Terry Pratchett, famously tuckerizing the Marquess de Queensbury as the Marquis de Fantailer said the Marquis was a small and timid man who made rules about all the places people weren’t allowed to hit him.
I confess to having less than no interest in the art of boxing. When I grew up boxing was the only sport dad would not watch on TV (oh, and bullfighting, but that’s not so much a sport.) and I never saw any point in it. I have friends who love it and weirdly I found an appreciation/interest in it in Georgette Heyer’s characters. I presume this would be the boxing popularized/made formal by the Marquess de Queensbury, and while I still have less than no interest in it, I also understand that the rules were designed to both make the spectacle of two guys slugging each other entertaining and to minimize the amount of real damage taken by the fighters (so the fight can go on.)
I like physical fights about as much as I like emotional fights (not at all) but many times found them necessary and when necessary I always felt — particularly when going up against disproportionate odds — a surge of panic at the beginning. Then I stopped thinking about it and used the panic to fuel the fighting. (At least until/unless the berserker kicked in, at which point … I have no idea, because it’s not me.) Having heard of “fighting like a cornered cat” I thought it was funny, because I always fought like that.
As someone who doesn’t like fighting, if I engage in it, I engage in it with everything I have and d*mn the rules. It’s not a spectator sport, and it’s not a gentleman’s entertainment, and the Marquess de Queensbury rules don’t apply.
Which is good, because the left always fights by street-brawlers rules, regardless.
This came up yesterday in the comments, when talking about elections and the GOP. There is a large number of the GOP who thinks it’s more important to behave like gentlemen than to win. (Even when winning doesn’t cause any particular moral conflicts. They confuse being nice with being good.)
It also came up well, in my engagement with Club 770. The number of people who’ve told me that he means nothing by it, and at worst he THINKS he’s neutral while not being was… interesting. Marquis de Fantailer would approve. We should be polite to those slugging us and– wait, what?
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. There is on our side the assumption the other side are not bad fellows, they’re just misguided. Largely and for a long time, particularly for those living in Europe, this was an easy if unprofitable illusion. Given the level of Agit-prop used by the Soviet Union, it was easy for people to just REALLY be genuinely deceived.
But this is not the seventies or the eighties. The Soviet Union imploded hard, its sewer-like innards were exposed. There’s books and heck documentaries and the history of various collectivists societies are around for everyone to look at. It is high time we presume anyone in a Che t-shirt knows he’s wearing a t-shirt with the face of a man who delighted in killing students, children and dogs, or else they’re completely and totally stupid.
It’s the same thing as let’s say keeping a blog that claims to be “neutral” in fandom issues, but which maintains a readership that is, to quote one of you in a private group “where mentally ill fandom goes to die.”
I’ve maintained a blog for five? Six? years now, with a regular and vocal audience. You don’t do that without catering to a point of view, and of course I don’t in any way, shape or form, pretend to be neutral. I’m me. My opinions might be all over the place, but they’re mine and I don’t pretend to not having any.
It would be really weird, if I claimed to be neutral and had managed to attract a following of freedom-minded rapscallions incapable of following a direct order if their lives depended on it.
And if I had genuinely done it while thinking I was “neutral” the only option would be that I was simply not very smart but had a sort of subconscious bend that shaped my beliefs.
Now, is that latter possible? Oh, heck, yes. Possible, of course.
But is it likely? More importantly, is it likely that someone in such a position wouldn’t have NOTICED the sort of following he or she attracted?
Um…. Are we talking about an alien species? Or are we still in this same world?
Do I ever give the other side the benefit of the doubt? Sure. I do think Irene Gallo was so immersed in the lies about the puppy sympathizers that she honestly thought what she was saying was completely non-controversial. Does that mean she’s stupid? Possibly, at least in the verbal arena, since she’s a visual person. But more likely she’s simply insular and insulated. (Part of the Insulata, according to the term so aptly coined by my friend Sanford Begley.)
Now do I think someone who runs a blog which attracts the same type of insular and a little insane fringe that fed Irene Gallo is doing it inadvertently? It would take a miracle.
I do think it is possible that he didn’t think through the layers of connotation and denotation involved in linking my post with that heading which finally and once and for all sent me over the edge. (It’s the Latin female thing. No, really, I’m not joking. Ask Dorothy about it sometime. You can’t see me, but I was totally slapping my right hand with the back of the left.) And it is possible I read that much into it because I’ve been following his smirking shenanigans for months. But then it’s sort of like having sand kicked in your face. It happens to everyone at the beach, particularly if your idea of a good time at the beach is reading a book. You’re down there, and kids and strangers walking by will kick sand in your face. It happens.
Now suppose though that there is a teenager near you, and he bounces a ball on the sand and sprays sand in your face. The first time, he’s all charming and says sorry, and you smile and say never mind.
But then he’s playing with his little sister with sand toys and sprays sand in your face, and he says “Sorry, I didn’t mean to do it, you can’t control where the sand goes.”
You nod, but you’re not quite so happy.
By the fifth time, when he runs by and sprays sand in your face, you’re going to think he did it on purpose, whether that one was genuine or not. And you’ll be right, or the kid has a problem with his reasoning. THAT time might have been an accident, maybe, but he’s been picking on you all day, and at the very least he didn’t CARE if he annoyed you, and probably enjoyed spraying sand in your face.
And frankly, even if that last one was an accident, you have trouble believing all of them were an accident and “oops, sorry.” As you should. Because people are not that bottomless stupid. Not adults. And they really can’t ask us to believe they are to one person infantile and brain damaged.
Again, there is something on the right side of the isle I don’t fully understand. Perhaps it comes from the fact the other side immediately accuses you of being crazy if you point out what they’re up to. And who wants to be called crazy?
But it’s time to take your foot off the cement bucket. It’s time to stop thinking all the people on the other side are just mentally defective splendid chaps. If the last six years or so haven’t shown that; if the disproportionate aggression from the other side over trying to diversify the nominees and voters of the Hugos hasn’t rang it home, then you might consider that you simply don’t want to fight, ever, and prefer servitude to freedom.
I’m not going to be mad at you in that case. Remember, I fight because I have to, but I hate it with a passion. But don’t try to hamstring everyone according to the Marquis de Fantailer. Those rules are for how to lose with style.
Me? I assume that after the last 100 years of history, anyone insisting “this time we’ll do it right” on collectivism, anyone dividing people according to arbitrary race/class/gender Marxism, anyone who is over 25 and believes all the cr*p their progressive professors spouted is an adult who chooses to be blind and who prefers to stand with the oppressors: either out of fear or out of what they hope to gain.
I don’t think the other side is full of splendid fellows and wonderful women who simply need to be told the truth. There might be a few in the mushy middle who can in fact see the light. They’re low information and too busy with life to have paid attention. But those on the left? Those active and engaged on the left?
I assume they’re adults and that if they’re kicking sand in our faces they’re doing it because they like to, and not because they’re mentally damaged. Until and unless proven otherwise.
They assume we’re monsters of avarice, cruelty and prejudice. The least I can do is assume they are capable and responsible for making those assumptions and those choices.
That is not crazy. The crazy thing would be assuming people who are older than I, well educated and well read are incapable of knowing what they’re doing or what sort of following they’ve attracted and what flag they’ve enlisted under.
No matter how much they scream otherwise.
According To Hoyt 
There are two instances when the Marque of Queensbury rules make excellent sense. 1) when it is an organized competition, not really a true fight; AKA in the ring, 2) when you are fighting a friend (it’s a guy thing) 3) when you are fighting for fun/dominance with someone new who may well become your friend.
Ok, that was three, but 2 and 3 are closely related, I just couldn’t figure out how to phrase them coherently as one.
Incidentally, none of the above applies here. Nor with very few exceptions (Lieberman would have been one, before he retired) does it apply in politics, today. In order to apply the Marque of Queensbury rules successfully, you must have an honorable foe, who is also following them.
There are rules in political fighting and they are even (to a degree; more one side than the other.) Okay — one rule: you don’t attack non-combatants: spouse*, kids, siblings, parents — all are off-limits.
This is not entirely because of any respect for integrity and/or honor. It is because such attacks usually inflict greater harm on the attacker. Even if the family member is actively campaigning it is generally counter-productive to train fire on the candidate’s son or daughter or even spouse.
There are other rules, but they are more of the “doesn’t work” than “is wrong” category. “Punching down,” for example, is not “against the rules” — it is more along the lines of starting a land war in Asia or going in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
*properly this would be spouses, recognizing multiple candidates each having a spouse but using the plural would imply a polygamy thing.
I’ll raise you two Bush daughters. Once again showing that the only standards of the left are the doubled kind.
I’ll see your Bush daughters and raise you the Palin kids. Whose mother isn’t even an elected official or running for anything at this point.
I’ve seen enough comments directed against Michelle Obama on other sites that it’s clear to me this goes both ways. Not just criticizing speeches or actions (which is fair) but things like calling her a Klingon or Wookiee.
When I see People magazine running hit pieces on our esteemed First Lady I will concede your point.
Or even any of the recognized pundits of the Right? Well, maybe Michael Savage, but percentage-wise, the Left has a FAR higher instance of such things.
I’m not disputing that… I’m just saying it’s not completely one-sided.
And it wouldn’t be, ever, because there are always outliers more or less loosely connected to any large group. The thing is, the attacks coming from the Left are NOT limited to their fringe, but come from the main body and often the leadership. Then the MSM celebrates the ones coming from the Left, and attacks those that they can dredge up on the Right, even if they are a blogger with five regular followers.
Niven’s Law: “There is no cause so right that it won’t attract fuggheads.”
Burkhead’s Corollary “If you don’t think your cause has fuggheads, that’s because you’re the fugghead.” 😉
It’s only because the left has been doing it for so long, and so vehemently, that some have decided turnabout is fair play.
Also, Michelle thinks she is an elected official, and does things like she was an elected official, therefore, she really is fair game for any and all attacks.
There is also the whole thing about spending the taxpayers’ dimes like there is nothing better to spend them on — as noted at Instapundit by Elizabeth Price Foley:
OBAMA GALS LIVIN’ LARGE: An upcoming vacation to Italy and London by Michelle Obama and her two daughters is estimated to cost taxpayers about $600,000–for airfare and lodging alone. The estimated tab does not include the costs of security, staff, other transportation and food. My, my–that is quite a trip. Is this what Obama meant when he said we ought to spread the wealth around?
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/208800/
When you take my money at gunpoint and piss it away on the high life, you can d-well bet I can say something about it.
Part of the distinction is that when someone on the Right gets caught gong all Sidney Blumenthal or Bob Packwood they get denounced, ostracized and excommunicated. When Nancy Pelosi or Harry “It Worked, Didn’t It?” Reid says something hateful the MSM doesn’t run around demanding every other leading Republican agree or denounce it.
The only recent exception to this that I can think of is Anthony Weiner.
Go back and look at how many defended him or, at a minimum, failed to condemn him until the writing on the wall was clear.
Nobody asked Hillary her opinion of how her chief aide’s husband was behaving, did they? Anybody think they would be as circumspect about asking any Republican candidate such questions in similar circumstance?
Of course it’s not. ‘There is not cause so noble that it won’t attract fuggheads.’
And some people are genuinely blind to the contradictions in their own thought, like the ‘non-racist libertarians’ who see the American Civil War as a horrendous ‘War of Northern Aggression’, and suggest that the preferred outcome of the political conflict of the 1850s and ’60s would have been to let white people KEEP ENSLAVING black people, until it stopped being profitable. They genuinely think that that position is the proper one for defenders of human rights.
We can only be responsible for our own conduct and beliefs.
I object strenuously to your inference that the pro big government, fascist, Michael Savage is on the right.
Well… OK. But he gets lumped in with us anyhow.
I am not sure about the big government part, but definitely someone who will get all pissy and put out a call to his listeners to pester England’s government because they won’t let him in their country is not really firing on all barrels.
Full disclosure, I haven’t listened to him for more than thirty seconds in years, and probably never for more than twenty minutes at a time, even the first few times I heard him. Every time I listen to him, he is either talking about being drunk the night before (really rather boring talk radio, I mean he doesn’t even ever have any good drunk stories) or complaining about how the government should outlaw this, or stop that.
Mrs 0bama is not an non-combatant. The kids are, and they for the most part try to stay out of the firing lane (and the few times I see them in news they look somewhat ill at ease in the political world, but do look to enjoy the many vacations). The Mrs on the other hand has waded into the fray acting hateful and swinging low blows from day one. That some are swinging back in kind is to be expected.
Yes, but we should go after what she says and does, not call her a Klingon because she has arm muscles.
I have heard she has a habit of making unfortunate fashion choices.
Criticizing the First Lady’s fashion sense is probably the exception. “What is Laura Bush wearing” was certainly news worthy for the fashion columnists. It’s what they do. Someone or other got fired for questioning what Obama’s daughters were wearing. I didn’t think it was that bad, (either the comment or what they were wearing), but apparently the criticism was an outrage. I *do* wish that people would lay off the Obama kids. It’s not their fault, no matter what it is. Chelsea Clinton, on the other hand, is fully adult and accountable for herself at this point.
Remember the outraged reaction from the Left when the Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize winning style editor critiqued the way Chief justice Roberts’ kids were dressed?
Me neither.
She gats called that because she acts like one. Me, I am not actually one who goes out of their way to call her names but I really cannot come to care if others do. I seriously doubt she would ever call out anyone calling Palin or Fiorina the fine selection of slanders hurled at them from her side of the political spectrum, and what comments she has ever made were of the non-apology style.
What Mr. Wilde is referring to is the habit of “right wing” idiots to attack liberal women on the basis of the way they look, including making fun of Hilliary because of her pant suits (and some even less fortunate fashion choices) instead of attacking their politics or behavior.
Now, if you wanted to criticize M. Obama for anti-american statements, or for being profligate with our money, have at it. But Mr. Wilde’s statement specifically said “…a Klingon because she has arm muscles.”
with Clinton it is more “I hate her politicas, and look at the ridiculous pant suits she wears”, and by the way, She makes use of her flipping suits by selling a t-shirt with a simulated pant suit on them in the manner of those Tuxedo T-shirts.
If you make a ridiculous suit your trademark (or should that be TradeMarx?) it too is open season for ridicule.
Mrs 0bama has complained about folks “stereotyping” her as an angry black woman, but even in leftoid biased stories she tends to scowl, be grumpy (I think the woman is grumpier than I am!) and for the most part those folks who slam her for looks and attitude are also deep into slamming the hatred of country and her commie tendencies as well. She earned the moniker by doing a fair impression of some of the characters on Start Trek. With facial expression far more than her arms.
The Wookie thing might be because she is a bit tall, but really to me it calls to mind her constant roaring about stuff. Otherwise I really don’t see that one.
Maybe a hairdo or something.
Now, should we go into why folks call Boehner an Oompa Loompa? Or as Sooper Mexy called him a Dorito (not a natural color)
Thanks… I had actually gone back and reread my comments to see if I might have left the qualifier out. I thought I was making a pretty noncontroversial point about attacking things of substance.
I think one blog I read, HotAir, puts comments with “Klingon” (maybe it’s “Wookiee”, I don’t remember for sure) into moderation, it was used so much.. and I don’t think HotAir is particularly fringe.
And then there was Hootchie-Hoop-Gate.
But we can be honest, can’t we? Have we NOT heard all about Rand Paul’s hair? Of course we have.
This UTTERLY pisses me off about the right (I expect the left to be shallow, vain, stupid and hypocritical), why do they have to attack the way Michelle O, or H. Clinton LOOK like when they SHOULD be focusing on their politics and philosophies, and in Clinton’s case her utter corruption.
But no, we have to look like drooling f*king highschool boys watching the girls between classes.
Well, I have made fun of Malia’s name. I figure it is legitimate to say that it sounds like an interesting choice for someone who purports to be legally trained. Pater Maliae being the real target, not the girl.
ah, but that is not the daughters fault and her name was inflicted on her by those parental units, so really you are slamming them.
Actually, Malia is a perfectly normal name in a lot of places (I think it’s Hawaii and the Philippines, but obviously Shadow would know better about one of those), so it’s actually one of the more normal things about that family.
She does the bored teen thing as well as anyone too.
It is funny for a lawyer to choose that name. See, lawyers are supposed to have some exposure to Latin.
If I’m not completely screwed up, which is quite possible, Malia is a variation of the Latin word for evil. Mala is evil, and where I may be in error is whether the -i- changes it into Evil. If Malia really does mean Evil, it would mean that Barack could be described as the father of Evil, which would seem to be an unfortunate coincidence.
It makes Obama look like he isn’t the most intellectually astute lawyer I’ve ever seen.
I was told one time that Malia is a common name in Hawaii (the equivalent of Mary, I think?), so the name probably comes from his time living there.
Yup. Once when my grandmother brought back coloring books from her trip to Hawaii, we girls were very pleased that it told us all what our names were in Hawaiian. Mine was Malia.
http://latindictionary.wikidot.com/adjective:malus
I’m relying on the ‘Words’ electronic dictionary of the late William Whitaker.
It lists malia for both the mala that means evil and the mala that means cheek/jaw.
It also says stuff about suffixes that I don’t really understand.
i Suffix
-ness, -es, makes abstract noun
i Suffix
art or craft done by the person (makes abstract noun); office of, -ship
So it is pretty clear I don’t have the foundation in Latin to figure out what is going on. I suspect I came to a wrong conclusion last time I looked Malia up.
Unexpectedly, there appears to be a word that also means misfortune, disaster, calamity, plague. This is kinda appropriate because of those individual incidents during the Obama administration which happened purely by chance, could have happened to anyone, and are all Bush’s fault besides.
Obama of course isn’t the most intellectually-astute lawyer we’ve ever seen. He claimed to be a Constitutional scholar, yet repeatedly saw laws and policies stymied because he couldnt figure out how to present them in Constitutional terms. He seems to imagine that being President means that he’s dictator. He could have accomplished much more, even much more of his evil ends, had he understood the powers of the American Presidency, instead of acting as if he were some sort of Third World despot and then being perpetually-frustrated when he was unable to simply shove his opponents aside.
I think the reason he sealed his educational records is simply that they show he’s not very bright.
They learned their lessons with Gore and Kerry, who were supposed to be far smarter than stupid GWB, but both had lower GPAs than the low end of average GWB (and of course AlGore had dropped out). They are also hiding (or hiding the lack of) his Thesis. The man was so brilliant no one recalls him at one college, and at the second, he was an editor who it seems never edited or wrote anything, He fully knows the COTUS, but he hates everthing it stands for (too full of those “Negative Rights” that say what gov’t can’t do to you)
Not very bright and spectacularly maleducated. I think grievance studies this and Marxist history that comprised most of his “learning.”
I’m not saying that he doesn’t “know” the U.S. Constitution. I’m saying that he doesn’t seem to grasp how it would operate to personally check HIM from achieving what he wanted. What’s more, he seemed unable to apply historical lessons to get what he wanted — he had a clear majority in both houses of Congress from 2009-2011, but he was unable to set his priorities and politic to get his laws passed. Instead, he got his policies in as Executive Orders, a strategy with two defects: (1) it’s highly vulnerable to Constitutional challenge, since many of his Orders go against laws and touch directly on Constitutional liberties, and (2) the next President can simply revoke his Orders, meaning that his “legacy” is built on sand.
It’s much harder to repeal laws.
“ … he doesn’t seem to grasp how it would operate to personally check HIM from achieving what he wanted.”
He sees those checks as bugs, not features.
He likely figure that an executive order suffices to establish facts on the ground and develop an entrenched interest group which can be counted on to squawk (and have its squawk resonate in the MSM) which would exact an intolerable political cost for any revocation of those orders.
Look at his efforts to game the SCOTUS and GOP on the non-legal revision of the Affordable Care Act.
ALL proglodyte effort is bent upon empowering the bureaucracies, their most reliable least restrained agencies. Obama has simply attained a more aggressive hack of the system than was previously imagined possible.
It’s really, really easy to revoke an Executive Order. It’s even easier than making the order in the first place. There is no possibility of unconstitutionality, hence no threat from the Supreme Court. Congress can pass the former Executive Order into law, but absent a two-thirds majority, the President can veto it. And there’s a good chance that the next US President will have been elected in part with the mandate to revoke Obama’s Executive Orders.
There’s a reason why FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society both relied on actual legislation. Woodrow WIlson tried to effect long-term change by Executive Order, and it failed: when he died, his Executive Orders were superseded by later ones, or simply allowed to lapse.
I mean, yes, there’ll be lots of “squawking,” but what in the end does squawking, unaccompanied by actual power, accomplish? All it takes is a firm Republican President, willing to enforce the laws and ignore noisy malcontents save in as they break those laws (and, then, punish rather than yield to the law-breakers.
Observe Reagan and the Air Traffic Controllers for how to do it. They squawked and squawked — but they didn’t get their jobs back, now did they?
