Hive mind? What hive mind?

You know that sense you get sometimes, when it seems like you are suddenly seeing all the usual suspects use exactly the same talking point verbiage to push whatever stank they've been told to pimp today?

Must be your imagination.

No no, loyal comrade.  You do not understand.  We said, it must be your imagination.

That actually made me laugh, to see that.  Blanket pre-approval from The Hive, to simply dismiss whatever content might appear above, probably just because someone used a hashtag for "QAnon"*, whatever that is.  (It hardly matters, as this content speaks for itself just fine.)

Anyway, whatever y'say there, MiniTru (or WikiPravda, if you insist on a modern name).  You said it, all right-thinking people believe it, that settles it.

Yo, Kroger. Is the craven coward thing paying off for you yet?

The following is addressed to the decision makers at Kroger / Fred Meyer, whoever you are and wherever you may be, who have now simply removed entirely gun and ammo counters, even from a store in Alaska, in response to partisan political pressure.  Let me be really clear here:  if you had a hand in promoting or making this happen--then "you" in what follows means you, personally.

Listening?  Good.  This part is important:

You are invertebrate, 

craven cowards.  

Get that?

Do you even know what the word craven means?  It really is not possible to use the word more literally.  Or more sincerely.

Harsh, you say?  Hell yes, what you've done is harsh.  Oh, me, you say?  Ha!  I'm just being honest.  It's not even comparable to say that I am responding in kind;  I am being far more polite than that.

Let's be clear about one other thing, too:

You chose this path.  

You did not have to, but you did anyway.

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying the choice shouldn't have been yours to make.  It's your business, and I'll defend your right to make your own business decisions until my dying breath.  Even if those actions are spineless, contemptible, and misanthropic.  (Liberty does not require decency, or even mutual respect.)

But the flip side of the freedom to make your own choices, is that then you own them--at least in the eyes of decent people, who do not presume to mind the business of others.

And you do own this misanthropic abomination you now call policy.  You have chosen to hock a giant greenie at untold thousands of customers, quietly loyal to you for untold years, to the tune of untold millions of revenue dollars, across product lines going far beyond guns and ammo.  And you did it in despicably craven deference to a simple loud-mouthed mob, self-arrogated minders of other people's business, crusading with nearly comic religious fervor to forcibly impose prior restraint upon millions of people who have harmed no one.  (You are aware, I presume, that the public face of this lynch mob, prior to the transparent co-opting of its tragic celebrity by veteran partisan zealots, and its subsequent miraculous conversion into instant national gun policy experts, was best known for being unable to resist eating Tide Pods on a dare?)

You do understand, I presume, that their coercion tactics have been wildly successful on you thus far?  I mean, let's not mince words:  they told you what to do, and you could hardly heel-snap into line fast enough.

So, here are some questions for you, now that you've made this bed and have to lay in it.  Even if you're not real happy with me at the moment for being so honest and all, you really should consider what the answers are.  (Truth, and reality, do not require your agreement, nor even your consent.)

• Do you really believe that, having caved without any real effort at all on this demand, that they will leave you alone now?  Do you?  Because either you do, or you don't.  If you don't believe it, then what's the payoff supposed to be?  If you do believe they'll go away now that you've caved, then you're as stupid as you are spineless--and QED that's saying something.
• Do you actually buy the stank these meddlesome piddlewits are pimping?  I mean seriously:  this crowd talks as if they are selling their ideas on the basis of some sort of calculable performance, but try this experiment if you want to learn something:  ask any of these people, if they truly believe in this notion of performance, what their "tipping point" is--that point at which their chosen statistic or metric goes the other way and will cause them to agitate against forcible prior restraint, and for actual liberty.  Just watch what happens.
• Do you think we--both the actual "gunnies", and other liberty-loving types for whom guns may be unimportant but principle still is--will simply not notice what you've done?  The complete removal of the entire gun-and-ammo counter is actually an up-the-ante move from the more well-publicized decision to ignore state law and further restrict sales based on arbitrary age.  (In my local store, the age-restriction sign still hangs above the now-simply-not-there gun counter, mockingly.)  I suppose this idea shouldn't be that surprising, since you've so clearly chosen to throw us under the bus in preference to your new policy-shouting besties, but will your gamble pay off?
• Did you trade up, in spitting on people like me to welcome the hipster polypragmatoi?  Or did you maybe miscalculate and trade down?  If I were you, I'd pay attention to that.
• Do you even know how many of your customers you've pissed off, by pissing on?

