Oh, now that was a swell thought...

So, y'all been enjoying this ongoing game of "What Fresh New Swill Will We Be Expected To Swallow Today?"  

There's little point of my recounting or even summarizing all the electoral fraud shenanigans;  many others have already done a really good job of this, including dismissing the nothingburgers among the legitimate gotchas. For some context, just to give the first nod to "best titles", I'll give the link love to Larry Correia:

• The 2020 election:  fuckery is afoot
• Election 2020:  the more fuckery update
• [Added 11/12] I asked one simple question to people who work with fraud

Indeed.

Other resources are worth the time as well, including this from the redoubtable Glenn Greenwald, and this interview (this link starts at about 7:10 on the timeline, where the best bits begin, and continue until about the 20-minute mark) in which one Robert Barnes very clearly lays out several of the most glaring "indicia of fraud" concepts.  There are others.  

Actually...there are a lot of others.  

Some of the usual suspects, of course, like Project Veritas, Breitbart, American Thinker, etc.;  and of course many sources come with varying degrees of obvious Team Red partisanship.  Caveat lector as always.

But again--there are a lot, and with a significant number not easily dismissible without the assistance of partisan beer goggles.  And there's a different vibe about the group of them, as a whole.  This isn't like what you're used to with the Hive Mind wokester crowd rallying behind an idea, where everyone refers primarily to each other, leading eventually back to a singular and highly partisan source, using the same talking points, same strategy, same rebuttals, etc.  No, from what I've seen here, there are simply a lot of reports (of evidence of shenanigans), from different people, stressing different evidence from different sources, appearing in different places...what's the same isn't the who, nor the evidentiary details, nor the style, nor the source, but only the obvious conclusions to be drawn from taking the body of reporting as a whole.  Even when multiple accounts do point to the same observation (e.g., the statistical impossibility of huge tranches of Biden-only-with-no-downticket-votes happening only in critical swing state locations), they often seem to do it from different angles, or the same observation gets made in both a statistical and a historical context by different people in different states...things like that.  To me at least, the signature of this landscape says grassroots, and self-motivated involvement, as opposed to water-carriers carrying water.

Woodward and Bernstein introduced the world to the modern term "follow the money", and this has the feel of a whole bunch of crowdsourced citizen-analysts, with various degrees of standing to analyze (e.g., I've seen things from data analysts, auditors, poll workers, historians, lawyers, and of course pundits, researchers, and activists as well), independently "following the money" with a fat lot of differentiated observations that all point to the same conclusions...

And boy, do these differ in presentation from the stank all the Cool Kids are so busy pimping:  I see a noticeable amount of "here are my sources;  by all means check my work";  as opposed to all the shouting, shaming, and Most Glorious Censorship of our modern MiniTru.  ("Joe Biden loves me / this I know / 'cause Twit-Face-Google / told me so.")

Really,  taken as a whole, it seems like the sort of broad evidential saturation that you'd absolutely dream of having on your side in a court case.  (Or, presently, quite possibly a lot of court cases.)  And as of this writing it keeps coming, with increasing reports and claims of actual intentional malfeasance, to go on top of the initial "this is just not possible" statistical and historical observations which merely imply malfeasance.

So, shenanigans then.  (Duh.)  And so we have Team Blue partisans looking away from the evidence so hard they risk snapping their own necks, and Big Tech and the urinealist media have their "nothing to see here" support schtick in full swing.  But a lot of people still seem to have noticed that what we're being asked to believe simply wouldn't pass as credible fiction, it's so over the top.  And now we have the great Hive Mind push to legitimize the shenanigans before they can be questioned.

Which reminds me:  I've found a pretty good analogy for trying to find some way to explain this shitshow to my girls, currently eleven and nine.  "Imagine you're watching a football game and the visiting team, heavy underdogs in the betting, are driving down the field for the go-ahead score at a critical point late in the game.  Suddenly there are multiple, inexplicable calls, all favoring the home team and shifting the momentum of the game.  The announcers and commentators can't figure this out, looking repeatedly at replays and scratching their heads, but the fans clearly love it, and play continues.  Then the home team commits a horrible roughing penalty, stripping the ball and returning it to within an inch of the goal line (but still clearly short).  Flags fly everywhere, but then the officials confer privately amongst themselves...with the clock running...and then rule that there was no flag on the play and the result is a home team touchdown.  The crowd goes wild.  At this point the home team literally races to get off the PAT play before the ridiculous spectacle can be reviewed.  (Oh, and it can't be challenged, see, because now they're now inside the two minute warning, even though the game clock hasn't been reset, and remember, the call on the field favors the home team...and how about that, now there's also been a glitch in the video footage for replay.)  And everyone knows that once that point-after kick is away, it's all a done deal, because you know, no backsies.  That's basically what's happening now."

And so now we have Biden already acting like he's official, with the mendacious partisanship level cranked up to eleven in support, all while more and more evidence piles up illustrating just how far and wide the Team Blue shenanigans went.  I've now seen some opinions coming forth that this is QED desperation;  that they know they've been made, and simply have to go all in or get completely destroyed from being hoist on their own petard.  It's a plausible idea, and maybe it's even true.  Under any amount of scrutiny, it just looks really bad for Team Blue here.

And then the thought hit me.  Oh shit.

Oh, shit.  No, no, no, no...

We've been here before.  

Remember the absolutely massive amount of evidence, and even public demand, to go after the Clinton cabal in 1998, for actual abuse of power crimes?  Waco.  Filegate.  Ron Brown.  Vince Foster.  (I'll stop there, but do you remember?  It was a lot, and the evidence was good.)  

All we needed, for a "within the system" remedy, was an opposition committed and competent enough to hit a barn from the inside.  It should have been the easiest layup of all time.

I may have written this here before, but it bears repeating now:  I can remember the exact instant when I finally gave up completely on "working within the system".  Why, it was in 1998, when I heard that Team Red was actually going to go after Slick Willy...for getting some unauthorized nooky in the White House, and for nothing else.  

They did it!  They missed the barn!  

And JFC, it's the same crowd that needs to come into play as a viable opposition now, to make any of this current cluster-coitus into something constructive.  