“It’s really, really easy to revoke an Executive Order… All it takes is a firm Republican President … ”
Oh, is that what it takes? I thought it would be something easy to find, like a unicorn or an honest politician.
We had a firm Republican President 35 years ago.
I will stipulate Reagan was a firm conservative president.
I will stipulate Coolidge was a firm conservative president.
I will stipulate Lincoln was a firm conservative president.
I will stipulate Taft & Harding may have been firm conservative presidents.
That leaves us:
Abraham Lincoln (1861–1865)Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877)
Rutherford B. Hayes (1877–1881)
James A. Garfield (1881)
Chester A. Arthur (1881–1885)
Benjamin Harrison (1889–1893)
William McKinley (1897–1901)
Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909)
William Howard Taft (1909–1913)Warren G. Harding (1921–1923)Calvin Coolidge (1923–1929)Herbert Hoover (1929–1933)
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961)
Richard Nixon (1969–1974)
Gerald Ford (1974–1977)
Ronald Reagan (1981–1989)George H. W. Bush (1989–1993)
George W. Bush (2001–2009)
That is three “yes” and two maybe out of seventeen?
My confidence is not inspired.
OTOH, the worst Republican is still bound to be better than any Democrat since Grover Cleveland.
Notice also that FDR deliberately made the Social Security System a mess so as to make it harder to unravel. See e.g. Thinking in Time for an extended discussion of history and policy.
The example I gave was of Ronald Reagan. And what he did was actually more politically-difficult than revoking a predecessors Executive Order.
“If it weren’t for low class/She’d have no class at all.”
(to the tune of “Born under a bad sign”)
the “Gloom, Despair, and Agony on me” song from Hee Haw is stuck in my head for some reason.
Heh. With me, some days it’s “Into the void” by Black Sabbath (about an ark-ship leaving an Earth become uninhabitable). Not many songs spark an entire sub genre of music (doom metal).
for me, lately it has been “Privateering”, and “So Far From The Clyde” from Knopfler, and “Blood Buzz Ohio” by The National,
No reason, they just seem to stick there lately
A pleasure to become acquainted with another aficionado of Knopfler’s solo work. For some reason,
… is what has been playing in my brain’s background music.
My Dad likes some of his stuff too. He’s not a rock fan at all but he saw the stuff he did with Chet Atkins and was impressed.
Xenophobe!
As I said regarding the Clinton 1992 campaign, you cannot have it both ways. You cannot present the spouse (or other individual) as an asset on your side and then expect them to be off limits from the other side.
You put them in play on the field, they’re legitimately subject to attack.
If Michelle Obama wants to make policy decisions, or campaign for her own programs, she is indicating that she views herself as a government official (even if she technically isn’t) therefore she is fair game.
Todd Palin on the other hand, never tried to make policy decisions, and barely appeared on his wife’s campaign trail, he definitely wasn’t pushing his own agenda.
However, you can make the normally “non-combatant” family members into valid targets if the candidate pulls them into it. Case in point the 1992 election. Clinton tried to run a “you get two for one” argument with him and his wife, then objected when Hillary’s politics then came under attack.
Sorry, Bill. You can’t have it both ways.
That rule worked out pretty well for Al Gore’s junkie punk and Howard Dean’s little burglar. For Trig Palin, not so much. Wonder what the difference was?
Ah, but left leaning politicians have become experts at keeping themselves above the dirty details of the process while their agents fling dung by the truckload. The slurs and attacks against Sarah Palin’s entire family are the perfect example. And in fairness a lot of that was not necessarily from the left at all, but may have originated with sore losers on her own side of the fence.
That is because the MSM has abandoned its role as independent referee in favor of partisan hacks, all while maintaining the guise of neutrality. The solution to that is not to accept their disguise (something Newt Gingrich demonstrated in the 2012 primaries) but to demand they enforce the rules impartially, as Larry Bird did when managing Indiana’s Pacers against Michael Jordan.
Please watch this instructional documentary and learn.
Ok, hold it. The MSM NEVER HAD a role as independent referee. Thay may claim to have had, but it is and always has been a lie. And one that has served them singularly well. If I had a tenth of the money and time the Conservative Right has spent on complianing about “Media Bias” instead of simply accepting that all media has always been biased and buying their own, I would be a very wealthy man and have at least a another century if life ahead of me.
Don’t conceed that the Media have a referee’s role. Shout that they are, and always have been, partisans, and back OURS.
I agree. Note how much good Fox News has done, simply by existing and acting as an alternative to the leftist MSM’s stories. Imagine if there were more such channels — some to the right of Fox. The claim of the leftist channels to be authoritative would look even more ridiculous.
There are two rules in Politics
1) win
2) Never violate Machiavelli’s First Rule : Never do someone a “minor” injury
I think you’ve hit the head–a lot of us hold out hope of others becoming friends. If not the one we’re directly fighting, then one of the people watching.
Don’t forget that the reason they are ‘fighting’ you is because, unlike the real enemies to their joyous utopia, you don’t hurt and behead them.
And sooner or later, that incentive system is going to have its’ inevitable effect.
— They assume we’re monsters of avarice, cruelty and prejudice. —
Actually, they know full well that that’s not the case. It’s merely a dilute version of your earlier observation:
— I don’t think the other side is full of splendid fellows and wonderful women who simply need to be told the truth. —
…to think they’re insane, deluded, or otherwise rationally hobbled. They know precisely what they’re doing, they do it with malice aforethought, and they must be punished for it in whatever legal ways are available to us. Not to punish them constitutes a positive reinforcement of their tactics.
Another observation I have made in the past is that our enemies often not only know that we don’t play by the same “rulebook” as they do, they count on it. Those among the Jihadi’s who have even a ghost of a clue know that if we were really as bad as they make out, well, it would be easier to pray toward Mecca–just face the blue glow.
Apropos of nothing, I am reminded of a scene in an old Fantastic Four comment. Sue Storm as the Invisible Girl (I think this was before she started calling herself the Invisible Woman) facing Dr. Doom. “Doom, do you have any idea how dangerous my force fields would be if I decided to play by your rules?”
That’s us all over.
And this would be why they hate and fear Vox Day above all others: because he does play by their rules.
I think the same thing is true in the ‘big media’ world about Ann Coulter. More than ‘offensive’, she is using their rules too.
That is the special joy of reading Mencken; he played for keeps, although he was capable of admiring the qualities of his foes (read his eulogy for Bryan, whose abilities as a speaker Mencken genuinely admired). I disagree with him on points, and the way German-Americans were treated in WWI made him slow on the uptake about WWII, but he could WRITE, and he hit hard.
If we played by their rules the earth would be scorched. But playing by the Devil’s rules would be to concede defeat — what we fight for is ordered liberty, constrained government, rational argument over insanity.
Batman does not become the Joker, Superman does not accept the values of Luthor, Spiderman does not become Doc Octopus.
And yeah, Sue’s force fields could be devastating — imagine her putting a small force bubble in Doom’s carotid artery. Of course, that is what the whole Dark Phoenix saga was exploring, wasn’t it?
(Forces comic nerd persona back into its box, puts aside whip and chair.)
Spiderman does not become Doc Octopus.
No… but Doc Octopus may become Spider-Man. For a while.
(MAN, I hated that Superior Spider-Man idea.)
(You may interpret this as laying out bait for the comic nerd persona.)
Heh. Why do you think I laid out that noose on the ground?
I am not sure what “news” made me happier to have quit a forty-year comic habit, but that story-line (and the death of Steve Rogers, and Thor loses his cojones and …)
Oh shit, did they kill Steve Rogers off? Last I saw he was a 90-year-old man again.
He was killed after he surrendered himself (while in handcuffs!) at the end of Civil War. He was reborn some time later.
The whole idea of opposing Iron Man and Captain America was stupid from the get-go, on the cause they chose. But the storyline was made of strawmen anyway.
It was an attempt to be “edgy” and “relevant” (yeah Bob, that’s why I read comics — their relevance) and a cautionary warning about our times. Same way they warned about the potential hazards of idolization of a charismatic political figure in the White House.
Yeah if you really want to tick off a liberal comic book fan, then relate the Civil War Storyline to them as a second amendment argument.
Hijinks will ensue.
And possibly splodey heads.
Oh, that. Years ago. Now he’s part of Marvel’s big push for social justice. The Falcon became Cap when Steve Rogers got aged somehow (brutha takes a white senior citizen’s job) and the Black Panther got his entire Kingdom massacred conspiring with a bunch of really smart white guys = Racial Sensitivity.
I think they did it at the end of Civil War, but that was after I stopped buying comics.
(Leaves aside Luthor and Doc Ock because they’re not the same kind of spree killer that the Joker is. The Joker is a much better metaphor.) How many people have been killed because Batman refuses to kill? How many people has the Joker killed because of Batman’s refusal (and “the system”–it’s not entirely Batman’s fault) to finally end the Joker threat?
Likewise, how long would WWII have lasted, leading to how many deaths if we’d played “patty cake” with them like we’ve tended to do in the Middle East? Similarly, could it not be that the bloodshed continues precisely because we’ve been playing “patty cake”?
Unless you’re an active pacifist there’s already an aspect of “playing by the Devil’s rules” the question really is “how far to go”?
Yes, we generally favor “fighting fair” but when you’re in a knife fight in an alley “fair” takes on a whole new meaning compared to in a sanctioned boxing match. And when someone tries to bring knives and broken bottles in the boxing ring there is no referee to stop him.
As for that “concede defeat” I don’t buy it. If we end up having to do “bad things” in order to win, we can come back from that. If, by not doing those things, we lose and the other side wins, we don’t come back from that for a long time if ever. In that knife fight in an alley, if you pick up a broken bottle and and slash the guy’s throat, that’s traumatic. You might need counseling to deal with the psychological trauma. If, instead, you stick with the Marquis of Queensbury rules and he carves out your spleen, then it’s over. Oh Vee Ee Are, over.
“Death was the equation. Survival, existence, must cancel out programming.”
“That’s it, Roc. Logic.”
Robot Chicken of all places made that point in a skit combining Batman with bits of the Green Mile – “Joker, for 3245 counts of murder, and many other counts that frankly seem unimportant next to the murders, the court sentences you to death.”
Or in the new Daredevil, when he beats some info out of a thug he tells DD to kill him, because the bad guys will kill him *and* everyone he cares about.
When DD refuses the thug calls him a coward.
Thing of it is, he has a point. At what point is Batman responsible for the continued crines of Joker, at least partially?
That’s an interesting question. Batman refuses to kill, but hey, what the hell is wrong with Gotham’s courts when THEY don’t execute Joker and just stash him in Arkham repeatedly?
Is it Batman’s responsibility to do that as a barely-tolerated vigilante when the actual justice system A) refuses to do it, and B) will probably pursue him for doing it for them?
“Not guilty by reason of insanity” of course.
That’s why when I brought it up, I laid a large part of the blame on “the system”. But a large part of Batman’s raison d’etre (sp?) is that he acts where “the system” fails so he’s not completely guiltless in the matter.
Of course the real reason is that The Joker is just too good a villain so the writers keep bringing him back. It’s their fault. 😉
True that. In fact, Joker *was* killed in his first appearance, only to have the mag’s editor shriek something along the lines of “ARE YOU AS CRAZY AS HE IS?” and force Kane/Finger to do a small corner panel saying that he wasn’t actually dead.
It’s one of the reasons why I admire what I’ve read of Terry Pratchitt’s Discworld. “Pray that a bad man has you cornered. He’ll give you a chance while he’s enjoying it; a good man will just finish the job.” (paraphrasing) And that does become something of a weakness as time goes on, and in a story where the question is actually raised on-panel, rather than just by fans, it becomes very difficult indeed to answer in a satisfying fashion.
Except of course he does not qualify for an insanity defense. Not by any means. He knows what he is doing, he knows it is against the law, and he chooses to do it.
I recommend The Law of Superheroes by James Daily and Ryan Davidson for anyone interested in the details.
Mm. Maybe. “Insanity” can be complicated. The tradition from old court dramas was “not knowing right from wrong” but other things can apply as well including “impulse powerless to control.” And, of course, I think we can take it as a given that law in the DC Universe is different from what it is in ours. If nothing else the law would have to adapt to the existence of real super-powered people. (That, I think, is one of the great flaws of DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths–with someone like Superman, or Superboy depending on version, as the first super hero, the law would have to adapt to cope. Start with someone like Sandman–at least I think that’s who was “first” in the Post Crisis world–and you don’t have that impetus to change; the results should have been more like the “golden age” timeframe for the Watchmen universe).
OTOH, there have been plenty of times in the DC universe when the Joker was not in an asylum but sentenced to prison. OTGH, the ones I remember where that’s the case, including one from the collection “The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told”, were when Batman was in one of the “lighter” phases and the Joker was more robbery oriented than themed spree killing. I can’t recall offhand any of the “darker” periods where the Joker was treated as “criminal” rather than “insane” by the courts.
Very few jurisdictions allow “irresistible impulse” as a form of insanity defense, and anyway, the Joker openly admits that his impulse is not irresistible.
But, as is demonstrated, his crazy does qualify for the insanity defense in Gotham.
Very few jurisdictions would allow a masked man, known only by a pseudonym, to testify in court but through much of his history (depending on which retcon is in force at any given time) Batman and other superheroes have been able to do so.
Within the context of the story and the fictional universe, that defense works. It’s part of the premise, part of the excuse that allows the writers to keep bringing him back.
The problem comes in that given that premise, and given Joker’s long history of escapes to kill again and again, somebody not necessarily Batman, but somebody, ought to have decided that the Joker should be “shot while trying to escape.”
I can accept that the laws are different. It’s the human factor I stumble on. 😉
And we get into the most interesting discussions here. 😉
Especially when Joker admits that he’s not going to take on the IRS. Batman yes, the IRS no. [Wink]
What gets me about the whole Joker thing is, even if the Gotham courts won’t execute the silly bastard, why hasn’t some other Power. That world is documentably knee deep in Blak Ops groups. Why hasn’t somebody sanctioned the Clown? Or, what’s wromg with the other DC villians? Joker HAS to be a serious problem for anyone trying to make a crooked living in Gotham, or North America for that matter.
But in that world working for Lexcorp is seen as a resonable decision.
“You make a hobby out of annoying a being who can penetrate battleship armor with his fists OR his glare? And you want me to work for you? Excuse me, I think I’ll go play on the freeway. It’ll hurt less, and there might be something left to bury.”
Well, to be “fair” the Luthor of Lexcorp almost always had “cut-outs” when he tried to take down Superman.
Officially nobody currently associated with him and Lexcorp tried to kill Superman.
Now I believe Luthor had “black operations” within Lexcorp involved in projects that might allow him to take down Superman but the people involved were carefully chosen.
The average individual within Lexcorp (even close to Lex’s level) didn’t know that Luthor was trying to take down Superman.
Most knew that he didn’t like Superman, but the idea that Luthor wanted to kill Superman wasn’t something they’d know.
Mind you, DC has changed things around since I last read their comics.
Are you kidding? I bet the Lexcorp HR department screened to ensure nobody who read comics was hired.
It does make one wonder about their employee screening process, doesn’t it? I wonder what their applicant’s aptitude tests looked for?
The ends justify the means.
[ ] Agree [ ] Disagree [ ] It depends
With great power comes great privilege.
[ ] Agree [ ] Disagree [ ] It depends
Those who can’t keep their sh-t together need adult diapers.
[ ] Agree [ ] Disagree [ ] It depends
Who in the DC “universe” has read DC Comics? [Very Very Very Big Kidding Grin]
I looked it up in the Kindle store and noticed that the writer of Wearing The Cape recommends it. [Smile]
Writing the Cape was easily one of the best superhero novels I’ve read, too! (And suddenly the source of the very sensible, logical mentions of superheroes vs. law used in that series is clear, too!)
Batman killing would also be the “break the character” point– like the article Sarah did a few weeks back.
There’s some things he cannot do. Being detective, judge, jury and executioner is one of them.
He’s perfectly willing to plan to kill his friends (ie, all the anti-Superman stuff), so I’m not sure why he won’t plan to kill the enemies of mankind.
He has the goal of stopping people long enough for them to be dealt with– and if he had to actually do it, he’d probably break himself doing it, too.
In Superman’s case, the distance between “stopping” and “killing” may not be detectable.
Yep.
Even if you could “stop” an evil Superman without killing him, how do you keep the evil Superman imprisoned?
Who says Supes & Bats are friends? Sure, Batman hangs out with Supes but that doesn’t make them friends. Batman is probably following the dictum to keep your friends close and your enemies closer; his “friendship” with Superman is likely no more genuine that the friendship his alter-ego “Matches Malone” has with the thugs and petty crooks of the Gotham underworld.
Confining Superman by DC rules means either temporal suspension or Phantom Zone.
For a serious discussion of superheroes and killing.
For a comical discussion of law and order in comics. (highly recommended)
That’s all I’ll bother saying. 😉
There’s also the problem of how governments would view vigilantes routinely executing people (criminal or otherwise).
Like it or not, governments correctly view that killing people (save in self-defense) is to be done by governments not by private citizens.
If Batman or Superman were to start executing people, then the governments would believe that they would have to take action against these “costumed vigilantes”.
To make things more complicated, Superman and Batman often act as Agents of the State. That is, the government requests their assistance.
If Superman or Batman, while assisting the government (especially against criminals) executes somebody, then the Law (and the Courts) would see it in the same way that they would see a regular policeman doing so.
There could be major legal problems for the government people who had requested Superman’s or Batman’s assistance.
Of course, if Superman is requested to assist in a military matter, then his actions fall under “rules of warfare”.
The blunt fact of the matter is that unless the government succeeded in recruiting enough superheroes to work for them, their choices may be vigilantes or chaos. And superheroes’ uniqueness and powers makes it harder to recruit than ordinary folks.
In the “Wearing The Cape” universe, Super-heroes generally belong to “Disaster Recovery Teams” with a side-line of assisting governments in dealing with “super criminals”.
The governments and the teams frown on super-powered vigilantes operating “outside of the law”.
If you’re going to “fight crime”, either you work with the police (as a consultant) or you are a member of the police forces.
Of course, many super beings have joined the military as “special forces” and other federal government “protection details”.
There are also super-beings that don’t go either super-hero or super-villain.
One character is a full-time family man and businessman while being on “reserve status” with one of the Chicago teams.
One gentleman gain flight power when his parachute failed while sky-diving. He was a law student and decided to specialize in Super-hero law. While he’s not a “super-hero”, he’s a lawyer associated with the Chicago teams. He’s nick-named “Legal Eagle”. [Smile]
In the Wearing the Cape series, that’s exactly the situation. No conventional police or military can mount an effective defense against superhuman opponents. In the climax of the first book, less than a hundred supervillains are mopping the floor with an armored division. The only weapons the government has that can deal with them would be impossible to use in an urban environment that you weren’t prepared to sacrifice.
The fact that most supers are prepared by cultural conditioning to act for civil society is the only thing that is stopping the chaos. Which is why the whole X-Men storyline never made much sense.
Nod and in that fight, the President survives until the Teams arrive because there were supers in her protection detail as well as some surviving military supers.
Of course, the Terrorists were led by a fanatic version of Superman, more powerful than most of his super “classification”.
On the other hand, in Wearing the Cape, there are a large number of superhumans. Chicago has several teams of them, for instance. that increase the odds of being able to recruit.
Well, and in the Wearing the Cape ‘verse, the cultural condition of superheroes/comic books that existed before the Event meant that the first superheroes (specifically, Atlas) were savvy enough to realize that people would freak out if an otherwise ‘normal’ person picked up a plane/moved a fallen building/etc, and so cobbled together a quick cape-and-mask with the idea that people would see it and think ‘superhero.’ And it worked. Which is why, in the ‘present day’ of the book series, most of the various superhero teams spend a good deal of time on marketing and PR–because it helps offset the still-present tendency of humans to want to freak out in the presence of someone with powers. In fact, it seems to me that one of the driving, escalating tensions of the series is the fact that, hard on the heels of a few too many superpower-caused catastrophes, the goodwill marketing/PR is not able to keep up in the face of growing fear of superpowered humans…
(Also a note: the President not only survived in part because of the supers on her security team, but I gather also–at least in part–because she herself is a super. Though the author has always been a little vague on Touches-Clouds’ abilities, other than she can fly, so perhaps she wasn’t able to contribute materially to her defense…?)
I did like the mentions of how ‘real world’ law adapted to deal with superheroes, and the fact that they still can’t keep everyone happy about it. There are always a lot of protesters, for example, who really dislike the fact that a superhero can maintain their mask/secret identity–if they have one–while testifying in a court room. And, though as a reader I sympathize with the heroes more than not, I can understand their viewpoint. On the other hand, a challenge in the courtroom on this front led to a very funny demonstration that yes, in fact, the superhero testifying WAS the superhero she claimed to be.
