the horror's governments are capable of and they use demonization to get their citizens to do their bidding. Does this play into our views? I think so, and at a very fundamental level.
I don't think many people shooters go into a public place, fire away, screaming, "Death to liberal scum!" or "Republicans must die!" But sometimes they belie certain stereotypical traits, like Dylann Roof (A suthun boy) screaming about how blacks are going after 'our' women and they all must go. Not sure what his politics are or if he voted but i'll bet they're somewhere to the right of Obama.
I don't see the jones for violence, or responding to violence, on the left the way I've seen it on the right. Which is not to say that the left *can't* be violent (there were violent left-wing groups in America in the 60s and 70s) or that they can't be again. If you like violence, support violence, or *are* violent, you'll find more welcoming arms on the right than the left. Even the far left today isn't anywhere near as violent as the right, whose bogeymen are Antifa (who still are pretty much guilty of micro-violence) and Black Lives Matter, which is guiltier of misappropriating donations than any real violence, and the right points to some of the riots and vandalism that took place during some protests which can likely mostly be attributed to violent people taking advantage of the situation.
Like it or not, politics is a huge driver of the violence spike we're seeing. The angry teenage shooter kills a classroom or shopping center and shoots himself might have been apolitical himself, but if I'd put a finger on where he'd go politically if he lived long enough, I'd wager he'll be more conservative than liberal. Although it might be a moot point for those who will stay in jail. Not sure if any mass shooters have been allowed out of jail, or what happened later if they did. Most of them die either by their own hand or by police bullets. AFAIK, none are out of jail so far although i could be wrong.
Yes, violent movies and video games play into our oh-so-American love affair with violence, although I don't know how apolitical it is. It's kind of a broad topic. I think serial killer movies are more apolitical than military & action hero movies. I love Sylvester Stallone but I haven't seen most of his movies because it's a lot of right-wing violent military crap (First Blood being an exception, and I thought it was a very good movie). He lost me for a long while in the '80s because of the right-wing-pandering he did to Reagan conservatives, but I know he himself is less partisan than one might think, he tends to skew Republican but has also voiced more socially liberal opinions and likely opens himself up to charges of being a RINO. He also has a sweetly quaint traditionalist view of marriage that comes out in his movies that he lives himself - he's spent most of his life married, and believes in all that happily-ever-after stuff. He hasn't ever, to my knowledge, been accused of domestic abuse or a lot of cheating, but I'm no expert on his private life.
I don't fear firearms either, I fear nutjobs with firearms. I think a LOT of people are not mentally stable enough to own firearms but I'm not going to get into what to do about it because no one's going to do it anyway, and I don't have to live there anymore so my feeling is just sort of, "Fuck it, people, *you* live there, *I* don't, fix it or just fucking die a lot. The ability is there, you decide."
In the spirit of Steve's commentary I will shorten my comment to the idea that you are equating very dissimilar things and making an unwarranted accusation.
I'm being a little sarcastic. I've been researching the role fetishism plays in the LGBTQ movement, AFAICT a fairly recent thing. When you have men pushing to get into women's spaces you can pretty much figure sex is behind it somehow.
I find it disturbing that they get very defensive about the pedo end of it. I've actually been on the fence about that accusation until very recently. Wasn't sure I was ready to accuse them of *that* but the push into schools, the people pushing clear fetishes (like here in Ontario, some teacher pushing his fetish garb and female look in the classroom, I'll dig it up if you want) is making me wonder why the push toward children. Why does this movement seem so *obsessed* with pushing this stuff at kids, and transitioning kids so young? If you've got a better theory I'm all ears.
The push to early gender transition has the same motivation as everything else coming from the “trans” activists: to grow their audience.
If you accept that as the goal you understand all their positions. The dropping of dysphoria as the definition of transgender is particularly revealing. This alone has multiplied the “trans” community a thousandfold.
Early transition forces a miserable person to lock into “trans” for life. Even puberty blockers have lifelong health effects.
Lost in the noise are the 5-10,000 authentically dysphoric, absorbed into a gender ideology they didn’t ask for and the treatment options diluted by an army of phonies.
Maybe, but I confess I'm always highly suspicious when men push something overtly sexual onto kids. They want to grow their tribe, for sure, but what's the end goal, even if they grew to the millions? Given the sexual predation on lesbians pressured to not be 'transphobic' about 'ladydicks' and 'cotton ceiling' whines, I wonder if gender identity-bending, getting adults as well as children used to parading fetishes in front of them, is a prelude to introducing NAMBLA-style 'acceptance'.
After all, if kids can be trusted to make lifelong gender decisions before they're out of grade school, maybe, it might be argued, they also have the 'right' to decide who to have sex with.
Maybe I'm just an overly-suspicious female but I suspect dicks are behind this push, as always.
I've had to stop reading them on Medium, they just make me too angry and I'm trying to be less so, having used anger as an escape mechanism all my life.
But yes, one of the biggest gripes I saw on there was about "TERFs," feminists who don't accept biological men as women. It underscores just how warped they are that they think real women *should* accept chicks with dicks at all.
The whole gender ideology thing makes me sick, the "nonbinary" stuff most of all. Even if over 99% of the "trans" are fake, this is such a thing as gender dysphoria, but there is no medical/psychiatric foundation for "intermediate gender." That is hot bubbling bullshit.
I hadn't thought of the part you're presenting here, that it's really about, as with most cults, giving men access to young women. You may be onto something ... though a lot of the "trans" activists are biological women.
"... though a lot of the "trans" activists are biological women."
Are they? Am I missing something? Or are we talking about gaslit feminists like Elle Beau (though I don't know if she's changed her attitude since I got kicked off a year ago).
"I hadn't thought of the part you're presenting here, that it's really about, as with most cults, giving men access to young women."
I was too terse. I don't take issue with that. As you know, I am very pro-2nd Amendment. It was your second paragraph that grated. Nobody is fine with splashing children across a classroom. Quoting the late Fred Reed, "Anything that is politically possible won’t work, and anything that will work is politically impossible." What do you recommend that would work and not be a hill you would die on trying to force on America?
The right isn't happy about situations like Sandy Hook and Uvalde because they make their side look bad, rather than because children died. Kiddie deaths, and everyone else's at the hands of a Righteous 2A 'Murican, are simply the price they feel you must pay, on some level, for overly-interpreted 2A rights.
The right has *zero* claim to 'pro-life' values anymore. Not when they fight harder for fetal rights than they do those same fetuses to go to school in a few more years without their brains getting splattered by a Righteous 2A 'Murican.
Do they want to see it happen? No, but it's an inconvenient embarrassment, at most. So, no, I don't expect people who'd rather die on a hill defending the right of every nutbag in America, literally, to have a gun, to ponder whether perhaps not everyone should have, that owning a gun is also a *privilege* as well as a basic right, and that it should be taken away if you're not responsible enough for the privilege (like pre-existing violence problems and demonstrated mental disorders). They show zero respect for life, and when it's okay for one side to diss life, it becomes okay for everyone else. So the left, instead, ignores its sexual predators and pedos taking advantage of their movement and, like the Catholic Church, are earning their growing reputation as a safe space for pedoes.
Neither side cares about children's rights, they just differ on which right they'll defend - the right to life or the right to not be preyed upon by pervy men.
Every time one of these grisly mass shootings happens there is a run on gun stores and a lot of them end up completely depleted as the RKBA junkies stock up, certain that the slaughter is just a ruse to take away their guns.
They don’t need to hear it from Alex Jones, they don’t need to coordinate. It’s spontaneous.
The fanaticism around guns is wholly irrational and since so many on the right maintain a permanent state of rage it’s hard to imagine this not getting a lot worse.
I have told you directly that I respect your views and understand the difference in our backgrounds. I would absolutely love to have a conversation with you about this; I think there would be some raised voices but no insults and that in the end we would find our differences are not as broad as we thought.
If I have not said so before let me say it now in this forum: I do not consider you to be a fanatic. You have been in combat, I haven't; you grew up with guns; I did not.
I actually agree with much, if not most of that, but your first paragraph looks like projection based upon an erroneous belief that you can read minds.
Here's the thing about my spirit of what Steve wrote remark (moving away from partisanship). I am pro-2nd so the political left (sorry Chris, I struggle for a meaningful word) see me as conservative. I am pro-choice so the right sees me as a progressive. There is no logical reason for linking such issues according to partisan tribalism which leads to my disdain for such thinking.
My hill to die on was a reference to a question I often ask myself, "Where might that lead? Is it worth it?" I am in no way for every nutbag to have a firearm, but the devil is in the details in how we deal with that. I wish I knew of a workable path, but I'm not that wise and the people at both anti-gun and pro-gun extremes seem the least likely to have that wisdom.
Substack threads can be wicked confusing and I just made three attempts to see what I said that you disagree with in the first 'graph. I think it's the one about how Sandy Hook & Uvalde are the price one pays, in 2A nutbag minds, for 'preserving' 2A 'rights' which I'm putting in quotes because I'm quite sure the Founding Fathers were concerned with muskets, not assault weapons or whatever doesn't qualify as an assault weapon that's nevertheless used for mass assault.
I might be overly-broad-interpreting myself, but the crazies (not the conservative intelligentsia) seems to be pretty 'pro life' on the subject of abortion, but anti-life on the subject of *intelligent* gun laws (I've never been a 100% "ban all guns" type unless someone can dig up a letter to the editor I wrote in 1976 that I've totally forgotten about).
That, plus GA pushing an election with a guy even dumber than Trump into a *runoff election* (and I don't believe GA is a maverick state of stupid), a guy who can't control his dick and paid for at least two 'baby murders' (as they define it), incline me to say the Religious Reich has finally produced proof positive that they are not, in fact, 'pro-life'.
You both know that I think political partisanship is illogical and that I am both pro-2nd Amendment & pro-choice so I'll ignore your conflation of the two issues.
Specifically, the idea that pro-2nd Amendment people are just fine with school shootings is something that required great restraint in my reply. Here is the issue.
The Winchester Repeating Arms Company introduced the first semi-automatic rimfire and centerfire rifles designed especially for the civilian market in 1903 & 1905. The Winchester Model 1903 and Winchester Model 1905 operated on the principle of blowback in order to function semi-automatically.
The first semi-automatic rifle adopted and widely issued by a major military power (France) was the Fusil Automatique Modele 1917. This is a locked-breech, gas-operated action which is very similar in its mechanical principles to the future M1 Garand in the United States. Civilians had semi-automatic rifles before the military did.
