The topic, in general, might be summarized as "Why is it that the FBI seems to have known about most of these mass-shooter cretins in advance of their moment of infamy?" Because--spoiler alert--they have.
Showing posts with label Grigg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grigg. Show all posts
Thursday, May 27, 2021
Of course the Fibbies knew about the Colorado shooter.
Documenting, here as a post, what was originally intended as a comment to an entry by Wirecutter. Another contemporaneous post at The Federalist is also appropriate backdrop.
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
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:
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.
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.
Saturday, June 29, 2019
When hip waders just aren't enough...
...to keep the muck away.
Rather than puke, I'll just vent a little about the recent fainting-couch theatrics in Oregon over some predictably sweeping and authoritarian climate change bill. This sort of horror-show bill, and these sorts of political gameplay shenanigans, are so depressingly common (and ironic) that they hardly even rate outrage any more. So, maybe my bile today is more a result of the gorge finally spilling over, than of anything unique about this particular episode. Whatever.
Stipulated: that the walkout by Republican state senators was pure gameplay, intended to deny a quorum and thus kill off a bill they did not have the power to defeat by conventional means. I'll leave the arguments for and against the legitimacy of such procedural stunts to those who give a shit about such things, but it is historically undeniable that organized walkouts such as this are not uncommon for either blue or red wings of the Boot On Your Neck Party.
So, are we ready to play the spin game?
Here's the [Oregon governor] Kate Brown version of events:
And certainly, if you read "The Insanity in Oregon Is a Glimpse of Our Very Dark Future" and don't ask a lot of questions, you might well see Courageous Kate & Co. in a positive light, and the walkout and its backers as mustache-twirling villains. It was designed and written that way. If you're already a card-carrying Woke Progressive--well hell, you could probably have written the story even better, eh, and even added an Orange Man Bad flourish for good measure. Your sky is clearly the same color as ol' Kate's.
What color that may actually be, though, is open to speculation. Clearly it ain't blue.
The thing that sticks out the most, here, is the brazen chutzpah of painting the protestors as aggressors. Apparently Courageous Kate & Co. don't believe that sending the Oregon State Police, on an extradition sortie to other states, constitutes aggression. Those guns they wear are just decorations, you see, and if those who have gone elsewhere in protest politely refuse to go quietly with the nice large men with the rippling muscles, "weapons of war", legal impunity, and Mustaches of Understanding, they'll just say, "Oh, I see. Tut tut, guess we've wasted our time then, very well, have a nice day," and leave peaceably.
Uh-huh. Pull the other one. Even the most dimly honest observer of history can see that on such a mission, law enforcement absolutely will continue to escalate until the victim either complies unconditionally, or needs a body bag. No matter how long it may take. If this does not constitute aggression, then the word has no fucking meaning at all. It's bad enough that people usually just ignore the always-present official threat of "comply or die" as though it somehow doesn't exist, just because most people exercise--under obvious duress--the first option. "We" don't like stating it how it really is--that even the collection of a parking ticket carries with it the ultimate threat of death--but that doesn't make it untrue. But then, for officialdom to step up on the moral soapbox and paint someone who actually removes himself from a brewing fight, as an aggressor...
...with or without a response that declares, "No. Your move."...
"Hypocrite". "Chutzpah." "Cognitive dissonance." "Hubris." "Tyrant." Mere words are insufficient to fully convey the complete absence of moral authority here. This isn't a public discussion, it's a show trial, a pile-on, and if you look at it that way, a whole lot of things make more sense.
(I seriously miss the late Will Grigg at moments like this. He'd find the perfect historical parallel in some forgotten story of fugitive slave recovery, weave it into an anthology-ready narrative--and be able to do it all without swearing. He'd also observe that, whether or not he'd agree with Brian Boquist's politics in any way, the latter's response to the threat of forcible kidnapping over a disagreement in politics is not so much a quintessentially American attitude, as it is nearly a human duty.)
That may be, for me, the worst smear--painting a "no" response to a clear threat of political violence, as aggression--but it's far from the only one in this sordid story. For those who cannot--or will not--see the difference between aggression and response, the smears come easy, and the Hive Mind's juvenile attempts to portray gun-rights activists of any sort--here, it's Threepers, Oath Keepers, and local private militia, plus their supporters--as imminently aggressive and violent, would be dismissable as "file photo" retread, if it didn't still work so depressingly well on the credulous. Look, I've got my own objections to some of the things I've seen these groups do, but one thing they are not, is preemptively violent, or even impolite, in the face of a pretty much never-ending onslaught of bigotry and dehumanization from the victim-disarmament (VD) crowd. And that latter's open contempt inadvertently reveals that they damn well do understand that gunnies are not fight-pickers; as Joel has put it before, if these people actually thought we [gunnies] were as dangerous as they say they think we are, well, they'd treat us a lot more politely. Given the spin-production machine the VD types have metastasized into over the last few decades, squatting on every opportunity they can imagine or invent, one can't help but get the impression they're quite deliberately poking the wolverine until they get a bite back.
There are other, more garden-variety contributions to the spin, too, but again, these have been so common for so long now, they hardly even register on the reader's radar anymore. There's the simple political hypocrisy: it seems that ol' Indignant Kate apparently thought that partisans going AWOL for the purpose of denying a quorum was just fine some years back, when Team Blue was doing it for (I'm sure) some purpose of noble embiggenment. There's the partisan partial-truth-telling: thinly veiled media hitpieces conveniently forget to mention that walkouts are and have been common; why do that when cheap PR points can be scored against the opposition that they insist they don't have, because they're so unbiased and professional and all. And of course there's all the other usual shenanigans of business-as-usual partisan politics--on both "sides" of the aisle--usually delivered with great sanctimony along the lines of "if you don't drink all my Kool-Aid then you clearly want to spit-roast your own children".
There's an interesting article here, about that notion of weaponizing everything and radicalizing everyone in the process, and that goes along with a pretty well-done statement here which simply further generalizes the same idea. (Sometimes, with so much stoopid in the world, it helps simply to recognize that not everyone is so credulous.)
At this writing, there are still two days left before Oregon's legislative session expires, and at this point the fugitive slaves will probably stay away for the duration. Of course, nobody should be surprised if the home team manages some sort of ace-in-the-hole surprise when people do come back--these are politicians, after all. That group of people whose approval ratings may, some day, with a sincere and dedicated effort, make it up to their hat size.
And yet, millions of people put these same oxygen thieves into, and back into, "legitimate" positions of power, every year. Afterward, those same people wax betrayed and indignant at the ensuing shenanigans. (And call me the crazy one, since I want nothing to do with any of it. The world is baffling sometimes.)
Rather than puke, I'll just vent a little about the recent fainting-couch theatrics in Oregon over some predictably sweeping and authoritarian climate change bill. This sort of horror-show bill, and these sorts of political gameplay shenanigans, are so depressingly common (and ironic) that they hardly even rate outrage any more. So, maybe my bile today is more a result of the gorge finally spilling over, than of anything unique about this particular episode. Whatever.
Stipulated: that the walkout by Republican state senators was pure gameplay, intended to deny a quorum and thus kill off a bill they did not have the power to defeat by conventional means. I'll leave the arguments for and against the legitimacy of such procedural stunts to those who give a shit about such things, but it is historically undeniable that organized walkouts such as this are not uncommon for either blue or red wings of the Boot On Your Neck Party.
So, are we ready to play the spin game?
Here's the [Oregon governor] Kate Brown version of events:
- Oregon Democrats offer a common-sense Save The Planet bill, sure to pass with Democrat supermajorities in both houses. The squee!
- Oregon Republican senators throw a tizzy and leave the state, clearly being unwilling to Save The Planet, instead being more interested in actively impeding your own Brighter Future, and probably eating kittens. The droogs!
- Kate the Great orders the Oregon State Police to go and fetch the criminal miscreants with all due Authority. The justice!