You could have told the meddlesome nitwits to pound sand in a hundred ways, and you could have simply ignored them into the irrelevancy they so richly deserve in a hundred more.  You didn't.  You capitulated immediately, with not even an obvious objection, much less any meaningful resistance.

The right to make that choice was, and is, yours.  The right to call it out as contemptible, craven cowardice, and pure antipathy to your customers, is mine.  

And here's the final rub:

It was pointless.

Yes, pointless.  No good will come of it.  If you don't understand that yet, don't worry, you will some day.  (I suspect there is a lot you haven't yet figured out about political crusaders;  if you think I'm a pain to deal with here, just you wait.)  

In the meantime, ponder this last question:

What will you do, 

when you figure out 

you've been played 

for nothing?

The late Mike Vanderboegh--a much missed voice in this tiresome age--used to love to quote Frank Zappa at moments like this, and it is with Mike in mind that I (as an unabashed Zappa fan of my own) offer this Frank-ism in parting:

Do you love it?

Do you hate it?

There it is,

The way you made it.

Achieving what is possible, free of the shackles of shame.

Hat tip to Gun Free Zone, via Joel.

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.


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* 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.  :-)

I know I can't be the only one thinking this...

...and also it's not like I spend much time these days combing the Interteubz to be sure, but still, I don't recall seeing the thought anywhere else thus far:

Bumpfire stocks as a key component of the recent Vegas disaster?  Really?

Notwithstanding the fact that certain key details of this sordid story seem to be slipperier than the finals heat at a greezed-pig contest, and changing and shapeshifting about like you'd expect within that metaphor:  this guy was supposed to be rich, a bit of a showoff, and not really afraid of jumping through hoops to get what he wanted.

So...instead of simply using that wealth and personality to amass a braggable NFA collection of "real" automatic weapons, he instead resorts to what has been described as the poor man's full-auto*?

And watching how the whole bumpfire thing has landed so squarely into the exact right spot to be exploited by all the usual blood-dancing suspects?

Something stinks doesn't even begin to cover it.  But then again, for anyone who's been paying attention, that's basically a given for any of these events, isn't it?



_____________________
* Personally I'm among those who disparage bumpfire stocks as a range toy for those who want to more efficiently waste ammunition, but I'm also among those who acknowledge that the most valuable characteristic any product could possibly have is the ability to cause instant apoplexy among the insufferable polypragmatoi.  Which is to say that if I had money, I'd immediately acquire two, whether I like them or not, which is hardly the point.


 

Please, stop. I need taller boots for this.

So by complete accident, I recently failed to avoid noticing this:

I try, you see, but sometimes it's just inevitable.

Gaaag.

Sometimes I'm tempted to wonder if it is even theoretically possible for this crowd to be more sanctimoniously self-absorbed and haughtily tone-deaf than they already are.  But the very minute I consider even entertaining the thought, the Weaponize Arrogance Now! crowd comes through once again, like the finely honed machine that it is.

"Can Satire Save the Republic?"  Oh, you mean from the hive mind's metastasizing singularity of abdicated intelligence masquerading as wit and self-arrogated moral superiority over an undifferentiated mass of people they utterly and totally refuse to understand on any level beyond that of a toddler at meltdown?  Well, you know, as an art form, actual satire just might be able to accomplish that--if, you know, it were done well, and pointed at the right target.

And so here they are, this professionally smarter-than-thou crowd, as usual presuming that they've got it all figured out.  Just a little more ridicule and those stupid hicks and cousin-humping rednecks will surely see the light.  It's so self-evidently obvious!  And then we'll be able to avoid all this electoral ugliness next time.

I know I shouldn't let it get to me, but JFC, so many of these people are committed to their onanistic displays of wanton superiority and intrasquad virtue-signaling.  It's bad enough that we've been burdened with the Deep State in the first place, and then with this latest buffoon to figurehead it, without having also to deal with this worse buffoonery of the overeducated useful idiot whose understanding of utopian ideology and elevated sense of self-importance vastly outpaces his understanding of real people in meatspace.

Hell, they don't even understand that the Current Occupant is an intentional buffoon, and yet from what I can tell, they crow with stunningly pathetic pride at all their oh-so-very-clever takedowns of what may be the ultimate straw man.


And man, is it annoying when I then sound (to myself at least) like I'm somehow defending that smarmy buffoon, or his "supporters", or even "the Republic" itself.  I'm not, of course.  But this hive-mind gambit--to somehow manage to be worse than all that, with new levels of sanctimonious smuggery backed up by childishly facile tone-deafness in practice--is, at least arguably, working.