Quoting from the Glossary of “Small Town Heroes”.
President Touches Clouds: The day of The Event Jennifer Touches Clouds manifested an A Class Aeriokinetic-Type breakthrough, enabling her to generate and control air currents strong enough to allow her to fly and put out fires.
End Quote
IMO while she would able to support her Presidential Protection Detail, during that fight she was the “Prime” target so her Detail would attempt to keep her out of the “Front Line” of battle.
Still, it was a battle against supers who were able to kill several of the Top Superheroes.
She was probably active in the fight but in a defensive mode not an offensive mode.
Ahhh, thanks. I haven’t actually finished Small Town Heroes yet. 🙂
The problem with that is simple: killing in defense of self or others is not an execution. It is a justifiable homicide, not an execution.
True, but there is a difference between Batman killing Joker when Joker is trying to kill him or when Joker threatens to kill others, and Batman killing Joker to prevent future murders by Joker.
With somebody like Joker, the difference can seem small since in Comic Book Land prison is extremely easy to escape but the Real World is different.
In the Real World, Joker would have a much harder time of escaping prison and if he committed his crimes in Texas, he would be quickly executed. Note, I doubt that the Insanity Defense would work for Joker.
When the probabilities start approaching 100% that someone will be killed if he stays alive… I find the argument unpersuasive.
And if the Joker lived in Texas, Mr. and Mrs. Wayne would have been able to defend themselves in that alley
Batman, after punching a goon too hard:
“Uh, remember Robin, he was dead when we found him, right?”
Well, and let’s remember that in Comic Book Land (like much of Fiction-Land) humans are a good deal harder to kill than they are in real life…at least in terms of head injuries, heh. (Or when it’s narratively convenient to die.)
Yes. We learn that, “The ends do not justify the means,” but I think there is a finesse there that many people do not recognize, or else deny. One needs to weigh the ends against the means, to determine whether the statement is true or not.
If the Ends are getting a cookie, and the Means are lying, then clearly the Ends do not justify the Means. However, if the Ends are purely survival, what level of evil must the Means be before they are not justified?
Exactly. The “ends don’t justify the means” and “you become just as bad” arguments are what the gun grabbers use to claim that armed self defense is wrong. Most rational people do, however, understand that the end of going home safely does justify the means of shooting someone COM until they stop presenting a threat. (Whereas the end of going through somebody’s pockets for money and valuables does not.)
The “means” I usually shoot for is “don’t start none, won’t be none, but start something an I will do whatever it takes to makes sure I’m the one who goes home safely to my wife and family” generally works for me.
People who declaim the “ends don’t justify the means” usually don’t properly understand what those ends and means are.
I don’t so much care about your stealing my property — that is insured. What pisses me off is your disrespecting the fact that it is my property and you have no right to it. I am defending my right to hold property without fear of its being taken.
That property is merely the tangible expression of a right (ends) and shooting your shiftless a@@ is merely me using a language your empty effing head can comprehend (means.)
No, the gun-grabbers are trying to get you to buy into the notion that the means: guns, are bad. They’re not.
The means justify the ends.
There’s actually a rather decent, well established pile of theology about this– and it’s really annoying once you get into it, because any time a body gets going, people want to grab quick quotes out of it on the assumption that they understand.
About the best part that can be pulled out without losing content is that you cannot do evil that good may come of it, coupled with the requirement that the results of your actions be weighed for good-or-evil.
This results in things like where I’ve pointed out that I am not allowed to attempt to kill someone– but I can take deadly force level actions, where I’m almost positive he will be killed, to stop him.
The issue is complex enough that it takes an entire framework to talk about usefully.
The issue is complex enough that it takes an entire framework to talk about usefully.
Oh, absolutely. The complexity can become truly immense when you try to factor in more than a very small number of people.
The theological argument gets more/less interesting depending on the religion in question too.
Take Mormonism – in the Book of Mormon Nephi (the first one) is flat out told by God to kill a man passed out drunk at his feet. The man in question had tried to kill him and his brothers repeatedly, and had succeeded in stealing almost all of their possessions. Even then it was only presented as justified because there was no other way to get the records they had been sent for, (after he kills Laban he takes his clothing and bluffs his way into the treasury by pretending to be him and gets essentially a 600 BC equivalent of the Bible) and without the records none of their descendants would have what they needed to follow the commandments.
The discussion about the validity of being ordered by God to kill is, of course, incredibly thorny and fraught with troubling questions. That this particular instance involves a man who had tried to murder them repeatedly doesn’t even remove most of the problem, since he wasn’t in that moment a threat. (I suppose the most common argument I see, and it is only an argument because there isn’t really any thing else definitive to go on is that if Nephi had simply stripped the unconscious Laban of clothing and left him there he would have pursued them into the desert and caught them. That only holds water if you know ahead of time that is what would happen, but that just brings us back to God commanding stuff because of his greater knowledge.)
There are even assassinations recorded – during a long nasty war one of the Nephite captains, after the day’s battle, (which he won) sneaks into the enemy camp and kills their leader, then gets his army up early and ready to fight. This ends with their enemies retreating.
Is it right then to assassinate a leader that is getting his own people (and the other side) killed by riling them up?
So much of this revolves on what the person knows. Going back to Batman, he wouldn’t be at fault the first few times he caught the Joker, but at some point he has to recognize that there really isn’t any way to keep the Joker locked up and the public safe from him, that the system will never be able to handle someone like him.
“Is it right then to assassinate a leader that is getting his own people (and the other side) killed by riling them up?”
The example here seems to go under “It’s war. While there is such a thing as murder in war, this doesn’t qualify, as the dead men was an enemy combatant who had not been taken prisoner..” Now, if they weren’t at war, and you were dealing with an aggressive autocrat, then the questions begin.
Batman is already taking on a lot of authority he isn’t entitled to because the system isn’t working– if he replaces it all together, as he’d have to if he’s to fix the Joker problem, then he’s removed the balance.
Vimes is probably the best window in to that mind– he made his own watchman.
Yeah, war does change the rules a bit.
Of course with Batman the analysis starts to fail after a certain point – if the Bat and Joker had really gotten in even a tenth as many fights as they have at this point (just main continuity, ignore all the what ifs and alternate realities) one of them would have died from their injuries well before now.
It’s all well and good for Batman to say he never kills anyone, but in real life a single blow to the head can (and does) kill someone.
It’s that he never intentionally kills anybody, or rather that he has plausible deniability about intentionally killing anybody.
Also, an argument could be made that it’s no accident both that the Joker keeps surviving, and that he keeps escaping. After all, the Bat needs someone like the Joker so that he starts looking good by comparison. 😉 (and I say that as a long time Batman fan–but if I can’t poke a little fun at my own heroes…)
In comic books, combat is absurdly safe. It is incredibly rare for someone to get killed by anything other than a deliberately murderous attack, and even those almost never work unless the power mismatch is extreme (trained assassin or superhuman being trying to kill ordinary civilian). Long-term crippling or debilitating injuries are rare. Even serious injuries (broken bones) are uncommon.
What’s more, there is very little collateral damage with serious effects. Whole buildings may get smashed by knockback or missed shots, but everything is insured, no one’s lives are ruined, and no one lives are lost. Urban downtowns can be trashed again and again and again with no dead, few wounded and no deleterious effects on their economies.
I focus on this because too many people, ignorant of history, form their concept of how combat works from comic books or equally-unrealistic movies. Then when real wars or violet police encounters happen, they judge the armies or police forces based on these assumptions, and conclude that they must be evil — surely no one would kill or cripple so many innocents if they didn’t mean to harm them?
Real life is far more dangerous than that, and in a violent situation, if you shoot the wrong person, you can’t just rewrite the scene.
Agents Of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. was especially bad at that.
In one comic they destroy New York City and in the next comic it was completely rebuilt.
Worse, the writers were called on it in the letters column and “excused” it with “Hey, this is the Comics. It’s not Real”. [Frown]
Ah, you beat me to the Laban-and-Nephi punch. But that’s what I get for not reading the blog over the weekend. ^_^
There is also the matter of God ordering the Israelites to slaughter an entire city population: men, women, children, even the animals. And then punishing Israel because someone saved out a choice cow or something. That always bothered me a bit, but I finally concluded that we probably weren’t getting a clearer explanation (as is given in the Book of Mormon with the Nephi killing Laban thing–not that it still doesn’t make people go “But…wait?”).
It’s a thorny issue, no doubt. For myself, I finally concluded that…there are worse things than death. (Since I believe absolutely in an afterlife, naturally I would feel this way.) So I do struggle with the fact that Batman just lets the Joker keep on killin’. I’ve also had Issues with several instances in Doctor Who where he gets all high and mighty about ‘not killing’ people or getting pissed off at people who DO kill someone/group of someones who a.) have already caused much death and suffering and b.) will certainly continue to do so unless stopped absolutely. Sorry, Doctor, but you let the Daleks live again? Yeah, and that puts HOW many deaths of billions on your head…?
That being said, of course, it’s not always clear cut black and white. A Dalek will, 99.99% of the time go on to try and exterminate all the things. The Joker will never change. But these are fictional critters, and so they are written that way. Real people, alas, are infinitely messier. (Although I’m a fan of Malcolm Reynolds’ view: “Someone tries to kill you, you got the right to try to kill them right back!”)
Well, Batman had guns initially.
The roots of the super hero are in crime fiction, and the execution of the superhero genre has changed as it became more incestuous. Many comic creators today have their understanding of what they are doing primarily shaped by comics written by people imitating super hero comics and not real life.
Dashiell Hammett had some basis in real life for his crime fiction.
The superhero genre would have differences if many comic creators had spent formative time working as a corrections officer.
Did Batman have guns at first? I know one early Batman has him using a gun to take out a couple of sleeping vampires. (IE silver bullets). But I think the writers didn’t want to show him staking a female vampire.
Of course, many have said that Batman was based on the Shadow and the Shadow definitely used guns.
I saw it somewhere on the internet. I probably significantly overstated the confidence I have. I’ve only a vague idea on citations.
Mea culpa.
There was a comment in the Batman wiki article that the early Batman had no problem killing foes (apparently also used guns) but apparently guns were a minor part of Batman’s “tools”.
One editor was mentioned as later “decreeing” that Batman wouldn’t kill or use guns.
The Comics Code wasn’t around yet, but the Catholic Church and other concerned adult groups did tend to make pronouncements on comics widely read by kids. Making Batman a little less obvious of a Shadow/Doc Savage clone was probably also legally desirable.
In Flashpoint Paradox Thomas Wayne (Bruce’s father) is Batman and uses twin pistols.
Thanks to the DC “Archives” volumes I’ve had the chance to read a lot of those early stories. He carried one. He just didn’t use them on people mostly. The vampire was one story. Using an aircraft mounted machine gun on “monsters” mutated by Hugo Strange was another. Mostly he just killed people by knocking them off buildings or so they fall to be impaled by sharp objects, that kind of thing, all with “plausible deniability” of being accidents. 😉
Yeah, Batman had guns in his earliest appearances. I’ve seen pictures.
They wouldn’t be so eager have villains win and heroes become thuggish.
And let us not forget the Shadow, who whole-heartedly slaughters criminals (to the point that I sometimes go “Hang on, but surely not ALL of these guys deserve to be shot down in cold blood?)…At least, it’s this way in the comics. What I’ve listened to of the radio plays–which, admittedly, isn’t much because I keep having to stop and giggle–doesn’t seem quite so violent. Haven’t read the pulp novels yet, so don’t know on that front.
The Batman was modeled on the Shadow that way until they deliberately toned it down.
I can see why: as irritating as his reticence sometimes is, I generally like Batman much better than the Shadow. (Except for movie Shadow. I loved the hell out of the 1994 movie.) Although it is possibly as much down to the fact that Batman relies on the tools of the Trickster hero, at least insofar as–because he refuses to use guns/kill–he must use his wits (and his gadgets) to outwit his enemies. Sure, in real life a better solution might be “shoot them” but it’s not half so entertaining in fiction. (With exceptions.)
There actually was an explanation offered for why Batman hasn’t killed the Joker. Essentially, Batman thinks he’s fighting and controlling Gotham’s dark side. So, if he kills the Joker, Gotham will throw someone even worse at him.
I am always amazed how so many ignorant libs talk about the horrible bombing done by the US and the Brits. They don’t seem to understand that the German and the Japanese both conducted bombing campaigns before the Allies did. The fact that the Axis powers never built the kinds of aircraft that could make such a campaign effective doesn’t change the fact that they did it.
I think I should point out, can’t be pointed out too much, about the bombing of Dresden that the death toll is between 22,700 and 25,000 dead. Vonnegut got his 125,000 to quarter million figure from antisemite and holocaust denier David Irving, who was hiding his colors during the Sixties.
Irving got that figure from Joseph Goebels. Apparently, Goebels got the preliminary casualty figures, and arbitrarily added 100,000 to make the slaughter sound even worse.
Goebels, btw, is the Nazi that IRVING considers the worst of the Third Reich leadership.
Okay, sure, Harry likes a couple beers but i don’t think he ever gets …
Okay, that one is just gratuitous.
*snerk* Possibly this is the exact reason he doesn’t…?
Two irresistible questions occur:
1)
How does my monitor obscure the fact I missed my timing on the shift key and type “i” instead of “I” when I am in composing mode but makes it drastically, embarrassingly obvious when I see the section in somebody’s response?
2)
What do you do with a drunken wizard?
What do you do with a drunken wizard?
What do you do with a drunken wizard?
Earl-i in the morning?
Just as a point of trivia – way back when I was in high school, my German teacher was a *survivor* of the Dresden firebombing (she was a child at the time). When she talked about it…. It certainly illustrates that there’s no way to win a way *cleanly*.
Sometimes you have to do it anyway and pray for your soul afterwards.
Alan Moore did a fair to middling graphic novel about that, “The Killing Joke.”
RES, do you know why the Geneva Conventions are written specifically to say that they should no longer apply to violators? Because if they continue to apply, the violators have no reason not to violate them.
You want to demonstrate the values of ordered liberty, constrained government, and rational argument? Give these people a personal taste of what living without them is like. There’s a reason why many of the former communist states, such as Poland, were far more steadfast allies against the jihadists than the Left in this country: they had personal, living experience of totalitarians.
Shucks, Snel, I spent my time in the internet battlefield arguing that it is morally and practically wrong, Wrong, WRONG to extend the protections of the GC to those who deliberately waged war by going outside those conventions and it was, in essence, a violation of the accords to grant their benefits to unlawful combatants.
So, yes, I know why the Geneva Conventions are written specifically to say that they should no longer apply to violators. I apologise if my point above was insufficiently clear about whom it applies to and how.
But last I looked the Geneva Conventions don’t cover American politics nor internet arguments.
Not by the letter; the principle is the same: here are lines that you will NOT cross, because if you do, it will result in your destruction.
Of course, you have to be willing and able to enforce them. On the individual scale, I am willing but not able to enforce them effectively; on the societal level, we are able but not willing. At some point, that societal level will change to able and willing, or history shows that there will be no society.
twib (may I call you twib for short?), I say that about the Israelis: If they did as they have been accused of doing, the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian “Authority” would be leveled. Remember, they are cornered and are fighting for their lives.
You can call me David. 😉 “The Writer in Black” is an exercise in “personal branding”.
Are you the Writer in Black because all memory of your work is erased?
http://thewriterinblack.blogspot.com/2011/07/welcome-to-my-blog.html
No, no, no it’s a title: The REAL Writer in Black has been retired for ten years and living like a king in Patagonia! 😀
The Writer in Black takes no prisoners. 😉
you may be in black, but your hair is in pink.
Purple.
You set a story in Reno just to watch the bad guy die?
nice
Yes, indeed. Thank you.
They may be deluded. But they are self-deluded, and neither affected ignorance in morals nor willful ignorance in law are defenses.
I have often used the metaphor that the Marquis of Queensbury rules are fine when you’re going against an evenly matched opponent in a ring with a referee to ensure that both parties follow the rules. In a knife fight in an alley, they’re a good way to get very dead very fast.
See also: asymmetric warfare, and the insistence of “human rights” groups and QuaNGOs on the conventional army fighting by Marquess of Queensberry rules against an opponent that obeys no rules of any kind.
Despite the actual laws of war, agreed upon by treaty, saying otherwise.
Disqualify! Disqualify!
Seriously. No one here is advocating torture or willful evil. But when faced with an opponent that has no morals or scruples, it is better to face them on their terms than lose.
I read Rob Crawford’s statement as agreeing with you. I think you’re both arguing for the same position.
That statement is rather ambiguous. What “actual rules of war” are you referring to, and what do you believe they say? As things stand, it’s easy to interpret your statement in contradictory ways.
I am reminded of what used to be called a “fair fight” when I was in grade school. The rules were formulated to give the larger combatant a disproportionate advantage by outlawing any techniques that relied on skill and accuracy rather than brute strength.
I got a reputation for being the bad kid because I was small and fast and mean, and used those things to my advantage. It was fine for the big guy to use his strength and reach against me, but when I went for a knee or face instead of trading body blows, I wasn’t “fighting fair”.
The Left does the same thing. They will always try to write the rules so that what they do is fair and what you do back is cheating. And just like high school, if you let the other guy make the rules, you’ll lose.
We really need to bring back the code duello.
Or the laws of Piper’s New Texas.
I don’t believe I’ve read that. Thanks for the tip.
The title is Lone Star Planet and it’s a public domain book available from Amazon for free.
Got it, thanks.
I got it too. It’s been on the to read list but knowing it was free on Kindle pushed it up.
Lone Star Planet. It’s available from Project Gutenberg.
Sounds like a good place to live aside from a lack of beaches.
Oh Misha, I remember the time I got is SO much trouble. I think it was around the fourth grade. We were engaged in what I now realize is primate behavior. My opponent, larger than me and higher on the pecking order” had finished the “calling names” part and the “thumping chest part.” He was getting ready to do the “tear bamboo leaves up” part, which we all know is the last stage of working himself up to charge when I locked my wrist, planted my back foot, and punched him in the stomach as hard as I could.
He folded in half, dropped, puked twice, and lookedup, utterly and sincerely shocked and outraged. I’ll remember those words until the day I DIE.
“What did you do THAT for? I didn’t do ANTHING to you!”
He was gonna. We all KNEW he was gonna. But I’d broken the RULES.
And ALL of the fourth grade boys universally agreed: I’d fought “dirty.”
I’d have gotten my ass beaten, otherwise.
So, you learned the same lesson as the Israelis learned in ’67 and Bush when he argued for preemptive engagement?
The best rejoinder to such complaints is a paraphrase Golda Meir’s supposed quote: [I] will not commit suicide so that the world will think well of [me].
I think Bibi Netenyahu said something similar lately.
What I tell leftist Jews outside Israel who expect us to do this for the sake of their moral narcissism: “You wanna play national suicide? Fine, you come here and go first.”
RAH would have had some choice words to tell them… 😉
And it’s one of the reasons I find Gandhi to be really, really obnoxious.
“Commit mass suicide to prove your moral superiority!”
Well, if you believe in reincarnation, death is no big deal.
Agreed.
Gandhi’s tactics only worked against the British. The Nazis would have rolled right over him.
Yep.
I submit that it didn’t work, or not entirely, even against the British. There was plenty of violent resistance to British Rule. What Gandhi did was provide a “face saving” alternative to admitting that they were giving in to violent revolt, made it easier for them to agree to Indian self-rule. In much the same way that Malcolm X said “the reason they’re willing to talk to Martin is because otherwise they’d have to talk to me.”
I habve seen the argument made (cannot myself evaluate it) that the entirety of the British “take” from the Raj did not cover the cost of ministering and defending it.
At any rate, Gandhi’s role was merely one additional straw among many, with the British already looking for an excuse to dump the whole mess.
Gandhi’s tactics only worked against the British. The Nazis would have rolled right over him.
If anyone here hasn’t read The Last Article by Harry Turtledove, that’s its premise: the Nazis won the war, and Gandhi’s trying his non-violent tactics against the Third Reich. It… doesn’t end well for Gandhi.
Good read, though.
How could you possibly write more than a couple of sentences about that?
“Sir, there is some dark skinned guy in a diaper, sitting in the middle of the road leading to the compound.”
“Well, why are you telling me about it? Toss him in the furnace.”
The general story was that after the defeat of the British forces in India, Gandhi & Nehru (?) tried civil disobedience methods against the Nazis.
So we saw them planning the methods, saw the methods fail and then they were arrested & killed.
A bit longer than your idea but not much. [Wink]
Honestly, the result would be the same if you replaced ‘Nazi’ with “Taliban” or “DAESH.”
And Ghandi’s tactics didn’t work against the British elsewhere. He spent 21 years in South Africa, working for better treatment of the Indians there. He achieved no changes in the government policies… though he did achieve some measure of success in how those policies were enforced. To wit, the apartheid government still considered Indians sub-human, but raised them to a “better class of subhuman” than tribal black Africans.