- Republican senator Brian Boquist brazenly threatens OSP, the government of Oregon and thus all living things by extension, by indicating he will not submit to Kate's common-sense extradition order. The handlebar mustache!
- Totally documentably (trust me!) violent antigovernment militia extremist inbred fascistic ammosexual teabagging gunhugger misogynist racists of white male privilege and self-evidently low intelligence (why won't you ever come to the table with us?), and their inexplicable race- and gender-traitor hangers-on, threaten to appear at the state house in protest. The orc army!
- OSP quite sensibly closes the Capitol due to the obvious and documented militia threat. The white knight!
- Friendly media outlets help us out by pointing out that some of these threatening groups supported...the Malheur Refuge protest (gasp). The moral authority!
- Politically reliable Esquire magazine contributes a wonderful hitpiece for the cause, which properly and sensibly calls out the seditious rabble for its instantaneous, unprovoked resort to violence. The outrage!
And certainly, if you read "The Insanity in Oregon Is a Glimpse of Our Very Dark Future" and don't ask a lot of questions, you might well see Courageous Kate & Co. in a positive light, and the walkout and its backers as mustache-twirling villains. It was designed and written that way. If you're already a card-carrying Woke Progressive--well hell, you could probably have written the story even better, eh, and even added an Orange Man Bad flourish for good measure. Your sky is clearly the same color as ol' Kate's.
What color that may actually be, though, is open to speculation. Clearly it ain't blue.
The thing that sticks out the most, here, is the brazen chutzpah of painting the protestors as aggressors. Apparently Courageous Kate & Co. don't believe that sending the Oregon State Police, on an extradition sortie to other states, constitutes aggression. Those guns they wear are just decorations, you see, and if those who have gone elsewhere in protest politely refuse to go quietly with the nice large men with the rippling muscles, "weapons of war", legal impunity, and Mustaches of Understanding, they'll just say, "Oh, I see. Tut tut, guess we've wasted our time then, very well, have a nice day," and leave peaceably.
Uh-huh. Pull the other one. Even the most dimly honest observer of history can see that on such a mission, law enforcement absolutely will continue to escalate until the victim either complies unconditionally, or needs a body bag. No matter how long it may take. If this does not constitute aggression, then the word has no fucking meaning at all. It's bad enough that people usually just ignore the always-present official threat of "comply or die" as though it somehow doesn't exist, just because most people exercise--under obvious duress--the first option. "We" don't like stating it how it really is--that even the collection of a parking ticket carries with it the ultimate threat of death--but that doesn't make it untrue. But then, for officialdom to step up on the moral soapbox and paint someone who actually removes himself from a brewing fight, as an aggressor...
...with or without a response that declares, "No. Your move."...
"Hypocrite". "Chutzpah." "Cognitive dissonance." "Hubris." "Tyrant." Mere words are insufficient to fully convey the complete absence of moral authority here. This isn't a public discussion, it's a show trial, a pile-on, and if you look at it that way, a whole lot of things make more sense.
(I seriously miss the late Will Grigg at moments like this. He'd find the perfect historical parallel in some forgotten story of fugitive slave recovery, weave it into an anthology-ready narrative--and be able to do it all without swearing. He'd also observe that, whether or not he'd agree with Brian Boquist's politics in any way, the latter's response to the threat of forcible kidnapping over a disagreement in politics is not so much a quintessentially American attitude, as it is nearly a human duty.)
That may be, for me, the worst smear--painting a "no" response to a clear threat of political violence, as aggression--but it's far from the only one in this sordid story. For those who cannot--or will not--see the difference between aggression and response, the smears come easy, and the Hive Mind's juvenile attempts to portray gun-rights activists of any sort--here, it's Threepers, Oath Keepers, and local private militia, plus their supporters--as imminently aggressive and violent, would be dismissable as "file photo" retread, if it didn't still work so depressingly well on the credulous. Look, I've got my own objections to some of the things I've seen these groups do, but one thing they are not, is preemptively violent, or even impolite, in the face of a pretty much never-ending onslaught of bigotry and dehumanization from the victim-disarmament (VD) crowd. And that latter's open contempt inadvertently reveals that they damn well do understand that gunnies are not fight-pickers; as Joel has put it before, if these people actually thought we [gunnies] were as dangerous as they say they think we are, well, they'd treat us a lot more politely. Given the spin-production machine the VD types have metastasized into over the last few decades, squatting on every opportunity they can imagine or invent, one can't help but get the impression they're quite deliberately poking the wolverine until they get a bite back.
There are other, more garden-variety contributions to the spin, too, but again, these have been so common for so long now, they hardly even register on the reader's radar anymore. There's the simple political hypocrisy: it seems that ol' Indignant Kate apparently thought that partisans going AWOL for the purpose of denying a quorum was just fine some years back, when Team Blue was doing it for (I'm sure) some purpose of noble embiggenment. There's the partisan partial-truth-telling: thinly veiled media hitpieces conveniently forget to mention that walkouts are and have been common; why do that when cheap PR points can be scored against the opposition that they insist they don't have, because they're so unbiased and professional and all. And of course there's all the other usual shenanigans of business-as-usual partisan politics--on both "sides" of the aisle--usually delivered with great sanctimony along the lines of "if you don't drink all my Kool-Aid then you clearly want to spit-roast your own children".
There's an interesting article here, about that notion of weaponizing everything and radicalizing everyone in the process, and that goes along with a pretty well-done statement here which simply further generalizes the same idea. (Sometimes, with so much stoopid in the world, it helps simply to recognize that not everyone is so credulous.)
At this writing, there are still two days left before Oregon's legislative session expires, and at this point the fugitive slaves will probably stay away for the duration. Of course, nobody should be surprised if the home team manages some sort of ace-in-the-hole surprise when people do come back--these are politicians, after all. That group of people whose approval ratings may, some day, with a sincere and dedicated effort, make it up to their hat size.
And yet, millions of people put these same oxygen thieves into, and back into, "legitimate" positions of power, every year. Afterward, those same people wax betrayed and indignant at the ensuing shenanigans. (And call me the crazy one, since I want nothing to do with any of it. The world is baffling sometimes.)
Sunday, May 20, 2018
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,
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.
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.
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.
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. :-)
____________________
* 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.
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. :-)
____________________
* 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.
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Achieving what is possible, free of the shackles of shame.
Hat tip to Gun Free Zone, via Joel.
(Things like this make me miss Will Grigg terribly. I'd have loved to hear him roast this one.)
Okay, kid, I'll go out on a limb and venture a guess that you don't know Thermopylae from a fever tester.
That level of irony is almost worthy of someone trolling it. Somehow, though, I don't think I'll hold my breath on the hopes that this person is either trolling directly, or making a more obscure comment about NRA being skippered by pre-emptive surrender monkeys. Possible, I suppose, in a quantum sort of way (and it would actually be pretty awesome if it was), but not...exactly...likely.
Actually, though, when I saw the picture, the very first thing that went through my mind was this:
Actually, the whole scene is worth a bookmark. I do remember enjoying that film.
Almost spooky, isn't it?
Maybe the real question, since we know that so much of this (current) feeding frenzy is pure Astroturf, is whether the idea for the kid's unintentionally hilarious sweatshirt originally came from Team Tide Pod*, or from the handlers. (Frankly, I'm not sure who I'd root for, there, either. The handlers more richly deserve the egg on the face, but they're just plain not going to heed the lesson no matter what: ironically the kids stand a much better chance of actually learning something from it all.)
Give the bag to Bozo, kid; you've taken being played for a fool to a whole new level of achievement. And in that vein, here's a piece of free advice for the future: never enter a battle of wits unarmed.