Shit.  We're screwed, aren't we?

____________________________

Why does this matter?  It's a question I've asked myself as well, and it's a reasonable one.  Claire recently touched on the idea too:  for those of us who have lost faith in the system to even show an interest in correcting itself, why sweat over these latest shenanigans, which for all their impressive magnitude, are hardly new in principle?

I'm not going to claim any sort of intellectual purity here, but I think there's a part of me that still wants to believe that a correction can happen;  that the grassroots of Greater Leavemethefuckaloneistan actually can rise up above the Establishment and bloody its nose just a little bit.  No delusions here that any such would somehow produce a true long-term solution, and maybe it's just sheer misplaced spite at decades, now, of having pretty much all the things I hold dear under continual attack by a mendacious, sanctimonious Establishment that now wants so bad--so very bad--to rid itself of an aberration in its hegemony (an embarrassing one that makes it look bad just like it really is).  But I don't think all this would bug me so much if that weren't at least a little bit true.

And so the realization that effectively exposing the obvious fraud here, and at least delegitimizing the transparently engineered election result, is going to depend on the cooperation of the same people that can and did turn a gigantic abuse of power case into a flaccid burlesque theater, leaves me a bit more despondent than usual, during the week after a presidential election.  

(What's most bizarre to me is that Trump himself, preening peacock and general toad though he may be, has actually proven himself unexpectedly capable of the sort of fortitude needed to lead such an effort.  I may have no confidence in the Team Red party apparatus to do anything substantial--hello, history--but DJT himself, now, he just might start swinging, and to the extent he appeals to people not on his own merits but simply as a functional stickfinger salute to the more couth, polished forms of authoritarian statism...well, he just might bring enough to the yard to land some hits.  (Personally, I like the idea that if he does wind up losing the war here, he could really stir things up with simple outgoing pardons of Julian Assange and Ed Snowden.))

In the end, philosophically, I remain where I have been for a while--over a generation now--but I think I have to admit I got caught hoping for better, here.

Damn buffoon sure has been entertaining, hasn't he?  The ability to give that much apoplexy to the pretentious mob...is actually pretty impressive.

A ranging shot from Leviathan?

The following was originally posted over at Claire's place, as a comment to this post in which she comments on (among other things) both the sudden Democratic Party wagon-circling around the barely-still-functional Joe Biden, and also on the emergent COVID-19 hysteria which has since illustrated, with full-spectrum clarity, just how willing and even eager so many otherwise intelligent people are to be led around by the nose, by the world's oldest protection racket.

It seemed appropriate somehow to warehouse this extended comment here as well. (As a housekeeping choice, I've backdated it to the date of the comment, but otherwise it's as it appears there.)



ORIGINAL COMMENT

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Claire, I’ll echo the “blog when you’re inspired to do so” sentiment. I see blogging at least a bit as a true art, and authentic art is, at heart, the channeling of a muse. Whenever you hear yours, by all means bring her beautiful voice to life again. (The hard part, sometimes, is just knowing when that voice is authentic, and not a manifestation imposed by the noisier parts of an active mind.)

_____________

In re the sudden wagon-circling around Biden, it seems clear enough that all the handlers are scrambling for a viable plan in this fainting-couch chaos of their own making. Bernie’s crime is simply that he’s had enough unexpected success on his own, now, that he’s forgotten his place, which of course is nothing more than to appear on cue for the purpose of making the party’s anointed one look more palatable to the credulous; he’s become big enough that he has to be put down–publicly. It’s amusing not because he’s actually “too far left” for the party (ha!), but that he’s too bluntly honest about the direction it’s all supposed to go, and since the Hive appears to have concluded there aren’t yet enough rubes ready for The Long Game to wind down, well, he’s got to go. The audacity of the shenanigans needed to accomplish this simply shows us the magnitude of the internal problem. (That is, if it really is a problem. After all, it could yet be another part of the show; it’s not like we’re dealing with honest people, here, in the first place…)

I can’t imagine anybody’s actually thinking of putting Biden into the general election on purpose. My guess (conjecture, of course, but hey, the popcorn’s already on the table, so have at it, eh wot?) is that he’s just being propped up temporarily to limp the party into the convention, where he can be publicly judged to be (suddenly and tragically) medically unfit for office, suitably lionized as a faithful soldier ready for retirement with honors, and then replaced by the pre-circled-wagon crowd with a True Anointed One. Everyone makes out, right? Bernie gets effectively sidestepped, Joe turns his humiliation into a Great American Hero story, and the party rallies around…

…well, at that point, as I seem to remember some professional cretin arrogantly saying, “What difference does it make?” (shudder)

I can’t quite make out Gabbard in all this, either. Sure, her politics are repulsive, but there does seem to be a certain honor and consistency there, and maybe the party really does simply fear that on her own she’d run away with the public and put their investments at risk. She’s an interesting X factor–or at least, at this point, she should be. (He says with full understanding that we’re so far beyond “should be”s, now, as to be firmly into the realm of the “absurd” of Voltaire’s famous quote.)

_____________

And in re Coronavirus…well, yes, it scares me, but not principally for any reason of epidemiology. Sure, it seems obvious enough that it’s a nasty little beast, a serious threat to people with certain vulnerabilities, and quite possibly comically under-reported…but…

If I take a step back, and take a sober look at what appears to be a worldwide…uniformity of both the under-reporting and the hysteria…first focused on establishing a public belief in lethality far past what even the most generous numbers seem to indicate (nicely said, Bear)…then shifting to focus on the inevitable impact on world markets…then shifting further to discussions of mandated quarantine, loss of resource and manufacturing supply, and most recently the potential for unrest due to resource scarcity…

…well, what are we always told is the solution to problems of this magnitude? Hm.

And then there are the outré, ridiculed, but persistent claims that [this Coronavirus] is a runaway bioweapon…and all the shifting stories and claims from governments worldwide…well, initially shifting; now, instead, coalescing around the “under-reported” leitmotif and moving toward increased discussions of mandatory quarantine…

Hell yes, I’m scared of Coronavirus, the worldwide phenomenon…because somehow, it has the feel of a goddamn ranging shot.

'Where is all this leading?'