And then after success in India, the man who led the nonviolent way was assassinated by an extremist who felt he was holding back their ability to fight violently. Sound familiar?
Given the presumption that Gandhi believed in reincarnation, suicide to prove your moral superiority is a valid course.
Just one reason I reject reincarnation — the moral paradigm it supports is repugnant as it endorses obedience to standing injustice.
IIRC Hindu reincarnation included the idea that your station in life and what happens in “this” life is because of how you lived in a prior life.
Thus if you help the less-fortunate, all you’re doing is condemning them to another “bad” life. [Frown]
Note, I don’t know if that is official Hindu theology but is my take on their theology.
“the moral paradigm it supports is repugnant as it endorses obedience to standing injustice.”
I don’t see that. I always figured you still had to try, or things would be worse next time around.
Whereas in my humble opinion if you’d been fighting dirty you would have put the boot to him to make damn sure he stayed down.
As for those fourth grade boys, I’d venture to guess they were a smidge less willing to take you on after that, at least one on one.
Maybe a bit less willing to take him on, but not necessarily incorporate him into the group. The hierarchy was well established, and by their rules, the big guy had a right to pound him. By a punch in the stomach, he brought all their social structure to it’s knees. Only way to survive was to then rape the bully’s mates and kill his children. But there ain’t a lot of mates and children in the 4th grade…
What is best in elementary school?
To punch your bully in the gut, see him grovel before you, and hear the lamentations of his hangers-on.
– Conan, age 10
My mother was the one who taught me that if an older, bigger, bully starts something do whatever is necessary; and if you get them down, put the boots to them and don’t let them get back up.
I was in first grade, when the big kid that lived down the road decided he was going to prove how tough he was, and impress all the other kids by beating me up on the playground. Our school had river rock and mortar outer walls. He had me backed up against it and got in a few blows, but he was overeager, and I managed to get a hold of him and proceeded to beat his face off the wall repeatedly. His mother was a teacher at that school, and she called me into her classroom and proceeded to scream at me for ten minutes before threatening to call my mother, I told her, “go ahead, she is the one that told me to do that.” She didn’t really have anything to say to that, and she never went to the principal or anyone else, because she knew there were at least fifty witnesses to the fact that her precious gorilla started it.
Incidentally, after that we became friends, and remained friendly through high school, although we drifted apart as we got older, because our interests diverged. I’m pretty sure his mother never forgave me though, I can never remember her saying a word to me when I stopped by his house, and he was never allowed over to mine.
My family taught me to never hit other people — that’s what gunsels are for. No matter how much bigger and tougher the other kid might be, it was always possible to find a bigger, tougher kid to kick his butt.
Um…either Dashiell Hammett was wrong or that’s NOT what gunsels are for…
😉 Hammet was not wrong and I used the word for much the same reason as did he. Amazing how it has acquired so much common application in his “incorrect” usage that it likely has supplanted the original meaning. Language, ‘sfunny that way.
^Ah, apologies. I missed the fact that you’d already said what I said below. 😀
Apologies wholly unnecessary — always nice to meet another member of the club and exchange secret handshakes. 🙂
I confess that I have not yet read Hammett (he’s on the to-read list, which is approximately a thousand miles long)…but I did happen across that bit of trivia somewhere. And, as is the way with things that interest or delight me, I retained it. :p
What’s a good one to start with?
It is always difficult to engage in such suggestions, not knowing your preferences, likes and dislikes. That said, using metrics other than my personal biases, I would recommend The Thin Man as very accessible (as well as having recently “re-read” it, courtesy of Audible, which helps inform my recommendation with the knowledge that it is not cringe-inducingly dated) for a novel, and The Gutting of Couffignal as a short story (based upon its frequent anthologization.) The Maltese Falcon has its proponents, of course, but as I haven’t read it in a very long time I am reluctant to give it the same level of endorsement. Alone of Hammett’s novels, The Thin Man was not serialized which may reflect in its structure.
Keep in mind that Hammett wrote these almost a century ago and that he has greatly influenced many (nearly every American) mystery writers since, so that much which might seem derivative to someone coming to him late was actually highly original — it is everything influenced by him that is derivative. For example, I have seen the basic set-up of The Gutting of Couffignal used by Robert Parker for one of his Jesse Stone novels and would daresay that the only reason Parker didn’t acknowledge as much in a forward was his confidence that the debt was self-evidently clear.
When reading Hammett or Chandler or Heinlein or Doc Smith there is an added pleasure to know that this author was breaking ground that many others would eventually tread upon and if the latter writers trod with surer step it was because that patch had been found for them.
Oops! I had intended to include this link along with a few of the choicer examples:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/16927.Dashiell_Hammett
“If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted policemen.”
― Dashiell Hammett
“Who shot him? I asked.
The grey man scratched the back of his neck and said: Somebody with a gun.”
― Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest
“Joel Cairo: You always have a very smooth explanation ready.
Sam Spade: What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
“Listen, Dundy, it’s been a long time since I burst into tears because a policeman didn’t like me.”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
“The face she made at me was probably meant for a smile. Whatever it was, it beat me. I was afraid she’d do it again, so I surrendered”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Continental Op
“When you write, you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and feel it’s good, and you want this to go on for hundreds of years. You’re not likely ever to get all these things, and you’re not likely to give up writing and commit suicide if you don’t, but that is — and should be — your goal. Anything else is kind of piddling.”
― Dashiell Hammett
David Drake on the general subject
I’d suggest trying a library for an omnibus volume with a fair number of Continental Op stories as an easy quick low commitment introduction.
Library of America should be in the library or there is a cheap Megapack for Kindle.
Thank you! I may have the Thin Man floating around somewhere, having picked it up for free in ebook form…
I am familiar with his works, as well as Chandler’s, and others’, via the film noir from the golden age of Hollywood. Although in those cases, I find I prefer Chandler (I *love* The Big Sleep)–but I haven’t yet managed to catch one of the Thin Man adaptations. 🙂
I read somewhere that Dashiell Hammett knew very well what the word really meant, and deliberately ‘misused’ it to troll the people screaming about ‘filth’…I believe the TV Tropes term is “Getting Crap Past the Radar.”
Because trolls are older than the internets. 😀
I’ve read the same thing. [Smile]
He put in a phrase (actually innocent of filth) that he knew his editor would reject and used gunsel incorrectly.
The editor rejected the innocent phrase and accepted “gunsel”. [Evil Grin]
It was William Safire, in one of his inestimable “On Language” columns who clued me in to that, many years ago. I always chortle when Hammett’s prank gets recognized/acknowledged, to this day — almost as much as I do when some careless writer employs it apparently* incorrectly in “Thug Talk” today.
Safire’s columns, BTW, are widely available in collected editions which should be in any writer’s library. He wrote clearly and entertainingly on the nuances of word selection, helping clarify the distinctions between “the lightning and the lightning bug.” You can likely pick several up at almost any church book sale or, of course, through the used book bazaar on the internet.
*I say apparently because who knows — might be the writer was aware and having their own little joke, thumbing their literary nose at their editor and readers/viewers.
I don’t remember whether or not the term was actually used in the *book* “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” but I did read about the actual ‘meaning’ of the term ‘schnozzberries’ (used in one of Dahl’s adult novels, which I haven’t ever read and likely won’t; his kid’s lit is weird enough, thanks)…and I do wonder at them using it in the film “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”…
Errr…speaking of writers Getting Crap Past the Radar (ie, this wasn’t an unrelated tangent).
And yet, in that very book (the book, which I read recently, not the film) it’s explicit that Spade was sleeping with Bridgid O’Shaunessey and implicit (although very strongly so) that he was sleeping with his partner’s (late partner’s by this point) wife Iva–who he goes right back to boinking at the end of the book.
Why am I thinking of the first few chapters of “Ender’s Game”?
“. It was fine for the big guy to use his strength and reach against me, but when I went for a knee or face instead of trading body blows, I wasn’t “fighting fair”. ”
The face was off limits? Really? What kind of strange school did you go to? I’ve heard the “rule” that punching a kid with glasses, in the glasses, wasn’t fair. But that was really because his parents would be rightfully ticked about having to buy him a new pair of glasses. Personally, I could sort of see that ‘rule’ if you started the fight, but if he started it, without bothering to take his glasses off first, I figure they are fair game.
You could still punch the glasses kid in the face, if he didn’t have them on at the time.
Where I grew up, I think, the only out of bounds rules were: “No weapons. No biting. No gouging. Quit when the other guy isn’t a threat anymore.”
That’s not to say I *didn’t* crack a porcelain sink with my head, dent a set of lockers with another guy’s head, or use a basketball goal to good effect. Or other broken bones and suchlike.
The bounds of honorable conduct evolved a bit as we got older. Don’t snitch was always enforced. Beating up on weaker guys would eventually get you curb stomped, too (because we ran a bit wild, the smaller/weaker set banded together and would Zerg rush anyone perceived as being “a bully”).
The girls, far as I can tell, had precisely *no* rules. This is why you never, ever hit a girl. Well, one of the reasons. The kids I fought with, most of them I ended up getting along with later on. The girl that tried to claw my eyes out when I was eleven, I’d still cross the street to avoid her even today. She’s crazy.
The leader of the communist youth league who had illegally set up a table in the foyer of the high school (illegally but with wink and nod from the directive council) called taunts to me, until I faced him. Then he said “I have glasses” To which I said “remove them.” He didn’t. I punched him. His glasses broke. The directive council was encouraged by my mother to see that I’d given him a chance and by my friends to see he’d started it.
The story has a happy ending. Met him ten years later. He said he’d always had a crush on me. This prompted him to start looking beyond his hereditary communism. His parents were heartbroken, but he grew up to be a decent man and an engineer.
so you knocked some sense into him. Good for you … and him.
” Don’t snitch was always enforced. ”
Double yes. Not only was it always enforced by my peers, but when all the kids were visiting grandma’s, she enforced it the same as she had when her kids were kids. If you tattled on somebody, you got the belt for tattling, and then she decided if whatever the kid you had tattled on had done, was worth spanking him over or not.
In fact it is the single one thing I have the most trouble adapting to here where I live now. The people in community see nothing wrong with calling the law on someone they don’t like. I was raised to believe it was questionable, but probably acceptable to call the law in cases of rape or murder, or possibly robbery if you didn’t know the culprit (if you knew, you handled it yourself). Turning somebody in or rolling on someone (turning state’s evidence, in order to defer punishment on yourself) for anything lesser was absolutely verboten.
Had this nearly this same discussion online before and I said plainly that the politicians and editors and supporters of failed socialism are working to undo the entire framework of western civilization.
I pointed out that they all assume that in a situation with a privileged group enjoying life and a mass of peasants like we see in Mexico they will be the dominant group. If they have children one assumes they think they will be able to hand off the reins to them.
They laughed it off like I’m a nut case.
They are also sure my sort will NEVER load up the rifle and go hunting if oppressed too far. History says they are wrong. Their actions on gun control say they don’t believe it down deep inside.
I’ve been in the gun control debate since 1990. ThAt year the Canadian government decided it would be a great idea to outlaw a bunch of guns and make me an instant criminal.
Which seemed rather totalitarian and pissed me off. So I looked into it.
The more I looked into it the more I found thieves and liars playing us all for fools. The entire medical literature on gun control is a lie, for example. All of it. Out of hundreds of papers I found six (6) that were not obviously and laughably false.
I also learned very quickly that the people quickest to call me a Nazi were the ones working the hardest to implement Hitler’s most cherished policies. Those being gun control, Medicare, ecology and euthanasia.
If you get them alone in a room and question them closely they’re either doe eyed innocents along for the hay ride or spitting vipers who dwell in the Land of Fear and Hate. Of calculating manipulators I found -none-.
So we have idiots being led by hate filled control freaks.
The gun debate is the Sad Puppies debate. It’s the same thing, and it’s the same goddamn people too. One side wants to read fun stories, and the other side freaks out because their propaganda machine and personal self worth is tied up in CONTROLING the genre. We view this as an annoyance, they view it as the end of the world.
That’s what makes the Sad Puppies Campaign so genius. We can freak them out and make them use their artillery with very little effort. Larry had them losing their shit two years ago. This year the TORoids de cloaked and showed us what TOR/McMillan bias looks like, and a lot of propaganda-writing Name artists fired their guns too.
All this because a couple hundred lazy ass people like myself finally leaned on the tiller just a wee little bit.
I view the Sad Puppies Campaign as the best entertainment I’ve ever gotten from $40.00. I mean, just think of all the WORK that wanker Glyer has been putting into smearing the Puppies, and all he’s doing is exactly what we wanted him to do in the first place.
Next thing that’s going to happen is they are going to get together a cabal of dedicated freaks to change the voting rules at WorldCon. I am looking forward to that shitstorm, as all I have to do to make them look like monsters is report their monstering and include the odd picture of them in mid-rampage.
They work in the shadows. We turn the light on, they can’t work anymore.
So, all you have to do to discredit them is to quote them?
That’s a common thing among progressives. And, man, do they get upset when someone takes notice of what they’re saying. It’s as if they’re completely aware they can only succeed by working in secret.
I often thought it would be really funny if Romney’d walked on stage at one of the debates with a digital voice recorder. Then when it came time to rebut something Obama had said, just push play on it to play back the salient part of one of Obama’s speeches or interviews. My old Dell Axim PDA would have been perfect for that…
GMTA (and so do you and I) At the time of the 2012 debates I was thinking the proper response to any Obama denial should have been “roll tape”.
It was George Orwell (then still a socialist) who pointed out that the worst advertisements for socialism are its adherents.
What’s the old saw: they have to lie about us (and about their agenda) while we only have to tell the truth about them (and about their agenda)?
TL:DR version: Tell the Truth and shame the Devil.
Just as well, I’m no good at all that slimy, backstabbing treachery.
Wouldn’t know where to begin.
“To ride, shoot straight and speak the truth.” Jeff Cooper
Happily, my shootin’ is getting pretty straight, though I still have to focus on not jerking the trigger. Action pistol starts tomorrow at our local range. Most fun that can be had for twenty bucks and 150 rounds.
I can shoot good and straight if I am firmly attached to the ground, shooting straight while riding is considerably trickier, however.
Not in the movies! ;o)
They assume that we are monsters of cruelty and avarice because that is the goal to which they expire. To quote Vox Day ” SJW’s always lie, SJW’s always project.” I have found this to be true. You have said they were the good girls who followed the rules and disapproved of the individual. I think its really like the movie Mean Girls in which they torment people because they can and believe they can’t be touched in return, because they are the cool ones. More actual proof that for some people High School never ends.
Exactly – they torment because they can, they get their jollies and affirmation of the in-group, and are certain they can’t be touched, because they are the cool kids.
Bullying is a learned response to an environment in which the authorities can be counted on to respond with differing levels of force depending on the identity of the transgressor. The schoolyard bully is always the kid that the teachers (and parents) think can do no wrong. Identity Politics creates bullies by its very nature. The irony of Dan Savage–who has based his entire career on “I can hit you but you don’t dare hit me back”–being held up as an anti-bullying icon would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
A particular bully said just last night that I have a “double standard” because I do not object to people doing to him what he has done to others. I tried to explain that it’s not a double standard — it’s treating him as he has treated others, the Golden Rule.
And, yes, the wanna-be tyrants depend on their identities shielding them. The whole “only whites can be racist” BS, the “women don’t lie about rape, ever” BS, and so on — they’re all about shielding abusers from defense.
As Insty says — they do not understand the incentives they are setting up.
To keep in mind: for someone who’s in it purely for the bullying of others – it’s not really personal. They aren’t doing it to YOU, because they don’t know or want to know you; you’re just this moment’s convenient target. (The kid who kicks sand in your face would do it to anyone who looked like a target that probably won’t successfully fight back.)
Which means a total lack of empathy, which in turn means they are sociopaths. They deserve whatever society gives sociopaths – and that is most certainly not our unearned sympathy or respect.
Yeah, I’ve thought the blowup has a Mean Girls aspect… mean girls upset because the D&D and A/V clubs started sitting at their table.
The other comparison, to the inbred hillbillies in Deliverance, wouldn’t be Marquess of Queensbury rules. But does anyone know if the Truefen filk singers play “Duelling Mandolins”?
Maybe the HS bit is what rubs me such the wrong way. I couldn’t wait for it to end. I don’t even have a yearbook for my senior year. The only thing I can even remotely say I miss about HS is band and that’s because I miss making music with someone else nearly every day (I still make it nearly every day).
For the rest, I couldn’t wait to be an adult. Finding exactly where and how took a few detours but I never wanted to go back.
Hard core Leftism in a guy Glyer’s age is a sign of mental disorder.
Furthermore he could have commented here days ago that sorry Sarah, you misunderstood my post, I did not meant to imply you’re a homophobe. Instead we get some crap about the fist person to say that line was David Gerrold.
Continued shit-stirring is another sign of mental disorder.
Most of the Feminazis claiming to want “and end to binary gender in SF” are unmedicated borderline personality disorder/bipolar disorder, and I say that based on their insane web presence and the fact that most of the founding Intersectionalists ended up in the nut house.
I see no reason to cater to the mad delusions of others at my own expense, and I see no reason to tolerate their disordered behavior and name calling.
Fuck ’em!
From the OP: ‘anyone insisting “this time we’ll do it right” on collectivism’
VileProg response: Communism would have totally succeeded if only we’d killed more people!
For the record, Sarah, I don’t think you are crazy. Kafkaesque methods feature prominently in their toolbox. And I’m stealing ‘insulata’. That is an awesome word.
I find it highly amusing that the only groups that have ever been able to get communism to work (in the “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, all working toward the glorious future of the commune” sense) were medieval Christian monasteries.
They were quite economically successful at it, and didn’t even have to kill anybody to make it work.
Didn’t work then, either. Acts 5:1-10, Ananias and Sapphira. You could argue this is *not* the case by any number of things, mainly that “they fell down dead” is not murdering folks, but the *spirit* of the issue is that collectivism pretty much fails because people are pretty much selfish. Even Christians. Being one, I know this all too well, because I suffer from the same malady.
Especially since they were killed for lying, not for selfishness.
You are correct. I will accept my correction. I have been well corrected.
I will now go back to reading “Houseplants of Gor” for comedic writing inspiration. 🙂
Houseplants of Gor? Is that the one where the strong, masterful men men lose all control…oh, wait, that’s all of them.
Has anybody written 50 Shades of Gor yet?
Rule 34 says it’s out there somewhere. I have yet to see it but it shouldn’t be hard to find if you’re really interested.
Didn’t see these when I posted my basic outline of “50 Shades of Gor” that I’ve been bouncing around since the move came out.
No, work on writing “50 Shades of Gor” where Annastia Steele is kidnapped and given to a Tarnsman to finally train her up right and to free Christian Grey who is secretly Karl Talbot’s son.
The internet is over. You won.
Start new game? (y/n)
Acts was written log before the middle ages though.
It seems to me the monastic tradition from the Desert Fathers to Mount Athos today is a functioning collective system although not perfect.
More interesting to me is why do they work? They work because they are small, voluntary, and composed of a fairly uniform set of people. They also embrace poverty which is a key idea.
Monastics are selfish because they are human but the monastic environment is one where the selfish competition is in non-material things. For the material things their uniformity of goal, voluntary nature, and embracing of poverty minimize the side effects of collectivism. That collectivism limits material goods to a fairly low level is a feature not a bug. The fact that the associations are voluntary means those who get tired of it can leave (not easily after vows but they still can). Uniformity of goals mean fewer disputes over how much of a given material good to produce.
None of those work on the level of even a town much less a nation.
I’ve also seen it said that they work because reproductive competition is taken out of play–the article was focused on why modern hippie communes generally failed and what could be done differently.
Yes, the communes I saw were hotbeds of sexual intrigue and double dealing. Gregory Bateson’s comment about dolphin tribes was applicable-“Everyone screws everyone else”.
That’s probably a key point too both directly and because reproductive competition and signally is tied to material desires.
Nah. They work because of divine intervention.
And because anyone who doesn’t fit is free to just go away and do something else: no harm, no foul.
I really, really enjoy pointing this out to commies.
“able to get communism to work were medieval Christian monasteries.”
Makes sense. They all gave up everything to get in.
They were also strict hierarchies and economically dependent on the rest of the world.
Also, they did not reproduce themselves but relied on outside society for that
Still had problems.
terrarium communism
Chuckle-snort. Terrarium communism. What a visual.
I was tired enough that I somehow read that as “terrapin communism.” I don’t even know.
I want a story with that title.
Considering what’s going on in Baltimore (in Maryland, the Terrapin State), you’d have to work hard to keep it out of “Current Events”.
Given the glee that Henry VIII seized the monasteries and their incomes I’m not sure how dependent established monasteries were except for new members and (critical issue) defense. Then again, subsistence farming isn’t exactly high tech.