__________________
* Probably, of course, it's just a school mascot sweatshirt, and we're just witnessing a truly amusing karmic coincidence. But I'd not be surprised, if word of this double-facepalm-fail actually gets around the way it should, to see schools across the nation drop Spartan mascots like the proverbial ton of bricks, for being too inconvenient to the narrative. (Because the narrative, after all, just wants to go home at the end of its shift. :-)
 |
| Hey Mom! Look, I haz a dumb. |
(Things like this make me miss Will Grigg terribly. I'd have loved to hear him roast this one.)
Okay, kid, I'll go out on a limb and venture a guess that you don't know Thermopylae from a fever tester.
That level of irony is almost worthy of someone trolling it. Somehow, though, I don't think I'll hold my breath on the hopes that this person is either trolling directly, or making a more obscure comment about NRA being skippered by pre-emptive surrender monkeys. Possible, I suppose, in a quantum sort of way (and it would actually be pretty awesome if it was), but not...exactly...likely.
Actually, though, when I saw the picture, the very first thing that went through my mind was this:
Actually, the whole scene is worth a bookmark. I do remember enjoying that film.
Almost spooky, isn't it?
Maybe the real question, since we know that so much of this (current) feeding frenzy is pure Astroturf, is whether the idea for the kid's unintentionally hilarious sweatshirt originally came from Team Tide Pod*, or from the handlers. (Frankly, I'm not sure who I'd root for, there, either. The handlers more richly deserve the egg on the face, but they're just plain not going to heed the lesson no matter what: ironically the kids stand a much better chance of actually learning something from it all.)
Give the bag to Bozo, kid; you've taken being played for a fool to a whole new level of achievement. And in that vein, here's a piece of free advice for the future: never enter a battle of wits unarmed.
__________________
* Probably, of course, it's just a school mascot sweatshirt, and we're just witnessing a truly amusing karmic coincidence. But I'd not be surprised, if word of this double-facepalm-fail actually gets around the way it should, to see schools across the nation drop Spartan mascots like the proverbial ton of bricks, for being too inconvenient to the narrative. (Because the narrative, after all, just wants to go home at the end of its shift. :-)
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Grigg is gone.
Sometimes, even God gets selfish.
If you'll forgive the crudity, this nevertheless sums it up just about perfectly:
 |
| The irony is that Grigg could have done it better without being crude. |
There's a hole in the freedomverse today, and it's a big one. I find it extremely telling that within just a few hours, I have seen more love for Will Grigg pass by my Facebook feed, than I have seen attention paid to any single person or event since I entered the TwitFace space just about ten years ago now. It's difficult to explain how someone I never met in meatspace could become so important in my life, but anyone who spends any amount of time reading these pages will not fail to run across Grigg's name with some regularity. I'd like to think that does not happen by accident.
I could go on and stumble for the words myself, but Dan Sanchez did a pretty fine job summing up the je ne sais quoi of Grigg's style, in an article for FEE today:
Each essay he wrote was a masterpiece of erudition and eloquence, precision and passion. He did not hurl invective. He simply described each official injustice exactly, stripped of all euphemism, as one would a crime committed by any “mundane” outside of the “punitive priesthood” and devoid of “blue privilege,” to use three of his many incisive coinages. He would illuminate the matter by drawing fascinating parallels from his expansive knowledge of history, literature, and popular culture: especially science fiction, which he loved. And he would slice to pieces the officious justifications of official victimizers with his razor-sharp reason. He was, bar none, the best writer in the liberty movement. And in his painstakingly produced podcast Freedom Zealot and his many interviews with Scott Horton, he seemed to craft final-draft prose as he spoke.
Yes, that. All of that. And for me, there is one other thing, too: William Grigg was an actual living manifestation of something that is otherwise at least arguably an impossible enigma: a true, literal Christian libertarian. What I am usually used to is that the acceptance of God as the ultimate benign authoritarian, will ultimately and always trump the libertarian impulse at some point in the continuum; but then somehow there was Constant Will, never budging from a libertarianism so beautifully radical it could easily be called the oh-so-naughty A-word...and yet somehow his devoutness was never in question--maybe it's because he always made it seem so personally, individually voluntary. I found that inspiring and impressive, even alongside his more obvious stylistic brilliance.
He leaves behind a world that desperately needs him, but which seems even more desperate to ignore him. "Those malignant bastards" do not deserve to breathe any easier for not having Will around any more, calling them out in his gloriously plain, honest language for what they are.
Somehow, in light of this terrible news, I am reminded of something I heard him say more than once:
He always said that about others--certainly worthy others--but based on everything I have learned about the man through his writing and social media presence, the sentiment is absolutely made for him.
Let me put it this way: my own son will get the notes I have taken.
Rest in peace, Will, and thank you eternally for the attitude.
He leaves behind a world that desperately needs him, but which seems even more desperate to ignore him. "Those malignant bastards" do not deserve to breathe any easier for not having Will around any more, calling them out in his gloriously plain, honest language for what they are.
Somehow, in light of this terrible news, I am reminded of something I heard him say more than once:
This is a man. Take notes.
He always said that about others--certainly worthy others--but based on everything I have learned about the man through his writing and social media presence, the sentiment is absolutely made for him.
Let me put it this way: my own son will get the notes I have taken.
Rest in peace, Will, and thank you eternally for the attitude.
Friday, November 18, 2016
There's a reason they call it the TwitFace.
Behold:
Well there, Massuh Superior Being suh, that's quite a statement there. (Personally, I'd say the worst insult anyone could throw at me is to call me a v*ter in the first place, but then I'm a known heretic.) It deserves a far more thorough fisking than I have any time to assemble here. Nonetheless, presumably you, paragon of civic virtue and All That Is Good, Healthful, and Nonfattening, "supported" a different candidate, and very likely "supported" the current administration through both of its terms, as well. (I suppose it's possible you didn't, but somehow that seems vanishingly unlikely from the evidence here.)
It would be childishly simple to ask you, in light of your strong declarative statement, why you would prefer a candidate (and a sitting president) who believes that dead Mexicans (that's brains-blown-out dead--we're not talking about a bigotry of words here) are an acceptable political cost of manufacturing the public impression that American gun dealers are arming narcotraficantes on the sly. (Oh, you never heard about Operation Fast And Furious, reported on almost daily for what, a year? In which the ATF deliberately armed the cartels so that their crime guns could be traced back to US gun dealers, supporting the FedGov's claim that 90% of Mexican crime guns trace back to the US? Yeah, both Hill and Barry were all over that one.)
It would be similarly easy to ask you, again in light of your morally upstanding and good-for-the-climate statement, why you would support candidates and presidents that not only argue openly for extrajudicial killing and indefinite detention, but practice it regularly. As but one example, assassinating not only an American citizen without trial, but shortly thereafter his teenage son, offering the functional equivalent of "sucks to be him, he should have had a better dad" by way of explanation. How many hundreds have been killed with drones, or more traditional methods of extrajudicial war?
You're okay with all that, right? Seeing as how "there is no middle ground", and all.
One could go on. It's not difficult.
But you're smart, and enlightened--so much moreso than half the American public, which you keep telling me has simply lost its mind because it doesn't move in lockstep with your beliefs. (Oh, you don't put it that way, but that's always what it comes down to.)
Obviously they must have been conned.
I'll bet you think you appreciate irony and wit, too.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
So this is interesting.
Still here. (You know, speaking to the 3-4 of you who comprise my "core audience". :-)
In the wake of this latest installment of Bewailing That Next Disaster We Keep Insisting on Making Inevitable--all the tiresome tooth-gnashing dances in front of the fainting couch, I did find this article interesting:
Orlando police repeat the gross ineptitude of San Diego cops in the "McDonald's massacre"
If nothing else, it's actually substantive to what happened, as opposed to the usual fixation on How Can We Absolve Ourselves By Going After Some Ginormous Group Of People Who Didn't Do It.