The following was originally posted over at Claire's place, as a comment to this post in which she comments on the ridiculous spectacle of the remaining field of Democratic presidential candidates trying without apology to out-Orwell each other in full view of everyone.  Included here are 1) my original comment, 2) a response from another commenter, and 3) my follow-up.

It seemed appropriate somehow to warehouse this exchange here as well.  (As a housekeeping choice, I've backdated it to the date of the comment, but otherwise it's as it appears there.)



ORIGINAL COMMENT

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Claire, first and foremost I hope you can find and keep your peace with the great Pandora’s Box that is the Internet. Heaven knows I still struggle as well…with the outrage fatigue, the “need” to know what stank the pernicious piddlewits are pimping today…against all the wonderful things that the same landscape still provides.

Playing with my kids helps–a lot–but the struggle remains. I do pretty well at the goal of living-free-being-the-best-revenge (and thank you once again and always, for your part in encouraging that), but boy, are there days…

Anyway, peace to you, Freedomista.

_________________________

I hate the fact that these tiresome, committed people are in any way living rent-free in my head, but I have to admit that the current ramp-up of Teh Stoopid does have me worried. It’s not that the depth of the ignorance, idiocy, or the unapologetic chutzpah is on its own shocking, although there are certainly days when I do have to marvel at what now passes for not just socially acceptable but even routine; rather, what I keep finding myself left with is the one overarching question which seems to have absolutely no good possible answer:

Where is all this leading?

Much ink has been spilled already, and rightly so, about the control zealotocracy increasingly demanding the unconditional surrender of every remaining vestige of individual sovereignty and freedom. Any honest assessment of the landscape makes it perfectly clear that it’s on, to these people: by any means necessary; only the result is acceptable; no law, ethics, or morality is any sort of impediment to the cause. The puppet masters set masses of people at each other’s throats–quite successfully–for increasingly trivial differences, and boy do the useful idiots know their narrative…if not so much how to defend or even really articulate it past the most sophomoric talking points. Rational discourse, even the most Pyrrhic forms of individual interposition, are becoming less and less possible by the day. And I’m sure it’s not me; the rate of acceleration of all this “let’s you and him fight” theater is well past tiresome, and into alarming.

Alarming because ultimately there’s got to be a reason for it. The real puppet masters may be evil in the purest sense of that word, but I cannot believe they are stupid. The comically hubristic antics we see each day, across the spectrum, must, at some level, serve a purpose. And with pretty much all the gloves coming off on every topic, by the day, the entirely reasonable question “what purpose is that?”…sits there, nagging.

As the saying goes, anybody who demands you give up the means of resistance, intends for you something he knows you would resist. Indeed. We’re seeing a fat lot of push for getting this thing (disarming the peasantry) done immediately. Why? What do these creeps know that we don’t?

Oh, sure, it could be something simple. Maybe it’s just covering for their sorry corrupt asses by misdirecting elsewhere. Insider knowledge of impending economic or social collapse. A hive-mind sense that their best opportunity for total domination is now, so strike with everything possible. Et cetera.

The thing is, the real puppet masters would seem to be above things like this. It reminds me of a comment I recall Claire making when talking about the increasing demands of the Total Surveillance State–the idea that you don’t go to the trouble to spy on everyone, everywhere, to catch mere criminals.

So what is it, then? Here we are, currently witnessing the most comically slipshod soft coup attempt I’ve ever even heard of, much less seen–this is stuff that would not be believable in fiction–and not only do the masses not seem to care about how embarrassingly bad it is and has been since even before Orange Man was elected, but more of the same is openly promised–and apparently cheered–going forward. The fainting-couch, Kabuki theater flavor of it all is so completely over the top, it would be tempting to think of it as freedom-lover agitprop…but frankly I don’t think any of us could have–would have–gone that far.

So again: what is it?

Eep. Apparently I needed to give vent to that. Like I said above, the struggle continues. 🙂



ANONYMOUS FROM FEB 10

---

@Kevin Wilmeth

Imagine drones bought from Hobby Lobby dropping firebombs on the roofs of government buildings. Dropping them every week. Dropping them until government falls apart because it can’t defend the bureaucrats who are funding it. Then government stays persistently fallen apart throughout the next phase, in which every militia general tries to set themselves up as a new king. For your own good, of course.

The technological singularity shifting power to the individual is the thing the current politicians are unsuccessfully trying to prevent with their too-little too-late attempts to LARP the Soviet Union.

Only the goofballs are playing the LARP Soviet game, because the competent who in times past would be nobility can actually do the military math about swarm attacks. Even the US Navy did the math correctly, in Millennium Challenge 2002.

What is coming next is a lot more freedom. The whining from the 99% who are not libertarians is going to be epic.



FOLLOW UP COMMENT

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Anon 2/10, I hope you’re right. I hardly relish the idea of that sort of conflict, for several reasons (not least of which because I suspect you are right about strongmen stepping into any available gap), but good god, look at the state into which we have “progressed” thus far, at the insistence of these obnoxious people who seem so fully committed to forcing the issue no matter what. It’s not so much that they are making peaceful revolution impossible, as it is that they are increasingly making peaceful existence impossible.

I think that in the end I do share the faith that the peasantry, if it must, will find its ways of rising to the challenge, whether it’s riflemen “behind every blade of grass”, or the flash-mob drone swarm of the deplorables, or some other Hayduke-ian creativity none of us has thought of yet. Or all that, in combination…

It’s the days between here and there, that I’m dreading.

My pipe-dream hope is that someone, somewhere, figures out how to make a peaceful statement that makes the lunacy of the continued wolverine-poking so self-evidently obvious that even the most tone-deaf, chest-thumping wokester agitator can’t miss it, or ignore it. (In this regard, I miss Mike Vanderboegh, who had a real flair for pursuing this goal–this quest for peace via the dire warning.) This really doesn’t seem like it should be all that difficult–from the “live and let live, how fucking hard is that?” angle, through to “you really haven’t thought this through, have you, hipster brainiac?”…and yet here we are.

The only problem with improvising creativity, is that it is inherently reactive. (Maybe that’s where my faith comes from, that in a world gone sideways, free people will ultimately prove more creative than the planners of other people’s business.) We’re still living in a world of strategy, where these improvising, reactive traits haven’t been truly needed yet.