Most monasteries by that point also were hotbeds of small industry, and sometimes not so small industry. They had space and could invest in projects, you see. That’s why the Cistercians used to run France’s steel industry. Then the king did to them what he did to the Templars, except he just seized their factories and woods and waters and made them live off the minor moneymakers, like herbal remedies.
Plus the monasteries’ lands were valuable in themselves. This was property that the monarch could give his supporters or sell to some other parties.
It was a Franciscan who invented double-entry bookkeeping.
Well, and by the point of the Dissolution, a goodly number of the monasteries/abbeys were well away from ‘small communes dedicated to poverty.’ I gather that–even where it wasn’t actual corruption–it was a matter of everyday business to hustle to increase the lands/holdings that owed tithes to your chosen nunnery/monastery.
I suppose, in that light, it just means that the communism failed under the appeal of capitalism…? 😀
A thing I did not know, and learned from the medieval mystery Sarah recommended a few blog posts back (Season of the Raven): that an implement/piece of property found to have caused someone’s death was forfeit to the Church? Interesting, that. (Though likely more immediately useful when the said ‘implement’ was, say, the bull?)
Please note that the Dissolution by its very nature tended to produce rhetorical excess about how horrible the monasteries were.
Yep.
The “give a thing that caused a death to the Church” sounds like a baptized version of the folk-practice of giving tainted things to the religious to deal with– “Hey, you’re a powerful spirit, the bad stuff can’t touch you!”
It does seem like it had its source in that. The novel actually specifically mentions the item (a mill wheel) would be given to be ‘baptized and cleansed of sin.’ (And then presumably put to use/sold by the local monastery. The guy whose mill wheel it was was less than thrilled at the idea.) Makes a certain kind of sense, actually.
“an implement/piece of property found to have caused someone’s death was forfeit to the Church? ”
The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England by Barbara A. Hanawalt has more on that. Originally, the rule was that something that caused death had to sold or something and the proceeds dedicated to prayers for the deceased.
The Normans turned that into the lord just claiming it.
Or the abbey, as the case may be–though I suppose at that point, *most* abbeys were headed up by someone Norman or sympathetic to.
I’ll have to add that book to my wishlist. Alas, that it’s one of those overpriced ‘textbooks’, even in ebook form… >.<
Only works so long as all participants are committed to serving a power beyond themselves. The minute enlightened self interest kicks in, and it always eventually does, the system disintegrates as the takers overwhelm the givers.
I think the vow of poverty is also a key feature because it side steps the problems of lack of material wealth collectivism produces.
LOL “We meant to do that.”
As funny as it sounds, yes. Several big problems of collective society for the majority of people: the need for strict hierarchy and lower production of physical goods are actually positives for monastics and not just Christian ones.
I see no problem with admitting that there is a very specific instance where forms of collectivism work. Plus, I enjoy the irony that collectivism only works among those addicted to the “opiate of the masses” while failing utter among the enlightened atheists who promote it.
As Reagan said, communism works only in two places: heaven, where they don’t need it (monks) and hell where they already have it (the souls of the SJW).
I’m not sure ‘enlightened’ self interest would destroy it, since by definition enlightened self interest takes into account ‘what’s good for everybody here is also good for me’–but I’d agree with you on the straight up self interest destroying it. 🙂
(Actually, I think a major problem in many arenas today is the fact that people have forgotten the enlightened part, and just went for self interest, which causes all kinds of problems…)
I think some people on our side give our opponents more “credit than they’re due” because we are more aware of the dangers of “echo-chambers”.
Sadly, our opponents love their “echo-chambers” and their “echo-chambers” tell them that it’s OK to destroy people that don’t think/feel like them. [Frown]
I’ve always like the sound a grenade makes when you drop it in an echo chamber. Usually one loaded comment is good for hours of screeching. Scalzi’s blog is great for that. A single logical statement contrary to The Narrative and they’re howling. The funnest part is watching Scalzi try to nit-pick and declare victory his way out of it.
These days he usually goes with denounce-and-ban. Very democratic.
That is the route The Blog That Shall Not Be Named went. At one time it use reason and facts to tear apart the leftoid stance, now you slightly disagree it’s ban hammer and deletery
“The Blog Version of Animal Farm”?
it has even gone beyond that. There is no equal there any longer
I used to check in regularly after my banning. Only because I knew so many that were still there. Once they were banned, there was no need to anymore. I just hear stuff about the crab bucket occasionally and either shake my head or chuckle in wry amusement.
I don’t think I even bothered getting banned. I walked away in disgust long before he got ban-happy anyhow. It wasn’t writing on the wall, it was a 5 story high Neon sign.
Yes, same thing.
I don’t think I was ever banned. I just stopped going in.
Likewise.
I swung by and demanded to be banned, just to be safe. BTW anyone want to buy an official Lizard shoulder patch, never worn?
use it for a bullseye, or lock it away as a souvenir from when things were less in need of medication adjustment.
Sarah, do the reservations you express in your article mean that you now accept you weren’t called a homophobe?
FOAD you lying bilious toad!
Ignore him.
Sarah, as you wrote “is it likely that someone in such a position wouldn’t have NOTICED the sort of following he or she attracted?” how do you react to the use of profanity (albeit via acronym) by one poster against another here?
Gee Mark, are your feeeeewings hurted? Did you perhaps think you didn’t deserve a hearty FOAD for your effort?
There’s a distinction between being genuinely offended by someone on the internet, and simply thinking that swearing is an unnecessarily uncivil form of words that reflects badly on both the user and those who support them.
Why, pray tell, are the ones you wish to only misrepresent constantly obliged to be civil?
Civil behavior goes both ways, and yours is false courtesy, which is worse than direct insult, as it shows only dishonesty on your part, and no surety of honorable conduct, especially when witnessed on friends’ blogs.
I find “homophobe” as offensive as the acronym you’re objecting to.
(And weird how thus is just the behavior discussed above — a bully objecting to someone returning in kind.)
Rob, how offended are you by hydrophobe though?
Mark
How offended would you be being called racist, sexist, pinko commie, mysandrist, mysgenist {sp}, useful idiot, etc?
Just curious mind you.
It’s misandrist and misogynist.
Thank you, emily61
Well, misgenist might be someone who hates family.
Actually Bob, I was a little irritated and just totally blew the spelling. I’m grateful to emily for correcting me.
you’re welcome Angus. I think that it’s my one superpower: good spelling.
Because I have had the rabies shots. There is no cure for rabies only a treatment. So are you saying people who have got the treatment are less than human?
No. Hells no.
Any hockey player knows, if you don’t respect the Code, you don’t get to hide behind the Code. A guy who will slash, hit from behind, toss elbows, always behind the play and when the ref ain’t looking, is going to get taken into the boards.
If you don’t like being told to sod off, then don’t spend all your days in haughty libels of everyone with whom you have a disagreement. If you wish to be welcome in polite society, be polite yourself. And if you behave like a crapweasel don’t be surprised if others don’t care for it.
Mark, are you saying you think Scalzi and his supporters are bad people?
“… unnecessarily uncivil form of words…”
Well then, this is the source of our disagreement Mark. I concur with emily61 and think FOAD was entirely appropriate and indeed necessary for you in this case. Anything less would be insufficient.
As for uncivil, your very existence is a crime against civility, as was your question.
Sind sie sicher das sie niemenmahl einem Jude befreundet? Wir mussten nur sicher sein, das sie einen echter Deutscher der Socialismus ist, sie verstehest. Alles wird bereit sein, wann die Wielichkeit zum Licht gebracht wird.
That’s the game being played here.
Unfortunately for them, there are those of us who still remember.
correction: Wirklicheit.
Please translate for those of us who are German impaired.
At least, that’s what my sleep-pill fogged brain is saying.
German impaired?! BLASPHEMY! Off to zee re-education camp mit du!
google translate is your friend.
I tried that and it only translated some of it.
“Are you sure that you have never befriended a Jew? We simply must be sure that you are a true German of the Socialist Movement, you understand. Everything will be alright, once the truth is brought to light.”
Thank you Shadow!
LMAO A little cussin’ is evil but character assassination is just ducky.
Yeah, and they have no problem labeling us ‘basket cases’ either. So if they have no problem with calling us neo-nazis, misogynists, etc, why are we supposed to NOT give them the same treatment as they give us?
So you have a problem in that you are not receiving the respect you desire… and are instead receiving the respect you deserve?
Oh dear… how uncivil. I am shocked and dismayed that you would receive such a response. *yawn* Oh well, going to bed now.
(Really. Almost mixed up the positives and the negatives in the first line. G’night.)
Amazing. They look right past the content for any little ambiguity that can be used to launch further attacks.
Yep.
Hi Mark.
Nice day for a bit of trolling, eh?
By the way, when did you stop beating your straw man?
No. If I wasn’t then Glyer could have said that outright. Next?
Sarah,
Your reply was here: https://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/06/17/fun-house-mirrors/#comment-280915
If you can’t take an outright dismissal of your claim from that, then I’m not sure what you will take. Anyway, I guess I’ve had my answer.
However, I’d be interested in how you square condemning the commentators elsewhere while quoting the opinion of one of your own community that I and others are mentally ill. (I’m not even going to bother with the outbreak of profanity and German above).
Look at all the wounded innocence!
An assertion of “that’s not what I meant” in a blog comment is, I’ll grant you, a dismissal of the claim, but it’s not exactly proof that the claim was not justified.
I’m not really interested in calls for civility from one side of an ideological fight unless I can see that those same calls are being made on the other side.
There is a problem with listening to “calls for civility” from the left. As soon as you punch back they will *then* call for civility. We need to keep punching for a bit so they treat their targets civilly *first* when they pick their next fight.
That presumes that they will learn from the punching – that there will be a moment of self-reflection, consideration and a realization of error. I believe the likelihood of that actually happening is… low. My own anticipation is that drubbing and a refusal to really acknowledge calls for civility from people who are also calling us neo-nazis, racists, and homophobes will not cause a moment of self-reflection. Rather, it will induce further and harsher signalling.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, they’ve gotten good responses from using certain buttons. When those buttons stop working, they won’t look at the rest of the board to see what other options they have. They will push the buttons they’re used to HARDER and LOUDER and LONGER.
Which is not without certain fringe benefits.
Mark, simple question. Do you demand these same sort of answers from Glyer and others? Unless and until you do, I suggest you quit trying to enforce them here. As for your I won’t “bother with the outbreak of profanity and German”, WTH? If your sensibilities are rubbed wrong by a little profanity, I suggest you move on. We are all adults here and, yes, some of us cuss. As for the German, sorry, Mark, but there was nothing wrong with it. In fact, Shadowdancer made a very good point by posting it.
Amanda, a simple answer then.
On Glyer: Were I to receive a similar stream of unjustified incivility on F770, then absolutely I would challenge it.
On others? Well, yes, because when I encountered unacceptable treatment on Mad Genius Club I challenged it. You might remember, because you were there, failing to moderate your commentator.
What have I actually done here? I’ve come onto a public blog post by Sarah whose central conceit is the misinterpretation of an article elsewhere, and asked a question whose premise undoubtedly was that I disagree with Sarah, and then further asked why I was getting abuse for this simply expressed disagreement. It’s nothing to do with sensibilities, and everything to do with standards.
For the record, here’s the abuse in question: FOAD you lying bilious toad! / FOAD / sod off / crapweasel / FOAD / mentally ill / a little insane / Marxist / barbarous / oh, and an enquiry as to whether I am a murderous white supremacist which was so strange as to be laughable.
Of course, I do actually know what I’ve done. I disagreed in a way that didn’t actually fit your prejudice of a frothing at the mouth SJW/CHORF/whatever you’re calling me today. I presented you with a target. And you took it with glee, and in the process demonstrated that Sarah’s issues with unpleasant commentators really need to start at home.
I disagreed in a way that didn’t actually fit your prejudice of a frothing at the mouth SJW/CHORF/whatever you’re calling me today.
No, you did it with such an air of smug condescension that I could barely get through reading your comments without throwing up. You also laid out Kafkatraps, which puts you in the category of Troll.
On Glyer: Were I to receive a similar stream of unjustified incivility on F770, then absolutely I would challenge it.
Intentional misreading of question, 5 yard penalty. You asked Sarah why she was not challenging her commenters. When Amanda asked you the question, then, it is obvious that she meant whether you called out commenters who were attacking others, not those attacking yourself.
I’ve come onto a public blog post by Sarah whose central conceit is the misinterpretation of an article elsewhere
I can’t decide if your main issue is reading comprehension or unfamiliarity with English. You do understand the meaning of “trope” right?
It’s nothing to do with sensibilities, and everything to do with standards.
[insert Tony Stark “I got nothing”] But please continue.
For the record, here’s the abuse in question: [whatever]
I’ve heard you can get rid of those wrinkled fingers if you just let them dry off. And also, exactly what is a “commentator”?
No Mark is engaging in Kafkatrapping basically a logical fallacy where denial of something is proof of the sin.
Point of order: I specifically wrote “if you behave like a crapweasel,” and I am not of a mind to let you gloss the distinction. I didn’t call you any name at all, nor abuse you; I pointed out that acting badly to provoke a response means that you forfeit the right to complain about the response. And I didn’t tell you to “sod off,” but the opposite – I said that if you want to be welcome, don’t abuse the welcome.
Now, however, I am going to call you a liar, not to abuse you, but to describe you. The power to remedy that lies entirely with you, Sir.
You also disregarded the answer Sarah gave you, demonstrated poor reading skills, insulted German-speaking people, and *demanded* a tribe you are not part of to tone police itself.
Frankly, if the “abuse” you’re complaining about is all you’ve got, we’re the worst trash-talkers ever. You can get far worse by being a Tor customer.
FYI, according to GRRM, the proper thing to call non-puppies is Truefen. At least until you think *that* becomes an insult in which case I’m sure you’ll tell us what we must call you in order to be polite.
Incorrect statement there, Mark. You said:
“I disagreed in a way that didn’t actually fit your prejudice of a frothing at the mouth SJW/CHORF/whatever you’re calling me today.”
The more accurate statement would be:
I disagreed in a way that conformed to the stereotype of a supercilious “butter won’t melt in his mouth” banderillero with aspirations of becoming a picadore.
The clear intention was to provoke.
Mark, have you stopped hitting your wife lately?
Only when she holds out on him and tries keeping some portion of her “evening’s” take.
Mark
You do realize that what Glyer did offended Sarah, right? That we’d be having a different kind of conversation here if Sarah was on the left, and Glyer on the right?
Well, since your father apparently didn’t teach you proper etiquette, let me give you some hints.
The way Glyer handled that was at best, gauche. At worst, sexist. Once he was aware he’d offended Sarah, his response should have been to show up here and apologize. Then he should have corrected the problem on his site. He didn’t do that.
The thing he did right was come here. But instead of apologizing he went mealy mouth. As such, a reasonable person would conclude that Glyer was sexist and misogynist.
The thing you should have done in this situation is dress down Glyer, and shame him into sincerely apologizing to Sarah.
You didn’t. You insinuated that she should disqualify her statement. Bad form. That means, a reasonable person could easily conclude that you too are sexist and misogynist. Very likely a generic bigot too.
Its not just polite speech, Mark. Its also how you do things. You failed at the latter.
For example, MG could have posted something like this here and at Vile770:
It has come to my attention that some people may have interpreted my quoting of Sarah Hoyt — a wonderful writer, witty raconteur, blogger extraordinaire and all around swell person — as suggesting that she might be racist, sexist, homophobic, mean-spirited and if not herself a neo-Nazi at least a sympathizer with their agenda. She is none of those things and I disavow, repudiate and denounce any statement on my part inadvertently conveyed such a view. I regrettably apologize to her.
Yeah, that might have worked.
Mark, here: Du bist ehrlich ein total Arschloch.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
“You might remember, because you were there, failing to moderate your commentator.”
Sorry, but clamping down on Free Speech is a trait of the Left. If you’re expecting Sarah to censor the comments to protect your feelings, well, you probably should get off the internet, your skin is way too thin.
Nothing like being forced to laugh at oneself to put you back in temper. So..
Cards on the table. For the nonce, I’ll assume you’re a reasonable fellow, you do the same for me- just this once.
What do you want? What, in a perfect world, would your comments here on this thread accomplish?
Frex: I visited a Noted Author’s site (by accident) and found Noted Author mocking Brad Torgersen for stupidly using words wrong. Unfortunately for Noted Author, I’m a word geek, and she was in error. So I posted a clip from the OED. Ignominious goal: mock Noted Author. Achievement unlocked!
On the other hand, when I posted a defense of JCW elsewhere, at a forum I hadn’t visited for a while, my goals were to 1. Refute a falsehood and 2. Convince my interlocutors that the might be judging him unfairly, not only in this case, but overall. Best case scenario, they come away realizing he’s not any kind of neo-nazi, and is, in fact, a thoroughly decent person.
So. What’s your “best case” here?
So, how long before your comment was deleted?
I find your insensitivity to the plight of the German people offensive. Equating their language with profanity is *not okay*. Your cultural ignorance is on full display in your comment, and I *cannot* take anything else you type seriously until you apologize to all the Germanic peoples reading these comments.
German? The language of Immanuel Kant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Thomas Mann?
Or are you displaying a anti-German prejudice, assuming that anything German comes from a particular social, philosophical or political position … such as, say, Hegel or Marx?
You and your ilk being mentally ill/ impaired/ deficient is just a trope. Don’t get defensive and read anything into it.
Flee.
It’s A Trope!!!!!!
You know, back on Usenet, it was a lot harder to look up people’s quotes in other languages, but we did it and enjoyed it. Nowadays, you can get a decent translation from Google Translate in about two seconds, so why would anybody complain about foreign language inserts?
Anyway, it gave me an idea for a filk to the tune of “Secret Agent Man”:
Secret linguaphobe! secret linguaphobe!
He speaks the only idiolect he wants to call OK.
There’s a man who fears the passing stranger,
Frowns if you say, “Ganbatte, Zyuranger!”
And the last thing he should hear
Is “Bitte” or “ein bier.”
The words all hurt, and he won’t see tomorrow.
Secret linguaphobe! secret linguaphobe!
He speaks the only idiolect he wants to call OK.
Accents hurt him just like all namecalling.
Don’t y’all dare to start y’all’s y’all-ing.
Glottal stops that youse guys make
Will cause his poor heart to break.
The words all hurt, and he won’t see tomorrow.
Secret linguaphobe! secret linguaphobe!
He speaks the only idiolect he wants to call OK.
You guys realize we get better writing here than we can get from a lot of Tor writers?
That’s kinda the reason we hang out here. Well, that and we’re a bunch of irrepressible rapscallions.
Dang. Now I have this image of a white rap group, wearing green overalls and white t-shirts, their hair dyed platinum and moused into spikes.
don’t you mean “moussed”? Then again, seeing a bunch of mice being used as hair extensions would be interesting…..
You dress your hair, we’ll dress ours, whitebread.
Uhhhh … yeah, white mice, yeah, that’s it, that’s the ticket. White mice.
Dang you autocorrekkkt! I need you installed so I can blame such on you!
bad wallaby, no biscuit!
Err, oops. Sorry — I’ll sweep that up and spray it with suitable disinfectant. I’ll make sure there won’t be a stain.
How embarrassing.
*holds lit Zippo aloft*
Danke schoen!
Let’s see. “Hydrophobia”, when applied to persons who have not actually contracted rabies, is used to mean, “frothing-at-the-mouth insane”. Under that title, Sarah was quoted to have said this:
But one thing is to know it instinctively – and even then when I write about it, people email me to tell me that I am wrong and “paranoid” and yeah, one is always afraid – and another to have one’s nose rubbed in it in the form of a supposed adult saying with the simplicity of a 12 year old that the people who oppose her are “racist, sexist, homophobic” and “bad to reprehensible” even before the “poopy-head” level classification of “neo-nazis.”
Therefore, it is reasonable to read that as Sarah being accused of being frothing-at-the-mouth insane for being perturbed at being labeled, “racist, sexist, homophobic”. So, maybe Glyer should be a little more careful with his implications.
Mark, I grow tired.
So, Mike Glyer didn’t call me homophobe. he also didn’t call Peter racist. And he never even hinted it in his blog, because he’s “neutral.”
To clarify, he’s NEUTRAL between people accusing innocents (provably so) of being racist, sexist, homophobic, “neo-nazis” and downright reprehensible AND the people defending themselves from their baseless accusations.
I realize you’re just an errand boy, but are you sure this is how you wish him to portray him? In the fight between good people maligned, and the people maligning them he is “neutral”?
So which one is he? Very stupid or slily partisan for the other side? There can be no other answer, Mark, and that’s without taking into account his “I can’t control my commenters” “I don’t realize I encourage the worst of the ASPs to hang out in my comments and malign people” and “any implications from my cutesy memes are baseless.”