Therefrom:
Seems like I'm starting to see a few voices saying that many of those who died at the nightclub in Orlando, only died because it dragged out so long. This comparison to the San Ysidro shooting, and the damning comment it makes about what Grigg describes as "Officer Safety Uber Alles" policy, is interesting.
Will have to keep an eye on Grigg for the commentary...and (le sigh) on Mas Ayoob, to tell us all how we've got it all wrong, again; that the cops did absolutely nothing wrong.
In the wake of this latest installment of Bewailing That Next Disaster We Keep Insisting on Making Inevitable--all the tiresome tooth-gnashing dances in front of the fainting couch, I did find this article interesting:
Orlando police repeat the gross ineptitude of San Diego cops in the "McDonald's massacre"
If nothing else, it's actually substantive to what happened, as opposed to the usual fixation on How Can We Absolve Ourselves By Going After Some Ginormous Group Of People Who Didn't Do It.
Therefrom:
To review, a white racist who hated Mexicans entered the McDonald's in San Ysidro (very close to the Mexican border) and started shooting. And shooting. And shooting.
The first cops on the scene did nothing, even as the shooting continued. They contacted HQ which in turn contacted the SWAT commander, who was at a social function at Mission Bay.
Until that time, SWAT was primarily geared up for hostage situations. Nationwide they'd never faced a maniacal shooter who just wanted to kill as many people as possible before they in turn were gunned down. So the San Diego SWAT commander ordered officers on the scene (including a sniper with a clear shot at the guy) to wait until he arrived in San Ysidro to properly assess the situation. That's about a 40-50 minute drive. Meanwhile the shooter is calmly walking around the restaurant, systematically shooting primarily Mexican women and children.
FINALLY the SDPD SWAT boss arrived, assessed the situation and gave the sniper the green light. The crackshot quickly dispatched the shooter. 78 minutes after the shooting begin, it was over.
Seems like I'm starting to see a few voices saying that many of those who died at the nightclub in Orlando, only died because it dragged out so long. This comparison to the San Ysidro shooting, and the damning comment it makes about what Grigg describes as "Officer Safety Uber Alles" policy, is interesting.
Will have to keep an eye on Grigg for the commentary...and (le sigh) on Mas Ayoob, to tell us all how we've got it all wrong, again; that the cops did absolutely nothing wrong.
Saturday, July 4, 2015
No real surprises. Much commotion.
So much agoggery lately. And why, really? Okay, there seems to have been a lot going on, but look, let's review some of the highlights:
Sure, it's messed up. Fancy robes don't excuse rubber-stamping thuggery. I still cannot, for the life of me, figure out why any self-respecting gay couple would anywise be excited about now being subject to the same control and abuse as the rest of us. Victim disarmament is still just about as misanthropic a principle as one could possibly visit upon another human being. And wholly aside from race bigotry going "both ways", trying to rewrite history by somehow suppressing it, pretending it didn't happen--well shit, what could go wrong there? Yezhovschina, indeed.
Messed up, yes, but it's hardly surprising. Seriously, did anyone--anyone-- really think that The Robed Nine would somehow come back on Obamacare and say, "Tut tut now, none of this is authorized in your charter document--you'll have to give it up and go home."? Jeez, pull the other one. We're already well down the road toward bypassing inconvenient impediments to power (e.g., fast track) anyway; it won't be long before people start suggesting regularly that we simply bypass SCOTUS rulings entirely. You know, when we know up front how they'll always turn out in the way that benefits the State.
And I truly found myself wondering, when I first heard about the "gay marriage decision": okay, what is this decision supposed to distract our attention from? (In the vein of why are they telling me this, and why are they telling me this now?) Yes, I understand that there are going to be exploitable provisions in that decision that are going to be used unfairly against people who commit no harm...but hell, we already have that, just for other "protected" demographics. This decision was treated like a giant party--that seemed to be the point--and I suspect it took a whole lot of attention off the Obamacarerubber-stamp decision.
The church shooter? Jeez. With the nearly standard caveat of "presuming he wasn't in fact a groomed CI", this character seems to be much more fitting of the stereotype that the Victim Disarmament Now! crowd insists all gunnies are--and I suspect that this is the primary reason the Hive Mind decided to plant its flag in this event in the first place. Their reaction to every shooting (-in a "gun-free zone") is the same--the only difference here is in the timing and circumstances, which were formulaically exploitable.
And then there were the church fires, about which there seems to have been a splash of interest and then near-silence. Curious. (One might logically think to go to the FBI about that, given the agency's expertise in both church and evidence fires.) But the race warriors seem to have played their hand well regardless, and may well get their race war if someone does something stupid now.
Again: is any of this surprising?
SCOTUSThe Nazgul now inform Us The Unwashed even more officially (no, really) that Obamacare is just peachy, good for you, and nonfattening.SCOTUSThe Nazgul have now "legalized" and "protected" State marriage for what might be called (at the risk of hyperoffending the hyperoffensensitive) non-traditional sexual preferences.- Following another "gun-free zone" disaster in South Carolina, the Who Does What To Whom machine has rather effectively rallied its Committee For The Disarmament Of Everyone Who Didn't Do It, along with Occupy Race Bigotry Army soldiers of all ages, and now otherwise normal people are positively tripping over themselves to disassociate from symbols and mythologies that mostly have absolutely nothing to do with all the chest-thumping.
Sure, it's messed up. Fancy robes don't excuse rubber-stamping thuggery. I still cannot, for the life of me, figure out why any self-respecting gay couple would anywise be excited about now being subject to the same control and abuse as the rest of us. Victim disarmament is still just about as misanthropic a principle as one could possibly visit upon another human being. And wholly aside from race bigotry going "both ways", trying to rewrite history by somehow suppressing it, pretending it didn't happen--well shit, what could go wrong there? Yezhovschina, indeed.
Messed up, yes, but it's hardly surprising. Seriously, did anyone--anyone-- really think that The Robed Nine would somehow come back on Obamacare and say, "Tut tut now, none of this is authorized in your charter document--you'll have to give it up and go home."? Jeez, pull the other one. We're already well down the road toward bypassing inconvenient impediments to power (e.g., fast track) anyway; it won't be long before people start suggesting regularly that we simply bypass SCOTUS rulings entirely. You know, when we know up front how they'll always turn out in the way that benefits the State.
And I truly found myself wondering, when I first heard about the "gay marriage decision": okay, what is this decision supposed to distract our attention from? (In the vein of why are they telling me this, and why are they telling me this now?) Yes, I understand that there are going to be exploitable provisions in that decision that are going to be used unfairly against people who commit no harm...but hell, we already have that, just for other "protected" demographics. This decision was treated like a giant party--that seemed to be the point--and I suspect it took a whole lot of attention off the Obamacare
The church shooter? Jeez. With the nearly standard caveat of "presuming he wasn't in fact a groomed CI", this character seems to be much more fitting of the stereotype that the Victim Disarmament Now! crowd insists all gunnies are--and I suspect that this is the primary reason the Hive Mind decided to plant its flag in this event in the first place. Their reaction to every shooting (-in a "gun-free zone") is the same--the only difference here is in the timing and circumstances, which were formulaically exploitable.
And then there were the church fires, about which there seems to have been a splash of interest and then near-silence. Curious. (One might logically think to go to the FBI about that, given the agency's expertise in both church and evidence fires.) But the race warriors seem to have played their hand well regardless, and may well get their race war if someone does something stupid now.
Again: is any of this surprising?
- Master investigates Master and concludes that Master's word is law.
- Master simply adds another dependent group to its rolls, handing out the news like a Mardi Gras party, but changing the way it works hardly at all.
- Disarmers exploit the blood of others, ignoring the success of the Deacons in favor of the enforced helplessness of victims whose tragedy they can use.
- Race bigots stir up envy and hatred in every symbol available, again for the purpose of pitting the peaceable against each other, instead of leaving them alone to learn about each other.