And maybe that’s why the “let’s you and him fight” crowd seems so incapable of grokking the stupidity of bringing their imposed reality to blows–they can only plan, not improvise. The strategy, on paper, may seem solid. Even the tactics–the planned tactics–may seem plausible. But at the point of action, the human tendency for creativity can, and usually does, intervene, and often in unintended ways. (“In any battle the first casualty is the battle plan.”) I dunno, it seems like most folks in Claire’s commentariat would have no problem seeing this result as obvious, but maybe the obnoxious polypragmatoi just…don’t. (After all, this crowd may have tried many different things to achieve their goals, over the nearly forty years I’ve been paying attention, but I can’t say that any of the methods I have seen truly qualify as creative.)

Hey, maybe we can glom on a bit to current trends, here. I’ve been enjoying some of the Babylon Bee’s satire titles lately, including this one, “Democrats Warn That American People May Tamper With Next Election”…in a similar way, maybe we can simply promise to interfere with their revolution. 🙂

Personal heroes - because Joel asked.

The following was inspired by reading Joel's post this morning.  Apparently in responding I got a bit carried away, and all of this made more sense here as its own post, than there just as a comment.  :-)

The question was,

"Anybody else ever have the good or bad fortune to meet a personal hero?"

Well...

I have met two, myself, and for all the reasons you discuss here, I think I have been amazingly lucky, because I hold them both in even higher regard as time goes by.

Jeff Cooper 

The first was the late Jeff Cooper. At the time I met him I was in my early twenties and fantastically not-necessarily-stupid-but...dense. I'd been reading his work for the better part of a decade by then, and had been actively corresponding by letter (remember letters?) for the latter part of that time; I was at least arguably a card-stock fanboy. When the meatspace meeting finally occurred, I had the oh-so-carefully-prepared list of questions with me, the storied shortness of breath and anxiety of meeting the great personal hero of my life...and then, at the moment of truth, and to the absolute credit of my parents, I had the great good sense to realize that what I most needed to do was to let all of that simply fall away, and instead just pay attention and learn.

And he was magnificent in person. I knew even then, as a wee mental niggling picked up gradually over time, that he was by no means flawless, but somehow it was still easy to see that he was a good man, with truly fantastic and selfless gifts of attitude, analysis, and personal excellence to offer to anyone paying attention. In person, those qualities stood out even more than they came through in his writing, even adjusting (both then and now) for an instructor-mentor being "on" all the time.

As an aside, for most of my own life, it has been reasonably common for someone who has read me, to remark upon later meeting me in person that "wow, you talk just like you write"*. Whenever I hear that, I smile and think of Jeff Cooper; I don't know if that was a deliberate aspiration of mine in terms of writing style, but it absolutely was a deliberate aspiration to unapologetic personal excellence. 

Personal excellence. Along with what is unfortunately pigeonholed under the name "the combat mind-set" (because it is so much greater than that), that is one of the two great components of Cooper's legacy. The late William Grigg (who is on the short list of people who I'd have wanted to meet in person) used to write, always of others, "This is a man. Take notes." So true, here, and boy, I did. I did on mind-set, I did on personal excellence, on how he interacted with his wife Janelle (who with obvious affection he called The Countess, a glorious human being in her own right), on mentoring and teaching...very nearly the whole enchilada. This is what a role model is supposed to be like.

Make no mistake, I understand the man had flaws, the most serious of which was his commitment to a State military apparatus. He did have a love of, and even thirst for, fighting that I will never share. But, apropos of the topical core of your post, Joel, I was fortunate to have seen him, at the most critical and formative times, through a lens of "merely" observation. I was lucky to realize that I didn't need a hero to be perfect across the board; at the time I met Cooper I could very easily have set myself up for a classic fanboy fall, but that didn't happen--the not-stupid part of dumb-me, delivered at an important moment.

And that moment was truly important. It was Cooper, after all, from whom I learned about Claire not long after, and I would not have been ready for her without him--just as I would not have been ready for the larger pantheon that followed--Codrea, Vanderboegh, Rothbard, Shaffer, Grigg, etc.--without her.

Robert Fripp

The other personal hero I've met in meatspace is English guitarist Robert Fripp. As with Cooper, it is difficult to overstate how important Fripp has been in my life, and even though like Cooper the influence began with something simple and defined (in Fripp's case, music), it simply exploded with context and contact--and I would say for the same reason: the personal excellence, the talk-walking--on the very most important points to me--was so obvious that other human flaws could easily be contextualized to their proper (in)significance.

I could go on at impressive length (heard ya snicker, there) about the details of Fripp's musical impact, but that sort of thing is for the Craftygrass blog, not here. Suffice it to say that aside from my simply liking much of what he has done, the thing I admire the most is his commitment to the idea that a group forms for a purpose, makes itself available for the purpose (that wording is very intentional), and then stops, when the purpose has been achieved.**

When I met him, having both listened to his music and read his writings for just about a decade, it was on a week-long residential course he was leading, and much like Cooper, in person the man was even larger than his virtual persona. Fripp is humble without fanfare, truly excellent both with students and with his support team, and skilled almost beyond reckoning in both physical mechanics and their context in the greater whole. I would also say that a "freedomista" would be specifically impressed at how he challenges someone to grow.

The flaws he is most often accused of are, I think, telling, in that regard. Critics predisposed to disliking him have long supplied a reputation of Fripp's being authoritarian, but having worked with him for a week in a residential and educational setting, it seems pretty obvious to me that most of this is pure BS. If along with my own context I put together every story that I've heard about him that goes to this point, what I arrive at is that his style is actually the polar opposite: that he is so dispassionately committed to and trusting of the people he works with that, along with his own personal confidence and excellence within the realm of hazardous musical risk, it's simply terrifying, and people don't know how to handle an environment quite that...well, that anarchic. (He's been breathlessly accused of fomenting "musical anarchy" on at least one documentary I've seen, which of course makes me giggle.) I get the impression of someone who understands human nature very well, to the point where he simply does not bother responding to the absurd or the willfully ignorant, and of course the credulous can then easily "qui tacet consentire videtur" all that right into a self-evidently obvious explanation of passive-aggressiveness.