I’m not allowing him to hide behind “innocent” when it suits him, and to be a “brave fighter” when it means accolades from the other side (Martin, Gerrold.)
So, in the fight between truth and lie, he chooses “neutral” does he?
Which one is it? Villainous or stupid? And would he want you to defend him that way?
And what does that make you?
Sarah,
I’ll start with the issue you brought back up, and then move on to the one you dodged.
To clarify, I am not here at MGs behest, and as he’s publicly stated that he’s not bothering to pursue the issue I’d suspect he wouldn’t have appreciated me continuing with the issue. I say suspect, because the number of direct interactions between me and Glyer number in the low single digits, and were things like “@Mike, how about an edit button on the site?”
My reasons for coming here and asking you is that I was reasonably sure I was going to be seeing “MG called Hoyt a homophobe” repeated as a nonsensical received truth in the interminable posts of this kefluffle, and I rather hoped to see you back off your unsupportable claim, or at least to be able to point people to the place where it was explained to you why you were wrong and yet refused to retract. So I guess it’s the latter of the two I’m getting, and as I’d already said I was taking your answer as final, I’ll leave it there.
The issue you dodged was that I asked you “However, I’d be interested in how you square condemning the commentators elsewhere while quoting the opinion of one of your own community that I and others are mentally ill.” which you doubled down on by saying “that’s without taking into account his “I can’t control my commenters” “I don’t realize I encourage the worst of the ASPs to hang out in my comments and malign people””
Physician, heal thyself.
Here’s the latest delight from your commentators:
The Other Sean – Mark, have you stopped hitting your wife lately?
RES – Only when she holds out on him and tries keeping some portion of her “evening’s” take.
Seriously? I’ve already had a delightful encounter on MGC with Jon LaForce saying my parents should commit suicide without a boo from Amanda and Cedar in the same discussion, and now your commentators are casting aspersions on my wife? And you dare to sit there and complain about other portions of the internet having commentators “malign people”?
Fair enough, I came here aware you would be treating me as a target, but what on earth did my family ever do to you? When did I ever attack your family. Will I insult your family? No. Will I wish harm to come to them? No. Will I insult _you_? Yes:
Sarah Hoyt, you are a hypocrite.
Have you never, ever heard of that particular kafkatrap, Mark? Because that seems very disingenuous of you.
RES crossed a line, but dude, you’re pretty obviously skimming until offended, and it shows. Meantime, you’re seriously calling people out for not wading through an entire morass of blog comments to see where some dude is being a jerk and call him on it? Really?
If I thought I crossed a line I wouldn’t have posted it, so please understand my disagreement. The Other Sean had clearly posted the historical hypothetical example of begging the question. I merely extended it in an (obviously less than successful) effort to point out that Mark had come in here pimping for Glyer, whether Glyer asked it of him or no.
Lacking any possible knowledge of any potential wife of Mark, the inferential point of my comment was, I thought, clear. Clearly I erred in that presumption.
Still do I disdain treating an obvious troll with the courtesy owed one commenting in good faith. He contributed nothing to the discussion and thus merited mockery; when one sets out to “prove” somebody hypocritical (of all the venal sins, surely that is the least!) one forfeits any obligations of courtesy.
I understand–I should have clarified that I didn’t think you were cackling as you did it.
Personally, when mocking trolls I prefer to go after things that are apparent in or readily inferable from their arguments–I don’t know them, and I don’t know their life, but there’s generally lots of fun to be had with the stupid things they say.
I s’pose I could have phrased it in the subjunctive —
— but there’d have been scant point. He came here to claim insult and would have manufactured one even if we’d ignored him.
The charge of “hypocrite” is a curious one — it indicts a person of advocating a standard beyond what they can easily, readily achieve, an indictment which convicts most any decent person.
It is a sin of which one can rarely accuse the thug, the crook, the slanderer, the blackguard, the bully, the person who advocates low standards or moral behaviour and consistently fails to reach them. If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, accusations of hypocrisy are the coin of those who disdain virtue.
No, the charge of hypocrite is one of professing a standard that one does not really believe in. The “does not live up to it all the time” redefinition is nothing but smear tactics.
(Shrug) Either way, popular usage or technical, he failed to prove his charge. His was the classic logic of a hanging judge: verdict and sentence already decided with the only open question being how to get there.
“But if you really believed it you would always act in accordance with my definition of x belief!!!eleventy!!” / leftard mode off
I find the accusation of hypocrisy puzzling. I have never PRETENDED to be neutral. I started talking to stand with my friends who were being maligned. Between people like Peter Grant called awful and untruthful names and the evil people calling them names, I don’t WANT to be neutral. That’s like being told to pick good or evil and picking potato.
Never go full potato.
Oft overlooked is the innocent seeming potato’s membership in the hemlock family. Known for their ability to smuggle carbs into a diet potatoes are also known to incite arthritis flare-up and, when thrown with sufficient force, severe the facial bruising colloquially known as “potato eyes.”
We will not address their vicious role in many science fair exxhibits as that subject opens the human mind to horrors beyond the normal person’s capacity to visit and remain sane.
“The issue you dodged was that I asked you “However, I’d be interested in how you square condemning the commentators elsewhere while quoting the opinion of one of your own community that I and others are mentally ill.” which you doubled down on by saying “that’s without taking into account his “I can’t control my commenters” “I don’t realize I encourage the worst of the ASPs to hang out in my comments and malign people””
I think what you fail to understand is that Sarah agrees with her commenters, maybe not with every jot and tittle, but on whole she isn’t calling them out, because she sees no reason to. This was exactly her point with Glyer, he doesn’t call his commenters out, because he agrees with them and doesn’t see any reason to.
To pretend to not understand that is remarkably disingenius on your part.
Mike, the real problem you are having with comprehension is that you seem unable to understand that we know you are a troll from a tiny cesspit trying to pretend you are important. You aren’t. You rate somewhere between fly buzzing near the face and flea on the dog. Once you figure that out you can go back to the septic tank with the other cretins on your site.
Pretty much. He’s doing the ‘attack the group that isn’t going to rip me apart’ cowardice, a la Salon.com
https://twitter.com/atlasnodded/status/612033684561117184
Shucks, Mark — you have a family? Who knew?
Seriously, you come in here obviously looking to start trouble and expect to be treated with courtesy and respect? I suggest your time would be better spent reading If you were a dinosaur, my love.
You came here to provoke people, and you succeeded. Sarah allowed you to succeed; of course, if she’d banned you that would have provoked the same charge.
Now go troll someone else.
Mark,
I trust you will understand that, to many of us, your coming in here, posing as a concerned bystander while setting out to “prove” Sarah a hypocrite by begging a loaded question comes across as hypocritical?
Faux concern about your family being attacked is another aspect of hypocrisy. Asking whether you have stopped beating your wife is no attack on your wife (stipulating such a person exists) nor is the suggestion you would treat her as a pimp treats his wares and insult to anybody other than you. Acting as if innocent third parties have been assaulted, insulted or that harm has been wished them when clearly no such thing occurred is a classic trolling technique familiar to all here. It also marks you a hypocrite.
I hardly think such accusation against Sarah merits much response beyond “it takes one to know one.”
Who’s a hypocrite, Mark? She’s the injured party, and you come here and make insinuations and add insults? Man, your dad really failed in teaching you any manners or any etiquette.
I’m not insulting you, I’m telling the truth. You’re not only a hypocrite, you’re racist, sexist, misogynist turkey.
Mark,
I want to hear from you whether or not you are a white supremacist who favors the burning of minority neighborhoods.
As you have declined to answer this, I must wonder if you do not have a viable counter-argument.
Lord have mercy! We done German-ed at him! Honest-to-Heinrich Deutches-spreche! And that poor man livin’ in a gave without a lone bable-fish translator! Why, I hang our collective heads in shame.
Now, I’ll be the first to agree that profanity cheapens the soul and weakens the mind, you poxy, poncing, passive-aggressive, serpent-tongued jack-a-Naples.
Better?
Go away, son. Ya bother me.
Embleer Frith in a basket. I do hate the autocorrect function on these ridiculous touch screens. You know the system is bunkum when it has a smaller vocabulary than you do.
Though I rather like the idea of a Jack-o-Naples. Something from the city-state warring period, perhaps?
The funny thing is, I didn’t swear at him once. The regulars here know I’ve weaponized that to humorous effect before. I just didn’t feel he was worth that sort of effort.
Mark,
Are you as much a white supremacist who supports the burning of minority neighborhoods as the other handle?
c4c
NCC-1701
Resistance is futile.
My multimeter says its about 47 Ohms.
I’m sure the Chief Engineer can do something about that.
He canna change the laws o physics!
But if nobody’s looking, would it hurt to bend the law just this once?
That’s what Newton said.
And it is what Einstein said.
Max Planck said, “Laws? Physics don’ need no steenkin’ laws.”
You have to know the laws, so you can make them work for you, instead of trying to break them.
That’s why I have a Physics Lawyer.
That’s why I have a Physics Lawyer.
I tried putting Heisenberg on retainer, but every time I needed him, he just seemed uncertain. It was almost like it was a matter of principle.
(Slow clap) Well played, sir. Well played.
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Did Planck institute something else instead?
Wasn’t Planck Constant?
Constants aren’t. Variables don’t.
Can’t somebody ban him? ;op
I never ban them. If they’re very, very stupid I ignore them. Mik– I mean Mark is there now.
Just joking about TOSean’s bad pun. Sorry, I forgot about all the creepy crawlies. I was ignoring them.
Ohms, ohms are so strange…where verniers and the output both change…
Ohm, ohm, Give me mho!
Ohm on the range. Or if you’re from AL: AUM.
You have to cook on electric? Condolences.
Resistance is not futile, it is voltage divided by current
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, power equals I^2*R…”
Wrinkle wrinkle little spar,
up above your yield so far,
Be it kps or psi,
Gee I’m glad that I don’t fly!
Nah it is just feudal.
No bloody A, B, C or D.
I was tempted… but Galaxy class trumps Miranda class any day.
I rather like the Miranda-class actually and would much rather captain one than the lumbering behemoth of a Galaxy-class. It’s like being a frigate captain in the age of sail – there’s more adventure there than in the Man O’ War.
Plus the Galaxy-class starships were deathtraps. I can think of only one that appeared in TNG/DS9/VOY that wasn’t destroyed, and that was Geordi’s ship from Voyager.
hehe, mostly I like because I play STO. =3
Did that game ever get better? I got Admiral in three days at launch and lost interest because there wasn’t any there there at the time.
there’s a lot of story, as well as player-submitted stories now. Several Star Trek names do voice-overs, and Nimoy does quite a lot. The latest installment has The Doctor. They’ve revamped Sector Space heavily too.
Perhaps I should give it another try, it is F2P these days right?
Yes. Sorry for the late reply. Finally conked out.
STO?
Star Trek Online. Our fleet is called Apathy Squadron.
You mentioned your hands are too small for some game controllers. Check out Mechwarrior Online, which you can play with keyboard and mouse. Many explosions.
At present, I’m dividing my time between STO, Lineage II and Minecraft. I’ll keep that in mind though =D
“Sign me up!”
Not with THAT attitude…
The madmen in our fleet decided that the most important part of our starbase was the windows. Not the actual, y’know, functions of the starbase. The windows were completed first. Similarly, our dilithium mine’s decorative aspects were being done first.
*siiiigh*
There’s a guy ’round there who has the name ‘BlackGuyInRedShirt.’ And yes, he IS one apparently, RL and ingame. Funny dude. Genre-savvy roleplayer.
The madmen in our fleet decided that the most important part of our starbase was the windows.
In City of Heroes (RIP), my supergroup leader was taking video game design classes. CoH let you design the floorplan of your base.
NEVER let somebody studying game design build your base. It was really impressive, visually, and a pain in the butt to get around. When he left, I redesigned it for functionality and people started using it more.
STO = Star Trek Operations?
Star Trek Online it is a Multiplayer online game.not bad actually as it has improved alot since launch.
I need to get back into that.
Is it wrong that I bought the TOS uniform pack and all my bridge officers are Vulcan women?
Yes. Why the heck aren’t they Orion women? 😉
Vulcan women are logical and are (according James T Kirk) the only logical women in the galaxy. [Very Very Big Evil Grin While Flying Away Very Very Fast]
Normally, yeah, but in a large enough population of Vulcans you’re going to always have people in pon farr.
I thought only male Vulcans went through pon farr.
Or did the female Vulcans go “crazy” like that as well?
IIRC, yes, see Enterprise.
I dunno… Orion women in the TOS miniskirts just seems wrong.
On the other hand… don’t they have Mirror Universe uniforms for sale? Those would work on Orions…
Orion man: “We’re not in charge– THEY are!” (Enterprise)
IIRC you can play Orions, but I think they’re Klingon faction. Skimpy metal bikinis.
You can start out Romulan or Klingon, and then join the other factions I…think at level 10 somehow. I know of a Vulcan who flies around in a Warbird – ran into her a few times at the Solanae Dyson Sphere doing the ship missions that NORMALLY take a coordinated 5 ship team all by herself.
(By contrast, Aff and I can duo some of those.)
No, but you must have a very quiet rec room.
Unfortunately, I can’t control who shows up in crew, so it’s mostly just bridge officers. I did try to go that way with non-special Duty Officers as well, though. If only I could set the whole ship complement to use TOS uniforms.
…You can have your duty officers go on shore leaves, and sometimes you’ll have ‘disaster’ as a result. Aff tells me of the time he sent a bunch of Vulcans to shore leave on Vulcan, and they ended up coming back all injured, having got into a fight over a logical disagreement.
The game has a weird sense of humor.
Heh… I’ll have to look for that. On the occasions that I do still play, I’m still trying to get the perfect Hamlet performance on the holodeck.
If I do get back into the game, is your fleet recruiting? I promise not to care too much either way.
Yes we are; voice chat is not required. ‘All we need is that you play the game. That means that you log in now and then. That’s all.’ Actually, let me log in. … er… let me patch the game.
Great! I’ll try to get back in this weekend (haven’t patched in a couple weeks myself) and relearn how to play.
I’ll look for your Fleet then.
I haven’t logged in in a month so I figure I should. At least to do regular DOFF missions.
4 gig patch on my end. Phooo….!
Contact seda@affirmative via ingame email, or me shadowdancer@kagemaiko =)
That…that right there might convince me to give STO a go…
Although I haven’t entirely forgiven Cryptic for selling CoH to NCSoft, who then murdered it…
I just mentioned it to Aff and he said that the specific argument was in a bar, between your crew and its’ patrons (other Vulcans) over IDIC.
There’s an onboard ship duty officer mission I’m trying to Disaster – onboard ship concert.
Engineering experimental upgrades have ‘explosion!’ as the disaster. You *can* lose DOFFs that way.
…*giggle* no. Aff, myself, and a couple of other friends play Vulcans.
Were frigates “ships of the line”? I prefer big ships with lots of BFGs. The ones that can make mincemeat of other ships. You do need both kinds of ships. I like aircraft carriers for their ability to project force a long long way. Dreadnoughts also have a place in my heart for the pounding they can take and dish out. “There is no overkill. There is only I’m out of rounds and reloading.”
Oh no, I was comparing the Miranda to the frigate and the Galaxy to the ship of the line. A proper ship of the line would destroy a frigate in broadside of course.
I actually went with the Engineering track in STO when I played, but I immediately upgraded from Galaxy to Sovereign class in any case.
No, frigates could not stand in the line of battle. They were essentially what we call cruisers. The one attempt to make cruisers that could stand in the line of battle, battlecruisers, didn’t end well as Jutland and HMS Hood demonstrated.
“Were frigates “ships of the line”?”
No. Frigates were a separate category of ships. Smaller, fewer guns, more numerous, different purpose. Frigates patrolled and controlled the seas. Battleships/Ships of the Line were for the big fights. Generally speaking, ships of less than about 50 guns were frigates, above were ships of the line.
Which is what made the US Navy’s original 6 frigates so awesome. They were designed as 44 gun ships, but at least in CONSTITUTION’s case, often carried more like 54 guns. They could do that because of awesome Yankee engineering using diagonal riders in the hull to transfer the extra weight directly to the keel and reduce or eliminate “hogging” that tended to occur in other wooden warships of the day. So they were built and classified as frigates, but carried the firepower of third rate ships of the line. And thus an enemy frigate captain couldn’t, for reasons of honor, not engage them in battle.
Sadly, despite having a few completely awesome captains (Decatur, Preble, Bainbridge), we had a bunch of boobs in command as well. And so we lost many of those engagements anyway.
But not CONSTITUTION! 44-0, if I recall my stats correctly. 🙂 Huzzah!
As I understand it, our ships could outrun what they couldn’t outfight and outfight what they couldn’t outrun. I gather the British papers of the time were full of items complaining about how we were so unfair.
True. CONSTITUTION was once clocked at 14 knots – quite fast for ships of that time.
And they were certainly capable of out-fighting the British and others. But as with everything, that all comes down to the men, and alas our men were sometimes lacking. To wit:
CHESAPEAKE was lost in battle because her Captain never exercised the gun crews, and her British opponent drilled them every day.
PHILADELPHIA ran aground off Tripoli and was later burned.
PRESIDENT was captured and brought back to Britain – in fact, British drawings of her are the reason we know about the design innovations I mentioned before. The US Navy used those drawings extensively during CONSTITUTION’s overhaul in the mid-90s that brought her back into sailing trim.
Not that those ships were completely lacking in glory. They all won earlier engagements, too (well, except for CHESAPEAKE – seems like she was always getting her ass handed to her). UNITED STATES and CONSTELLATION accorded themselves well. But none matched the sheer awesomeness of CONSTITUTION.
🙂
Yup, it’s totally unfair for a younger country with less income to be able to beat the pants off the rulers of the seas.
And then there’s Perry’s Victory, otherwise known as, “I’ll fight from as many ships as it takes to win this battle!” Almost a parody or fictional version of Napoleonic naval warfare.
The Constitution is the support of our Republic.
Can a captain of the Miranda class refuse to incriminate himself if accused of violating the Prime Directive?
Only in the Fifth Fleet, but he would have to be read the Prime Directive before Security could put him in the brig.
How do you know that any of the Bill of Rights survived? We have no way of knowing if the American Constitution was the foundation of Federation law.
A couple of TOS episodes:
Court Martial, where Kirk’s lawyer cites “The Bible, the Code of Hammurabi and of Justinian, Magna Carta, the Constitution of the United States, Fundamental Declarations of the Martian colonies, the Statutes of Alpha Three.”
The Omega Glory, where a parallel earth has the barbarian Yangs (descendants of that world’s Americans) are fighting the villager Kohms (descendants of Chinese Communists). One of the Yang relics is a copy of the Constitution, which Kirk recognizes once he gets past the Yangs’ atrocious pronunciation.
For me, Constitution Class all the way.
(I say this only as a fan of TOS, I’m not a gamer)
You can play the Constitution, but most people upgrade because after a while it’s not something that can survive the later missions.
Somebody ought to post it. But I won’t. I won’t. The hell I won’t!
Gentlemen! If you please, this is a private fight. The Marquees of Queensbury Rules will be observed on all occasions.
And that one ties for my favorite John Wayne movie of all time! You just can’t watch it too many times for it to get old.
Extra points for the McClintock mash-up in the text. 😉
One of my reasons for leaving LA, local TV station aired The Quiet Man on St Paddy’s day and the one year they started cutting The Walk for commercial time. I will NOT associate with such barbarism.a
This’un and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, whence Nicolas Meyer and Bill Shatner stole the eyeglasses scene.
That’s okay, because Ford got the idea from George Washington’s eyeglasses scene.
Always observe them … see, they are right over there … Follow on the other hand, depends on the situation
And this post reminded of this.
(Butch Cassidy’s knife fight.)
As a second generation Cuban, there’s almost nothing I find more offensive than idiot hipsters wearing Che shirts.
Alan Vega and Martin Rev had it right:
When he died
The whole world lied
They said he was a saint
But I know he ain’t
I read Che’s bio. So did my kids. In elementary school younger son got Che shirts banned by insisting that shirts with mass murderers scared him.
Good for you for seeing that the sons knew. Kudos for younger son.
Younger son takes after me. He’ll rule the world if they don’t hang him first.
As if you would let them…
He’s a player, that one.
Do you suppose if we passed the hat at Liberty to fund a hit on File770 he might consider accepting the commission?
A ‘hit’ on File770 generates over 1000 comments, I believe.
I think I’ll encourage my niece and nephew to try this…especially since my niece’s history teacher had the temerity to tell her students that Hitler had a few good ideas. I corrected that with, “He did not have a single good idea.”
ahem…”Even committing suicide was a bad idea. He could have surrendered and saved any number of lives by ending the fighting, but he chose to sit there in Berlin until the last moment before putting a bullet in his head.”