Which brings me to the thought that first prompted this post. The reason these things are unsurprising is that most people sold the farm years ago. Judicial activism has been around for just a few years less than the country has--and thus whoever accepts judicial activism in principle doesn't really have much a leg to stand on about this ACA decision. Likewise, it seems kinda hypocritical to "defend" a State sanction for (and thus its control over) one kind of marriage, and yet criticize the same sanction for another kind. Most people seem to accept the State's monopoly on force and violence, whether in the form of "SYLP", or siccing the FedCops on "those people" for some vice or other (drugs, guns, raw milk, erotica, etc.), or the thunderous worship of "Support Our Troops", yet try to act appalled as some minor dipswitch of detail gets decided or discussed that supports the principle. And my word, but people seem to believe anything they are told about racial bigotry in unknown others, yet get all uppity when others insist on seeing it in them as well.
And all of this is rendered even the more disturbing because nearly everyone who is running around without his mind right now, doesn't really care about any of it. He doesn't want these things--he wants to be seen wanting these things.
I don't remember when I first heard the phrase, "It's all over but the shouting", but lately, it seems to be in my mind every day.
Because all this? This is "the shouting". And "we" have fully earned it.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Protection, without the racket.
Just in case you're tempted to believe that Will Grigg is all "cry the dystopia" with no recognition of workable alternatives, note here his recent report on the actions of one Dale Brown. Brown may be deserving of some sort of brass balls bravery award for publicly offering a protection service in direct contrast to the protection racket that most of us have to deal with.
All in all, a pretty impressive response to the problem. Is it perfect? Of course not, but we shouldn't make the same mistake we so often see and decry in the statists, demanding demonstrable utopian perfection even to consider a possible alternative, while tolerating and defending nearly any atrocity in the status quo. Brown's idea doesn't have to be perfect, it simply has to be better--and really, that's not such a high bar to get over. I might personally bristle at the idea of a "good person file", notwithstanding its (very clever) psychological utility as described in one of Brown's anecdotes, but then I must remind myself of the far more important consideration here: the whole system is opt-in. Voluntary. You can walk away if you don't like it. (No wonder it's got officialdom in such a tizzy.)
Hopefully Mr. Brown continues to have the success he's had so far. And that more and more people notice.
"How would things be different,” muses Dale Brown of the Detroit-based Threat Management Center, “if police officers were given financial rewards and commendations for resolving dangerous situations peacefully, rather than for using force in situations where it’s neither justified nor effective?”
Brown’s approach to public safety is “precisely the opposite of what police are trained and expected to do,” says the 44-year-old entrepreneur. The TMC eschews the “prosecutorial philosophy of applied violence” and the officer safety uber alles mindset that characterize government law enforcement agencies. This is because his very successful private security company has an entirely different mission – the protection of persons and property, rather than enforcing the will of the political class. Those contrasting approaches are displayed to great advantage in proto-dystopian Detroit.
All in all, a pretty impressive response to the problem. Is it perfect? Of course not, but we shouldn't make the same mistake we so often see and decry in the statists, demanding demonstrable utopian perfection even to consider a possible alternative, while tolerating and defending nearly any atrocity in the status quo. Brown's idea doesn't have to be perfect, it simply has to be better--and really, that's not such a high bar to get over. I might personally bristle at the idea of a "good person file", notwithstanding its (very clever) psychological utility as described in one of Brown's anecdotes, but then I must remind myself of the far more important consideration here: the whole system is opt-in. Voluntary. You can walk away if you don't like it. (No wonder it's got officialdom in such a tizzy.)
Hopefully Mr. Brown continues to have the success he's had so far. And that more and more people notice.
Friday, July 4, 2014
Grigg: Happy Insurrection Day!
Ran across this classic again today. It is so outstanding that I felt the need to have it bookmarked here.
Just a teaser:
And Grigg's wrap-up is exactly what you'd expect from him:
As always, worth it to RTWT.
Just a teaser:
It's hardly surprising that the Wilson regime effectively criminalized the Declaration: Like collectivists of all ages, Wilson assumed that man, who was created for the state, should be pitifully grateful for whatever transient "liberties" he was given by the state, and should be prepared to sacrifice everything on behalf of the state.I'm saving that one for the next Wilson apologist I run into. Jeez, what awful people.
"It is not an army we must shape and train for war, it is a nation," Wilson declared, as he centralized the economy, orchestrated a frenzy of war hatred against Germany, and moved to impose conscription. His Vice President, Thomas Marshall, urged that citizenship be formally revoked for anyone found to be "not heartily in support of the Government in this crisis."
Bernard Baruch, chairman of the War Industries Board and de facto commissar of the economy, explained the logic of Wilson's war regime in admirably frank terms: "Every man's life is at the call of the nation and so must be every man's property.... The state is all; the individual is of importance only as he contributes to the welfare of the state. His property is his only as the state does not need it. He must hold his life and possessions at the call of the state."
And Grigg's wrap-up is exactly what you'd expect from him:
What if, instead of starting every day being marinated in the language of submission (to pledge "allegiance," after all, is to proclaim one's status as a vassal bound in service to a feudal lord, or "liege"), youngsters were taught, on a daily basis, the principles of self-responsibility, individual liberty, and principled rebellion? As I stated earlier, if this kind of thing were to become common, our rulers would simply criminalize the Declaration. They've done it before, and they would be more than happy to do so permanently.
The sobering truth is that, due to the cultivated docility of the American populace, Jefferson's document, much like the Constitution created eleven years later, poses no threat to the designs of our rulers.
As always, worth it to RTWT.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
The postmodern world.
I can't remember exactly when I first caught wind of the new lawsuit by Seattle cops, that, as I understand it, argues that their new use-of-force policy is too restrictive, because it--get this--runs afoul of the Second Amendment. (Apparently they also says it violates their "rights" in re the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments as well.)
I know, you threw up a little in your mouth too, at that.
What I do remember, having seen that blurb, is an instantaneous thought: I wonder how long it will be before Grigg is on that story?
Answer: not long at all.
He starts it with an image that would make Oleg proud:
And then, as usual, he just nails it, culminating with the following:
As always, worth the RTWT.
The only thing I'd add to any of this is that the ethics are actually pretty damn clear here. As private citizens, acting in the capacity of private citizens, even cops should enjoy the protections of the US Second Amendment. (And, of course, like the rest of us, be held accountable for their actions.) But when they put on the badge, and become agents of the state, they lose those protections completely. They like to say they are "held to a higher standard" than we are, which is precisely the way things should be, but aren't. The "higher standard" is that in order to protect us from them, they have to give up their rights as free people. To paraphrase L. Neil Smith, each and every one of them should be absolutely terrified of violating the rights of even one of the mass of human beings that they "work for"--lest they be run out on a rail by the entire town...
Dang. Caught myself dreaming again.
I know, you threw up a little in your mouth too, at that.
What I do remember, having seen that blurb, is an instantaneous thought: I wonder how long it will be before Grigg is on that story?
Answer: not long at all.
He starts it with an image that would make Oleg proud:
And then, as usual, he just nails it, culminating with the following:
Most people believe that the purpose of the Bill of Rights is to protect citizens against abuses of their rights by government officials. The incurably self-preoccupied people behind the Seattle police lawsuit apparently believe that the Bill of Rights exists to emancipate law enforcement officers from restrictions on the use of lethal force, and immunize them against legal, civil, and professional accountability when they kill people without legal justification.
As always, worth the RTWT.
The only thing I'd add to any of this is that the ethics are actually pretty damn clear here. As private citizens, acting in the capacity of private citizens, even cops should enjoy the protections of the US Second Amendment. (And, of course, like the rest of us, be held accountable for their actions.) But when they put on the badge, and become agents of the state, they lose those protections completely. They like to say they are "held to a higher standard" than we are, which is precisely the way things should be, but aren't. The "higher standard" is that in order to protect us from them, they have to give up their rights as free people. To paraphrase L. Neil Smith, each and every one of them should be absolutely terrified of violating the rights of even one of the mass of human beings that they "work for"--lest they be run out on a rail by the entire town...