In the military, assault is a verb. At least when I was on active duty there was nothing designated as an assault weapon. In the Vietnam war era, there was an assault accessory that could be attached to the side of the belt fed M-60 machinegun that could hold its 250-round linked belt of ammunition to keep it from dragging on the ground while on patrol where you might participate in an assault. On perimeters it was crew served and mounted on a tripod so that accessory was not needed. Instead, the assistant machine gunner had an extra barrel and an asbestos glove to change the barrel when it got too hot during heavy activity.
I gave you that background to point out that, I'll use the progressive word here, "assault weapon" is a "dog whistle" for semi-automatic firearms capable of rapid fire. I've seen assigning attempts at defining them as; look military, black, detachable magazines, muzzle breaks/flash suppressors, pistol grips, bayonet lugs and such. Things that have absolutely nothing to do with anything logically associated with mass shootings. The thing they want to eliminate is semi-automatic firearms but are afraid to say it because that's about 40% of the firearms in the US. A low percentage because of all the old firearms like a bolt-action deer rifle that anti-gunners have been known to call "sniper rifles" (need to ban those next) and pump shotguns which anti-gunners have been known to call "riot guns" (need to ban those too). Most of the firearms on sale today are semi-automatic. I think it disingenuous to try to pretend that it is not about a large-scale ban of the new firearms that people have purchased, rather than inheriting them from their grandfather.
That would just piss off a big chunk of America and cause a change in how the nutcases commit mass murder of which there are many ways. Some, like a Ryder truck full of fertilizer are even more spectacular.
All of that is to say that a politically acceptable action that would effectively reduce the number of such event is difficult. If you think that just giving the finger to such a large percentage of America and just banning the semis is OK, I could talk like you and say that you might just be OK with a very bloody civil war. Basically, when you claimed that 2nd-amendment people are fine with school shootings you spit in my eye with the demonization much discussed here. I will continue with my restrained reply.
That's why I said 'assault weapons', or whatever's used to assault people. Let me state again: I'm not anti 2A, I'm just against idiots with guns, defined as people too demonstrably stupid or violent to have them. However you want to define 'assault weapons', the ones that make it easy to kill lots of people in a very short period of time are the ones in dispute. Not *all* weapons Americans are allowed now are necessary, but I'm not getting into the semantics thing with you again. I watched Beau's videos you sent awhile back on guns and they were quite good and informative but let's please stop with the semantics. I think some guns should be kept out of civilian hands but I'm not for disarming the populace. Just the part of the populace that can't handle the responsibility, and that is usually the loudest voices against sane gun laws. Honestly, I'd drop the whole discussion about which guns if we could find a way to keep them out of idiots' hands. But the 2A set won't allow it, and apparently we have to do everything they tell us to do or they'll get violent--er.
While I don't think the gun nuts exactly *cheer* when there's a mass shooting, I *do* think they find it more of an embarrassment than something we need to do something about it. Like it or not, it's a partisan issue. They didn't like abortion so they finally got Roe overturned; but they look the other way when people are murdered every damn day in America, and often children too, and come up with *every excuse in the book* for why we can't do *anything* about the real problem, which is the (mostly) men with pre-existing violence and mental health problems (that everyone knows about) being allowed to have guns.
And somehow, saying the nutbags already committing mass murder are going to find new ways of committing mass murder sounds fairly unpersuasive, but only because I think they're going to do that anyway. Mostly, because no one has put the skids on their gun obsession for thirty years and now here we are, with one of the highest murder rate, perhaps even THE highest murder rate in the Western world.
Arguing that 'If we go after their guns there will be mass slaugher/civil war is exactly why the Middle East is such a shitshow. The terrorists are the real rulers because no one wants to be the victim of the next terrorist attack. Their weak-ass governments let them get away with it because *they* don't want to be the targets of their terrorism. No one has the balls or labia to come down hard on them. No one wants to be blamed for 'encouraging' the attacks to begin with. (Isn't pacifism of Hitler what contributed mightily to WWII?) The longer we *allow* terrorists to set the rules ("Do this or we'll do that") the sooner the US will come to resemble the 'shithole states' of the Middle East.
Unfortunately, the Democrats are too weak-ass to fight them, and the Republicans, of course, fully support them.
"we can't do *anything* about the real problem, which is the (mostly) men with pre-existing violence and mental health problems (that everyone knows about) being allowed to have guns."
Alas, were it only so. Yes certainly some of the shooters telegraph their intentions; Rittenhouse shot his mouth off about wanting to kill protesters and a friend caught his rant on video but the in-the-pocket judge ruled it inadmissible.
However. Thank back to all the times you've heard that the shooter was a mild and unassuming guy, kept to himself, last person one'd expect ... a lot of these shooters commit their first offense ever when one day something snaps and they go shoot up an elementary school. Red flag laws would mitigate, but they would not stop the mass killings.
On. The. Other. Hand. Australia in 1996 had the Port Arthur slaughter and, unburdened by a ridiculous Right To Keep and Bear Arms or an NRA, they banned assault rifles, or whatever you want to call the goddamn things, and in the 26 years since there have been no more of those events.
The Onion in one of their more unfunny routines regularly republishes this, with a few words changed:
And make no mistake: the slaughter is not overplayed for clicks, the death toll in the USA is greater than in some countries' civil wars.
The gun nuts only see the news of such events in one way: as manufactured Fake News to create pretexts to disarm the populace so they will be helpless in the face of some hallucinatory "left wing" takeover where their kids will be taken away for gender-transition surgery and the FBI will come for their steel-belted radials and their beer. See Jones, Alex who went on his rage show and screams that Sandy Hook never happened.
Nope. Not enough to disarm those who have already broadcast their derangement. America is a country where the MMPI has to be frequently recalibrated because the center of sane <—> insane keeps moving toward insane.
I heard about an American couple that emigrated to Holland and brought their guns; after a fw years they realized how stupidly they'd been thinking and came clean with the cops, fortunately to a captain of police who in his discretion decided not to prosecute them. But it took them several years to absorb the new outlook.
I borrowed a gun for three days once, I was handling a lot of money and lived in a bad neighborhood. I couldn't stand having it around. Every time I got mad it crossed my mind, and I have pretty good impulse control but still I needed to return it and take my chances.
There are other contributing factors, for sure, like the disintegrating social contract, the social media divide, and rise and lack of control over fake news, conspiracy theories, mis/disinformation, etc., and income inequality and the skyrocketing costs of living, both of which get short shrift in the public debate about mass shootings, and crime overall.
We know a lot more about public shooters than we did back when they really got started forty years ago (not including the U of TX sniper shooter 15 years prior, I consider that an outlier) and the earliest ones were most often motivated by workplace rage (the book Going Postal details this quite well). Now they're getting younger and crazier and the ability to assault people with repeating bullets guns (not getting into the terminology again or it will trigger someone's lengthy guns definitions). What we *do* know is they often broadcast their intentions and no one pays attention. And sometimes they do and the cops move in to nail someone with all the goods on him indicating he was, in fact, planning a mass attack.
No, I don't want to disarm the populace, and I don't believe the 'slippery slope' nonsense, or we would all have *no* rights* because the laws we need (against murder, crime, lying, driving while drunk, etc.) would have been used to strip us of everything.
The ones who are shrieking about a fascist nation and jack-booted thugs coming for their guns and terrified that libtards and n-words want to destroy their rights are the ones most worried about losing them if we had saner gun laws, while keeping the 2A intact.
In other words, anyone with a history of violence, esp domestic violence.
I saw that Onion article when it came out, and yeah, the bitter sarcasm is just as resonant today as it was eight years ago.
Since we *do* have gun laws in some places that are stricter than before, and the questions rise up in the wake of each shooting, "Why was this guy allowed to buy a gun? How did he slip through the cracks?" maybe we should pressure law enforcement to enforce laws they probably don't agree with, because they too support the 2A *a little too much* and also because cops have a huge problem with domestic violence (the subject of my last article). How about we start legally going after the people who aren't doing their jobs properly?
This is the first post I have read from you that I would say crosses the line. While the information on nomenclature is illuminating on its own it really has nothing to do with the topic, which is not firearm lore but firearm politics.
The RKBA fanatics are not indifferent to school shootings? That's like saying all Republicans acknowledge that Trump lost and admit that he lies every time he opens his mouth.
Every time a mass shooting is reported there is a run on gun stores, a lot of BS about the shooting report being a pretext to confiscate guns.
Yes, the banning of assault rifles would trigger a huge surge of rage and violence. Should we allow ourselves to be extorted into keeping the damned things legal until people are afraid to go to work? How many parents hear the phone ring during the day and wonder if this is the report that one of their children has just been blown in half by some disturbed teenager?
Really, and I insist you answer this, why does anyone need a semi-automatic or an automatic weapon? And, no, I am not interested in the difference between the two, a correction that is trotted out as a distraction and an attack on people who are tired of the slaughter, as being uninformed.
Correct me if I am wrong but your support of the 2A is for self-defense, correct? How does anything past a one-shot handgun have anything to do with that?
Yes there are other ways to kill people, but right now the proliferation of these massacre machines is out of control.
I am not spitting in your eye, I don't believe for a second that you are OK with classrooms an inch deep in blood. But when it comes to the line that says "at this point we have to consider no longer allowing preposterously overpowered firearms in the hands of mentally unstable people," you will not cross that line.
Just as with the "trans" crowd, to altogether too many people their guns are the very seat of identity. Who am I? Blah blah blah Second Amendment blah blah blah freedom blah blah blah more guns. Do you think this is acceptable? I don't.
As for the very bloody civil war, must we be held hostage to that? They're preparing for it anyway, stocking up on ammo and filling their ranks with experienced ex-military, and the longer we go without addressing the core of the problem, the bloodier it's going to be.
The point in that was that semi-automatic firearms have been available for over one hundred years and civilians had them before our military and they were available for mail order with no government intervention. I think that there is more to the issue than the availability of semi-automatic firearms. There is complexity and while I understand that if you believe that guns are the root cause that that's where you'd focus first. They are an issue, but I don't see them as a root cause and as a practical matter I don't see them vanishing anytime soon.
A sales tactic. Interestingly there are now a large portion of gun buyers who are first time buyers who gave up being anti-gun as a matter of perceived practicality. I hope they get training, both in safety and the law.
The issue isn't limited to buying guns. Gun rights organizations are yammering (send money) about the anti-gun provisions in the abomination spending bill which people signed without reading (an impossible task). My objection to omnibus spending bills goes beyond senseless spending on things that won't walk on their own legs but enacting policy on such things, but that is another subject,
In truth, I think that there would be less violent resistance than is believed. Most people, like me, would turn them in. I know a fight I can't win or is not worth it when I see it.