There, I think I got the rest of that thought out that time…
You assume that he wanted to save them. He considered extinction the best fate for the Germans since they had failed and so proven themselves inferior.
One of his lieutenants, Goebles maybe, poisoned his children before shooting his wife and himself. He was reported to have said he could not bear for them to grow up in a world where nazi was a dirty word.
No, I’m not. The only thing I am assuming is that if he had ordered a surrender, lives would have been saved. The teacher said that he had some good ideas, I’m arguing that his single greatest act as a human – his suicide – was, as it was actually carried out, a bad idea – an objective bad as viewed from today.
But drugs are a victimless crime.
The level of tolerance for Nazi ideas is outrageous. Yesterday in K-Mart, I saw a skinhead with “6 million more” tattooed across the back of his head.
I would have tapped that idiot on the shoulder and ask him if he was volunteering to be in that number.
His “old lady” had a look on her face like she was begging me not to. Guess I’m just a softie.
Evil is being encouraged.
There are all sorts of good reasons why preemptive self-defense isn’t legal, but isn’t it nice to think about in cases like him?
I wouldn’t attack someone who didn’t attack me first, but boy, this guy makes me want to make an exception.
Well… if they insist on redefining attack.
I wasn’t advocating preemptive self-defense, I was just offering to help him achieve his dream of becoming one of the 6 million more that he wanted to join. I was just trying to help the guy out, honest. 🙂
Just needs a short touch with a belt sander.
I would have assumed he meant blows delivered on the marked target and given him part of his wish.
“Hitler had a few good ideas”?
I can think of one — sound money — but would be very interested in hearing anybody expand on the list.
Very interested.
BTW: was that teacher’s name by any chance Marge Schott?
I’m pretty sure that adulterating currency was a crime that predates the Romans, but I could be mistaken. 🙂
You’re right.
Egypt in fact required its own coinage to be used internally; no one would use it outside; so they made a pretty penny on the exchange.
Rome, conquering it, didn’t see any reason to forgo the money.
Nazi Germany went off the gold standard in 1934, kept interest rates low and went on a public works building program, which eased unemployment. Pretty Keynesian if you ask me.
It’s almost like they somehow expected outside sources of wealth to suddenly become available somehow.
Götz Aly’s Hitler’s Beneficiaries is worth reading.
Well, and en masse deployment of tanks.
One must however be wary of what Leo Strauss called “reductio ad Hitlerum” though (a.k.a. argumentum ad Naziam ;)) — dismissing a particular position simply because Hitler (may his name be erased) happened to agree with it, no matter that they are completely unrelated to his odious ideology.
Classic examples: “vegetarianism is bad because Hitler was a vegetarian!”
(and yes, to my everlasting shame I once pulled this one on a college girlfriend). And “dog welfare laws are bad because Hitler pushed them”. (IIRC, they’re pretty much the only Nazi-era legislation that is still on the books in Germany.)
One can however play the converse: if some PETA type argues that ALL vegetarians are morally superior to non-vegetarians, “weapons free” 😉
” (IIRC, they’re pretty much the only Nazi-era legislation that is still on the books in Germany.)”
As it happens, Germany’s anti-homeschooling law, which are strict to the point of removing the children from the family, dates back to 1938 and is a Nazi law.
Anti-homeschoolers are quite literal supporters of a Nazi position.
Makes sense. Goes hand in hand in the ‘controlling information’ part of the kind of control that such philosophies/governments require.
Interesting, thanks
*Shrug* So are gun-controllers; never seems to slow them down either.
Like I said, dishonesty at a pathological level.
Good for him. Schools are an entirely inappropriate place for such fashion statements. While I wasn’t instrumental in it, my company tightened up its dress code specifically on account of the hipster who kept showing up to work in sandals, cargo shorts and Che T-shirts.
I once hurt the feelings of some individual by telling him I saw no moral difference between his moronic Che Guevara T-shirt and a brown shirt with a swastika armband.
meany
The brown shirt with the swastika armband is probably either more aware than the hipster in the Che shirt or, if the hipster is aware, the brown shirt is more honest with himself.
That’s a difference and not a small one.
Shouldn’t Che shirts require trigger warnings? Doesn’t any school that fails to ban them owe apologies to all descendants of the Cuban Diaspora?
Che shirts trigger me!
Me too.
I think the Blackfive milblog was selling T-shirts a few years ago. I think it had “DouChe” superimposed on the picture.
And I don’t know if this was ever a T-shirt or not, but I seem to recall seeing a picture of Che in the morgue made up to look like the shirts.
This is Che.
This is Che on hollowpoints.
Any questions?
there is a case of it being better if his mother had been a radical feminist and aborted him before he did any damage.
Also a picture of dead Che and “Your tax dollars at work.”
I pointed that out once to someone, and got the reply ‘but he was considered a hero!’
At which point I decided not to waste my breath.
Some consider Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Chavez, and more heroes also, need I go on?
Yeah, well, who they consider heroes says a lot about them, aye?
“He was considered a hero.”
Optional response:
Really? Why do you think that is? Why would anyone exalt a murderous thug to hero status?
I’m always tempted to ask if the reason they’re wearing the Che shirt is because their Hitler and Goebbels shirts are both in the laundry.
Heh. It kinda makes me think of that Adolf Hipster cartoon with the Occupy Poland shirt. “I just needed a Safe-space for my people, man.”
Perhaps the Idi Amin one? Heard he was another of those hands on, I’ll do it myself guys like Che…
+++++
Che shirts just make me want my Franco shirt 🙂
I mean, think of the good he did for the Church and all that. It’s logical for him to be a hero to conservatives. His heart was in the right place so we can excuse his oppression just like they do for Che.
The only time when I got a progressive to actually get it and change his mind was that. I think it helped that his grandfather had fled Franco’s Spain.
Pinochet.
I feel there’s a song in there, maybe to the tune of Tangerines or (better yet) danke schön … sorry I haven’t time to invest in the idea at present.
Pinochet, oh my darling, Pinochet
Thank you for all the joy and pain …
http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/ferrisbuellersdayoff/dankeschoen.htm
Knew a few Cubans who escaped and also others who have left “the loving arms of mother socialism/communism” like Viet Nam or Cambodia.
For some reason they are not big fans of the leftoids. Slow boil when we have an idiot who wears a Che shirt to work.
It is high time we presume anyone in a Che t-shirt knows he’s wearing a t-shirt with the face of a man who delighted in killing students, children and dogs, or else they’re completely and totally stupid.
Sadly, to those of us familiar with what is being presented — and not presented — in the schools, it is not hard to conclude that the latter — they’re completely and totally stupid — is more than likely the case for the vast majority.
We are ODDs. We like to think. We enjoy it. It is as natural to us as breathing. It is among the disciplines and challenges that we like to chase. But, in the case of most people, to paraphrase a man who could think clear circles around just about anyone else ever: Thinking has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
I must confess, I do like the Planet of the Apes version of the Che shirt.
Or the one with the international “forbidden” traffic sign over it, and the text “Che was a mass murderer and your T-shirt isn’t cool”. Or the Mickey Mouse parody designed by (I think) TheDissidentFrogman.com
DissidentFrogman’s Mickey Marx is also a good one.
Rules in a fight are fine thing, if both sides agree to them and follow them; otherwise they are merely an inconvenience for those who do follow them, and a potentially fatal one. This point has been made in various places and in various forms. For example, I remember a phrase like “honorable rules for honorable foes” (can’t remember the source for that,) and something from one of the Pournelle and Stirling Falkenburg novels, about what civilization owes barbarians – nothing.
However, it is important to remember that far too much of the population is still reliant upon, or at least largely still believes, the traditional sources of information and opinion. Opposing the left takes action, but it also requires a shift in public opinion in the long run. I’m uncertain how to fully accomplish that, and it is essential for long term success. I see distrust in mainstream media slowly increasing, but alternatives still carry a stigma for many (in part from deliberate mainstream media hostility).
Also, some seem to go from distrusting the media to disbelieving everything they say, and listening to outright craziness. For example, everything from moon landing conspiracies and anti-vaxxer insanity to 9/11 conspiracies and racist lies. Some people just seem determined to go from one form of stupidity to the next. I guess, to paraphrase the Bible, “the stupid you will always have with you.”
Aye, nor is discernment granted to everyone.
Spend five minutes with Tom Kratman on the Laws of War. There are reasons for them, but they only make sense if enforced. The idiocy lies not in having such laws but in imposing them unilaterally.
Same idiocy that imagines gun control legislation would prevent such tragedies as happened in Charleston while ignoring that none of the laws proposed would have prevented the perp from getting a gun (latest reports are that he did buy the gun and thus passed a background check even though being out on bond for a felony should have precluded that.
When “the rules” require the good guys to fight with one hand tied behind the back “the rules” are bollocks. If the “bad guys” put innocents in the line of fire, the war crimes are not by the shooters.
Even if the “intent” of gun control laws was to keep the guns out of the hands of real criminal, they are worthless as long as criminals using gun are not severely punished.
England is said to have strong anti-gun laws but criminals (with or without) guns are punished lightly.
IMO if criminals knew they would be strongly punished (including execution) if they used guns in a crime, the market for illegal guns would lessen.
Of course, any criminal executed for using a gun in a crime is one less criminal around. [Evil Grin]
“being out on bond for a felony”
Being out on bond =/= convicted felon. So…yeah, if that’s true, he SHOULD HAVE passed the background check.
Punish the innocent, not the guilty. Until convicted by a court of law by a jury of his peers, he was (and is) not guilty. Therefore his rights should not have been restrained.
Woops. That should have been punish the guilty, not the innocent.
LOL
The innocent and compliant are easier to find, and impose punishment on. Finding and punishing criminals is HARD
This is the fundamental basis of lots of bureaucracies
Which is why you never hear proposals to reduce gun violence by arresting gangbangers. It’s always another law that only the law-abiding will obey.
that is because the reasons for gun control have absolutely nothing to do with reducing crime.
My impression is SC law does not permit somebody out on bond to purchase a weapon.
Probably out of some wild idea that such a person might attempt to intimidate or eliminate a witness.
I read somewhere that the gun was a gift from his dad. If true, someone is not showing good judgment.
Nope. The money he used to buy it was though.
later I read it was his, but his mom had confiscated it because she did not trust him to have it, and he had stole it back from her.
Eventually we might get the true story.
maybe
sorta.
Meet his Dad:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/06/this-probably-explains-a-lot.php
Apparently that apple-knocker landed near the tree.
real winners, huh?
“All the News that Fits the Narrative.”
and it comes in fits and starts, and sometimes even in truthfulness (though not often enough)
For example, everything from moon landing conspiracies and anti-vaxxer insanity to 9/11 conspiracies and racist lies. Some people just seem determined to go from one form of stupidity to the next. I guess, to paraphrase the Bible, “the stupid you will always have with you.”
It hasn’t helped that over the past six years things Glenn Beck and Alex Jones have said turned out to be as much prescient as b@tsh!t crazy (and the former doesn’t necessarily cancel the later). I remember the first few times I realize that had happened. I checked the car for blotters or mushrooms.
Ugh, wrong replied to wrong comment.
Or not…caffeine time.
Or chem trails, there is an older couple I sell firewood to every year. They used to be pretty normal, but over the last few years the guy has been getting not just paranoid, but bat guano nuts. Last year he was constantly going on about the chem trails (and he will email me websites on them 🙂 ) today I was by there and not only got an hour long lecture on chem trails, but got to hear about disappearing clouds (he admits to having nothing better to do than watch the sky). And that everybody from his daughter, to his doctor who fixed his broken ankle, to his shrink, doesn’t believe him and calls him crazy.
Once upon a time a man told me his secret to success. “Fighting fair is fighting to lose.” Seeing as said gentleman had survived a trip to Iraq circa the early 90s while wearing a uniform with the words “US ARMY” stitched above one pocket, I decided that he probably knew a bit about fighting and decided to take his advice. It has worked well for me ever since.
The problem is that the other side demands fairness from us while offering none of their own. See the comments by Irene Gallo as an example. Maybe she did think she was saying something non-controversial, but if so it was because she had been lied to by someone on her side. The default setting is to scream racist/sexist.Non-nazi and then to tell people that they’re not allowed to think for themselves as to whether or not something IS racist/sexist, etc. Free thought might lead to someone disagreeing.
Any thinking person will tell you to assume that your enemy is at least as smart as you are. The Left assumes that we’re not as smart as they are and so far we’re proving them right. We will start retaking some ground when we fight fire with fire. Seriously. It’s time to sink to their level. Tell people you’re sick of being “white-shamed.” Tell them they have no right to think about whether it’s right or not. Act like spoiled, petulant children. If we want to win we can’t be above fighting dirty.
“I assume they’re adults and that if they’re kicking sand in our faces they’re doing it because they like to, and not because they’re mentally damaged. ”
Embrace the power of AND. They like to do it AND they’re brain-damaged.
Queensbury’s rules are for managing intra-civilizational fights. They limit the damage opponents can do one another so as to maintain the basic trust that must exist between individuals and groups inside a civilization. Thus, civility.
The Barbarian has a huge advantage over civil populations because he uses levels of violence not permitted to civilians and so overwhelms them. Civilization depends upon certain of its members who are authorized and trained to exercise otherwise unacceptable levels of violence against the Barbarian in order to protect the civilization and render it secure. Ordinary civilians resist using the Barbarian’s own violence against him precisely because they have internalized the trust building rules of their culture. That’s why civilizations confronting Barbarians tend to lose.
Until such time as ordinary members of Western Civ recognize that the Left is an alien and barbarous culture bent on our plunder and destruction. They look like us, talk like us and walk like us most of the time. But they are revealed uncivil actions. An effective opposition will mean that meet violence with violence *EVERY* time they act against us.
We won’t win all such fights, but we don’t need to. It is sufficient to make them keep their heads down, diminishing the effectiveness of their attacks. Allow no Leftist twaddle to go unanswered.
Add to that the need for a bit more confidence in our culture and civilization – that it is worth defending, that it is, in fact good.
Heck, and a willingness to stand firm on the idea that there is such a thing as objective good.
They’re scum, there’s no doubt about it. I’m still not willing to use their tactics against them, for two reasons. One is because they’re better at it. And the other is Nietzsche’s old admonition about fighting monsters. If I were to e.g. troll them into making some public statement that could be interpreted as a slur against a protected class (I’m in one, not one they usually consider but one they often rail against in their vitriol) and then try to get them dismissed by their employer as a result, I’d feel dirty. And they’re not worth feeling dirty over.
Note that I am not being critical of those who think Gallo ought to be fired for her remarks; she went well beyond merely making an “unacceptable” public statement into directly attacking her publisher’s customers, products, and other business associates. I could probably publicly criticize my company’s products without being fired, but my company is unusual in this. But attacking customers and business associates… nope, I’d be gone.
Agree with your thoughts on stooping to their level of dirty tricks and tactics.
Which is why I must confess to a good bit of schadenfreude while sitting back and watching while they do it all by their own selves.
I am sure that Ms. Gallo thought at the time she was being cute and edgy, praiseworthy qualities in her circles, and was shocked beyond belief when she realized she had put her livelihood in jeopardy.
I stopped assuming that they were innocent, or that their actions were unintended years ago. They are nasty, they are bad, and many of them are just downright evil. They know what they are doing, and they do it on purpose with complete malice aforethought.
‘The Ends Justify the Means’ is their rallying cry and they do not care who gets killed or who gets hurt, just as long as they get their way. They are the biggest bullies, and the most uncaring bastards you will ever encounter. They are often the biggest cowards as well, because when they are caught red-handed they will whine and cry and prostate themselves declaring their innocence in the most insincere forms you will ever see.
They are like children, mentally stunted to the age of Ten, consequences be dammed, facts do not matter, history does not repeat! And they will cry cry cry and scream and shout, until they get what they want. Then they’ll do it all over again because it worked the last time. There is no dealing with them, and no compromising. Because like any Ten year old, they will never be happy.
Careful John, criticize them for prostating themselves and they will call you a homophobe.
OK, cheap shot, could not help myself.
Jokes aside, you are correct, they operate at a moral level of spoiled children who never attained adulthood. Bully, threaten, make up lies about their opponents then cry foul and claim victimhood when called on their actions.
Ok, I can’t always tell – was “prostating themselves” intentional? Because if it was, that’s an awesome pun.
Well, crap. I saw it in your comment, Uncle Lar, but went right over it in the original.
(Bangs head on desk) Now, my eyes are crossed. Perhaps I can read better that way. 😛
“prostate themselves”: interesting Freudian slip for “prostrate”.
I was in a rush and typing very very fast. But it does sorta work too, doesn’t it?
I’ve never liked the dismissal of that expression because, frankly, the objections generally point to cases where the ends are pretty bad themselves. If the Left thinks their ends justify their means, I submit that the ends are already bad.
Then there’s the flip side, can the “means” justify the “ends”? That is, can pious means vindicate a bad end? If the result is disaster then the result is disaster no matter how “morally superior” one may think ones means.
How about this one: “by their fruits shall ye know them”? “Means” and “ends” are not separate things. They are interdependent. You can’t have one without the other. Means that leads to a bad end are bad means. Only when you have multiple viable means to achieving a good end do you have the luxury of choice between “good” and “bad” means.
Know that old “a quote, out of context, is a pretext” thing?
The “ends justify the means” thing is sort of that– it’s from a very specific context, and might be better understood as “you cannot do evil that good may come of it.” Even then, you have to understand it’s about evil, not just bad, and a direct evil, not an action with an evil second effect. (Those can be justified by the ends.)
It’s for things like “if all innocents go to heaven, shouldn’t we slaughter every child after they are baptized?”
Or the convoluted claim that if those who have never been exposed to the Word of God are unable to choose him and are thus innocent. And since all innocents go to heaven, we shouldn’t send out missionaries or proselytize because that will mean we are condemning all of those who don’t choose to follow god after they have the Word shared with them, to hell.
My version is “The ends do not justify the means, but the results sometimes can.”
But those results must be clear, present, and verifiable. NOT projected into the misty future. Not ever.
I keep thinking of the following phrase from David Weber’s Shadow Of Freedom
Quote
“Why is it,” Terekhov asked conversationally, “that people like you always think you’re more ruthless than people like me?”
End Quote
This is just before Terekhov “lowers the boom” on the person he’s talking to. [Very Very Big Grin]
There is an idea that was presented in a book…might have been the Northworld Trilogy…that if you want to destroy something, you don’t send a sociopath. You take a “good” person and give them a reason – like protecting something/someone they love – and send them. Because they will destroy themselves before they stop, whereas the sociopath/psychopath at some point will get bored or otherwise put self-interest before the mission.
The bad guys wouldn’t know ruthless if it bit them on their backside.
I’ve told anarchists that they best be happy some of us keep preventing their plans because some of us are far, far better at it than they will ever be and only our hatred of it prevents it from happening.
It’s akin to Quigley and hand guns … just because he didn’t have much use of them, does not mean ignorant of their use.
They’d never learn, either. Ruthless goes for the neck.
Reminds me of a line in the first scene in Lois McMaster Bujold’s _Paladin of Souls_: “She knew what she feared—to be locked up in some dark, narrow place by people who loved her. An enemy might drop his guard, weary of his task, turn his back; love would never falter.”
For certain definitions of “love,” of course.
Reminds me of C. S. Lewis in God in the Dock: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
I’d forgotten about that quote. Hmm, where’s my copy…? Love those essays. I keep hoping the price on the Kindle version will drop.
The “good” people tend to be slow to anger. But, push them far enough, they will do some pretty horrific things in a calm, dispassionate, orderly manner- the firebombings of Germany and Japan, for instance. Or, the scientific manner of siege warfare as another example.
The Japanese earned their nuking. They attacked us.
And China, Philippines… ect.
No. I’m sick of the “Pearl Harbir was an unprovoked attack” nonsense. We had seized their bank accounts in the U.S., stopped their trade, amd called them a wide and pungent variety of evil names. The only thing we hadn’t done -YET – was actually hit them. We had provoked them. That their formal declaration of war arrived after the attack was a bureacratic bungle, not a deliberate act of barbarism.
HOWEVER, the provocation was richly deserved, by their barbarity in Korea and China.
They earned their nuking by behaving barbarously all through the Pacific war, and by declining to surrender when the next step was an invasion of their main islands which would have killed more of us AND of them than the two bombs did.
But Pearl Harbor was the result of FDRs racist assumption that Japs couldn’t strike that far across the Pacific. And to hide that fromthe public, he (Progressive that he was) told the Public that themattack was “Unprovoked”, which was bullshit, since provoking Japan had been his policy of some years.
It’s probably been about ten years or more since I read about this, but TR had stabbed Russia in the back when he “earned” his Nobel Peace Prize by “acting” as impartial negotiator to end that little kerfuffle in 1905 (date?).