Dang. Caught myself dreaming again.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Quote of the day.
What would we do without William Norman Grigg? The man is quite simply a treasure.
I have a love of language and the construction of a good mental image, and Grigg regularly qualifies for wizard status in this regard. When I need to point someone to an example of how to describe the world as it is, rather than as viewed through the beer goggles that so much of society insists on wearing, I go to him. He combines razor-edged ridicule and sarcasm with a straight-up delivery style (it'd be deadpan if it weren't quite so sizzling with scorn) that reminds me of what we were all taught a "reporter" (remember those?) is supposed to be like.
That is: it's a regular story, only told straight, without all the bullshit, and with terms and comparisons that are, like, contextually accurate. (And it's hard to describe how refreshing that is, to someone who doesn't already understand.)
The world is not just more tolerable with him in it. It's better.
Only in a universe in which the rules of logic follow the contours of a Salvador Dali painting would that warrant be considered “reasonable,” if the objective had been to avoid unnecessary violence.
I have a love of language and the construction of a good mental image, and Grigg regularly qualifies for wizard status in this regard. When I need to point someone to an example of how to describe the world as it is, rather than as viewed through the beer goggles that so much of society insists on wearing, I go to him. He combines razor-edged ridicule and sarcasm with a straight-up delivery style (it'd be deadpan if it weren't quite so sizzling with scorn) that reminds me of what we were all taught a "reporter" (remember those?) is supposed to be like.
That is: it's a regular story, only told straight, without all the bullshit, and with terms and comparisons that are, like, contextually accurate. (And it's hard to describe how refreshing that is, to someone who doesn't already understand.)
The world is not just more tolerable with him in it. It's better.
Friday, December 6, 2013
From the 'Problem? What problem?' file...
Behold the logo of the newest National Reconnaissance Office satellite:
Nah. Nothing to see here, peasant. Move along.
__________________
H/T to LRC, via Grigg on Facebook.
Nah. Nothing to see here, peasant. Move along.
__________________
H/T to LRC, via Grigg on Facebook.
Monday, November 4, 2013
LAX attack as false flag?
Oh come now. Regardless of whether it actually was or wasn't, who with a straight face can say that the Forcible Disarmament Now! crowd is in any way above it?
Via Workman, I just saw this YouTube, which is only really convincing in its perfectly understandable angst. Angst about the obvious sense that something stinks. And something always stinks about these things, doesn't it? Always. And I'm not talking about the pluperfectly predictable stink of a mass shooting occurring in a "gun-free zone", either.
It is truly amazing, isn't it, that all these meme-perfect events only happen when frothing legislators have bills in hand, fresh oil in the propaganda machine, and a sense of either hunger or momentum among their legions of sycophants? They don't happen in the troughs, do they? It may have occurred to you before that things like the Brady Bill and the AWB, for all their sound and thunder (you remember that, right?), would not even have prevented the events that inspired them--instead the events that did happen were molded by propaganda to fit the desired political meme, and with enough repetition the lie became...what's that term again?...oh yeah, "settled science". Even today, the victim disarmers regularly admit that their interest is in the meme above all else; how many times have you heard some nitwit (with power over people's lives) say "well, sure, what we're proposing may not have prevented what just happened, but fersure we know it's a Good First Step(TM)"? Yeah, I've lost track too.
So now we have this LAX shooting episode, which from the reports I've seen seems just about as meme-perfect as one could imagine today. (Try not to imagine tomorrow--it's depressing.) EBR? Check. Note indicating his intentions? Check. "Patriot" affiliation? Check. Antigovernment sentiment? Check. Wanting to show "how easy it is to get a gun into the airport"? Check. A scenario that the whole airport just trained for a few weeks earlier? Check. Made-to-order "heroism" from a detested agency struggling for legitimacy? Check. Really, one could go on. It rather reminds me of a great analogy Grigg made while illustrating the FBI's manufactury of "terrorism" from which they may then be widely seen saving us all.
There's also all the things that did not happen here, that make no sense. As just one for instance: I'm sorry, this shooter survived after opening fire at LAX and reportedly capping a TSA badge? This isn't just an Only Ones zone, this is LA. The place where, as Joel so memorably put it:
Other stuff will be found to stink too--count on that. Apparently the folks who made the above YouTube also feel that the blueshirt in the wheelchair was a dummy, and that the LAX police chief botched lines that were handed to him. Yeah, well, maybe. (Their strongest case, really, is nothing more than the idea that "officials vehemently deny...", which always lends a certain legitimacy in any political system.) One might also reasonably wonder things like why the shooter returned to where he began, and why he bothered to carry boxed ammunition if he was expecting a quick, suicidal engagement. There's the remarkably meme-convenient "just recently moved from Jersey", and so on. Plenty of things for people to bicker about while ignoring the core lesson that "gun-free zones" are still a monumentally stupid idea.
Well--for everyone except those running the protection racket, of course.
And to wrap up this "how amazing is all this?" fantasia, how about the idea that anyone who even notices these anomalies, discrepancies, patterns, histories, motivations, incentives--is inherently suspect, almost certainly a terrorist, and probably a witch. You know, "agin' us" because they're not "with us".
So, here we go again. Some creep visibly demonstrates, again, that forcible disarmament does nothing but create an obvious killing field...the slime mold from the statehouse oozes on by to wag its blobulous finger at the little people for not being sufficiently cowed by it all to hand over the rubberstamp...and the war on the people who didn't do it is fired up once again.
"They hate us because we're free." Hell, after all this time and all those perfectly deserved jokes, it seems that indeed "they" really do.
Via Workman, I just saw this YouTube, which is only really convincing in its perfectly understandable angst. Angst about the obvious sense that something stinks. And something always stinks about these things, doesn't it? Always. And I'm not talking about the pluperfectly predictable stink of a mass shooting occurring in a "gun-free zone", either.
It is truly amazing, isn't it, that all these meme-perfect events only happen when frothing legislators have bills in hand, fresh oil in the propaganda machine, and a sense of either hunger or momentum among their legions of sycophants? They don't happen in the troughs, do they? It may have occurred to you before that things like the Brady Bill and the AWB, for all their sound and thunder (you remember that, right?), would not even have prevented the events that inspired them--instead the events that did happen were molded by propaganda to fit the desired political meme, and with enough repetition the lie became...what's that term again?...oh yeah, "settled science". Even today, the victim disarmers regularly admit that their interest is in the meme above all else; how many times have you heard some nitwit (with power over people's lives) say "well, sure, what we're proposing may not have prevented what just happened, but fersure we know it's a Good First Step(TM)"? Yeah, I've lost track too.
So now we have this LAX shooting episode, which from the reports I've seen seems just about as meme-perfect as one could imagine today. (Try not to imagine tomorrow--it's depressing.) EBR? Check. Note indicating his intentions? Check. "Patriot" affiliation? Check. Antigovernment sentiment? Check. Wanting to show "how easy it is to get a gun into the airport"? Check. A scenario that the whole airport just trained for a few weeks earlier? Check. Made-to-order "heroism" from a detested agency struggling for legitimacy? Check. Really, one could go on. It rather reminds me of a great analogy Grigg made while illustrating the FBI's manufactury of "terrorism" from which they may then be widely seen saving us all.
What political profit would result from allowing local authorities to prosecute Williams on a charge involving an actual property crime? On the other hand, arresting him as part of a black Muslim terrorist cell -- now, there's a bust with a high Q rating. Or, to recur to the Scrabble analogy, that's like playing the "z" tile on the triple word score square at the intersection of two fifteen-letter words.