Just as the gun industry promotes overblown fear of gun restrictions, the anti-gun groups promote hoplophobia to create true believers who will send money like the pro-gun groups do. I am not minimizing school shootings, but I think the fear about them is greater than justified. When people hear "mass shooting" they think of spectacular events like major school shootings or the Las Vegas shooting. The government sets a low bar for calling something a mass shooting and the large majority (bumping up the count) are local events like drug deals gone bad, gangs, etc. Promoting fear and hysteria are tools used by more than FOX.
I don't think in terms of only owning what we need. That would collapse the buy what we want economy. People would not have jobs or income in a world without self-sufficiency and I don't need to tell you where that leads. It's not a question I ask but what follows might be the answer you seek.
Self-defense is not huge in my list of priorities since the odds of being in a self-defense situation is small enough that I don't carry a gun every time I go out the door. At the same time, I see no higher personal priority than self-preservation and the defense of those we love so I certainly think people have a right to tools to effectively do that. I'm not talking about laws but nature.
Your thought that a single shot handgun is all you need for self-defense is actually a strong argument for semi-automatic firearms. One-shot stops are a "buy this gun" gun magazine fantasy. In all of the critical incident reports from the Phoenix PD that I've seen, they never shoot one round. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1137967663572659&ref=sharing
I suspect that I have a lower opinion of the Mr. Tacticals who think they need more crap than soldiers in a war zone than you have. They are mostly wannabes. Wannabe what they never were or wannabe what they once were. The thing is, they seem to me to be more about a weird form of cosplay than people who are actually going to go out and do something.
I probably support more measures than you imagine, but at the same time I have concerns about abuse of those things that you may not worry about. Red flag laws could address the nut jobs that shouldn't have access although there is a thriving stolen gun market for such people. But it can also be abused with false claims by vindictive people.
As I wrote, "assault weapon" is a political term used by people who are ignorant or disingenuous about the true object of their concern, semi-automatic firearms. I commend your honesty and candor. I just have a less sharp focus on tools than you although the complexity of my concerns doesn't make solving the problem any easier.
"A sales tactic. Interestingly there are now a large portion of gun buyers who are first time buyers who gave up being anti-gun as a matter of perceived practicality. I hope they get training"
Actually they don't need to advertise, as soon as the news comes out, they are deluged with customers.
Training? Highly unlikely. Most people facing a home invader are so shaken they probably couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Hands shake, pulse hammers. Those on for example SWAT teams need to undergo biweekly desensitization so they can function in that kind of emergency' miss ONE such session and they can't go to the next emergency.
A lot of the Hairy Chested Administrator of Frontier Justice stuff is just conceit. Facing a threat to one's life takes more than conceit and most people aren't up to it.
Accepting children being splashed across classrooms is inseparable from the Second Amendment unless it is restored to its original meaning. There is no putting the genie of Crazy back in the bottle and it is only going to get a lot worse, and soon.
The 1/6 committee recommended four criminal charges against Trump and it is likely that at least some of them will proceed to indictment. His followers are going to go absolutely ape and most of them are armed.
I don't know that they will cross the Rubicon and send a former President to prison since the pendulum will eventually swing and the Rs will follow that president and do the same to the criminals with a D behind their name.
If they do, I don't expect much to happen. They say there are four political boxes. The soap box, the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box. My super MAGA buddy is big on the first two but to the best of my knowledge he doesn't own a firearm, his military experience did not involve combat and I would not anticipate him doing anything violent. Actually, I have several conservative friends who don't own firearms; two of them because their wives are unstable, and they are concerned that they might use one to harm themselves. And, I have liberal/progressive friends who do own firearms. In the words of one of them, "We lefties like our guns too."
You might be overestimating their gun ownership and especially their likelihood of using them, though I agree that some might.
1/6 was an insurrection where the insurrectionists left their guns at home. The notable exception was the Oath Keepers.
I was a founding member when it was advertised as a non-partisan organization. I should have seen it coming, but when I saw it become partisan, I ended my membership. Stewart Rhodes has already been convicted. He seemed reasonable when I met him, but then came what was probable delusions of grandeur.
"I don't know that they will cross the Rubicon and send a former President to prison since the pendulum will eventually swing and the Rs will follow that president and do the same to the criminals with a D behind their name."
There are no good paths out of this but I think not indicting and arresting Trump is the worst of them. That tells some future set of insurrectionists that they can try again.
Future Republican congressional majorities—heaven forfend—will try the same thing, of course; they have already made clear that the next two years are going to be nonstop performance and sham. They will try to impeach Biden at least once a week. But it's not symmetrical. Indictment numbers:
Trump — 215
Nixon — 76
Reagan — 26
Obama — 0
Carter — 1
Clinton — 2
I doubt any Democratic president is likely to provide a real justification for indictment and arrest. Not that they won't try, and when they fail they will just say that the deck is stacked against conservatives, as usual.
I think that failing to indict is the greatest risk, and a pardon by Biden is not warranted in this case, I think it would have the same effect as not indicting at all.
Yes, indicting Trump will increase the persecution mania that conservatives enjoy so much. No question. And yes there will be a violent reaction, though probably not as intense as it would have been had the indictments come before all the disgrace.
It's important for people to be reminded that nobody is above the law. I think that is more important than anything else. Trump has committed dozens of crimes, he has no morals, and whether people revere or despise him, they need to know that he is as subject to law as anyone.
Then maybe we can start doing something about people who don't pay taxes.
There are 393 million firearms in private hands in the US. According to the CDC in 2020 (the most recent year with data) there were 45,222 gun related deaths in the US (homicide, suicide, accidents where the number of people properly killed (to save lives) is not called it). Therefore 0.00115% of the nation's privately owned firearms were involved if you generously assume that each death was with a different firearm. I don't see that as a case for firearms being a cause, they are tools. It is purposefully under reported when a gun is used to save lives which leads to what I think is the biggest impediment to reasonable gun control - mistrust of the anti-gun people with their end justifies any means mentality.
Let me add another statistic: 42% of Americans own guns at all, which means that those 393 million firearms are distributed among 140 million people, the vast majority of whom own one or two guns.
Completing that thought, some people own absolutely enormous numbers of firearms. Perhaps you've seen that photo of the family with over 400 assorted black military-style rifles and handguns on display in the back yard.
I want people like that completely disarmed.
More: suicide is about 2/3 of gun deaths. Problem is that firearm suicide is successful about 90% of the time while other forms are about 10%. People take a bottle of pills and just puke and awaken in the hospital just flying and with a headache. They cut their wrists and just cripple their hands.
There is no arguing that most gun owners aren't problems, they just own a gun to feel safer. But then, the tiny percentage who break into houses require us all to have locks and worry every time we're out of the house.
And gun advocates won't concede a thing; blind people who are mentally unstable need to be allowed to own guns.
With mass shootings coming almost daily now, and only bound to get worse, we need to start somewhere and it's a pity we didn't start back when there were fewer guns than people.
People who hunt/hunted often have more than one firearm for different purposes, not the same as collecting. I wonder if the super gun collectors have a form of MIAS (musical instrument acquisition syndrome). It would be better and just as useless to have fifty guitars or ukuleles.
I have a friend who bought two each AR15 & M1As (non-military versions of the M16 & M14). He asked me over to teach him how to field strip them to clean them. He was not a veteran and had no training with them. Politically left leaning and not a nut. He just wanted to have them as an investment. He could sell them for far more than he paid for them today. To his credit, he had a high-quality gun safe.
Some people buy gold and silver for the collapse. One of my daughters says that lead will be the barter currency for the new millennium. Ammunition is very scalable right down to a single round of .22 LR. There are people who store large amounts of ammunition more for that reason than thinking of a shoot-um-up.
I have a dozen hardware synthesizers. OK, I went a little nuts. I was warned about Gearlust.
I have three classical guitars and a mandolin. I'm struggling to get the motivation to get practicing again. I used to be quite good and I get a lot better in an hour of playing.
But I wasn't talking about a hunter with a second piece for rodents, you know who I'm talking about; the guys with racks of assault rifles, the guy who bought five more handguns because Obama won some legislative victory (not related to guns), the ones who wear three guns around the house and five when they leave it. These people are crazy, and they are obsessed.
I'm talking about the people who can't imagine any solution to the growing menace of firearms that doesn't involve everyone being more armed, the ones who really believe in that polite society, the ones who take Xmas pictures of everyone in the family holding an assault rifle.
I don't need to tell you how good music is for your head. I hope you pick up one of those guitars and create something new on a synthesizer for you sound cloud.
Playing from sheet music, which I now do almost all the time I play classical guitar, has an established benefit in deferring senility. Last I read the connection was not understood, but it uses so many different parts of the brain in coordination that speculation comes easily.
Cellist Pablo Casals was playing gifted interpretations of Bach which involved reading figured bass; numerical notations beneath single notes
B
6
would be a G chord, B being the third, and the other note, D, not needed because any one who can read figured bass knows this stuff. But it isn't just chords, the musician is expected to work in themes and transitions from the body of the piece.
It takes really deep understanding and fast thinking to play from figured bass, most Baroque musicians fill it in before they perform.
Casals was doing superb live interpretations of figured bass at age 96.
I hope you're wrong. Trump predicted everyone would lose their minds over the midterms if his people didn't win but they didn't. It's a very real threat, for sure, but they lost their minds neither over that nor the Mar-A-Lago raid. Maybe they'd like to go to jail too, along with all their fellow traitor comrades already there?
I think you have it backwards. Loyalty to the GOP or to conservatism takes a distant second to loyalty to the God King himself. He wasn’t running. Trump isn’t a conservative, and he isn’t a Republican. Neither are his followers. It’s a cult.
And when the cult leader is marched away in handcuffs bellowing about persecution and witch hunts it’s going to be like sewer rats in a flood.
Maybe, although he doesn't seem to have as much support as he had before. The mid-terms appear to be a refutation of Trumpism. Yeah, Americans need to be vigilant if he's perp-walked into a prison. Yeah, there will probably be some terrorist attacks by his followers. Not sure it will be mass hysteria, but I could be wrong. Then again, will Garland have the balls to indict him. I note Republican Congresscritters aren't jumping to protect Trump with the expected indictment, and they have to answer to the voters. So maybe they know something we don't.
That it's safer. I really hope so. If America *doesn't* explode with anger over this, it'll be the strongest indication yet that Trump's Reign of Error is over.
He has lost support of what we've come to call the "establishment" Republicans, who are only 8 on the Crazy Meter and not 11.
The good part: the GOP cannot win with Trump, his unfavorability is not only high, it is intense. But if he is not the nominee he will take psychotic revenge, telling his supporters not to vote for Republicans who betrayed him.