Anyway, as a musical role model, I know of no one better. The way he lives his life, too, while not resembling my own in many respects, is at worst still admirable for its consistency, privacy, and obvious pursuit of excellence, often at visible cost to himself. This is no pretender; if he's pretending just for fame and fortune, then he really sucks at it.

If there is to be any sort of a fall to come, with Fripp-as-personal-hero, it will most likely be because I some day discover what "his politics" actually are, and then that they are somehow beyond the usual level of atrocious (that anyone wishing to remain sane in this absurd world must put up with in order just to live among other people). One of the things I admire the most about him is that he enjoys his privacy, and does not stump for anything other than music. Based on what I can extrapolate from his considerable writing over the years, I would anticipate that one of the reasons he does not participate openly in politics, is that he might well be accused of much wrongthink--but again I would be guessing at that; I do love it that I do not, in fact, know, because he keeps it to himself.


Like I said before, I think I've been fantastically lucky to have met my two personal heroes--arguably the two most important non-family people in my life--in meatspace, and somehow come out on the far side, years later, having batted a thousand.

Others

Of course there have been other heroes, including a few of pretty significant importance, but either I have not met them in real life (e.g., Claire), or I don't consider the context sufficient to merit mention (e.g., I've met both mandolinist Sam Bush and banjoist Bela Fleck in person, but the meetings were so brief that I couldn't assess them with any real confidence).

Although I have not met him in person, I feel at least a bit honor-bound to address Massad Ayoob, who has been an incredible and positive influence on me in certain respects that I must acknowledge as heroic, but who is the best example I can share of a hero who fell from grace--or at least a hero whose uncovered flaw(s) are so vital that I cannot in conscience remand them into insignificance. I give the man full props for being, in some ways, exactly what he implied himself to be: a champion of what Grigg called the Mundanes, someone who would both freely and by profession teach you the things you should know if you need to save your life with lethal force some day. As a matter of the mechanics and considerations of doing this in the flawed legal landscape under which we all suffer, and to a lesser but still significant degree the mechanics of the physical act of saving your life in the first place, he is at least arguably without peer. I have no doubt he understands quite well, how to out the BS of those who think they understand how confrontations happen first on the street and then afterward in court, but really don't; his position both inside and outside the police and law/legal communities gives him a pretty unique perspective.

The problem, of course, is that in the end, when push comes to shove, he is by all appearances fully committed to the Only Ones mentality, to wit: cops' lives matter more than yours, and there is no systemic police problem to discuss. What I have seen, and not seen, from him on this topic is irreparably damning. He used to write about police corruption stories, you know, in almost a Peelian reform sort of way; when I first ran across him, he'd actually write about stories like Frank Serpico's--although looking back on it now, IIRC even then those kinds of stories always were rooted in the "bad apples" rationalization as well: the ultimate immunity and supremacy of the enforcement constabulary itself were presumed, and unquestioned, even then. Now? Well...I can't remember the last time I saw something under his name that addresses the topic at all, that does not simply sound like someone condescending to scold the whistleblower. The worst part about it all is that, having for years read his very useful information about the sort of "cute lawyer tricks" that can be used against you in a courtroom by unscrupulous prosecutors, I cannot help but see his repeated excusings of nearly any sort of police behavior at all, as anything but the same thing. It's become as predictable as gravity that if Ayoob writes about a police abuse or corruption case at all, these days, it is only to carry the water of Team True Blue and tell the very peasants he claims to champion, how it is always and ever not-what-you-think. Even more damningly, when asked, directly, questions that would go to the real point here--meat questions like "do you really believe that no abuse happens?", or "provide an example of what you would consider 'going too far'", or "would a regular person have been excused from this behavior too?", etc., what we hear is...nothing.

I used to care, more, about what happened to bring about this apparent change, from the writer who would champion the little guy standing up to the department, and discuss how important it is to avoid understandably misidentified appearances for the sake of one's own image with the public; into the writer who now treats any sort of systemic inquiry as de facto tinfoil hattery, automatically marginalizing any attempt even to get to the public's perception, much less addressing the legitimate question of "and do they have a point?"--and maybe I still do, as it still invokes a sense of betrayal and makes me angry. But not only is it not stopping, it's getting worse, and a reasonable person might start to wonder if that whole period of championing the little guy and pointing out the deliberate ways that the system deceives the people to serve its own purposes, was merely an advance guard to normalizing the horrors of the police state we suffer from now.

For anyone new to that topic who would like a compare and contrast exercise (it would be involved, but illustrative), I'd simply suggest reading the posts and commentary (watching how he handles the commentary is important) of a year's worth of Mas' posts at Backwoods Home magazine, covering the police abuse stories of your choice, and the posts and commentary of the same period at Will Grigg's Pro Libertate blog.

Okay, enough about that. Makes me irritated.


Finally, on a much happier note: although also not in meatspace, there is also you, Joel. Your example, for me at least, actually sums up much of what I think is important to consider in this weird, enigmatic notion of "heroism" that people seem so fascinated with.

You frequently lead, unapologetically, with this idea that you are a hermit by choice because you're difficult to be around, and didn't choose the desert for the social gatherings. I find this disclosure admirable and perfectly acceptable in a hero, who doesn't have to be anything at all like me.

Your heroism, to me, occupies a very abstract and mental place. To wit: you are easy to admire because you do what many people, myself absolutely included, desire at some level to do, but stop short for one reason or another. You're perfectly clear on what it takes to achieve it, and the risks and concerns that attend your own choices. All this is at once very hypothetical for an observer, and yet it also demystifies the experience in a way that I find extremely useful. It helps me with the life I have here, which in some ways is so very different (e.g., wife and three young kids, traditional day job, way too much time around obvious cheerleaders for Team Tide Pod and the Statist Beer Goggles Emporium, etc.), but which in others I think is functionally quite similar (e.g., the intention to live outside of the unwanted invasions of "regular" society, voluntary interdependence upon selected friends and neighbors, available retreat from aforementioned TTP and SBGE types, increasing self-sufficiency through personal learning and development)...