There's also all the things that did not happen here, that make no sense. As just one for instance: I'm sorry, this shooter survived after opening fire at LAX and reportedly capping a TSA badge? This isn't just an Only Ones zone, this is LA. The place where, as Joel so memorably put it:
UPDATE: Mildly concerned police officers basically shooting everybody they see, on theory that it might turn out to be Dorner.Does anyone doubt that this Ciancia fellow is going to sing the DiFi meme-song, on time, on cue and with perfect pitch?
Other stuff will be found to stink too--count on that. Apparently the folks who made the above YouTube also feel that the blueshirt in the wheelchair was a dummy, and that the LAX police chief botched lines that were handed to him. Yeah, well, maybe. (Their strongest case, really, is nothing more than the idea that "officials vehemently deny...", which always lends a certain legitimacy in any political system.) One might also reasonably wonder things like why the shooter returned to where he began, and why he bothered to carry boxed ammunition if he was expecting a quick, suicidal engagement. There's the remarkably meme-convenient "just recently moved from Jersey", and so on. Plenty of things for people to bicker about while ignoring the core lesson that "gun-free zones" are still a monumentally stupid idea.
Well--for everyone except those running the protection racket, of course.
And to wrap up this "how amazing is all this?" fantasia, how about the idea that anyone who even notices these anomalies, discrepancies, patterns, histories, motivations, incentives--is inherently suspect, almost certainly a terrorist, and probably a witch. You know, "agin' us" because they're not "with us".
So, here we go again. Some creep visibly demonstrates, again, that forcible disarmament does nothing but create an obvious killing field...the slime mold from the statehouse oozes on by to wag its blobulous finger at the little people for not being sufficiently cowed by it all to hand over the rubberstamp...and the war on the people who didn't do it is fired up once again.
"They hate us because we're free." Hell, after all this time and all those perfectly deserved jokes, it seems that indeed "they" really do.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Please, make your unicorn shit the rainbows again...
Hat tip to Grigg, via Facebook.
The quantity of what color is the sky in your world? is very, very large here. I had to read through it a few times to make sure it wasn't an Onion article, but no, near as I can tell, the author actually means it.
The article's title is "If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person: A Manifesto". (I know: an obvious Onion headline, right? You understand my confusion!) Its point is laid pretty bare here:
Only a hard-core statist can have such supreme confidence in the hive mind, to state an absolute truth ("But rich people will always find a way to game the system"*) and then, without even so much as a single word of physical separation, utterly ignore it as though it did not exist ("That shouldn't be an argument against an all-in approach to public education..."). See: she said it, you believe it, that settles it. What are you, a cancer to the hive mind or something?**
I think I may have to propose a new, simplified definition of statist as one who does not merely fail to recognize irony, but actively refuses to believe that it exists.
Oh, but it gets better. Check out my submission for "top zinger" among a truly bumper crop of The Stupid (emphasis mine):
Just--wow.
Please, lady, pleease make your unicorn shit the rainbows again. It's simply astounding to behold...
__________________________
* Got news for ya, hon: ain't just "rich people" who understand how to "game the system". But then again, you probably think that anyone who doesn't vote, simply does so from ignorance or apathy...right? It's truly amazing how you have this all figured out...
** She's clearly got her sense of duty...and, well, I've got mine.
The quantity of what color is the sky in your world? is very, very large here. I had to read through it a few times to make sure it wasn't an Onion article, but no, near as I can tell, the author actually means it.
The article's title is "If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person: A Manifesto". (I know: an obvious Onion headline, right? You understand my confusion!) Its point is laid pretty bare here:
I am not an education policy wonk: I’m just judgmental. But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good. (Yes, rich people might cluster. But rich people will always find a way to game the system: That shouldn’t be an argument against an all-in approach to public education any more than it is a case against single-payer health care.)
Only a hard-core statist can have such supreme confidence in the hive mind, to state an absolute truth ("But rich people will always find a way to game the system"*) and then, without even so much as a single word of physical separation, utterly ignore it as though it did not exist ("That shouldn't be an argument against an all-in approach to public education..."). See: she said it, you believe it, that settles it. What are you, a cancer to the hive mind or something?**
I think I may have to propose a new, simplified definition of statist as one who does not merely fail to recognize irony, but actively refuses to believe that it exists.
Oh, but it gets better. Check out my submission for "top zinger" among a truly bumper crop of The Stupid (emphasis mine):
And parents have a lot of power. In many underresourced schools, it’s the aggressive PTAs that raise the money for enrichment programs and willful parents who get in the administration’s face when a teacher is falling down on the job. Everyone, all in. (By the way: Banning private schools isn’t the answer. We need a moral adjustment, not a legislative one.)
Just--wow.
Please, lady, pleease make your unicorn shit the rainbows again. It's simply astounding to behold...
__________________________
* Got news for ya, hon: ain't just "rich people" who understand how to "game the system". But then again, you probably think that anyone who doesn't vote, simply does so from ignorance or apathy...right? It's truly amazing how you have this all figured out...
** She's clearly got her sense of duty...and, well, I've got mine.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Grigg on the UN ATT
Here.
As usual, it's a capital-R resource. But this one is important even within Grigg's corpus of work.
File this passage in the "History of the Future" category:
Grigg does report his historical cautionary tales with a certain style, doesn't he? One might be tempted to call it "plainspeak" as a compliment, but that might actually do a disservice to a man who in a sane world would be revered as a national treasure.
The problem with plainspeak isn't so much that hardly anyone speaks it any more. It isn't even that hardly anyone even wants to. If that were it, it would still be possible to live in peace.
The worst problem with plainspeak is that too many want to forcibly remove it from existence.
As usual, it's a capital-R resource. But this one is important even within Grigg's corpus of work.
File this passage in the "History of the Future" category:
For more than fifty years, the United Nations, with the enthusiastic support of the U.S. government, has pursued a vision of “general and complete disarmament” in which the world body, or its successor, would claim a monopoly on the “legitimate” use of force. Within that global monopoly, each national government would have an exclusive territorial franchise.
“Controlling the proliferation of illicit [that is, civilian-owned] weapons is a necessary first step towards the non-proliferation of small arms,” wrote former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in his official 2000 report, We the Peoples. “These weapons must be brought under the control of states, and states must be held responsible for their transfer.”
It was in pursuit of that formula that UN “peacekeepers” were deployed in Rwanda in 1993. The peace treaty they were sent to enforce required the collection of all civilian-owned weapons. Despite that country’s history of bloody ethnic conflict, Rwandans were assured that they had nothing to fear from a UN-approved government that claimed a monopoly on weaponry; after all, the Blue Beret-wearing emissaries of the “international community” were there to protect them, in the event their government turned feral.
In January 1994, Lt. Col. Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian officer commanding the UN contingent in Rwanda, learned that the Hutu-dominated regime was planning to massacre the Tutsi population. He sent an urgent fax to UN headquarters requesting permission to disarm the government-backed militias by raiding their arms caches. He wasn’t allowed to take this pre-emptive action, because the UN’s self-assigned mandate called for civilian disarmament, not the disarmament of government operatives.
Less than three months later, the massacre began – a 100-day orgy of bloodshed in which roughly one million people were slaughtered. Most were hacked to death with machetes – but behind the machete-wielding goons were government troops, police, and militiamen armed with guns. Dallaire’s troops did nothing to protect the victims; indeed, many of them were butchered as well.
The UN official who was given advance warning of the massacre, and ordered Dallaire not to take any preventive action, was Kofi Annan – who at the time was undersecretary general for peacekeeping operations. In the finest tradition of Soviet career advancement, Annan was rewarded with a promotion to Secretary General, and eventually received the Nobel Peace Prize. Dallaire, who had done what he could to prevent the genocide, succumbed to near-suicidal depression and alcoholism. He was eventually rehabilitated after a reporter found him freezing to death under a park bench in Hull, Quebec.