According to some sources, Teddy gave the Japanese the clear idea that the US was fine with the far side of the Pacific being theirs to operate as they found fit.
True or not, if that was their impression you can understand their being miffed about the sanctions we were imposing.
Oh, I can understand them being furious, no matter what the background. I hope FDR didn’t think for a moment that they WEREN’T going to attack at some point. I firmly believe that he was a swine, but never a stupid one. No, my reading of the mayyer os that FDR’s arrogance lead him to think that they would attack, say, the Philippines, and that they would be beaten back with very little trouble. Which makes him an idiot, but a lot of people underestimated them in that way, in spite of plenty of opportunity to observe them in Manchuria and elsewhere.
My point remains; Pearl Harbor was a provoked attack. They deserved to be provoked. We provoked them. We should have been better prepared.
The agonizing over Hiroshima and Nagasaki bores me. If we had had to invade, and the Japanese had resisted as furiously as they did on Okinawa, we would have killed a lot more JAPANESE, setting aside our own casualties. A blockade and bombing campaign would have had much the same effect, plist possible famine (which wouldn’t have touched the assholes in charge until a LOT of Little People starved).
Dropping those two atomic bombs was, by comparison, the vegetarian option.
But I’m a peculiar cuss. I think Nuremberg was a mistake. We forfeited any Moral High Ground when we included any of Stalin’s stooges in the court, and whatever gloss was put on it the sentences still amounted to “You lose a war, and piss off the rest of the world in the process, and like is likely to become very unpleasant.” We’d have cleaner hands if we’d just shot out of hand any Nazis we thought should be inspiring the cabbages.
There was ample famine as it was – see e.g. Grave of the Fireflies if you can stand it; everybody should see it once, nobody should be asked to see it twice – Genda who as much as anyone led the attack on Pearl Harbor later (as an officer in the Japan Air Self-Defense Force and so perhaps with an agenda) told the man who dropped the bomb (Tibbets then a wing commander as I recall) that dropping the bomb was the right thing.
There’s a nice alt history story in which the A bomb fizzled and island hopping was extended to the home islands with a complete blockade and continued airstrikes on any technology – bomb them back to the stone age and otherwise embargo all contact with all that implies for an industrialized society.
Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya have been more than a little discredited as honest historians but as I recall wrote that much of the Navy was persuaded to go along with Army expansionism for fear a looming shortage of fuel oil would prevent future fleet actions – a use it or lose it decision.
It comforts me that I run into japanese pop-culture treatments of the arrogance of the military government, and of Japanese war crimes and Unit 731. Their upper echelons are dishonest about the War, and the rest of Asia is rightly furious with them, but they do debate among themselves.
“The agonizing over Hiroshima and Nagasaki bores me. ”
The agonizing over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, shows either a) willful disregard for the facts, b) a complete disassociation with reality, or c) complete and utter stupidity.
Or of course, a combination of the above.
I’ll grant the vast majority of people, “Having lives and no special interest in the history of the period.”. The Liberal Intellectual Radical Progressive establishment spent a lot of time and energy creating the “It was awful to use The Bomb, it must never be used again” narrative, for a wide variety of reasons, none of them honest. You and I know it’s hogwash, but you and I read, and chew things over. I don’t have kids, don’t really have a career (a career takes up so much more time that a job, don’t you think?), don’t follow sports, don’t camp. The time most people spend on “leisure” I spend reading. I expect to have more historical background under my hand, so to speak.
It should be noted that had Truman declined to use those bombs and the public learned we had a war ending super-weapon but instead of using it we accepted a million American casualties it is probable that Truman’s impeachement proceedings would have employed tar, feathers, lampposts and hemp (not the kind you smoke.)
“inspiring the cabbages”
awesome!
” I think Nuremberg was a mistake.”
Yeah, another way to get lefty heads to explode is to remind them that under the Constitution orders to confiscate guns would have to be disobeyed because the “following orders” defense was hung at Nuremberg.
You do realize that between the two of you, you have encapsulated and agreed with the Left’s argument that 9/11 in particular and jihadism in general is justified by our actions?
Just wanted clarity.
I’m not saying that Pearl Harbor OR 9/11 were justified. I’m saying they weren’t unprovoked. I’ll admit that the difference is a little too subtle for the LIRPs, but their capacity for reason is atrophied.
We may have provoked the 9/11 attacks. We certainly SHOULD have. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t competely justified in killing any Jihadis we can find. But we were so justified BEFORE the 9/11 attack anyway. If only on the “stepping on one cockroach may not solve the problem, but it’s a start” basis.
Slightly tangential, but I’ve always been struck by the phrase “poverty and drug addiction explain your crimes, they don’t justify them.” Studying your opponent and trying to find ways to make him stop must include an honest appraisal of why you are in a fight in the first place.
Nothing I said strikes me as endorsing the Left’s arguments in defense of the jihadis — that provocation does not justify action is a basic tenet of civilization.
The Japanese earned their nuking in China. It’s probably their good fortune they got it from us; the Chinese would not have stopped at two bombs, given the ability.
When I lived in DC, one of the signs of spring was the yearly effort by one twit or another to have the Enola Gay removed from the Air Amd Space museum. I always felt we should hang a banner on the plane, in Japanese, saying “You rape Nanking again, we nuke you again.”
There were reasons the Tokyo Disneyland project failed. It wasn’t that they didn’t enjoy the Bataan Nature Walk and Pirates of Nanking, they just refused to believe the rides had happened and kept demanding refunds.
There are people on our side for whom the phrases “by any means necessary” and “war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt” resonate as deeply as they do to any “people’s revolutionary.” The fact that such people choose not act on them is not predicated on the approval of our opponents…and it is, I suspect, NOT an irreversible choice.
:o}
Nod.
Of course, in the case of Weber’s character, his opponent was threatening to kill “rebels” if he didn’t back off.
His response was to do a precision strike on her location.
While some innocents may have been killed, his actions stopped the killings on the planet.
Oh, David Weber is on record as saying that Terekhov is more of a “hardass” than Honor Harrington. [Evil Grin]
Weber, while a great story teller, is a genuinely nice, kind hearted guy; and it shows through in his fiction. I have been listening to the audio version of the Honor Harrington books while driving lately. I’m currently on Echoes of Honor, and was just thinking that if it would have been ME writing the story… well. I would not have had all of the Alliance pussyfooting around after the execution of Honor was aired, along with the pleas for civility and ‘no reprisals’.* I would have had either Protector Benjamin or more likely Admiral Yanakov (?) Publicly state that the rest of the Alliance could make their own policy, but they had given orders to the Grayson navy to neither surrender, nor accept surrenders.
*My but that ‘no reprisal’ speech of Boardman’s sounded remarkably like what we hear from the Left.
Well, I suspect that the Graysons would have loved to do as you suggested but the Protector knew the problems that would cause with the Alliance with Manticore.
Remember, that some of the Manticorian Politicians were close to being nutty Lefties. [Sad Smile]
On the other hand, remember the battle at the Basilisk termini where White Haven ambushed the Haven attack fleet after Honor’s “death”?
The Grayson contingent of his fleet scared the pants off of the Havenites in the Life Pods. IE they didn’t fire on the Life Pods but did “target” the Life Pods. [Very Very Big Evil Grin]
No, what we usually hear from the Left sounds remarkably like that psychopath Andre Warnecki in “Honor Among Enemies.”
And Weber describes their mindset perfectly:
“This man is convinced he can beat the entire universe because he’s hungrier and more ruthless than anyone else in it. He’s counting on that. He expects us to be the good guys and back away rather than accept the blame for the cost of stopping him.”
Oh, David Weber is on record as saying that Terekhov is more of a “hardass” than Honor Harrington. [Evil Grin]
Dicey disagrees. 😉
The hilarious thing – especially in light of Monica and Mobius – is that Terekhov’s backstory has him as a former *diplomat.*
Bwahahaha. 😛
Compare his discussions with Westman and his discussion with that woman. Diplomacy works with reasonable people but not with unreasonable people. Smart Diplomats understand that. Unfortunately, there aren’t many Smart Diplomats in the Real World.
Diplomacy is a way of saying Nice Doggie until you find a rock to bash the doggie with.
To a degree that’s correct. [Smile]
But done correctly, it can “cut through” the anger/annoyance that prevent reasonable people from coming to an agreement that both sides dislike but can live with.
Of course, it’ “interesting” the lack of diplomacy coming from the people who claim diplomacy works. [Evil Grin]
Or a KEW deployed via countermissile tube. 😀
I always thought diplomacy was telling someone to go to hell in such a way they look forward to the trip… 😉
That is tact, a subtle difference but a difference.
“There are people on our side for whom the phrases “by any means necessary” and “war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt” resonate as deeply as they do to any “people’s revolutionary.” ”
Guilty.
“Never start a fight, but always finish it.”
Sarah, will you write a letter to all republicans running for office? Warn them of the tactics, tell them why it is important that they never give up, and especially never allow themselves to be chased from the ballot by poo flinging communist monkeys? I’ll do my best to make it go viral, and I’m sure most of us here will. It could be an early eye opener for voters, as well as a back stiffener for anyone running at any level.
Pam, if they are not already fully aware of what they’re up against they have no business being in this race, or anywhere in politics for that matter. Revelations as to the character and nature of your opponents at this stage of the game would I’m afraid be too little too late.
I wish. Look at the people who drop out over things they said or did when they were in their twenties.
Sarah is an inspirational writer, and rabble rouser. Maybe she can make some people stick their toes in and fight back.
I read that as “Ballad of the poo flinging communist monkeys”
That works.
I’m reminded of Bujold’s line about reputation being what others think of you, honor being what you know about yourself. They are concerned with their reputation among their peers. We are concerned with honor.
Which is why the phrase “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” means something comprehensible to us. I’m not seeing any signs that they comprehend any meaning in that line.
If we are slow to engage in total war, it is because we each must consider what our honor demands of us. If we did not, we would not be us.
For the life of me I can come up with only three explanations for any competent adult embracing a marxist socialist philosophy.
Willful ignorance.
Massive long term indoctrination. The current US school system, case in point.
The cynical observation that the socialist agenda can be used as a tool towards the acquisition of an individual’s wealth and power.
So, stupid, brainwashed, greedy, or a combination of all three.
At 25 the brain is fully developed, at that age most people are out of school. Anyone who doesn’t start unlearning the indoctrination at that point has no excuse.
You can’t learn what you don’t know exists, and you can’t research when you don’t even know enough to tell fertilizer from floor-wax.
I know this first hand– I had to teach myself Catholicism, and there wasn’t even any sort of deliberate attempt to keep me from learning about that, and there was even a highly active effort to get the information out.
Just a lot of people doing what was easy, and others who did what they should believing that everyone was doing what they claimed they were, what they were responsible for; haven’t identified a single actually malignant individual. Still never would’ve found out enough to even know where to look if not for a massive outreach effort largely started by Mother Angelica, and currently best personified by Catholic Answers.
And that wasn’t trying to overcome actively antagonistic philosophies that were entrenched.
That’s true, people won’t necessarily gain positive knowledge to replace their indoctrination. But I can’t believe that rational people won’t, at the very least, notice that real world experience contradicts their indoctrination at every single turn.
You have noticed what happens when people question the narrative, right?
I didn’t get into it on this post, but THAT is where the thing were us all being evil can gain traction– we look at the whole “if I was evil, I’d be a lot more effective” thing, and we don’t see all the stuff they think we do/are told we do, because we recognize it as following cause and effect from their choices.
This is a really old technique– what’s Mary keep pointing out, kulacks and wreckers?
So if you do “everything right,” and still fail, it’s because someone is sabotaging you. Not because the technique of “doing it right” you were taught is false.
I figured that once people stop being exposed to propaganda they would eventually stop believing it, not take it to heart and make excuses for why it doesn’t match experience. That’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for the brainwashed true believer, but I still have a sneaking suspicion that there is an element of willfulness in their continued delusion.
*sad* You mean like that Martin kid being baby-faced, having skittles in his hand, and having been hunted down by a White Hispanic? That kind of propaganda?
Most of the folks I know that stopped trusting the media had to get slapped by it, and get some kind of support that they weren’t just “confused” or “misunderstanding,” before they looked for alternate routes of information.
I got lucky, my parents taught us to look for all kinds of manipulation, including unconscious stuff– thank God for having a lot of family that most likely qualify as “Odd.”
People who do think fairly normally, on the other hand? Especially if they’re not highly detail oriented? They’ll assume they must’ve missed something, or misunderstood, or there was someone actually doing them wrong.
There probably are some people who are willfully ignorant, but we KNOW there are others who deliberately work to make people believe a desired thing. They’ll tell us about it. They’ll BRAG about it.
Why, oh why, did I read that first sentence as “that Martian kid”?
I dunno why you did, but I did, too. I just didn’t want to say it. 🙂
I haven’t read through the comments yet, so this may have already been covered, but here goes…
This brings to my mind the question of the nature of evil.
I’ve heard it said that the Right thinks the Left is wrong. The Left thinks the Right is evil.
But which side is reinforcing racial/social stereotypes? Which side has proclaimed sheer vitriol about their opponents on the other side? Who has made comments about how they want opponents raped/killed/enslaved, just because of a difference of opinion?
I know that many trolls on both sides have behaved this way, but I’m talking about the politicians themselves; the public faces of the individual parties.
As a religious individual, I can’t help but see evil, and call it what it is.
When your foe is evil, then all sort of tactics — tactics which would be foul if your foe is merely wrong — become acceptable.
The Left does not think the Right is evil, or not at the policy level. The Left thinks that saying the Right is evil works.
The Left, like all would-be Aristocraces, has no morals and recognizes no evil. A few Aristicracies that managed to BECOME Aristocracies learned, usually the hard way, that Evil is counterproductive and at a minimum Ethics are necessary for the creation of wealth. Eventually, of course, their pampered descemdents forgot.
It is possible also due to the fact that *some* of those on our side of the fence are so very very dangerous. We bind ourselves to preserve civilization. If someone spree murdered my family and ended up in the Cook County lockup I would have no problem with . (Deadpool rather than Batman.) With the side benefit that it would seriously decrease the Chicago area crime rate quite significantly.
Which is why Frank Miller made such use of The Punisher as a character during his Daredevil run; Two different sides of a line, with both acknowledging that line’s existence.
Socialism delenda est!
I joined the US Army way back when to go fight the communists in Europe, so we wouldn’t have to fight them here. I was too young to know then that they were already here…
They have ALWAYS been here. They went cheering right over to the Soviet Union from the day the revolution started and have been cheering it ever since. And feeding it ideas. It’s scary how many of the Soviet and NAZI ideas came straight out of the Progressives right here in the US.
Thank you for your service so that the Russians never came here or had the opportunity to overrun Western Europe.
> But more likely she’s simply insular and insulated.
“How did those horrible people get on the ballot, no one *I* know voted for them!”
“How did all these horrible books get on the Hugo Ballot? Nobody *I* Know reads them!”
Related: the new front.
The War on Comedy
http://takimag.com/article/the_war_on_comedy_gavin_mcinnes
He mentions Gamergate
Not for one thing or another, but Taki’s Rag (especially the comments) is full of people I do *not* want to share a foxhole with (Taki himself and Pat Pukecannon foremost). My concern is not diminished by the fact that they nowadays do publish some people that are worth reading (Dreher, for example).
In the old media landscape, the relentless PC-ization of all media risked creating a situation where heterodox views could only be expressed on the pages of shady rags — setting the author up for guilt by association (whether with Hugh Hefner or Robert Welch). Nowadays, more outlets are available — anybody who doesn’t give two droppings whether (s)he gets paid can simply open a blog and not be tainted by association. Not that this will stop the doucheoisie from trying to do so anyway — as our blog-mistress and many others have learned to their chagrin. Once again, our elites are setting up a perverse “they’ll hang us for a lamb anyway, so why not a sheep?” incentive structure that they may bitterly rue one day.
PS: le-heser safek/to remove any doubts: will my distaste for Taki stop me from reading it? No. Or call for it to be banned from publication? H*ll no! I will read friend and foe alike the better to understand them, and “I will give the Devil benefit of law, if only for my own sake.” (attributed to Thomas More)
doicheoisie! You sir are a word craftsman.
I can’t claim credit for that one 😉 forgot where I first saw it…
I like dalrymple.
yeah, I have several books by him. How he ended up there is beyond me.
Probably because no one else would publish him besides CityJournal.
Which is a crying shame.
Dalrymple has a regular weekly post at PJ Media and turns up infrequently at National Review and The London Telegraph.
Maybe Taki’s mag simply pays better?
Maybe. Who knows.
A few columnists were pushed out of National Review and have reappeared in Taki’s mag. I don’t read PB.
He gets published a number of places. If you follow this blog:
http://blog.skepticaldoctor.com/?doing_wp_cron=1434934149.1661748886108398437500
You will see them.
Also, he gave the blogger some articles he had written for a publication before severing ties before they were published, so — original work.
(Nods) I’ve been over there a few times, and most of the writers and the commenters somehow make the Dread Ilk look like the Monster Hunter Nation in terms of the crazy. I mean, yikes.
But as to your last sentence–have they forgotten so quickly that the reason socialism and communism are attractive is shortsighted, stupid capitalists?
Oh my Bellator Deus, you are a far better human than I. If my family were spree murdered, all civilized responses would be null and void by me. There would be NOTHING that I would not do to avenge their deaths. I pray that day never comes.
How a company should treat its’ customers: not declare them dead.
Ok, everyone? This must be seen.
http://voxday.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/the-first-law-in-action.html
Stood to reason, projection being a common feature.
I would strongly advise to the Huns and Mad Geniuses and ELOErs that we make gratitious use of the archive.is and twitsave bookmarklets.
Archive everything. Screenshot everything. If it’s not archived, it didn’t happen, especially in the wake of the ASPs deleting things they say now to cover their asses.
Pass it on. Remember that I’m not in the US and I’m often asleep when most of this happens.
Also, if anyone needs a place to collate the information, post and such, the forums on the affsdiary website are yama-proof.
So, more sock puppets than a Lamb Chop fan club convention.
Pretty much. Hired out of Indonesia too, it looks like.
from the looks the price was cheap and they hired Stepfords
Reblogged this on Views of a Crank.
US Special Ops folks have a saying: If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck. (My apologies anyone else among the 568 commentators said this, because I don’t want to be redundant).
i think it’s been mentioned a couple of times, but it always bears repeating.
Don’t they also say “If you ain’t cheating you ain’t trying.” or similar? 🙂
We got talking about Superheroes here and “why doesn’t Batman just kill Joker”.
In the Wearing The Cape universe, there’s the “Deal”.
The first thing to remember is that in that universe “secret identities” aren’t. That is while the real names of some supers aren’t publically known, somebody with the time, money & interest is going to be able to find out who they really are.
Superheroes play by the Rules. IE Following “rules of evidence”, no killing except for self-defense or otherwise dictated in an open fight, etc. For example, Batman wouldn’t play assassin against mobsters.
In return, Supervillains and mobsters will *not* go up against the friends/family of superheroes and won’t attack a superhero when they’re “off duty”. IE try to kill Batman when he’s “on patrol” is OK but don’t attack Wayne Manor or Wayne Enterprises to get him “off guard”. (Of course, is Bats ever off guard. [Wink]).
Of course, if the “Deal” is broken, then the rules don’t apply to the people breaking the Deal.
One superhero and his family were killed in their beds by mobsters. Immediately, somebody (later nick-named “the Hammer”) completely destroyed that mob including executing mobsters. Nobody knew who the Hammer was but no supervillain group or organized crime group wants a repeat of his/her actions.
So Batman (or Superman) are not going to “just go out and kill criminals” and the criminals aren’t going to attack the Heroes friends/family.
Of course, Joker is a “Wild Card” (yes I went there). He’s not associated with any group that could put pressure on him nor is he the type to care about any “Deal”.
But, as has been brought up, the Gotham organized crime groups would be very concerned about Joker’s actions provoking “outside of the law (or outside the Deal)” actions by Batman or other superheroes.
The Joker is very tricky, but if mobsters wanted him dead, then he’d be dead.
Why is the Joker still alive? The writers don’t want him dead. [Wink]
“It would be really weird, if I claimed to be neutral and had managed to attract a following of freedom-minded rapscallions incapable of following a direct order if their lives depended on it.”
Sarah, you do realize we herd about as well as cats, right?
That’s kinda the point. This group would not likely have self-aggregated if she claimed neutrality. There aren’t enough people who comment here from the communitarian side of the aisle, who aren’t accusing her of being whatever -ist or -ism is on their minds that day.
cats are easier to herd. just open a can or two of tuna.
“It would be really weird, if I claimed to be neutral and had managed to attract a following of freedom-minded rapscallions incapable of following a direct order if their lives depended on it.”
Oh, we can TAKE a direct order…you just didn’t like what we did with it. *g*
Another take on SJWs. (They’re a plague.)