In short: they can't win with him, and they can't win without him. It's algebra.
But his supporters are hate-crazed, enraged, and irrational. They *will* make a ton of trouble. I don't know the scale but it will be horrible. They have discovered electric grids now and may graduate to bombs.
Garland: the pressure on him to act will be intense. Discouraging is that he has moved so slowly; encouraging is that he authorized the search of Trump's Florida tea-room. That took some balls. He will have to travel in tanks for a while but, well. I don't want to jinx it with a prediction. I want to pick up my phone and see TRUMP ARRESTED on a notification, or maybe something a little more ummm determinative.
I'm getting quite, quite sick of waiting for the other g.d. shoe to drop. Enough pussyfooting around, buddy-boy, INDICT HIM!!!
The inability to deal with terrorists and coup plotters in a timely manner, like within 24-48 hours like Germany and Peru did, tells something about how lacking in balls the US has become. Since mass murder on a daily basis doesn't move Americans' hearts to wonder whether people really need all the damn assault weapons they've got, maybe terrorist attacks that inconvenience *them* will make a difference.
Or perhaps when Trump's brownshirts do worse than not vote for any Republican Trump decides he doesn't like, maybe they'll rethink their position on whether idiots with guns is a sane policy for a so-called 'civillized' country.
As someone who worked with classified data for years, I see taking classified data as a serious thing that he could, and should, rightfully be prosecuted for. Why the hell would anyone want to keep that kind of thing?
I ran across the piece and the guitarist on a bus on my iPad and ordered the sheet music on the spot.
I had a chance to meet him but the company I was working for threw me a curveball with a sudden deadline, I had already bought my airline ticket to Bangkok and lost the money. I should have told them to go to hell, as I did a few months later anyway. He's Israeli, his grandfather was in Auschwitz and my partner went ahead and took his flight so I sent a rare book to him, a photo album from Auschwitz that was found in the commandant's nightstand. It meant a lot to him. I hadn't known his grandfather was there.
The piece doesn't even have measures, it's extremely hard and I have to break my sightreading habits with those two flatted strings. But I love the tonality; if you listen to it a few times you'll start to pick out the logic. It's one of two pieces, the first isn't so frantic.
"Medical transition can provide great relief for dysphoria, but it cannot change actual biological sex."
Exactly! Medical transition is treatment. Not magic. It doesn't change underlying realities for males or females and pretending it does has been catastrophic.
You will read daily about suicide among transgender youth, but never a word about the suicide surge 7-10 years after transitioning. The former supports the "trans" activist agenda; the latter refutes it.
I read something recently that said it's not about the left vs right anymore but the authoritarian vs. tolerant. There are authoritarians on both sides of the political divide who are, for a variety of reasons, pushing for the extremes.
I'd like to think that a majority of us are sensible, down to earth people who want a better world and thought we were working for that by backing our usual side.
I for one have come to realize, in the last 6 months, how much I had been played by the people I thought were politically progressive, and that the caricature of the whacky people on the right was, just that, a ridiculous caricature meant to build my mistrust.
I sure hope that many more of us wake up to what's happening. Whether we are concerned about free speech, child safeguarding, women's rights, or another issue, it's going to be important for us to push for open debate and the coming back together of reasonable people who have had enough of the ridiculous.
Very well said. I think the reality deniers and the authoritarians are often one and the same because if you want to push an idea that's ridiculous or whose logic falls apart under the slightest scrutiny, you can't rely on tools like persuasion and debate. In fact, you have to silence those tools as quickly as possible so they aren't allowed to undermine your agenda.
You can't allow people to listen to "the other side," so you convince your side the they're evil and stupid. You can't acknowledge the strengths of the opposing arguments, so you rely on straw-men and lies. You can't afford dissent, so you silence people using emotional manipulation and intimidation.
I absolutely believe that most people are sensible and reasonable. As long as you can break down these filters first.
You just wrote what I was trying to say.
I think the left/right formulation has completely broken down. The traditional divisions on matters of culture and economics etc. have yielded to a warped system with different axes altogether. Take the "woke" movement, easily as rigid and uncompromising as the worst of MAGA; that they have few values in common does little to mitigate their complete inflexibility. You cannot hold a view on even the most absurd matters of gender identity on what we once called the left any more than you can believe Trump lost the 2020 election.
The right used to be about strong defense, fiscal restraint, now it's the right running up the biggest deficits in history. The left used to be about lending a helping hand to those who need it, a diversity of viewpoints; now it runs in terror from any conviction of any kind.
Red and blue doesn't really cover it either. It seems more geography than outlook.
I call myself a leftist; I am more of an environmentalist and communitarian than anything else; but I would welcome the most brutal authoritarianism if it would halt the eulogies of extinct species, as long as it could be trusted, but it can't be. I revile the "woke" with as much disgust as I do the MAGA crowd.
The right once included ideological leaders, men like Buckley and Goldwater whose ideas were horrible but were at least sincere and coherent; their descendants are just haters and nothing more than that.
Whatever we call them, there is no common ground to be found anymore.
"I think the left/right formulation has completely broken down."
Yep, agreed. Or rather, as you say, it doesn't mean what it used to mean. The divide used to be about policies. About sincere, albeit different, visions of how to create a better society. Increasingly, it's about which fictitious version of reality you want to pretend is real.
The reality deniers on both sides will cause untold, albeit different, damage if left unchecked. The reasonable people, who I believe are a silent majority, have a common enemy.
Really well articulated. I get where you’re coming from on the imperative for some sort of cooperation mechanism to deal with global environmental issues of existential importance. I was an enviro nonprofit lawyer for nearly 25 years.
But arguably more important to my current daily life and that of my children in the near future is the freedom to openly adhere to what your good faith version of shared truth. (Your “lived experience” is your own damn business.).
That freedom is what is at stake. Thanks for your really helpful and insightful thoughts.
When words have no standard meaning all things become ambiguous. People who think like what you just expressed are moving away from parties or labels they once proudly proclaimed as their tribe with words to the effect of, "The [X] has moved away from my values."
My MAGA buddy calls Republicans who don't support Trump RINOs. In my thinking, Trump is the RINO when thinking of what Republicans once stood for. When Trump first ran, I opined that as a life-long Democrat he was a shill who would destroy the Republican Party. I took considerable heat from his supporters for expressing that opinion. I was probably wrong about him being a shill with a mission to destroy the Republican Party. He now seems more of a narcissist with total disregard for the Republican party, though I was probably right about his destructive nature. His supporters have forgotten what Republicans once stood for.
JFK would probably be too conservative to be a Democrat today. The same could possibly be said for the young tough on crime Joe Biden. Barack Obama ran on "change." We got it good and hard where the change is a bit dystopian. Not entirely blaming him for that, I had high hopes for him. He was an inspiring candidate, perhaps more a disappointment than a villain.
It was not all that long ago that the Democrats embraced racism for the southern vote and there was a strong liberal wing in the Republican Party. Probably everyone reading here is aware of the pivot that came with LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act, though he was way off in his prediction of how long it was give the southern vote to the GOP.
The traditional conservative imperatives—strong defense, fiscal restraint, blah blah blah—are gone, Wm F. Buckley would be unwelcome and Goldwater's "shoot straight" would make him a pariah. What remains of the GOP is mostly crazy people and a few more who are not repelled enough by children in cages, or by Trump, to leave the party.
Aside: on the way home from the gym just now the traffic was backed up, one lane closed ... I thought it was some minor construction but then a grass mat over a lump in the road and a stream of blood coming out by a small hand. A dead child. Probably fallen off the back of a motorbike whose driver was playing too hard at "me first." Pardon if I have a touch of the horrors right now.
To your aside, yesterday I watched the internet news from Thailand with my wife. Severe flooding in the north. A capsized naval vessel with 31 missing sailors. Traffic carnage including a 14 year old boy killed on a motorcycle whose older brother died on a motorcycle two years ago. Horrors indeed.
I've been to Thailand. It is nothing like Vietnam. People drive sensibly, like a moving pattern of bikes maintaining the same distances and speed. In Vietnam it's all me first! Me first!; I even saw people zooming around dead bodies in the road, reckless as ever with the end result of such recklessness right in front of them.
In Thailand if you're walking toward someone on a sidewalk he will shift to one side. In Vietnam they don't; in America it would be a macho thing (YOU get out of MY way); in Vietnam it isn't, it's just a fundamental unconsciousness of cooperative order.
I was struck many times by the difference between behavior in the two countries.
The Lunar New Year (Tết) is coming soon; half the city will go visit relatives in villages, the other half will stay, get drunk, and drive craz[il]y. Great time to stay at home.
"Whether it’s the belief that Trump won the election, that humans can change their sex just by saying so, or that the COVID vaccine contains location-tracking microchips, there’s are growing contingent of people on the political left and right whose instinctive reaction when faced with facts they don’t like is to fabricate new ones.....
Increasingly, this is the only divide that matters."
What the political extremes share are reality-shattering ideologies. Full disclosure: I describe myself as a "committed anti-ideologue."
Sometimes I wonder whether there are certain traits that are hard-wired into people. There are some people who are comfortable with saying "I don't know," while others HAVE to have an explanation. There are some people who see conspiracies in everything, and others who shrug and say, "shit happens." Some are comfortable with moral ambiguity, while others have to have clarity and issue judgment accordingly. Some see the universe as unknowable and mysterious, while others see an "intelligent design."
I think the ideologues and the anti-ideologues crack along the same fissure. Beware of the former.
"There are some people who are comfortable with saying "I don't know," while others HAVE to have an explanation."
Yes, yes yes. This is at the root of so many flawed ways of thinking. Starting at the root, of course, which is religious fundamentalism.
The humility to say "I don't know" is pretty much entirely absent from discourse. And that's by necessity. Because for many people, any answer, even a bad one, is preferable to uncertainty. The people willing to say "I don't know" are drowned out by those who would rather die than admit the same.
Uncertainty is scary and complex and requires continuous attention to resolve. Simple, black and white ideologies are far more comforting. And allow you to focus all your energy on hating the "enemies" preventing your ideology from being implemented.
Vaccines with mind-control nanotechnology, Trump won, women with XY chromosomes ... this has nothing to do with ideology on any axis, this is psychosis.
It's a small part of an epistemological crisis, a collapse of belief in any distinction between truth and falsehood, a disdain for expertise, a distrust of education, a hatred of intelligence.
Most alarming of all, it is not limited to The Usual Suspects, the grade school dropouts and those whose lives have included serial institutionalizations. Freeman Dyson, he of the Sphere, who was with Einstein at the Princeton Institute, was an AGW denier. So was Michael Crichton, author of some of the most intelligent fiction of the last half century.