Grigg does report his historical cautionary tales with a certain style, doesn't he? One might be tempted to call it "plainspeak" as a compliment, but that might actually do a disservice to a man who in a sane world would be revered as a national treasure.
The problem with plainspeak isn't so much that hardly anyone speaks it any more. It isn't even that hardly anyone even wants to. If that were it, it would still be possible to live in peace.
The worst problem with plainspeak is that too many want to forcibly remove it from existence.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
'...it is forbidden to be stateless.'
Sometimes, they just come right out and say it.
So it's been interesting to watch Gerard Depardieu as he attempts to take the advice that so many of us have been given before, usually with a whiny, dismissive tone: "If you don't like it here, just go somewhere else." Normal, well-adjusted human beings would of course read that statement as implying that the offer is to actually do that, taking with you what is yours and demanding nothing more in return.
Well, yes...or, rather, no. This being the State, after all, the...oh, go with it, let's call it a "deal" just to soak up the full effect...the "deal" has two little conditions attached to it. To wit:
This is not hyperbole. Via William Grigg on Facebook, the AP today reports:
Now heaven only knows what Pooty-Poot's real motivation might be in this--I shudder even to contemplate it--but certainly this shows at least arguably rational thinking on Depardieu's part. Thirteen percent may be thirteen percent too high for non-voluntary extraction, by any moral standard, but on a practical level at least it's not more than half an order of magnitude higher.
But here is where (through the perfectly-to-type "Authorized Journalist") they just come right out and say it--the point entire:
"...it is forbidden to be stateless." There it is, for the next simpering statist who attempts to dismiss you with the "luv it or leave it" argument. It should be enough, of course, to simply ask, "Where?" since there is not a square inch of land on this planet that is not claimed by at least one nation-state...but then again it should be enough to argue that it's simply wrong to forcibly compel anyone who has not harmed another.
"...it is forbidden to be stateless." That's pretty clear, and the attitude behind it is even clearer: your life is not your own, but belongs to the State. You will be milked like a cow, and the only reason we might leave you alone, is if you can prove to our sole satisfaction that you've subjected yourself to the milking ministrations of another racket just like us.
Any questions?
So it's been interesting to watch Gerard Depardieu as he attempts to take the advice that so many of us have been given before, usually with a whiny, dismissive tone: "If you don't like it here, just go somewhere else." Normal, well-adjusted human beings would of course read that statement as implying that the offer is to actually do that, taking with you what is yours and demanding nothing more in return.
Well, yes...or, rather, no. This being the State, after all, the...oh, go with it, let's call it a "deal" just to soak up the full effect...the "deal" has two little conditions attached to it. To wit:
- You can't leave without paying us what we, in our sole discretion, think is a fair price.
- You can't leave our protection racket without proof that you've selected another one, of which we, in our sole discretion, approve.
This is not hyperbole. Via William Grigg on Facebook, the AP today reports:
MOSCOW — Gerard Depardieu, the French actor who has waged a battle against a proposed super-tax on millionaires in his native country, has been granted Russian citizenship.
A brief announcement on the Kremlin website on Thursday revealed that President Vladimir Putin signed the citizenship grant following an application from the actor.
The former Oscar nominee and star of the movie "Green Card" has been vocal in his opposition to French President Francois Hollande's plans to raise the tax on earned income above €1 million ($1.33 million) to 75 percent from the current high of 41 percent. Russia has a flat 13-percent tax rate.
Now heaven only knows what Pooty-Poot's real motivation might be in this--I shudder even to contemplate it--but certainly this shows at least arguably rational thinking on Depardieu's part. Thirteen percent may be thirteen percent too high for non-voluntary extraction, by any moral standard, but on a practical level at least it's not more than half an order of magnitude higher.
But here is where (through the perfectly-to-type "Authorized Journalist") they just come right out and say it--the point entire:
France's Civil Code says one must have another nationality in order to give up French citizenship because it is forbidden to be stateless.
"...it is forbidden to be stateless." There it is, for the next simpering statist who attempts to dismiss you with the "luv it or leave it" argument. It should be enough, of course, to simply ask, "Where?" since there is not a square inch of land on this planet that is not claimed by at least one nation-state...but then again it should be enough to argue that it's simply wrong to forcibly compel anyone who has not harmed another.
"...it is forbidden to be stateless." That's pretty clear, and the attitude behind it is even clearer: your life is not your own, but belongs to the State. You will be milked like a cow, and the only reason we might leave you alone, is if you can prove to our sole satisfaction that you've subjected yourself to the milking ministrations of another racket just like us.
Any questions?
Monday, December 17, 2012
And speaking of crocodile tears...
...if you haven't already, go check out Grigg and Silber on the topic.
Grigg gets right down to it in that beautiful matter-of-fact language that is so refreshing in this plasticene time. He opens:
Silber goes much further into the psychology. Even the hardcore may have trouble agreeing fully with everything he says, but all of it is worth consideration.
In wrapping up, he brings back the brimstone:
I'm with these guys. Crocodile tears don't much impress me.
Grigg gets right down to it in that beautiful matter-of-fact language that is so refreshing in this plasticene time. He opens:
“They had their entire lives ahead of them -- birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own,” intoned the murderer of 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki as he began the liturgy of official mourning for the victims of the Newtown massacre.
Every time children die in an outbreak of violence, “I react not as a president, but as anybody else would as a parent,” continued the head of a regime that will not explain to Nasser al-Awlaki why his son Anwar and grandson Abdulrahman – both of the U.S. citizens – were murdered by presidential decree.
“We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years,” insisted the official who has presided over dozens of lethal drone attacks in Pakistan and other countries with whom the U.S. is not formally at war.
Tears welled up in Obama’s eyes as he pronounced the familiar, facile phrases of selective sympathy. After ordering that U.S. flags be flown at half-mast for a week, Obama said that he and his wife would hug their children a little closer tonight as he empathizes with the parents whose children were murdered in Newtown.
It’s doubtful that he was moved to similar thoughts of vicarious bereavement as he contemplated the parents in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan who have been left childless because of his actions.
Silber goes much further into the psychology. Even the hardcore may have trouble agreeing fully with everything he says, but all of it is worth consideration.
Now I want to draw your attention to several other issues that will never be mentioned during the current exercise in national mourning. I again emphasize that I exclude from this analysis those persons and families directly affected by these events. My concern here is the national immersion in this story. This enthusiasm, and there is no other word to describe it, for demonstrating how deeply one is affected, how vast is one's grief, how completely shattered everyone is by these deaths -- everyone, that is, who is supposedly "decent" and "caring," and who is grief-stricken and shattered by these deaths but not by many thousands of other deaths -- is a symptom of a culture that is profoundly disturbed.
In wrapping up, he brings back the brimstone:
And while there are references now and then in news stories to Newtown being a "wealthy" or "affluent" town, I haven't seen much highlighting of some easily available facts about Newtown: 95% of those who live in Newtown are white, and the estimated median household family income is around $120,000. This is one very small, enormously privileged fraction of America; it certainly is not representative of America in any general sense in the smallest degree.
And that makes it the perfect tragedy for the Age of Obama, and the perfect opportunity for Weeping Obama to make his appearance. Never mind those whom Obama orders to be murdered; don't give a thought to the children abused, humiliated and tormented in ways that will scar them for the rest of their lives; ignore the families destroyed by Obama's zealous pursuit of the monstrous War on Drugs. None of those victims are people like us, they're not human beings who actually matter. Who gives a damn what happens to them? These are among the hideous effects of the unrelentingly cruel and brutal reality America entered when it elected its first black president, a man who perfectly embodies the white authoritarian-corporatist-militarist State, and who ran as a white man. You elected -- and reelected -- a white man who is also a vicious killer. What did you expect?
I'm with these guys. Crocodile tears don't much impress me.
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