Hello there, Robert Gore.

Posting has been pretty dark here for a while--not really my intention even given the deliberate attempt to pull back from all Teh Stoopid for a good bit--but this deserves a bookmark.  "The Last Gasp", by one Robert Gore.

I came across it via the Zelman Partisans blog (hat tip to Sheila Stokes for this post), which linked to Gore's "Basic Math", which then identified itself as a companion piece for "The Last Gasp".  So, arguably, I found it nearly by accident.

It does sorta get your attention right away:

When you can’t love, you hate. When you can’t build, you destroy. When you’re ignored, you scream. When you can’t tell the truth, you lie. When you can’t reason, you panic. When no one will follow you out of admiration or respect, you compel. When you can’t live, you kill.

This is it, the last gasp of the psychopaths who express their contempt and hatred for humanity by trying to rule it. Compulsion, not voluntary and natural cooperation. Power, pull, and politics, not incentives, competition, honest production, and value-for-value trade. From each according to his virtue to each according to his depravity.

Nicely said.

It goes on from there, with a refreshing excellence.  Gore's style strikes me as a mashup of Rothbardian ideas, laid out and presented in a Butler Shaffer artistic style, using a tone that reminds me of Robert Higgs, with some polite nods to Will Grigg.  (Meaning, of course, that in me it would naturally find a friendly audience.  :-)

Boy, I hope he's right--with the "last gasp" idea.  It makes perfect sense in a go-to-the-logical-conclusion kind of way, but of course I'm also reminded of an El Neil backstory (I think it was in Forge of the Elders) which talked about a similar tyranny inexplicably snatching an unexpected total victory from the jaws of similar defeat, right at the point everyone thought it was over and could finally move the hell on to better things.  "No one is more dangerous than the suicidal," indeed.

Anyway, hello there, Robert Gore.

Actually, George...

(As seen on the TwitFace.)

I’m sure you were great on TV and all (I confess I have never been a proper Trekkie), and I’ve no reason to doubt that you have also been a personal inspiration to more than a few perfectly decent people trapped in the closet by shameful and needless sexual bigotry. Even more importantly, you have done much to shine needed light on one of American history’s darkest moments, in openly talking about your own family’s internment in WWII. (As things happened for me, I learned about that horrible exercise in genocide enablement from others, but I will always respect you specifically for swimming against the shameful tide to willfully ignore or forget it.)

But seriously, George, your snowflake comment here pretty much writes its own rejoinders. 

Since you brought it up, then, here’s a few other “the thing”s about snowflakes:

• Snowflakes evaporate (or sublimate) and vanish completely with the simple application of hot air. (That is: they are utterly dependent upon utopian environmental conditions.)
• Snowflakes have no minds of their own; they simply drift and fall wherever the winds may blow them. (Note that it does not matter who may supply the wind.)
• Snowflakes are also completely unlike any living thing, in that they have no individual defenses of their own. (Not only are they not organic—they’re inorganic!)
• Snowflakes’ entire capacity for creativity and uniqueness is expended at the point of their creation. Yes, they are formed beautiful and unique, and truly the process of crystalline self-organization is remarkable—but once the process completes, the magic is gone; there is no life. (Nor the sentience for self-awareness, much less the sapience for self-direction.)
• Snowflakes can be artificially manufactured by machine, or deliberate cloud-seeding. (Note that whosoever does this, does so with inherent intent to create an exploitable mob.)

Look, I understand that your intention in coming to the defense of the noble snowflake, was probably to call out the notion of unintended consequences. In itself, that is a reasonably noble instinct, which I would generally applaud. But—aside from a rather juvenile delivery—do you really not recognize the fractal irony in defending the accretion of mindless, non-adaptable, easily manufacturable participants in a societal contest over “legitimate” power?

And I not only mean the overall irony, George, I mean the personal irony. It somehow seems very odd that you would make a reference such as “in large numbers become an unstoppable avalanche that will bury you”, given your own personal and family histories. I would think that you would understand, implicitly, “the thing” about “in large numbers” as it relates to human society, which is this: the relationship between empathy and “large numbers” is strongly inverse. Are you really suggesting that the only thing that matters in a societal discussion is “large numbers”? That the little guy should just suck it up lest he be bur[ied] in an avalanche? Really?

The late Aaron Zelman had a name for that sort of cognitive disconnect: bagel brain.

Bummed for David.

I learned this morning, first from David himself on Facebook, and then again via...everyone else, that he has now had to follow through on his promise to leave the new Gottlieb-controlled JPFO, if it ever got to the point where he felt censored in writing content.

Gives me no joy to hear it, but it sounds like that's exactly what happened.  (Yes, I understand that the backbreaking straw was at KABA, not JPFO, but I cannot fault Codrea for recognizing the very clear writing on the wall.)

Well, there it is, then.  I can't say it's a surprise, but I suppose I did want to be proven at least a little wrong at least a little...or at least a little longer.  In the end, that didn't take long at all, and that just makes me bummed for David. 

I can say this:  Codrea has handled this whole unfortunate affair with a considerable amount of class, and has reaffirmed for me why he is one of the lasting giants of gun rights.  Long may he ride, shoot straight, and speak the truth.

I never knew him personally, but from what I understand, I do suspect Aaron would have backed him on this.

The Zelman Partisans

I caught first wind of it from Kent McManigal on Facebook, and the realization of what was going to be behind the link hit me even before the mouse pointer got there. 

I'll echo Kent's thought:  may it succeed wildly.