I personally know several people who would have been at the absolute end of any list of people I expected to catch this illness, but caught it they have.
And the timing could not be worse. We are heading into environmental collapse and need all hands to the pumps. Instead we have people whose ability to reason has fundamentally broken down, and we are too dedicated to diversity and inclusion to even think of doing anything about it.
Really well said. I have a (former( good friend whom I debated with for years. I would generally take the old liberal view and he the conservative.
But some years ago he just went off the ultra right deep end. Nothing is by accident any more.. And this guy is no red neck. He’s a public school Brit with a Cambridge mathematiics degree.
But he’s gone full MAGA with the big lie and everything. When he tried to dismiss Jan 6 I finally told him where to stick it.
Go figure.
I've seen several cases of this. My ex is one of the most jarring; he was sane and compassionate, once we bought a large live fish from a tank in a Chinese restaurant and released it into a lake.
Last time I talked to him he said he would take a bullet for Trump. That he was moving to Texas (he's Chinese) because they blocked mask mandates. Then he told me that COVID came from the vaccines; when I asked him why the vaccines were created in the first place (COVID preceded them) he ended the call.
He's very "spiritual" and has thrown his life away chasing rainbows and unicorn farts, so he was prone to that kind of manipulation. He's smart, hexalingual, but never had a real job.
"Child abuse is a distinctly un-festive topic."
Back around 2008 I ran across a former coworker who was down and out, he'd been kicked out of his apartment and his stuff placed outside to be hauled away by opportunists, including his CD collection; this was the guy who turned me on to Coil and started me buying music for the first time in 16 years, aside from classical and a few artists I followed.
I should have seen red flags a lot sooner.
He kept talking about child abuse, child rape, crazier and crazier stories, finally passing the point where it was possible to believe him at all. Everyone he had ever known or trusted had raped him, our boss had raped him (I doubt this boss could screw his own hand), his parents had farmed him out thousands of times ... then came this tale of a rollercoaster at Disneyland (he was ALWAYS talking about Disneyland) that took a secret turn and delivered its passengers to a room where people including Janet Reno used them in kinky sex.
He was psychotic.
He got a job at Microsoft and emailed public figures about his crazy obsession from his MS email account and you an guess where that led.
In the end I had the cops take him out of my house and had nothing more to do with him.
Now we talk on Facebook; I've had to tell him that if he ever brings up child rape or anything connected with his obsession ever again I will block him, who knows if Vietnamese cops are reading my FB pages and maybe getting confused about who's who.
He is on some kind of psych disability but decades later he is still preoccupied with child abuse. I bet there are people who prey on kids who think about it a lot less than he does.
One of the weirder entries in my gallery of oddballs.
"One of the weirder entries in my gallery of oddballs."
Yikes! Yeah, there's this horribly unfortunate tension between recognising abnormal behaviour and being seen as (and even seeing yourself as) small-minded or unkind.
I don't think there's a way to get this balance completely correct. There is, obviously, such a thing as a person who is weird but not bad. But the main reason we miss red flags is that we get the balance badly wrong.
One of the many things we have to thank critical theory and postmodernism for is the erosion and stigmatisation of our concept of "normal." As I wrote recently, normal should be as broad a category as we can reasonably make it. But it desperately needs limits. For everybody's sake.
The reason I had the cops take him out, aside from the fact that he refused to leave and locked his bedroom door (in my house), was because I no longer felt safe with him in the house. He wasn't violent but he was manipulative; for example he told the cop that I'd threatened him with "physical violence" because I told him I intended to "kick" him out.
There was one time I just snapped; I had a package delivery while away and he refused to accept it. "It might contain DRUGS!" That was a turning point.
I paid my crazy dues with a schizophrenic roommate who nearly murdered me one night and broke my arm. I wasn't paying again.
' those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” So true!
Thank you, Steve, for being out there plowing the fields of truth through the wilderness of media and news. May you find time to breathe deeply and renew your being in a space of peace.
"May you find time to breathe deeply and renew your being in a space of peace."
Thank you so much Ruth. That's exactly the plan. Some Christmas songs and eggnog should do the trick.😁
Less than 1% of those identifying as “trans” are dysphoric.
The only thing that amazes me more than how defensive the alphabet soup gang gets when you point out how much fetishism, including an unhealthy fetishism centred around kids is how blind so-called 'feminists' are to this shit and why *we're* the enemies when we call bullshit on this stuff.
I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. We couldn't get arsed enough about Sandy Hook to do anything about guns, nor about the horribly mishandled Uvalde case, so maybe it's to be expected that people are as okay with grooming kids for pedophilia as they are with splashing them across a classroom.
I apologize if I came across with excessive harshness. I have this thing about demonization of those with opposing views. I've made my reason why clear in the past. Peace
I understand, Dave, and I'm not upset with you. You have always been pretty restrained even when you disagree with folks here. I do hear what you're saying about demonization and I know I can be guilty of it. But sometimes stereotypes exist for a *reason*. The gun obsession is primarily on the right, and when ideology is involved (when we know of it, we don't always), it's almost always someone screaming about blacks or Jews or some damn right-wing bogeyman. There are a few exceptions - I remember one exception of a liberal engaging in a mass shooting:
https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/14/homepage2/james-hodgkinson-profile/index.html
If you know of others let me know. The 'non-binary' guy who shot up the gay nightclub was less 'non-binary' than advertised (it was fairly recent) and he also came from a right-wing family, fucked up for reasons arguably other than ideology (substance abuse, emotional abuse, Dad was a porn actor). Some, like the Las Vegas shooter, we STILL don't know what his motive was. Some simply share some elements of 'traditional' thinking without necessarily being terribly political (like the incels going after women who won't have sex with them because they feel so entitled, plus there's the love affair with violence, killing, guns, weapons, etc.)
It's interesting that liberals are way under-represented in mass shooters, along with women. The exceptions exist, but they're pretty small. (One liberal I can name so far, and four women).
Other than the guy who shot up the Republicans at the practice for a charity ball game which was obviously about politics, I'm not certain about the degree of political influence on shootings. Disgruntled teenagers who shoot up a school are probably not politically motivated since at that age they are likely oblivious to partisan politics. I have some very Democrat friends who are highly anti-gay. People tend to look for political connections in such things to support the demonization process.
Does our fascination with violent movies and video games play into it? I think it does. How many people, left and right, have paid money to watch a war or police/crime movie that is all about violence? Perhaps most people. Where is huge sums of money spent making movies? Violent scenes. That fascination is for the most part apolitical.
In Steve's most recent commentary he mentioned people fearing different things. I don't fear firearms, probably because they have been a presence for my entire life. I'll confess that I fear the potential tyranny of governments. No individual nutjob can come within orders of magnitude of the horror's governments are capable of and they use demonization to get their citizens to do their bidding. Does this play into our views? I think so, and at a very fundamental level.
I don't think many people shooters go into a public place, fire away, screaming, "Death to liberal scum!" or "Republicans must die!" But sometimes they belie certain stereotypical traits, like Dylann Roof (A suthun boy) screaming about how blacks are going after 'our' women and they all must go. Not sure what his politics are or if he voted but i'll bet they're somewhere to the right of Obama.
I don't see the jones for violence, or responding to violence, on the left the way I've seen it on the right. Which is not to say that the left *can't* be violent (there were violent left-wing groups in America in the 60s and 70s) or that they can't be again. If you like violence, support violence, or *are* violent, you'll find more welcoming arms on the right than the left. Even the far left today isn't anywhere near as violent as the right, whose bogeymen are Antifa (who still are pretty much guilty of micro-violence) and Black Lives Matter, which is guiltier of misappropriating donations than any real violence, and the right points to some of the riots and vandalism that took place during some protests which can likely mostly be attributed to violent people taking advantage of the situation.
Like it or not, politics is a huge driver of the violence spike we're seeing. The angry teenage shooter kills a classroom or shopping center and shoots himself might have been apolitical himself, but if I'd put a finger on where he'd go politically if he lived long enough, I'd wager he'll be more conservative than liberal. Although it might be a moot point for those who will stay in jail. Not sure if any mass shooters have been allowed out of jail, or what happened later if they did. Most of them die either by their own hand or by police bullets. AFAIK, none are out of jail so far although i could be wrong.
Yes, violent movies and video games play into our oh-so-American love affair with violence, although I don't know how apolitical it is. It's kind of a broad topic. I think serial killer movies are more apolitical than military & action hero movies. I love Sylvester Stallone but I haven't seen most of his movies because it's a lot of right-wing violent military crap (First Blood being an exception, and I thought it was a very good movie). He lost me for a long while in the '80s because of the right-wing-pandering he did to Reagan conservatives, but I know he himself is less partisan than one might think, he tends to skew Republican but has also voiced more socially liberal opinions and likely opens himself up to charges of being a RINO. He also has a sweetly quaint traditionalist view of marriage that comes out in his movies that he lives himself - he's spent most of his life married, and believes in all that happily-ever-after stuff. He hasn't ever, to my knowledge, been accused of domestic abuse or a lot of cheating, but I'm no expert on his private life.
I don't fear firearms either, I fear nutjobs with firearms. I think a LOT of people are not mentally stable enough to own firearms but I'm not going to get into what to do about it because no one's going to do it anyway, and I don't have to live there anymore so my feeling is just sort of, "Fuck it, people, *you* live there, *I* don't, fix it or just fucking die a lot. The ability is there, you decide."
In the spirit of Steve's commentary I will shorten my comment to the idea that you are equating very dissimilar things and making an unwarranted accusation.
I'm being a little sarcastic. I've been researching the role fetishism plays in the LGBTQ movement, AFAICT a fairly recent thing. When you have men pushing to get into women's spaces you can pretty much figure sex is behind it somehow.
I find it disturbing that they get very defensive about the pedo end of it. I've actually been on the fence about that accusation until very recently. Wasn't sure I was ready to accuse them of *that* but the push into schools, the people pushing clear fetishes (like here in Ontario, some teacher pushing his fetish garb and female look in the classroom, I'll dig it up if you want) is making me wonder why the push toward children. Why does this movement seem so *obsessed* with pushing this stuff at kids, and transitioning kids so young? If you've got a better theory I'm all ears.
The push to early gender transition has the same motivation as everything else coming from the “trans” activists: to grow their audience.
If you accept that as the goal you understand all their positions. The dropping of dysphoria as the definition of transgender is particularly revealing. This alone has multiplied the “trans” community a thousandfold.
Early transition forces a miserable person to lock into “trans” for life. Even puberty blockers have lifelong health effects.