And finally, you live unapologetically and, I think, without real judgment. Oh sure, you like to declare the things you find absurd with wonder and even a little humor, but that's regular human being stuff, nothing recognizably like the pluperfect misanthropic malice increasingly emerging among the more socially acceptable of Master's minions. You're also the first to observe that even you, for all your choices that may seem drastic even to committed freedomistas, are also on a continuum, just perhaps in a very different place than most. That simple observation right there is more valuable, both first as an epiphany and afterward as a reminder, than it might appear.

And of course, with someone who openly (and repeatedly) declares his faults, and who regularly fesses up to his mistakes even when nobody else would ever have noticed, how could you even have a fall from hero grace? You said already that you're a 'mudge, so we knew that coming in...

If the purpose of a hero is to have a personally important point of reference to which to aspire and work towards, well hell, you fit the bill as well as anyone I've run across. Which could be considered an accusation of damning with faint praise, except that in my case the praise really isn't faint. :-)



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* Usually that has been meant as a compliment, but then again I don't worry overmuch about the "TL;DR" crowd in terms of how it reflects on me. :-)

** A regular feature of King Crimson's work has been that, just as a given incarnation of the band has matured its voice and started to "succeed" in the marketplace, it dissolves, the magic having been in the listening to the muse to find the voice, rather than in the repetitive output of a matured-but-no-longer-growing voice. This is very frustrating to some people--there is obviously something in the psychology of the band name and wanting to ascribe "consistency" to it over time--but I find it utterly admirable. Part of this is that King Crimson are identified mostly in the "rock" music genre, and that is a genre that insists on consistency of the output behind a name. But not all genres are like that. With "jazz" music, by contrast, it is perfectly normal for a bandleader to form and dissolve various groups over time, often with very different styles and output. Crimson are a little different there, though, in that even though the styles of the different incarnations can be pretty wildly different, one can always feel the King Crimson muse present somehow, and it's not just the consistency of Robert's presence. People of course argue about that, but most of those arguments come from the sort of people that out their own ignorance pretty quickly.

One last reminder before the inauguration:

Remember that there will be purpose in these promises of destructive and even violent protest (H/T Claire) around the inauguration.  And the purpose is not about actually disrupting a party, or even embarrassing the new dictator-elect.

I would argue that it's a longer-term strategy.  The Never Trump Army has invested itself way too heavily in the marketing idea that Le Coif du Orange will always, without exception, crack any head at the slightest dissent, and peaceful protests right out of the gate would not fit that narrative.

So:  in order for Mein Trumpf to appear the proper oppressor in the opening and subsequent spotlight, he needs something to oppress.  What more obvious than cracking down on "peaceful protestors" on inauguration day?

Really, it's the same logic that reminds us (thanks Kit Perez, via Claire) that if ATF really is on the chopping block (cuz...yeah, well, maybe), we should be completely unsurprised at another Operation Showtime any time now.

Sure, maybe nothing will go wrong--so many of these people are all-hat-no-cattle in the first place--but if something does:  consider the idea that "the Brownshirts" do have to be seen being Brownshirts.

Clairespective.

Another capital-R resource from Claire.  This one covers--well--the idea that sometimes the path to better things does indeed go through the technically unacceptable.

Are we likely to see constitutional carry in Massachusetts, New York, or California any time soon? Ha! But I can tell you that a lot of us who were around in the dark old days of 1993 and 1994 never thought we’d see even this much, ever, in so many places.

And “this much” is a lot. A hell of a lot. Better yet, we’re going to see more.

Do I now approve of the “shall issue” permits that laid the groundwork for this? Nope. No way. But even I have to admit that the grassroots “shall issue” ccw movement gave birth to the constitutional carry movement. And constitutional carry is an unreservedly good thing.

I do indeed remember those darker days;  in fact it was right around then that I stumbled across Claire in the first place.  Worth, seriously worth, a RTWT.

The only downside I can see, honestly, is that celebrating a good thing for what it is, isn't going to help the sort of prag mindset that still can't distinguish between long-term strategy and true pre-emptive surrender.  Yes, there is a lesson in all this for those of us who can't bring ourselves to actively support ideas that might turn out later to be valuable incremental milestones.   (Duly noted and appreciated, and to borrow from Joel, the crow tastes pretty fine!)  But we, too, should recognize our important place in restraining the surrender impulse--and keep at it.  The real visionaries, as Claire's post suggests, will recognize us for what we are and work with us.

Here's to more such free-people assertions.  Many more!

Oh, this. All kinds of this.

Via Claire, I just saw this essay, "What Anarchism Means To Me", over at Vin's place.  Just a tidbit therefrom:

Anarchism is my declaration of independence from corrupt and debauched systems which institutionalize the dominance and submission of the mind and conscience, pillaging the property of the peaceful and raping the human spirit. Authority is a form of privilege. There is one kind of wealth that one can only gain at the expense of another, and that is privilege; money may follow privilege, but it may only buy privilege when there exists a warehousing authority to assign it.

One of those 'because Claire' bookmarks.

"What are we as a society going to do?"

With Claire*, you don't get a magnum opus, you get a lupine opus.  This is one of those, not so much because of the size of the response, but because it just seems like it's all in there.  Nothing is perfect, but it's good enough that it becomes very difficult to quote it merely in part.

So, RTWT.

One feels a bit sorry for the original "first-time" commenter, who at least implicitly gets fairly savaged by the force of the article, and then by the Commentariat.  Claire does a perfectly fine job of declaring that she's speaking to attitudes rather than singling out ad hominem (she's better than most at this), but still...whoosh.  (I admit, full disclosure, that I am familiar with such criticism myself, and perhaps I make more of it than I should.)  Truth is, unless he speaks up again (and as of this writing he doesn't appear to have done so), we may never know what his actual intention was.  In one way that's a bit of a shame, but on the other hand, if someone really does need to learn this particular lesson, it's probably gonna leave a mark anyway.

Anyway, that aside, it's a truly excellent summary statement on the question, and what the question usually implies in society-as-it-is-now.  Duly bookmarked here, because I have a feeling I'll want to refer back to it.


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* Claire Wolfe.  Get it?