Lost in the noise are the 5-10,000 authentically dysphoric, absorbed into a gender ideology they didn’t ask for and the treatment options diluted by an army of phonies.
Maybe, but I confess I'm always highly suspicious when men push something overtly sexual onto kids. They want to grow their tribe, for sure, but what's the end goal, even if they grew to the millions? Given the sexual predation on lesbians pressured to not be 'transphobic' about 'ladydicks' and 'cotton ceiling' whines, I wonder if gender identity-bending, getting adults as well as children used to parading fetishes in front of them, is a prelude to introducing NAMBLA-style 'acceptance'.
After all, if kids can be trusted to make lifelong gender decisions before they're out of grade school, maybe, it might be argued, they also have the 'right' to decide who to have sex with.
Maybe I'm just an overly-suspicious female but I suspect dicks are behind this push, as always.
I've had to stop reading them on Medium, they just make me too angry and I'm trying to be less so, having used anger as an escape mechanism all my life.
But yes, one of the biggest gripes I saw on there was about "TERFs," feminists who don't accept biological men as women. It underscores just how warped they are that they think real women *should* accept chicks with dicks at all.
The whole gender ideology thing makes me sick, the "nonbinary" stuff most of all. Even if over 99% of the "trans" are fake, this is such a thing as gender dysphoria, but there is no medical/psychiatric foundation for "intermediate gender." That is hot bubbling bullshit.
Who would want to work with this "person?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFjUjSJplfs
I hadn't thought of the part you're presenting here, that it's really about, as with most cults, giving men access to young women. You may be onto something ... though a lot of the "trans" activists are biological women.
"... though a lot of the "trans" activists are biological women."
Are they? Am I missing something? Or are we talking about gaslit feminists like Elle Beau (though I don't know if she's changed her attitude since I got kicked off a year ago).
"I hadn't thought of the part you're presenting here, that it's really about, as with most cults, giving men access to young women."
And children, too. Either gender.
I was too terse. I don't take issue with that. As you know, I am very pro-2nd Amendment. It was your second paragraph that grated. Nobody is fine with splashing children across a classroom. Quoting the late Fred Reed, "Anything that is politically possible won’t work, and anything that will work is politically impossible." What do you recommend that would work and not be a hill you would die on trying to force on America?
The right isn't happy about situations like Sandy Hook and Uvalde because they make their side look bad, rather than because children died. Kiddie deaths, and everyone else's at the hands of a Righteous 2A 'Murican, are simply the price they feel you must pay, on some level, for overly-interpreted 2A rights.
The right has *zero* claim to 'pro-life' values anymore. Not when they fight harder for fetal rights than they do those same fetuses to go to school in a few more years without their brains getting splattered by a Righteous 2A 'Murican.
Do they want to see it happen? No, but it's an inconvenient embarrassment, at most. So, no, I don't expect people who'd rather die on a hill defending the right of every nutbag in America, literally, to have a gun, to ponder whether perhaps not everyone should have, that owning a gun is also a *privilege* as well as a basic right, and that it should be taken away if you're not responsible enough for the privilege (like pre-existing violence problems and demonstrated mental disorders). They show zero respect for life, and when it's okay for one side to diss life, it becomes okay for everyone else. So the left, instead, ignores its sexual predators and pedos taking advantage of their movement and, like the Catholic Church, are earning their growing reputation as a safe space for pedoes.
Neither side cares about children's rights, they just differ on which right they'll defend - the right to life or the right to not be preyed upon by pervy men.
Every time one of these grisly mass shootings happens there is a run on gun stores and a lot of them end up completely depleted as the RKBA junkies stock up, certain that the slaughter is just a ruse to take away their guns.
They don’t need to hear it from Alex Jones, they don’t need to coordinate. It’s spontaneous.
The fanaticism around guns is wholly irrational and since so many on the right maintain a permanent state of rage it’s hard to imagine this not getting a lot worse.
While I am pro-right to bear arms, I am not a fanatic and hope that you don't see me as one. One size does not fit all.
I have told you directly that I respect your views and understand the difference in our backgrounds. I would absolutely love to have a conversation with you about this; I think there would be some raised voices but no insults and that in the end we would find our differences are not as broad as we thought.
If I have not said so before let me say it now in this forum: I do not consider you to be a fanatic. You have been in combat, I haven't; you grew up with guns; I did not.
We cool?
Absolutely cool. I would love to sit at a table with you and converse where it is lies awkward than the internet.
I actually agree with much, if not most of that, but your first paragraph looks like projection based upon an erroneous belief that you can read minds.
Here's the thing about my spirit of what Steve wrote remark (moving away from partisanship). I am pro-2nd so the political left (sorry Chris, I struggle for a meaningful word) see me as conservative. I am pro-choice so the right sees me as a progressive. There is no logical reason for linking such issues according to partisan tribalism which leads to my disdain for such thinking.
My hill to die on was a reference to a question I often ask myself, "Where might that lead? Is it worth it?" I am in no way for every nutbag to have a firearm, but the devil is in the details in how we deal with that. I wish I knew of a workable path, but I'm not that wise and the people at both anti-gun and pro-gun extremes seem the least likely to have that wisdom.
Substack threads can be wicked confusing and I just made three attempts to see what I said that you disagree with in the first 'graph. I think it's the one about how Sandy Hook & Uvalde are the price one pays, in 2A nutbag minds, for 'preserving' 2A 'rights' which I'm putting in quotes because I'm quite sure the Founding Fathers were concerned with muskets, not assault weapons or whatever doesn't qualify as an assault weapon that's nevertheless used for mass assault.
I might be overly-broad-interpreting myself, but the crazies (not the conservative intelligentsia) seems to be pretty 'pro life' on the subject of abortion, but anti-life on the subject of *intelligent* gun laws (I've never been a 100% "ban all guns" type unless someone can dig up a letter to the editor I wrote in 1976 that I've totally forgotten about).
That, plus GA pushing an election with a guy even dumber than Trump into a *runoff election* (and I don't believe GA is a maverick state of stupid), a guy who can't control his dick and paid for at least two 'baby murders' (as they define it), incline me to say the Religious Reich has finally produced proof positive that they are not, in fact, 'pro-life'.
You both know that I think political partisanship is illogical and that I am both pro-2nd Amendment & pro-choice so I'll ignore your conflation of the two issues.
Specifically, the idea that pro-2nd Amendment people are just fine with school shootings is something that required great restraint in my reply. Here is the issue.
The Winchester Repeating Arms Company introduced the first semi-automatic rimfire and centerfire rifles designed especially for the civilian market in 1903 & 1905. The Winchester Model 1903 and Winchester Model 1905 operated on the principle of blowback in order to function semi-automatically.
The first semi-automatic rifle adopted and widely issued by a major military power (France) was the Fusil Automatique Modele 1917. This is a locked-breech, gas-operated action which is very similar in its mechanical principles to the future M1 Garand in the United States. Civilians had semi-automatic rifles before the military did.
In the military, assault is a verb. At least when I was on active duty there was nothing designated as an assault weapon. In the Vietnam war era, there was an assault accessory that could be attached to the side of the belt fed M-60 machinegun that could hold its 250-round linked belt of ammunition to keep it from dragging on the ground while on patrol where you might participate in an assault. On perimeters it was crew served and mounted on a tripod so that accessory was not needed. Instead, the assistant machine gunner had an extra barrel and an asbestos glove to change the barrel when it got too hot during heavy activity.
I gave you that background to point out that, I'll use the progressive word here, "assault weapon" is a "dog whistle" for semi-automatic firearms capable of rapid fire. I've seen assigning attempts at defining them as; look military, black, detachable magazines, muzzle breaks/flash suppressors, pistol grips, bayonet lugs and such. Things that have absolutely nothing to do with anything logically associated with mass shootings. The thing they want to eliminate is semi-automatic firearms but are afraid to say it because that's about 40% of the firearms in the US. A low percentage because of all the old firearms like a bolt-action deer rifle that anti-gunners have been known to call "sniper rifles" (need to ban those next) and pump shotguns which anti-gunners have been known to call "riot guns" (need to ban those too). Most of the firearms on sale today are semi-automatic. I think it disingenuous to try to pretend that it is not about a large-scale ban of the new firearms that people have purchased, rather than inheriting them from their grandfather.
That would just piss off a big chunk of America and cause a change in how the nutcases commit mass murder of which there are many ways. Some, like a Ryder truck full of fertilizer are even more spectacular.
All of that is to say that a politically acceptable action that would effectively reduce the number of such event is difficult. If you think that just giving the finger to such a large percentage of America and just banning the semis is OK, I could talk like you and say that you might just be OK with a very bloody civil war. Basically, when you claimed that 2nd-amendment people are fine with school shootings you spit in my eye with the demonization much discussed here. I will continue with my restrained reply.
That's why I said 'assault weapons', or whatever's used to assault people. Let me state again: I'm not anti 2A, I'm just against idiots with guns, defined as people too demonstrably stupid or violent to have them. However you want to define 'assault weapons', the ones that make it easy to kill lots of people in a very short period of time are the ones in dispute. Not *all* weapons Americans are allowed now are necessary, but I'm not getting into the semantics thing with you again. I watched Beau's videos you sent awhile back on guns and they were quite good and informative but let's please stop with the semantics. I think some guns should be kept out of civilian hands but I'm not for disarming the populace. Just the part of the populace that can't handle the responsibility, and that is usually the loudest voices against sane gun laws. Honestly, I'd drop the whole discussion about which guns if we could find a way to keep them out of idiots' hands. But the 2A set won't allow it, and apparently we have to do everything they tell us to do or they'll get violent--er.
While I don't think the gun nuts exactly *cheer* when there's a mass shooting, I *do* think they find it more of an embarrassment than something we need to do something about it. Like it or not, it's a partisan issue. They didn't like abortion so they finally got Roe overturned; but they look the other way when people are murdered every damn day in America, and often children too, and come up with *every excuse in the book* for why we can't do *anything* about the real problem, which is the (mostly) men with pre-existing violence and mental health problems (that everyone knows about) being allowed to have guns.
And somehow, saying the nutbags already committing mass murder are going to find new ways of committing mass murder sounds fairly unpersuasive, but only because I think they're going to do that anyway. Mostly, because no one has put the skids on their gun obsession for thirty years and now here we are, with one of the highest murder rate, perhaps even THE highest murder rate in the Western world.
Arguing that 'If we go after their guns there will be mass slaugher/civil war is exactly why the Middle East is such a shitshow. The terrorists are the real rulers because no one wants to be the victim of the next terrorist attack. Their weak-ass governments let them get away with it because *they* don't want to be the targets of their terrorism. No one has the balls or labia to come down hard on them. No one wants to be blamed for 'encouraging' the attacks to begin with. (Isn't pacifism of Hitler what contributed mightily to WWII?) The longer we *allow* terrorists to set the rules ("Do this or we'll do that") the sooner the US will come to resemble the 'shithole states' of the Middle East.
Unfortunately, the Democrats are too weak-ass to fight them, and the Republicans, of course, fully support them.
"we can't do *anything* about the real problem, which is the (mostly) men with pre-existing violence and mental health problems (that everyone knows about) being allowed to have guns."
Alas, were it only so. Yes certainly some of the shooters telegraph their intentions; Rittenhouse shot his mouth off about wanting to kill protesters and a friend caught his rant on video but the in-the-pocket judge ruled it inadmissible.
However. Thank back to all the times you've heard that the shooter was a mild and unassuming guy, kept to himself, last person one'd expect ... a lot of these shooters commit their first offense ever when one day something snaps and they go shoot up an elementary school. Red flag laws would mitigate, but they would not stop the mass killings.
On. The. Other. Hand. Australia in 1996 had the Port Arthur slaughter and, unburdened by a ridiculous Right To Keep and Bear Arms or an NRA, they banned assault rifles, or whatever you want to call the goddamn things, and in the 26 years since there have been no more of those events.
The Onion in one of their more unfunny routines regularly republishes this, with a few words changed:
https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527
And make no mistake: the slaughter is not overplayed for clicks, the death toll in the USA is greater than in some countries' civil wars.
The gun nuts only see the news of such events in one way: as manufactured Fake News to create pretexts to disarm the populace so they will be helpless in the face of some hallucinatory "left wing" takeover where their kids will be taken away for gender-transition surgery and the FBI will come for their steel-belted radials and their beer. See Jones, Alex who went on his rage show and screams that Sandy Hook never happened.
Nope. Not enough to disarm those who have already broadcast their derangement. America is a country where the MMPI has to be frequently recalibrated because the center of sane <—> insane keeps moving toward insane.
I heard about an American couple that emigrated to Holland and brought their guns; after a fw years they realized how stupidly they'd been thinking and came clean with the cops, fortunately to a captain of police who in his discretion decided not to prosecute them. But it took them several years to absorb the new outlook.
I borrowed a gun for three days once, I was handling a lot of money and lived in a bad neighborhood. I couldn't stand having it around. Every time I got mad it crossed my mind, and I have pretty good impulse control but still I needed to return it and take my chances.
There are other contributing factors, for sure, like the disintegrating social contract, the social media divide, and rise and lack of control over fake news, conspiracy theories, mis/disinformation, etc., and income inequality and the skyrocketing costs of living, both of which get short shrift in the public debate about mass shootings, and crime overall.
We know a lot more about public shooters than we did back when they really got started forty years ago (not including the U of TX sniper shooter 15 years prior, I consider that an outlier) and the earliest ones were most often motivated by workplace rage (the book Going Postal details this quite well). Now they're getting younger and crazier and the ability to assault people with repeating bullets guns (not getting into the terminology again or it will trigger someone's lengthy guns definitions). What we *do* know is they often broadcast their intentions and no one pays attention. And sometimes they do and the cops move in to nail someone with all the goods on him indicating he was, in fact, planning a mass attack.
No, I don't want to disarm the populace, and I don't believe the 'slippery slope' nonsense, or we would all have *no* rights* because the laws we need (against murder, crime, lying, driving while drunk, etc.) would have been used to strip us of everything.
The ones who are shrieking about a fascist nation and jack-booted thugs coming for their guns and terrified that libtards and n-words want to destroy their rights are the ones most worried about losing them if we had saner gun laws, while keeping the 2A intact.
In other words, anyone with a history of violence, esp domestic violence.
I saw that Onion article when it came out, and yeah, the bitter sarcasm is just as resonant today as it was eight years ago.
Since we *do* have gun laws in some places that are stricter than before, and the questions rise up in the wake of each shooting, "Why was this guy allowed to buy a gun? How did he slip through the cracks?" maybe we should pressure law enforcement to enforce laws they probably don't agree with, because they too support the 2A *a little too much* and also because cops have a huge problem with domestic violence (the subject of my last article). How about we start legally going after the people who aren't doing their jobs properly?
This is the first post I have read from you that I would say crosses the line. While the information on nomenclature is illuminating on its own it really has nothing to do with the topic, which is not firearm lore but firearm politics.
The RKBA fanatics are not indifferent to school shootings? That's like saying all Republicans acknowledge that Trump lost and admit that he lies every time he opens his mouth.
Every time a mass shooting is reported there is a run on gun stores, a lot of BS about the shooting report being a pretext to confiscate guns.
Yes, the banning of assault rifles would trigger a huge surge of rage and violence. Should we allow ourselves to be extorted into keeping the damned things legal until people are afraid to go to work? How many parents hear the phone ring during the day and wonder if this is the report that one of their children has just been blown in half by some disturbed teenager?
Really, and I insist you answer this, why does anyone need a semi-automatic or an automatic weapon? And, no, I am not interested in the difference between the two, a correction that is trotted out as a distraction and an attack on people who are tired of the slaughter, as being uninformed.
Correct me if I am wrong but your support of the 2A is for self-defense, correct? How does anything past a one-shot handgun have anything to do with that?
Yes there are other ways to kill people, but right now the proliferation of these massacre machines is out of control.
I am not spitting in your eye, I don't believe for a second that you are OK with classrooms an inch deep in blood. But when it comes to the line that says "at this point we have to consider no longer allowing preposterously overpowered firearms in the hands of mentally unstable people," you will not cross that line.
Just as with the "trans" crowd, to altogether too many people their guns are the very seat of identity. Who am I? Blah blah blah Second Amendment blah blah blah freedom blah blah blah more guns. Do you think this is acceptable? I don't.
As for the very bloody civil war, must we be held hostage to that? They're preparing for it anyway, stocking up on ammo and filling their ranks with experienced ex-military, and the longer we go without addressing the core of the problem, the bloodier it's going to be.
And the core of the problem is guns.
As you know, I can hold contrary views, or at least acknowledge truth in them.
"𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘯 𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘪𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘤, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘮 𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘮 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘴."
The point in that was that semi-automatic firearms have been available for over one hundred years and civilians had them before our military and they were available for mail order with no government intervention. I think that there is more to the issue than the availability of semi-automatic firearms. There is complexity and while I understand that if you believe that guns are the root cause that that's where you'd focus first. They are an issue, but I don't see them as a root cause and as a practical matter I don't see them vanishing anytime soon.
"𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘳𝘶𝘯 𝘰𝘯 𝘨𝘶𝘯 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘴, 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘚 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘨𝘶𝘯𝘴."
A sales tactic. Interestingly there are now a large portion of gun buyers who are first time buyers who gave up being anti-gun as a matter of perceived practicality. I hope they get training, both in safety and the law.
The issue isn't limited to buying guns. Gun rights organizations are yammering (send money) about the anti-gun provisions in the abomination spending bill which people signed without reading (an impossible task). My objection to omnibus spending bills goes beyond senseless spending on things that won't walk on their own legs but enacting policy on such things, but that is another subject,
"𝘠𝘦𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘢 𝘩𝘶𝘨𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦. 𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘸𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘮𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘭 𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘭 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘰 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬? 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘥𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘧 𝘣𝘺 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘣𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘳?"
In truth, I think that there would be less violent resistance than is believed. Most people, like me, would turn them in. I know a fight I can't win or is not worth it when I see it.
Just as the gun industry promotes overblown fear of gun restrictions, the anti-gun groups promote hoplophobia to create true believers who will send money like the pro-gun groups do. I am not minimizing school shootings, but I think the fear about them is greater than justified. When people hear "mass shooting" they think of spectacular events like major school shootings or the Las Vegas shooting. The government sets a low bar for calling something a mass shooting and the large majority (bumping up the count) are local events like drug deals gone bad, gangs, etc. Promoting fear and hysteria are tools used by more than FOX.
"𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴, 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘮𝘪-𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘱𝘰𝘯?"
I don't think in terms of only owning what we need. That would collapse the buy what we want economy. People would not have jobs or income in a world without self-sufficiency and I don't need to tell you where that leads. It's not a question I ask but what follows might be the answer you seek.
"𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘧 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 2𝘈 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧-𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦, 𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵? 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘢 𝘰𝘯𝘦-𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘨𝘶𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵?"
Self-defense is not huge in my list of priorities since the odds of being in a self-defense situation is small enough that I don't carry a gun every time I go out the door. At the same time, I see no higher personal priority than self-preservation and the defense of those we love so I certainly think people have a right to tools to effectively do that. I'm not talking about laws but nature.
Your thought that a single shot handgun is all you need for self-defense is actually a strong argument for semi-automatic firearms. One-shot stops are a "buy this gun" gun magazine fantasy. In all of the critical incident reports from the Phoenix PD that I've seen, they never shoot one round. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1137967663572659&ref=sharing
"𝘠𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘭."
I suspect that I have a lower opinion of the Mr. Tacticals who think they need more crap than soldiers in a war zone than you have. They are mostly wannabes. Wannabe what they never were or wannabe what they once were. The thing is, they seem to me to be more about a weird form of cosplay than people who are actually going to go out and do something.
I probably support more measures than you imagine, but at the same time I have concerns about abuse of those things that you may not worry about. Red flag laws could address the nut jobs that shouldn't have access although there is a thriving stolen gun market for such people. But it can also be abused with false claims by vindictive people.
As I wrote, "assault weapon" is a political term used by people who are ignorant or disingenuous about the true object of their concern, semi-automatic firearms. I commend your honesty and candor. I just have a less sharp focus on tools than you although the complexity of my concerns doesn't make solving the problem any easier.
"A sales tactic. Interestingly there are now a large portion of gun buyers who are first time buyers who gave up being anti-gun as a matter of perceived practicality. I hope they get training"
Actually they don't need to advertise, as soon as the news comes out, they are deluged with customers.
Training? Highly unlikely. Most people facing a home invader are so shaken they probably couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Hands shake, pulse hammers. Those on for example SWAT teams need to undergo biweekly desensitization so they can function in that kind of emergency' miss ONE such session and they can't go to the next emergency.
A lot of the Hairy Chested Administrator of Frontier Justice stuff is just conceit. Facing a threat to one's life takes more than conceit and most people aren't up to it.
Accepting children being splashed across classrooms is inseparable from the Second Amendment unless it is restored to its original meaning. There is no putting the genie of Crazy back in the bottle and it is only going to get a lot worse, and soon.
The 1/6 committee recommended four criminal charges against Trump and it is likely that at least some of them will proceed to indictment. His followers are going to go absolutely ape and most of them are armed.