Cognitive dissonance.

Via Claire, here's one for anyone you know who needs a working example of cognitive dissonance.

It seems that a former director of the Nobel Institute has now stated in a memoir that he regrets awarding Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.  Okay, plenty of ink has been spilled about that absurdity already, and justly so.  Here, I'm more wanting to call attention to the pluperfect cognitive dissonance that illustrates how Statist Beer Goggles* can produce such a shark-jumping result in the first place.

Behold, from the article:

According to Lundestad, the argument which swayed the committee was that the prize would help him [Obama] achieve his goals.

"Help him", roger that.  Scary enough just taken on its own, of course.  But then, later:

The Nobel committee, which fiercely guards its independence from the politics of power, ...

I know:  ha!  funny!  Sing it, cheese shop patron:

And yet, people still believe contradictory nonsense like this.  Or, if they don't, they nonetheless continue to give power over other people's lives to "leaders" that do believe it--which is not only worse in a practical sense, but it's also a fractal representation of the same cognitive dissonance problem in the first place!

Oh well.  At least this "revelation" was able to wait long enough for the desired effect to run its course...

Right?


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* Because really, that's what this is, isn't it?  I find myself using that term more and more;  just like the battered-spouse analogy, it works.

Yeah. So...Much...Yeah.

Go immediately to the front of the line of Wish I'd Said That, and find Welcome to the Arena in the Clouds, by one Max Borders at the Foundation for Economic Education.

It is a subject that is usually done so very badly - the "argument in the clouds" idea is usually delivered as a sneering epithet - but this didn't have that feel at all, at least to me.  Somehow it had more of the feel that I have myself:  that of having firmly been, at one time or another, every character in the story.  I swear, as I was reading along I started to root for the little inline jabs to "Do me!  Please, do me!", and dang if they didn't!

Sweet.  I deserved every one of them.

I found the whole thing endearing, but have to call out a favorite insight in particular:

“I just wanted to congratulate each of you on how much bigger your teams have gotten.” It occurred to her that with most memories from childhood, things seem smaller when one returns as an adult. She felt a bit disoriented, as if she’d ingested Alice’s “drink me” potion.

I could chew on that all day.

Bookmarked here, so that I can explain to others a little better why principles are (and have always been, even if I didn't realize it) more important to me than purity.  I know I've never done it that well, myself!

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Deep tip of the hat to Joel for this share.

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.

Do they or don't they?

Hurt "the cause", that is.  Lately it seems that there is much agoggery over whether flamboyant open carry at political protests is "constructive" (or the replacement term of your choice).  And here I mean internecine agoggery--not just the usual histrionics from the progs, but an escalating wailing and gnashing from the prags as well.  Those "extremist" brutes!

I dunno, it seems to me that the vast bulk of it all misses the point entirely.  After all, this is just another redux of the prag/anti-prag argument, isn't it?  Professional Incremental Surrender Salesmen (yes, that's PISSers) love to rationalize their enduring appetite for prolonging the misery, by attacking people earnestly aggravated at being deliberately pinned into a "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" position...who themselves turn increasingly to ever-clumsier tactics which seem destined to intensify the misery. 

And of course the progs do love it when the prags piss on the pissed-off.

(Me, I like to think that the very clumsiness of protest tactics may actually be an endearing demonstration of character.  Perhaps I'm being naiive, but somehow, recognizing that people whose principal interest* is to be left in peace, just might never be all that successful at using collectivist methods to appeal to collectivist institutions within a collectivist system...well, I'm just not all that sure I want it to be otherwise, you know?)

But here's the thing.  Most of the commentary I've seen on the "do they or don't they" topic thus far, views the protesters and their methods as somehow a cause of a problem, rather than as a symptom.  Which strikes me as far more damaging to whatever principle or point that anyone might wish to make, than anything either "side" might accuse the other of in the intramural gameplay.

No, it really doesn't matter how you define "extremist".  (After all, as the old saying goes, an "anarchist" is anyone who believes in less government than you do, right?)  The more important question is:  however you might define "extremism", why does it exist?  Why, exactly, do these people now feel the need to strap up and make a parade of something they never made a point of before?  Because that sort of thing doesn't happen in a vacuum.

And, I would argue that failing to recognize reality for what it is, is as close to a sure ticket for total failure as there could ever be--whatever it is you're trying to do.

Now:  prags love to trot out the idea that there are better ways to expend energy than the circular firing squad.  Which is true as far as it goes, of course, but it does seem a bit juvenile to then suggest remedies which essentially consist of suppressing and marginalizing dissent, quite often using precisely the same procedural tools and institutions as those they claim to be fighting.  (Insert fractal irony vamp here.)  Look:  for those who simply must look down their noses at others "less civilized" than they, wouldn't it be more "constructive" to channel that need toward the primary threat?  You know, something like:  "Look, progs, at what you have created.  These people didn't come out of nowhere;  they have been produced by your continued assault on all peaceable means of redress.  Have you not noticed how their numbers steadily increase, and their tactics grow ever more rebellious?"  See how this still permits the demonstration of superiority (over both the progs and the intransigent friendlies), but expends the energy generally forward instead of backward?  You know, that "not targeting your own" thing that prags so love to accuse others of?

And I am reminded here, as well, of an observation that Mike Vanderboegh loves to make:  that there are always others more extreme than the ones standing up in public.  The idea that refusing to listen to a Mike Vanderboegh, on account of he's "too extreme", completely fails to recognize that he may be effectively holding back others even less interested in backing up.  I would think that this would be a most desirable tool for the truly "pragmatic", as it arguably represents a possible way to not just staunch the bleeding and hold, but actually make up ground.  "You say, progs, that you want 'compromise', which any kid can tell you means that we both give something and we both take something.  Lovely.  You've had a helluva run, but here's what we are taking this time.  What, you don't like that?  Don't wanna talk to me any more?  Well, you could do that, but then you'll have to deal with them, directly.  You don't wanna do that." 