I don't know that they will cross the Rubicon and send a former President to prison since the pendulum will eventually swing and the Rs will follow that president and do the same to the criminals with a D behind their name.
If they do, I don't expect much to happen. They say there are four political boxes. The soap box, the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box. My super MAGA buddy is big on the first two but to the best of my knowledge he doesn't own a firearm, his military experience did not involve combat and I would not anticipate him doing anything violent. Actually, I have several conservative friends who don't own firearms; two of them because their wives are unstable, and they are concerned that they might use one to harm themselves. And, I have liberal/progressive friends who do own firearms. In the words of one of them, "We lefties like our guns too."
You might be overestimating their gun ownership and especially their likelihood of using them, though I agree that some might.
1/6 was an insurrection where the insurrectionists left their guns at home. The notable exception was the Oath Keepers.
I was a founding member when it was advertised as a non-partisan organization. I should have seen it coming, but when I saw it become partisan, I ended my membership. Stewart Rhodes has already been convicted. He seemed reasonable when I met him, but then came what was probable delusions of grandeur.
"I don't know that they will cross the Rubicon and send a former President to prison since the pendulum will eventually swing and the Rs will follow that president and do the same to the criminals with a D behind their name."
There are no good paths out of this but I think not indicting and arresting Trump is the worst of them. That tells some future set of insurrectionists that they can try again.
Future Republican congressional majorities—heaven forfend—will try the same thing, of course; they have already made clear that the next two years are going to be nonstop performance and sham. They will try to impeach Biden at least once a week. But it's not symmetrical. Indictment numbers:
Trump — 215
Nixon — 76
Reagan — 26
Obama — 0
Carter — 1
Clinton — 2
I doubt any Democratic president is likely to provide a real justification for indictment and arrest. Not that they won't try, and when they fail they will just say that the deck is stacked against conservatives, as usual.
I think that failing to indict is the greatest risk, and a pardon by Biden is not warranted in this case, I think it would have the same effect as not indicting at all.
Yes, indicting Trump will increase the persecution mania that conservatives enjoy so much. No question. And yes there will be a violent reaction, though probably not as intense as it would have been had the indictments come before all the disgrace.
It's important for people to be reminded that nobody is above the law. I think that is more important than anything else. Trump has committed dozens of crimes, he has no morals, and whether people revere or despise him, they need to know that he is as subject to law as anyone.
Then maybe we can start doing something about people who don't pay taxes.
There are 393 million firearms in private hands in the US. According to the CDC in 2020 (the most recent year with data) there were 45,222 gun related deaths in the US (homicide, suicide, accidents where the number of people properly killed (to save lives) is not called it). Therefore 0.00115% of the nation's privately owned firearms were involved if you generously assume that each death was with a different firearm. I don't see that as a case for firearms being a cause, they are tools. It is purposefully under reported when a gun is used to save lives which leads to what I think is the biggest impediment to reasonable gun control - mistrust of the anti-gun people with their end justifies any means mentality.
Let me add another statistic: 42% of Americans own guns at all, which means that those 393 million firearms are distributed among 140 million people, the vast majority of whom own one or two guns.
Completing that thought, some people own absolutely enormous numbers of firearms. Perhaps you've seen that photo of the family with over 400 assorted black military-style rifles and handguns on display in the back yard.
I want people like that completely disarmed.
More: suicide is about 2/3 of gun deaths. Problem is that firearm suicide is successful about 90% of the time while other forms are about 10%. People take a bottle of pills and just puke and awaken in the hospital just flying and with a headache. They cut their wrists and just cripple their hands.
There is no arguing that most gun owners aren't problems, they just own a gun to feel safer. But then, the tiny percentage who break into houses require us all to have locks and worry every time we're out of the house.
And gun advocates won't concede a thing; blind people who are mentally unstable need to be allowed to own guns.
With mass shootings coming almost daily now, and only bound to get worse, we need to start somewhere and it's a pity we didn't start back when there were fewer guns than people.
People who hunt/hunted often have more than one firearm for different purposes, not the same as collecting. I wonder if the super gun collectors have a form of MIAS (musical instrument acquisition syndrome). It would be better and just as useless to have fifty guitars or ukuleles.
I have a friend who bought two each AR15 & M1As (non-military versions of the M16 & M14). He asked me over to teach him how to field strip them to clean them. He was not a veteran and had no training with them. Politically left leaning and not a nut. He just wanted to have them as an investment. He could sell them for far more than he paid for them today. To his credit, he had a high-quality gun safe.
Some people buy gold and silver for the collapse. One of my daughters says that lead will be the barter currency for the new millennium. Ammunition is very scalable right down to a single round of .22 LR. There are people who store large amounts of ammunition more for that reason than thinking of a shoot-um-up.
I have a dozen hardware synthesizers. OK, I went a little nuts. I was warned about Gearlust.
I have three classical guitars and a mandolin. I'm struggling to get the motivation to get practicing again. I used to be quite good and I get a lot better in an hour of playing.
But I wasn't talking about a hunter with a second piece for rodents, you know who I'm talking about; the guys with racks of assault rifles, the guy who bought five more handguns because Obama won some legislative victory (not related to guns), the ones who wear three guns around the house and five when they leave it. These people are crazy, and they are obsessed.
I'm talking about the people who can't imagine any solution to the growing menace of firearms that doesn't involve everyone being more armed, the ones who really believe in that polite society, the ones who take Xmas pictures of everyone in the family holding an assault rifle.
You know as well as I that this is sick.
I don't need to tell you how good music is for your head. I hope you pick up one of those guitars and create something new on a synthesizer for you sound cloud.
But wait! There's more!
Playing from sheet music, which I now do almost all the time I play classical guitar, has an established benefit in deferring senility. Last I read the connection was not understood, but it uses so many different parts of the brain in coordination that speculation comes easily.
Cellist Pablo Casals was playing gifted interpretations of Bach which involved reading figured bass; numerical notations beneath single notes
B
6
would be a G chord, B being the third, and the other note, D, not needed because any one who can read figured bass knows this stuff. But it isn't just chords, the musician is expected to work in themes and transitions from the body of the piece.
It takes really deep understanding and fast thinking to play from figured bass, most Baroque musicians fill it in before they perform.
Casals was doing superb live interpretations of figured bass at age 96.
I hope you're wrong. Trump predicted everyone would lose their minds over the midterms if his people didn't win but they didn't. It's a very real threat, for sure, but they lost their minds neither over that nor the Mar-A-Lago raid. Maybe they'd like to go to jail too, along with all their fellow traitor comrades already there?
I think you have it backwards. Loyalty to the GOP or to conservatism takes a distant second to loyalty to the God King himself. He wasn’t running. Trump isn’t a conservative, and he isn’t a Republican. Neither are his followers. It’s a cult.
And when the cult leader is marched away in handcuffs bellowing about persecution and witch hunts it’s going to be like sewer rats in a flood.
Maybe, although he doesn't seem to have as much support as he had before. The mid-terms appear to be a refutation of Trumpism. Yeah, Americans need to be vigilant if he's perp-walked into a prison. Yeah, there will probably be some terrorist attacks by his followers. Not sure it will be mass hysteria, but I could be wrong. Then again, will Garland have the balls to indict him. I note Republican Congresscritters aren't jumping to protect Trump with the expected indictment, and they have to answer to the voters. So maybe they know something we don't.
That it's safer. I really hope so. If America *doesn't* explode with anger over this, it'll be the strongest indication yet that Trump's Reign of Error is over.
He has lost support of what we've come to call the "establishment" Republicans, who are only 8 on the Crazy Meter and not 11.
The good part: the GOP cannot win with Trump, his unfavorability is not only high, it is intense. But if he is not the nominee he will take psychotic revenge, telling his supporters not to vote for Republicans who betrayed him.
In short: they can't win with him, and they can't win without him. It's algebra.
But his supporters are hate-crazed, enraged, and irrational. They *will* make a ton of trouble. I don't know the scale but it will be horrible. They have discovered electric grids now and may graduate to bombs.
Garland: the pressure on him to act will be intense. Discouraging is that he has moved so slowly; encouraging is that he authorized the search of Trump's Florida tea-room. That took some balls. He will have to travel in tanks for a while but, well. I don't want to jinx it with a prediction. I want to pick up my phone and see TRUMP ARRESTED on a notification, or maybe something a little more ummm determinative.
I'm getting quite, quite sick of waiting for the other g.d. shoe to drop. Enough pussyfooting around, buddy-boy, INDICT HIM!!!
The inability to deal with terrorists and coup plotters in a timely manner, like within 24-48 hours like Germany and Peru did, tells something about how lacking in balls the US has become. Since mass murder on a daily basis doesn't move Americans' hearts to wonder whether people really need all the damn assault weapons they've got, maybe terrorist attacks that inconvenience *them* will make a difference.
Or perhaps when Trump's brownshirts do worse than not vote for any Republican Trump decides he doesn't like, maybe they'll rethink their position on whether idiots with guns is a sane policy for a so-called 'civillized' country.
A reason to be concerned about the inability of the DOJ to act decisively:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/03/08/they-are-preparing-war-an-expert-civil-wars-discusses-where-political-extremists-are-taking-this-country/
Worse, the insurrectionists have a lot of support in law enforcement.
As someone who worked with classified data for years, I see taking classified data as a serious thing that he could, and should, rightfully be prosecuted for. Why the hell would anyone want to keep that kind of thing?
To sell it, of course. What other reason could there be? Nostalgia?
Well he sure ain't gonna read it himself. Too many big words, and no mention of himself.
I ran across the piece and the guitarist on a bus on my iPad and ordered the sheet music on the spot.
I had a chance to meet him but the company I was working for threw me a curveball with a sudden deadline, I had already bought my airline ticket to Bangkok and lost the money. I should have told them to go to hell, as I did a few months later anyway. He's Israeli, his grandfather was in Auschwitz and my partner went ahead and took his flight so I sent a rare book to him, a photo album from Auschwitz that was found in the commandant's nightstand. It meant a lot to him. I hadn't known his grandfather was there.
The piece doesn't even have measures, it's extremely hard and I have to break my sightreading habits with those two flatted strings. But I love the tonality; if you listen to it a few times you'll start to pick out the logic. It's one of two pieces, the first isn't so frantic.
"Medical transition can provide great relief for dysphoria, but it cannot change actual biological sex."
Exactly! Medical transition is treatment. Not magic. It doesn't change underlying realities for males or females and pretending it does has been catastrophic.
You will read daily about suicide among transgender youth, but never a word about the suicide surge 7-10 years after transitioning. The former supports the "trans" activist agenda; the latter refutes it.