I'm certainly not agreeing with this sort of simple jockeying (sadly, I used to, years ago when I thought 'pragmatism' was the right thing to do), but it does seem somewhat amazing that more is not made of it as a tool at the gameplay level.  Truth is, I can't bring myself to fully embrace the protest "movement" either.  It just seems to me that appealing to the political system to fix a problem which is ultimately the system itself isn't going to suddenly start working where it has never worked before.  Not to say that both individual and mass displays of defiance and solidarity can't have a constructive effect--but I would argue that when they do it successfully, it is by being beyond the politics, rather than of them.

But ultimately, it doesn't really matter whether I or anyone else likes them or not:  the clumsy protests exist, and it would seem to behoove all parties--progs, prags and the truly uncompromising--to recognize why.  What they are a symptom of.

Perhaps with more emphasis on reality rather than playbook, the progs can realize that they are (to borrow again from Vanderboegh) poking a wolverine with a stick, and had better be very careful what they wish for.  Maybe the uncompromising can recognize that the power they have is not within the system but outside it, and not in flamboyance but in everyday normalcy.  And maybe the prags can realize that, if gunnies really don't like being spoken for by progs (which seems to be well-enough understood), maybe the reason is that they don't like being spoken for by anybody--not just because they're not adequately "represented".

Somehow all that reminds me of an object lesson I got many years ago now.  In coming to grips with the reality of an impending divorce that I did not want, I was visiting with some dear friends and going through the "was it me?" exercise in self-flagellation.  It was in that conversation that the following exchange happened:

[Paraphrasing] "Kevin, you've often gone out of your way to accommodate and help her out.  For a long time, in a lot of different ways, and regardless of the cost to yourself."

"Sure.  I couldn't just stand by and not help out.  I guess I've always approached the idea of marriage that way."

"So, do you see it as your responsibility to help her?"

"Sure, as a husband, I'd see that as something I should do."

"Hm.  How arrogant," she said, with the most earnest smile I had ever seen.

Pluperfect accuracy.  (She may have been the only person in my life at that time--perhaps excepting my sister--who could have delivered that for full point value with so much extra credit.  She and her husband are among the most important friends I have ever had, against all considerations of distance and time.)  And such a necessary lesson for me to see properly.

It's hard to overstress that point.  Times are downright dangerous these days, and we should all keep our heads up.  Peter Capstick once said, "The only thing worse than seeing a black mamba at close range, is not seeing a black mamba at close range."

Truly.  Maybe "do they or don't they" isn't where we should be spending our time.




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* Yes, I'm presuming that most people's real interest is to be left alone.  That most people are only invested and interested in the political system because they have been convinced that it is inevitable.  Perhaps I'm wrong in ascribing more power to simple inertia than to the incentive of the teat, but that's where I am nonetheless.

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.

JPFO and the curse of the institution.

Today I learn from Claire that JPFO--or rather, the (and this is gonna sound hauntingly familiar) arbitrary control structure that pretends to represent JPFO members--suddenly seems hellbent on presenting itself for what seems like certain self-destruction in the form of a business takeover by Alan Gottlieb's Second Amendment Foundation. (For anyone happening across this who needs a primer on why that is a terrible, awful idea, read these items from Claire, who knows the history better than most.)

I must confess that I cannot personally confirm the veracity of most of the details I'm hearing, but I will say that I trust Claire, and David Codrea, and Mike Vanderboegh, in their judgment on this, and I would not be surprised to see El Neil pop back up over the whole matter, recovering-from-stroke or not.  From my own limited exposure to Gottlieb's recent shenanigans with the Manchin-Toomey(-Schumer) pre-emptive surrender, I certainly don't have a great deal of confidence either, that he is not in fact the cat in this observation from the late and much-missed Aaron Zelman:

“A housewife and a cat will both chase mice out of the kitchen. But the cat wants more mice to come back.”

Details sound bad.  Bad enough that it's tempting to wonder if there is not a hand of some Bloomberg-like creep in all of this.  I mean, jeez, where have we heard the "hurry,-we-gotta-do-this-now-before-the-little-people-find-out-about-it" line before?  Again, Claire has details if you need 'em.

My observations at this point are two:

1) This is another (and extremely ironic) example of the risk of vesting power in a centralized authority structure--in institutionalizing.  Claire notes that the board of directors is three people--meaning that any two can destroy the organization in an instant, and it's all "legal and proper".  And in this case (presuming that past history is the way to bet), moreso than in most takeover cases, it would really be tragic to lose the organization's identity, as it is unique.  The tragedy is amplified further by the specific who is "bidding" for the takeover:  the way I understand it, Zelman would never have had anything to do with Gottlieb, going back for some time.  The sense of betrayal among the JPFO rank and file must be seething, and once again, unless I'm getting some pretty bad information, it seems very likely that Gottlieb must have known of Zelman's opinion of him, and stipulating that, it does not exactly cast much positive light on Gottlieb's intentions here.

all of which brings up

2)  If the fix consummates the way it appears to be intended, and the result performs the way long-timers seem to believe it will, it will cost the perpetrators, whether they realize it or not.  It's one thing to take over an organization with no soul or passion, but another entirely to do the same to people who are devoted to speaking plainly and rejecting compromise.  Maybe SAF really does see JPFO as just another list of protection-racket customers, newly available for exploitation.  First of all, I'd say they're simply wrong.  Second, even if that's what they believe and they are right, there is this:  protection rackets can work famously, right up until the moment when they don't.  If it really is Gottlieb's business to perpetually stump for money while never intending to kill his cash cow, he presumably understands that his ruse depends on others not figuring out they're being taken.

He would do well to remember that having a name on a list doesn't constitute...ownership. 

Claire. Read.

America's UberGovernment.  And the rest of us.

But that goes only so far. Keep that up for a few years and one day you’ve got no friends left at all. And then you’re surrounded. By us. And by millions more who never thought they’d be at such a point in all their lifetimes.

But remember: you started it. We didn’t. We wouldn’t. We’re better than that. But once you’ve weakened yourself with your own voracious secret keeping, your gluttony for data, your excesses in the cause of Control — we will damn well finish you.

I understand the angst.  Hopefully enough people will "get it" in time that we can simply walk away from the dickheads...but I know that may not be the way to bet.  Some people are...committed to their fantasies.

For them, Claire.  And Vanderboegh.  And Larken: