Fun House Mirrors

555 thoughts on “Fun House Mirrors”

1. I remain optimistic and hopeful.

   Might be that I’m stupid or not tracking very well.

   1. Or you’re like that cartoon dog in a burning room that gets used as a meme?

      “This is fine.”

      😉

      1. It’s not fine. The smoke dirties my glasses, causing eyestrain, thus limiting my ability to use the internet to distract myself.

         1. It’s bad when I think playing more Fallout 4 because a post-atomic wasteland is more attractive than the current mess, right?

            1. Last fall, before the election, I really enjoyed the first season of Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans, as being fun lighthearted fluff compared to my psychological place. The very first scene of that is of the young male protagonist in alley pooling with blood of people he has killed. The footstep in the puddle is shown in the first opening for about thirteen episodes. That accurately advertises what the show is like.

            2. Nah. A well placed gauss rifle shot is a much easier solution than what we have IRL

               1. Sneak up on a deathclaw, put him down with a single gauss rifle round, and sneak off into the distance… and all is right with the world.

               2. I’m currently leveling a gunslinger build, alas. If I can stop restarting the game when I find a nifty new mod. Maxed-out Gun Fu is awesome, though.

                  I did play around with the “better artillery grenades” mod and found it quite useful in dealing with annoying opponents that were too resistant to my character’s pistols.

            3. I’d play more Fallout 4, unfortunately I’m caught in the mod loop. Every time I install it I have to install the 200+ mods and then keep adding just one more mod and having to make sure that everything’s playing nice together.

               1. You are not alone. I totally get stuck in that.

                  I must say, though, that LOOT (in combination with the Nexus Mod Manager) seems to work nicely for automatically making sure things play nice, and it tells you when there’s problems/missing things/conflicts.

                  Thank goodness Bethesda seems to have finally stopped doing the ‘updates’ that borked ALL the mods…

                  1. I find LOOT to be a bit finicky. Though I tend to let it sort some things but then I manually move some other things in the load order because the mod authors recommended it. That and it seems to work properly in those locations, no matter what LOOT may think.

                     1. Yeah, I’ve got at least one mod that LOOT tries to stick somewhere it shouldn’t be (mod removes LOD flickering issues, so I can do things like, say, tear down all the houses/hedges in Sanctuary without bizarre world-vanishings occuring).

                        I’ve mostly stopped myself (by virtue of staying away from the Nexus, lol) and have actually gotten pretty far into the game. Finally.

                        I keep getting hung up on settlement building, heh.

                        1. What mod is that? (The LOD flickering issues thing…)

                           1. Oooh, I’ll have to get back to you on that. I’m at work, and can’t look it up. 😉 (Attaches sticky note somewhere visible)

                           2. Sorry, didn’t get my computer up and going until this morning. 🙂

                              The mod (from the Nexus) is called “No More Disappearing Act” If you google it plus fallout 4 + mod, it should be your first hit. (Since WordPress hates URL links.)

                              Whatever you mod order, this one should always be dead last. (LOOT always tries to bump it further up the list.)

                           3. Hm. I may not end up using that. The problems it describes I usually don’t end up having, but I’ll track it and try it if I do have that sort of problem.

                           4. I’m a fan of tearing all of Sanctuary down and starting from scratch (I also have a mod that lets you scrap ALL the things), but it caused some serious graphical glitches. Apparently, I’m not the only one who wanted to do this, so someone produced this mod.

                           5. I’m actually unloading a mob that has worn, but intact houses in Sanctuary. Noticed one of the houses kept reverting to default, but it would return to the modded form after a shutdown/restart of the game. The mod you mentioned might help, but I decided to go back to my usual habit of putting a “roof” on the shattered houses then putting concrete foundations and building on top of that if I want clean floors.

                              I have Place Everywhere, which makes that a LOT easier. 😀

                              Thanks for the information on the mod, I’ll keep it in reserve if I want to try something that allows scrapping lots of things.

   2. You are naive and stupid. The enemy is as real as Martin Luther’s devil. They will crush you and not care.
      Fight them, they are wrong AND evil.
      Prepare. For fighting, for survival and for rebuildling.

2. Lovely. Sense of doom does nothing for my mood while I’m attempting to potty-train a toddler.

   1. ROFL

   2. I sympathize. We’re trying to get our eldest to even start trying.

3. They have sown the wind. May God have mercy, on them and on us.

   1. Amen.

   2. Dear Lord be merciful and let no one reap the whirlwind. And may the folks that got shot today recover as quickly as possible under your grace and protection. Amen.

      1. And should the whirlwind come, may it be the smallest possible to do what must be done.

4. I’d just like to add that you and I have talked a lot about the plans for Inkstain. At no point during any of those discussions have you even implied anything about keeping out minority voices. None. Nein. Nyet. Zilch. Zero. Nothing at all along those lines.

   So I’d love to hear just how in the hell you’re going to oppress voices without actually oppressing them.

   1. It doesn’t matter what you actually *said*. They know what was in your dirty racist homophobic conservative kitten-torturing mind. And in case you’ve forgotten, they’ll be happy to tell you…

      1. True enough.

      2. The “kitten-torturing” part may hit a little close to home, given her Dyce Dare character. 😉

         1. Anyone know if she has quit blogging at the Puppy-Blender’s?

            1. No. I still do. 😀

            2. Didn’t last night because of a family incident.

               1. So missed your turn in the blender?

                  1. 🙂 Da boss says it’s a calumny.

                     1. Yeah, but it was fun to watch as Frank J. created and milked it for Instapundit links. It dates all the way back to April of 2003. The post that started it all is here: http://www.imao.us/archives/000567.html

                        1. IMAO used to be my pressure relief valve when I was in the closet. Frank J is a living blog god.

         2. I have NEVER been Dyce. This thing is not entirely under my own control, and Dyce is a weirder character than a gay guy, for me to find myself in the head of.
            the closest I came to torturing cats was disinfecting their wounds with hydrogen peroxide and looking after them.

            1. A friend of mine swore you were in her head with that character. 🙂

               1. Ah. So that’s where it came from!

            2. You beast! The notion that a little bit of pain now will prevent greater pain later on is just an excuse to exercise your human privilege and practice torture on what you see as an inferior species! The only proper feline response to such an outrageous notion is with fang and claw.

               1. Oh, they do. At least rescue cats do. Mine are very good and know mommy well enough. So they hiss and growl, but don’t bite or claw.
                  Yes, this evil right winger DID cat rescue for years and only isn’t doing it now because of health issues. When I recover, I will resume.

               2. I must say that I have never been treated as an “inferior” (or “superior” for that matter) species by Sarah. As bewildering, perhaps, but that’s not at all the same.

                  1. Hmm, You’re no proper feline, either. Does an assault by carpapult count as torture?

                     1. Nor am I am improper feline. Not feline at all.
                        Felines, as far as I know, do not have hooves.

                        1. Have you heard Havey run?

                           1. I have not, but given how some children can out-stomp draft horses when running about, is it something like that?

                           2. He sounds like a little horse, yes.

                           3. Nemo stomps when climbing his people.. He may only be 15 lbs but he feels and acts much larger.

                           4. Or the cat a friend of mine had about 30 years back. Oy, what a gallumphing he would get up to at night.

                           5. The first time I visited Oldest Daughter out here, they were up to three cats. Early in the morning (as in @2am-ish), mom cat would round up the others and start the races: everyone lines up at the head of the hallway, then sprints down the hallway to the closed bedroom door, leaping at the door to brake themselves.

                              Then she herded the other cats back up the hallway, to line up and do it again. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Etc.

                              I was in the bedroom in question. Trying to sleep.

                           6. Two likely explanations for the cats’ behaviour occur. First, I have read such actions reported in news articles typically featuring headlines such as “Hero Cat Saves Family From House Fire.”

                              It seems probable that, had there been such a conflagration it would have been brought to your notice.

                              The second explanation is that you might have been occupying a room the cats ordinarily consider their own and that by shutting the door you mortally offended them.

      3. No fun torturing kittens. They can’t fight back effectively. Now poking fun at Marines in a bar, that’s picking on someone your own size!

         1. People pick fights with Marines in bars? Sounds like the definition of stupidity to me. Their job, broadly speaking, is to break things and kill people. Picking fights with professional fighters is ludicrous.

            1. More the definition of the engineering department, especially on a ship with oil fired boilers (and thus BTs).

               1. Lol. Old times! Would you mind heading down to the boiler room to get me a BT punch? I also seem to be low on relative bearing grease and blinker fluid.

                  Bar fights are supposed to be about blowing off steam, not starting a war.

                  1. Years ago, at Mare Island Navy Base, a friend of mine was sent by a Sr. Petty Officer to get a can of Relative Bearing Grease.
                     He has smarts and an evil sense of humor, and so, went to the maintenance shop QM and asked for an (empty) can of the closest thing he could get, Relative Bearing Compass Oil, which is a highly refined sperm whale oil, vintage 1890, of which the Navy has VERY little left, of high value, and is closely controlled.
                     He told the CPO that the few spoonfuls left in the can were all that were left after spilling the rest by accident, set the can on his desk, and left. Mike said that the CPO reported it as having been spilled and lost, and that the shit-storm went up to the base commander’s level before being finally sorted out.
                     Same guy whose Reserve unit had written orders that he and his best friend were NEVER to be deployed to Iraq together again, and all he did was follow standing orders. really.
                     JPDev

                     1. The first time I worked at a (very small) airport, I was sent to get a container of wind shear. Almost fell for it, and wasn’t clever enough to come back with a good response. Missed opportunities.

               2. No more BTs, they were folded into MM several years back.

                  1. It’s ok. I’ve been out of the Navy a really long time. The BT’s were usually monsters too. Getting punched by one of those guys was not my idea of fun. (Luckily I was on the bridge so when I made QM3 not many of them ventured up to ‘tack’ my crow on).

                     Was mostly enjoying remembering how many ways there were to mess with the poor noobs on the ship back in the day 🙂 I needed a reason to smile today because I’m afraid that if things continue this way there will be few reasons to smile in the years to come.

                     1. Most of the MMs are worthy heirs– even the tiny, skinny guys do stuff like have pipe wrenches hidden in random places.

                  2. I know but they still existed when I was in although I think the combination had been announced.

            2. SEALs do. Keeps it in the family, Burns off some testosterone.

               1. This makes sense.

                  1. Remember Horace Harkness from the Honorverse, dear.

            3. Look up “baby boot bashing” in the bars around San Diego.

            4. I don’t think you’ll ever understand guys and professional rivalry then.

               1. I’m a woman, how am I supposed to understand men?

                  1. By observation.

                     1. Why should a woman be able to understand a man when most men don’t understand women either? (But will admit it’s fun trying.)

                        1. I tend to think guys are pretty simple. Well, most guys. There are a few weirdos out there.

                           Even the Odd kind of guy ain’t all that hard to understand. A good book, a fine whiskey (I don’t drink anymore, but there are days I miss it), respect from his peers, love and trust from his family, a purpose and the will to make the means. Give a man that, and he’s content, by and large.

                           Women, on the other hand… They’re complicated! *chuckle*

                           1. I completely agree with this. Having been raised more by guys, women are a bafflement. Thank heavens I’m straight.

                           2. Ugh this, so much. Thank goodness i found a delightfully adorable Odd man who, miracle of miracles, fell in love with me!

                           3. Oh my, Sarah. I never considered whether lesbian women understood other women or not. Running it through my evaluation mechanism, I should have concluded that they’re even more likely to be clueless than those naturally on the straight and narrow. Which should be a good basis for internal conflicts in stories.

                        2. My Dad: “Women are not meant to be understood, they are meant to be appreciated.”

                     2. Must disagree. Yes, observation can tell you “When I do X, Y shall happen (at least usually).”

                        Tells you nothing about why Y happens, though. At least from the male viewpoint, my gender’s understanding of women is still about at the level of Aristotle’s understanding of gravity. Not even Newton, much less Einstein (who were just as baffled, from what I have read…)

                        1. No, that’s okay. We’re not understandable. there are times I don’t GET myself.

                           1. Me lately: Seriously, body?! Why would you do that?! This is so not the time!

      4. It’s amazing how mind-reading powers appear among those who have reason not to like you for some cause or other.

         1. Amazing how bad they are at it.
            Even if they really were capable of such, evidently the (automatic) protective barriers are most effective.

            1. It’s not so much ‘mind reading’ as projection plus a serious lack of critical thinking ability and almost total lack of anything resembling empathy.

   2. Inkstain’s very existence is oppressive because you’ll judge authors on how well or poorly written their stories are and not how loudly they preach the Marxist cause. And everyone knows that only rich white heterosexual homophobic racist capitalist Christian males (like Sarah) dislike Marxism.

      1. Of all those, I’d love being rich. I have had two sons in college for five years. That’s where my money goes. Note I didn’t say “Spare” money.

         1. You must need to update your address if you haven’t been getting your WHAM patriarchy oppression dividend checks.

            1. The checks are at the same place as my checks from Big Oil ended up.

               1. Yeah, I’m not getting my patriarchy checks either. But I am continually told that being white, male, cis, straight (for some value of straight but one I had to write over 500 words to explain), Christian, etc, etc, etc I have it made and have worked for nothing in my life and don’t have to obey the law and get 72 virgins every morning and…

                  1. The Zionist conspiracy won’t send money and won’t return my calls.

                     1. The Latter Day Saints send me stuff all the time. So I know that they know where I live. They have no valid excuse whatsoever.

                        1. I had an email yesterday from the a bank with whom I do no business, advising me that the You Ess Treasury was about to seize the funds in the account I do not have because I had failed to cover a $Transfer from a Nigerian bank. I figure that’s where my payments for SJWs rendered have landed.

                           1. Ewww… You render SJWs? Doesn’t that raise a heckuva stink? And what do you do with that fat once it’s rendered? Seems like a hazmat incident waiting to happen, to me.

                        2. Never borrow anything from Blockbuster if you wanna hide!

                     2. (Sarc tagging for the inevitable idiots reading this) Well, that’s no surprise! Why would we gentiles expect to get paid for that?! Messhugenah, I tell you! We’re Jews – It’s against our cultural rules! Oy vey, don’t they know we have to spend all the moneys on arms and thicker bank vaults every single day?

                        /said in her best imitation of Mel Brooks in super exaggerated cranky Jew stereotypes mode

                        1. I talked to my contact at the ZC home office and was advised, “Oy, Bubbela, such kvetching over such a meshugener problem? Some shlemiel in bookkeeping cocked-up but relax, you’re mishpucha, the check is in the mail.”

                           1. *exaggerated shocked look* Jews messing up book-keeping?! Surely you jest! It’ll ruin the reputation amongst the goyim about the ZC’s superpowers!

                              (We’re joking around, but there really are people who believe this crap is real.)

                           2. Jews messing up bookkeeping? Whattya saying, you shouldn’t hakn a tshaynik! The accounting is good, it couldn’t be better, but that noodnick office boychick (between you and me, if it were not this putz is the Chairman’s nephew he shouldn’t be sweeping the halls) who shoulda been stuffing envelopes was at the deli, stuffing blintzes in his ponem and so the mail room never got the checks until late. But no problem, you should rest easy, everything is now good, I take care of it myself.

                              So, did you how how Zadie’s operation came out?

                           3. Damnit Res, I’m tryin’ to eat here! Are you TRYING to put me off my food, me, a sick woman down with the flu! I don’t want to think about how Zadie’s sex change operation is going, though I have to say, she’s probably ballsier than half the men she hangs out with, I don’t know why she wants a putz. Or is it ‘he’ now? I get confused. So many new terms these days, it keeps changing every day!

                              (Hmm. I dropped Mel Brooks and went Dr. McCoy there…)

               2. You went Russian to the bank too fast to cash the Czechs, so they Czeched out on you……

         2. I feel your pain on this. We cleverly spaced our two 5 years apart, on the theory that only one would be in college at a time. We hadn’t counted on both going to graduate school. Or older daughter getting bumped a year ahead. So we’ve had at least one in school since 2005.

            Our youngest is almost out – she’ll start her first post-graduation job this fall. Part of me is wondering which black swan event will occur to swallow up all the newly available funds.

            1. It’s one in graduate school and the other doing 3 bs at the same time that’s KILLING us.
               Also, we spaced them three and a half years apart, so younger one skipped a year. SIgh.
               this too shall end. Younger son should be out in two years, and older son in three.

            2. If you are like us, one of you will total out one of the vehicles soon……..

         3. I’d love to hear more about these magical cheques for being a race / gender traitor. *grin* As long as it isn’t monopoly money it’ll spend just the same, yeah?

            1. Right?

         4. I don’t really want to be rich. I’ll settle for being out of debt, and having the bills paid.

      2. You forgot Mormon

         1. So I did.

            1. And of course the privilege of looks, what with the great rack and all…

               1. I’m told that’s why so many of those Mormon males sport chest-length beards – to hide those great racks!
                  (Hey, it makes as much sense as anything Mike 92%linkbots posts!) 😛

      3. OK, a fair point.

   3. In their tiny minds, your very existence oppresses them.

      1. And, in that case, I’m very OK with that.

         I’m a giver.

      2. Which makes them white supremacists. They think whites are some malevolent force that suppresses non-whites with their mere existence. That and they think any non-white is so utterly helpless before that malevolence that only progressives and Social Justice can save those hapless victims from white supremacy.

         (Then one notices how a bunch of the progressives/SJWs screeching about “white supremacy” are very… white.)

         1. My favorites are the ones about how white women are racist coming from white women. I wonder whether these who claim this are racist all over or just in spots.

         2. THIS. And this is why I drive them nuts. I don’t need their handouts. And I’m not only equal. By most measures I’m BETTER than them. Better read, better educated, smarter. Remember the howling when my husband leaked my IQ? Yeah.

            1. You give yourself too much credit: you do not drive them nuts — you cannot drive a person someplace they already are — but rather you provoke outrageous expression of their insanity.

               You are not, cannot be better than they, because in their minds “better” equates to more progressive.

               As has been discussed, they “know” how vile and unempathic they are, and as they are “better” than we it stands as given that we are meaner than they.

5. Yup, we are evil. So evil that the one representative from Tennessee said that even if he had seen the shooter with a rifle, he would have figured the guy was just up early to go birdhunting.

   On the bright side, it turns out that being shot when you have a combat surgeon congressman in your party is really good for your survival chances.

   1. Indeed.

      You know, I still had some hope that the lefties would calm the heck down, but after this morning … I just don’t think so. And the national establishment media will go on and on, gaslighting conservatives in blaming us for the violence directed at us.

      “Look what you made us do, you h8ers!”

      1. Yep – story in The Hill has R congressional offices reporting just such communications being received all day.

   2. On the really bright side, one dead crazy left wing assassin while all his intended victims will recover.
      My fear is that this will play out many times over, only with less fortunate results.

      1. Me too, Uncle Lar. And at some point people on the right snap and beat the bastards to death with their “impeach trump” signs. But America will change after that. it can’t help but change. And I don’t want it to change the way it would.

         1. “And I don’t want it to change the way it would.”
            Exactly right. No matter how this goes – we recover some portion of America, it all goes down the drain, some other mixture – it won’t be what we want.
            I saw America as a kid, often from a car. By the time I was an adult, I had been in probably 25 states. By the time I was 28 I had been in all but one. By the time I was 40 I had added the 50th and two territories. And, everywhere I went was America. I saw America The Beautiful played out in my life. I once drove from Maine to Texas to North Dakota to eastern Washington. This country is glorious. There’s a reason the Founding Fathers had the hopes they did – they looked at the people and the country and saw a good match, making for a free nation across an entire continent.
            I’ve been to 30 other countries in my life. While I might enjoy visiting some of them long term, I’ve never truly wanted to live in any of them – because none of them are what America is. None of them is as free, and none of them is built on the vision of freedom.

            This will never be the same.
            /speechifying

            1. We apparently have similar experiences traveling this country and others, with similar sentiments.

            2. (Wipes away a tear.)

               1. It’s bad enough that the country will never again be the way it was in my father’s day. Now things are degrading further.

            3. Hear! Hear!

         2. The irony is the left thinks they are striking at the alt-right with stuff like this. What they are actually doing is making the alt-right more attractive to the rest of the right if only to have a supply of foot soldiers for the street fighting that seems to be inevitable.

            1. PRECISELY.

            2. What this is, now, is a criminal matter. That is where I stand in it. One loose assemblage of chicken entrails and cow shit masquerading as a human being, dead. His would-be victims, not (as I know of, now).

               Those that are trying to make this a *political* matter, now, are treading on very dangerous ground. The criminal’s motive certainly appears to have been political, yes. But I *absolutely* do not want this country to establish a tradition of political violence.

               We are damned near *unique* in our history of peaceful transitions of power. What we do not do, as a people, is set assassins on political opponents. Or so I have thought.

               I *think* we are a nation of laws, not men. I believe that. Many folks around here do, too. If that changes, and the gloves come off… The America that I love will change, and not for the better. You can’t stuff the guts back in the bunny and whisper it back to life. Once that pillar of society tumbles, Lady Liberty may still stand, but it will be just another hollow institution, the skin being worn by a gibbering fool who demands respect.

               We who were trained in the ways of honor, discipline, and fair treatment can’t expect much of the same anymore from the other side. There is a feeling that if we’re to be held to one standard, whilst the other holds none at all, if we’re to have our own decency used as a weapon against us, then we shall be barbarous towards those who act barbarously towards us. Something tells me that is is not quite right.

               The ones encouraging and enacting this violence need to be caught and removed from society. The common response from an empire (we’re not, really, but we are a pretty big country in a lot of ways, still) to this kind of assault is usually a big hammer. That could take us down a dark road.

               There are ways to fight evil without becoming evil yourself. Murder is evil. An attempted murderer is now assuming room temperature. That is one permanent and effective way of reducing recidvism to zero. On the proactive front, those who’ve been supportive of this attempted murderer need to be taking a good, hard look at themselves- and those in authority should, too. As should we all. They want to make this a political statement. That will not end well for anyone involved.

               Best outcome is the intended target does not become a dead martyr. If this were a Democrat under the Hillary administration, not five seconds would have gone by before a call for draconian gun control, all over. Let’s flip that. Get the 2nd amendment some legs, and go after the localities that are trying to infringe on it.

               1. There are leftists already talking about how, after this, the recent tradition of no political violence in America has ended (one seemed to date it only from the 60s, I’m sure if pressed due to leftists) and it is the Republican’s fault.

                  This is relevant because when you say:

                  There is a feeling that if we’re to be held to one standard, whilst the other holds none at all, if we’re to have our own decency used as a weapon against us, then we shall be barbarous towards those who act barbarously towards us.

                  Honorable behavior is an agreement. It is hard to get people to hold that agreement when honor is cast away in merely verbal tussles.

                  Now they are physical ones and one that could still theoretically take a life.

                  Yet one of the first responses from the left was to justify this as self-defense on the part of the shooter. Sure, it was deleted with a “hey, I was joking.”

                  Based on all the rhetoric I don’t think it was a joke. I think it was an honest point of view that slipped out; a classic gaffle.

                  If honor is hard to get people to hold to when the dishonorable behavior is merely verbal it will be impossible once it is clear it will be physical. Berkley was a pair of test runs to see if the press and police would side with the left and they did.

                  I understand your sentiment. You are right it will fundamentally change the US just as Bloody Kansas did via the Civil War.

                  However, one side is openly declaring they don’t want to honor the agreement that makes civilization. They are claiming justification in not honoring it. They are claiming violence is justified.

                  Once one side does that the other side has two choices: death or dishonor. No matter what, that means change. Their vision can triumph or in saving what of our vision we can part will be lost.

                  I fear the dice have been cast and now we just waiting to learn pass, point, or craps.

                  1. Happily, James Hodgkinson doesn’t scan near so neatly as John Brown.

                  2. “Based on all the rhetoric I don’t think it was a joke.”

                     If it were a joke, ‘twould make it worse.

                     Some things are not to be joked about. “Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees” or “When it is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it.”

                  3. If I remember correctly, historically, wasn’t it the duty of all honorable men to kill those who were not?

                     1. Not sure if it rose to duty but certainly was acceptable.

                        I think if they aren’t disrupting the honorable or innocent dishonorable men could be allowed to self-destruct.

                        1. There was a sort of assumption that most men *were,* back when. It was showing that you were, in point of fact, *not* honorable that could get you killed.

                           And truth to tell? Behaving honorably enough to get by was a pretty low bar. Keep your word. Honor deals made. Basic respect and courtesy went a long way.

                           Things that weren’t considered honorable, like, oh, having the reputation as a guy who didn’t go out of his way at all to help anyone, ever, didn’t really cross that line. Disreputable, say. Also, like you say, the ones that weren’t bothering anyone decent, they weren’t worth the trouble of stomping on.

                           1. Break a deal, face the wheel!

                           2. As Louis L’Amour was wont to remind: a “bad man” was somebody it would be bad to get into a fight with.

      2. Scalise is in critical condition; he’ll probably recover, but there is no guarantee.

         1. Also no word on the lobbyist as far as I’ve seen.

            1. His family said he was doing okayish, but was in for a lot of time in a hospital.

   3. Thing that flatly blew my mind…?

      None of those guys was armed, aside from the Capitol Police escorts.

      What. The. F**k? How naive and trusting are these people we’re electing and sending to Congress? How… Stupid?

      Like Sarah, I’ve been expecting this for months. Hell, actually, years–I’m kinda surprised that some of these so-called “Town Hall” meetings haven’t been targeted for violence, already.

      So, why the hell are these guys out there in public unarmed, and unable to defend themselves? Why weren’t those baseball diamonds overwatched by the cops or the Secret Service already? How foolish are these people? The left has been talking violence since November, and delivering it in spades at all sorts of venues. What the hell did these geniuses expect?

      And, now, after the horses are well out of the barn, Representative Chris Collins says he’s going to be carrying a pistol whenever he’s out in public…

      One, it’s a little late, and two, you don’t ever tell people you’re armed or going to be armed. It’s just bad tactics, because now they’ll start shooting at you from outside pistol range, and not giving you a good shot at self-defense by getting up close to you before doing their thing. Not to mention, expect the caterwauls to begin soon, about how the SJW types are all scared, ‘cos their representation is armed… You can practically write the scripts now.

      1. You try playing baseball with a gun strapped to your hip.

         Most members of congress don’t rate constant police protection. The only reason the two capitol police officers were there is because the one Representative that got shot was part of the House leadership.

         1. I’ve played sports with a freakin’ M16 strapped to my ass. Not well, mind you, but still…

            You don’t put down the tools of self-defense under threat unless you’ve got someone else on overwatch, and they definitely did not plan well for this. Every gathering of Republicans needs armed security, just like every house of worship needs armed security. If we gather in large groups, we’re making targets of ourselves, and that will be taken advantage of.

            This has been a fact of life for quite awhile–Look at the crap the anti-fascist groups have been pulling in Portland. It is a straight-line calculation to what happened this morning from those data points.

            If you’re not prepared to defend yourself, and haven’t got external security in place, you’re too stupid to live. Period. This is the world the left has made for us, and today should only serve as a punctuation mark for that fact.

            1. Fortunately, we’ve not yet reached the point where every house of worship needs armed security in the United States. The good news is there are far too many of them for that to be practical. The bad news is that far too many of them are partially empty, even during services.

               1. No, but I have figured for a couple of years where the cry “The Doors, The Doors” in the Liturgy again becomes an act of safety.

                  1. Where can I find a copy of your liturgy? Mine is quite different.

                     1. In Byzantine and Orthodox rites, “Doors” is called out by the deacons when the Mass of the Catechumens is done, the catechumens have left, and the Eucharistic portion of Mass is about to begin. Then they close the doors and lock ’em.

                        Everything after that point was only allowed to those already baptized, and in ancient times was super-secret and sometimes protected by oaths of secrecy. No telling the newbies the words of the Our Father until they were practically ready to get baptized, either. (St. Cyril of Jerusalem, the Catechetical Lectures. Fun, educational, and makes that professor in The Paper Chase sound like Mr. Happyface.)

                        1. *takes notes*

               2. I would beg to differ. Houses of worship have been under attack since the 1990s, and only the foolishly optimistic would say that such locations are safe, anywhere in this country. The two attacks that stand out, in my mind, were in Colorado and Texas, respectively. And, most recently, the nutter in Charleston.

                  I just had this conversation with a Sikh businessman who we do work for. My advice to him was that he needed to put bollards in, and add blast-resistant coatings to all the glass on their local temple, which is quite the modernistic edifice. At the moment, they’ve done limited to no thinking about security, and that’s just nuts for a site in the Seattle metro area. The Sikhs have it really bad, in that they’re not only the targets of the Muslims, but everybody else that thinks they’re Muslims, which is a disturbingly large swathe of the population.

                  Oh, and BTW… ISIS and al Qaeda both have been talking since 9/11 about targeting houses of worship. My expectation is that when the bill comes due for the Obama administration’s malfeasance in security matters, it’s going to be either a Karbala-style attack here on US soil, or something along the lines of Beslan. Keep armed, and avoid crowds with poor security, especially in the screening areas.

                  1. To inject a bit of levity into a very somber moment, you just reminded me of the old punchline “I’m Sikh and tired of being thought to be Muslim!”

                  2. You missed the Wisconsin Sikh Temple attack in 2012.

               3. Bearing in mind that DC is still a rather gun-hostile town, even a congressman might be reluctant to carry.

                  Some years ago, I went to a community church. The minister at that time insisted that no firearms were to be in the church; he wouldn’t let the sheriff in the fellowship hall during a wildfire. Those of us who carried just thought “don’t ask, and we won’t lie”. The next minister had his own problems, but after the Colorado church shooting, he let it be known that those lumps in our clothing were quite welcome.

                  1. THIS.

            2. How many Congress critters can get D.C. CCHP? I’d wager few if any.

               1. If I remember right, they’re exempt from those requirements.

                  1. Judging from Fineswine having a CCW permit for years, that would be incorrect.

                     1. Hers is a California CCW Permit – probably harder to come by.
                        JPDev

                        1. ‘was’, she surrendered it.

                           1. She publicly handed in a revolver that was listed on her CCW permit after the Moscone/Milk murders, but that was mostly theater, as she had at least one other handgun.

                              IIRC, she just let her CCW lapse; after all, she had security in place for her protection, doesn’t need to do it for herself.

                           2. She kept the… bersa or PPK or whatever it is…

                              and she surrendered it because she opted into the Federal Marshall thing.

               2. The key issue will be their party affiliation…Dems need it to protect themselves from violent, evil haters and thus will be issued. Republicans will only want them to randomly shoot those righteously engaged in self-defence against violent words and budget cuts.

                  Remember, the first response from Vox was if the shooter had major health issues it was self-defense (ie, Obamacare changes are a physical threat and attack).

               3. At one point, the story was, if any elected Representatives or Senators wanted to carry, they could get sworn as unpaid Deputy Federal Marshals and thus do so nationwide.

                  Since that story has been public for quite a while, I doubt that is how it works anymore.

                  1. I saw a news story where at least one Republican congressman said he was going to always carry from now on.

                     He already had a CCW permit, but had only carried occasionally because he didn’t think it was always necessary. No he’s no longer that complacent.

                  2. and as soon as that was put in place, Fineswine surrendered her CA CCW permit.

                     1. But as a Politically Connected Person, should she desire to supplement her state-provided protection detail by carrying, DiFi could get another CA CCW with a simple phone call.

                        Note that’s not how it works at all for anyone else in the glorious Republic of California.

            3. We hadn’t really reached the point where I think they felt the need to be armed at all times. Antifa and even BLM have been mostly limited to certain parts of the country and no one really thought things were going to escalate to shooting Congressmen at baseball practice.

      2. Unarmed because not even politicians can get carry permits in the blot known as DC. And frankly since I carried there (against the law mind you) for the four years I had to work there) I’m not feelin’ much pity over that situation.
         What’s going to be a real now on-going problem will be when the other side who are in fact our enemies – just ask them, they’ll tell you – start taking fire. Because, as was mentioned, THAT will suddenly become a SERIOUS problem for their enabling media.

      3. “And now, after the horses are well out of the barn,…”

         From your lips to God’s ears, but one horse =/= an empty barn.

         1. Figure of speech…

            I’m of the opinion that the thing you prepare for ain’t not never gonna be the thing wot happens, soooo… Read the news, do the extrapolation, follow the consequences, and they should have started carrying about the time our dear Mr. Obama started talking shit about “getting in faces”.

            Right now, if you’re an identifiably non-Democrat or fellow traveler like Bernie, you have been fitted out for a stylish new yellow star. They just haven’t gotten around to making you wear it, as of yet, and they are relying on word-of-mouth about who’s who in their pantheon of evil to mark you out for slaughter.

            Or, did you miss the one-for-one correspondence between those precious little flowers at Evergreen, with their baseball bats and mob actions, and the nasty old SA troopers wandering the streets of Munich? Practice runs, darling, practice runs… The Cultural Revolution will soon have you singing the right tunes, though.

            What I think is more likely to happen, though, is that one of these cute little left-wing poseur mobs is going to put their little show on the road, and wind up doing one of those rural Mexican disappearing acts where they find the Soros-provided bus, but the creatures that were aboard it are… Missing. After that, the whole thing is going to get a lot less attractive, and my response to the aftermath is gonna pretty much be “Action; meet Reaction… Now, shake hands and… Oh, bad, bad Reaction! Put Action down… No, not like that… Dammit, we’ve talked about this… Let go… Shit… Oh, well… I told Action not to poke at Reaction through the cage with that stick… (sotto voice, to self) Jesus… That’s a lot of blood…”.

6. > Her understanding is average. And yet she
   > can believe the narrative over her lying eyes.

   Nothing new with that. While Shirer’s “Rise and Fall” is his scholarly work, “The Nightmare Years” is his autobiography about living in Germany in the 1930s, dealing with ordinary people on one hand and various Reich ministers on the other.

   While generally overlooked by historians, “The Nightmare Years” is a good outline of how things were at the street level while a modern, industrialized nation became a vicious one-party dictatorship.

7. I hate to say it, but one of the usual drivers of local concom malice (as opposed to faraway strangers) is personal envy, followed by personal feuding and/or romance troubles. Political or other disagreement can be an excuse for venting frustration that other people “have it better” than particular concom members or their friends. (And of course stress anger can make people irrational.)

   You are a published writer living a happy personal life (health aside), with a faithful husband, loving family, and a large circle of friends. I don’t know this other person’s troubles, but you are someone who could be envied.

   But yes, this is emotional stormweather, and yet some keep wishing for the winds and water to keep rising.

   1. And the proper rings were not needed to be kissed. So you’re scheduled against the big get together for the guild that people want to go and hobnob at.

8. In their funhouse’s mirrors, refusing to promote “marginalized” voices in SF — simply because they are marginalized, not because they write good stuff — is wanting to suppress voices in Science Fiction.

   Writing entertaining fiction is so very subjective and can be hard to determine, whereas being “marginalized” is easily defined and makes it easy to tick the boxes.

   The one thing of which we can be sure about this morning’s shooting is that few, if any, voices on the Left will apologize for stoking a climate of fear. Doing that would mean accepting responsibility and recognizing a need to change their rhetoric.

   1. Sadly true about the suppression of writers. That applies to academia, as well (and a few other places I’ve seen).

      As to this morning and accepting responsibility? Some leftist twits are already a-twitter about how the Republicans drove him to this, because they generated a climate of fear by wanting to repeal 0bamaCare!
      Many of them actually believe there are 5 lights.

      1. I love how all that leftists will say violence is warranted but have not the stones to try it. They think if they get others to do it then it will never touch them.

         They are really trying to learn otherwise.

         1. The ringleaders remember the first part of one of Niven’s laws: “Do not throw shit at an armed man.”

            They forget, however, the second part: “Do not stand next to someone throwing shit at an armed man.”

            I would add a third part: “Do not egg on, even from what you think is a safe distance, someone throwing shit at an armed man.”

         2. They think the boys in uniform shall do it for them. In between their murderous rampages against good boys jes goin’ to church choir practice at 2 AM.

      2. Is the 5 lights a Bujold reference.

         1. Star Trek TNG:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_Command_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation%29

         2. IIRC it is a Star Trek Next Generation reference.

            A torturer was trying to get Picard to say that there were five lights instead of the actual four lights.

            1. And they got it from Orwell’s 1984.

               1. I’d say it was a deliberate allusion, rather.

                  Specifically, 2+2=5 scenes.

                  1. D’oh! “2+2=5 ”
                     I watched that when it first aired, and not until you mentioned did I ‘get’ that.
                     Ox know ox slow, but… day-yamn.
                     Thank you.

                     1. I didn’t get it for years later, mostly because I really dislike 1984.

                        There’s a reason that someone was able to slap a quote from a stage play being made of it on to an image and nobody questioned the meme….

                        1. I have to read 1984. Having lived through the actual year and hearing ad nauseum about the book, I am well and truly sick of it without having read the dang thing. But the 5 vs. 4 for 2+2.. should have been “obvious.” But then I consider ‘obviousness’ to be a rather dangerous or at least dubious concept. After all, to many, it is obvious that socialism cannot work, and yet that escapes so many others.

                           1. Think of it this way, means the writer for that episode did a really good job– the point of a good allusion/easter egg is that it makes sense, not for it to stick out like a sore thumb.

                              I figured it out when I realized that the Cardassians were Soviets. (Sort of, anyway. More like if the Nazis and the USSR hadn’t broken with each other, and then a lot of Japanese stuff mixed in. Great culture design.)

                           2. Er, “I have YET to read” or “I have never read…”

                  2. I always liked this one from Babylon 5:

               2. And I was thinking of both (though the 1984 ref is fingers, not lights).

                  1. I always thought that at the end the interrogator, under time pressure to meet his monthly quota, just brought in an extra light so he could ‘pencil whip’ that case and move on to an easier one.

            2. Shaka, when the walls fell.

               1. Timba, his arms wide!

   2. “Writing entertaining fiction is so very subjective and can be hard to determine … ”
      Buzz – wrong answer. It is easy to determine.
      1. While you were reading, did you want to keep reading and/or find out what’s going to happen next?
      2. Do/did you enjoy reading it?
      3. Would you be willing to re-read it?
      4. Would you recommend it to a friend?

      If the answer to all 4 is yes, you have entertaining fiction in your hands.

      1. #5 would be “Will your friend enjoy reading it, or will they assume that it’s another tract you’re handing them, to save their souls?”
         That’s where the insular worldview comes in, so they can insist everyone,/em> must like this because “no one I know thinks it’s crap!”

      2. Sorry – did that need a sarc tag? I thought my posts already come equipped with that.

         The problem with entertaining fiction is that one person’s entertainment, such as an extended thirty page discussion of oppressive cis-normative values and the oppression inherent in free market economies, is another person’s grey goo. Or one person’s ten-page discourse on the technology of space suits is another person’s lost opportunity to denounce fascism.

         Everybody can agree on whether an author is transorthogonal, which makes it a much easier standard for literary evaluation.

9. “I don’t care what their politics are.”
   Exactly. Unless they place them in their works, and their politics either makes the story untenable or it comes across as preaching (which I can’t stand from anywhere on the political spectrum). Or, because they must signal their politics, their works are pretty much exactly the same as the signaling author to the left and right of them on the bookstore shelf.

   “they’re doing it because they’re sure of their own righteousness and goodness”
   Absolutely this, Sarah. Although some merely desire power, so many want that power to “do good” to everyone else. I’m sure everyone here can recite C.S. Lewis’ quote about tyranny. It’s why Goldberg wrote his book about fascism with a smiley face. They will gladly continue to cut your veins open and put leeches on you, until you bleed out, assuring you all the while, with a sickly smile, “But it’s for your own good! I’m making you healthy!”

   1. Even a good enough story can overcome some rather heavy messaging. See 1632.

      1. I loved 1632. It was an unabashedly “feel good” book, full of arm-pumping “Yes!” moments.

         I hadn’t even gotten to 1635 before I lost interest however. That kind of thing could not be sustained and, well, without it the story was “okay” but not really much better than that for my taste. (YMMV and all that).

         1. The books are spotty. Depends on who co-wrote but most are still good, except Eric has joined Webber in ending them with “damnit, where is the next chapter?!

   2. If yoy’re doing good TO someone, it ain’t good. Better to do good FOR them, but that might cost you something personally.

      1. Yep.

      2. Especially if you do good TO someone without consent, which is something the progs do all the time. They don’t realize lots of people are very picky about who can do TO us.

   3. This is actually one thing that turned me off Clancyverse stories. One of his collaborations shortly before he died had what looked to me to be a Obama Expy. And slimier than the real one even in the most fevered dreams of the internet. I just couldn’t get into it after the pages of shovel blows on my head.

      But I’ll compare it to Larry’s MHI, especially early. The MCB were somewhat paper bureaucrats and the hunters went past the gun nut stereotype but the back story made sense as to why and it fit the characters. I have no qualms about recommending his stories to others, even Bernbots because I think they work at the level they are. I do include the ‘first novel’ and ‘alien mindset’ to them but they aren’t Law and Order.

10. Can’t “Like” this post because I agree with Sarah and think it’s completely shitty. 😦

    Oh, I heard that the shooter was killed and I’m thinking that is convenient for the Lefty Assholes will very likely be claiming that the shooting is Trump’s Reichstag fire moment.

    IE Somebody tries to kill some Republicans, he is a Bernie supporter, and he’s dead. Of course, Trump/Hitler will use this shooting to suppress “Patriotic” Liberals and his supporters were the real people behind the shooting. 😦

    1. Well, I’ve been thinking of teasing Bernie fans over it being the Nationalist Socialist’s Night of Long Knives, or compare with the communist assassination of Kennedy.

       I’m not seeing a political path to victory for anyone in this act.

       I’m somewhat interested in the man’s history of drug use.

    2. There is already a leftist page of support for him as a “patriotic American.”

       1. Not surprised. 😦

       2. His FB page, which may be gone shortly is: “Terminate The Republican Party”.

          So this will get chalked up to . . . “gun violence”.

       3. So they do want Bloody Kansas.

          Have they counted who owns how many guns and knives? Have they counted who knows the various techniques of improved explosives?

          1. Nope they haven’t. They can’t without their heads exploding.

             1. When I looked at Fox, they were gloating in comments about how conservatives were losing the civil war.

                Civil Unrest is not won. It is merely survived, and one side has barely started even defending itself.

          2. They believe those surveys that show the number of Americans who own guns has gone down. You know, the ones where they call up and ask you if you own guns and you say “Nope!” while trying to figure out if you’ve got room in your safe for another…

             1. Believe the number has gone down all they want. That wasn’t exactly the question they need to ask…what they need is ratio of them to ratio of us with guns and the knowledge of improvised weapons.

                The communist cadres probably have both but what faction of the left are they?

                1. Number of guns will go down in my house. I’m bequeathing several to my son, retiring a couple, and buying a few pretty new ones to replace them.

             2. You know, the ones where they call up and ask you if you own guns and you say “Nope!”

                Leaving them to wonder about the rash of tragic boating accidents among people who don’t even own boats.

                1. There was a guy over on HotAir (back in the mostly open commenting days), Bishop by moniker, who we had *all* evidently gone fishing with, and lost all our firearms. There was a veritable armory at the bottom of his fishing hole.

                   1. Just happened to be in weighted Pelican cases and properly prepared for long term storage.

                2. A big problem with legal gun ownership is that most are “registered”. The FFL paperwork is supposed to be deleted, (but who believes that) and so inevitably, someone (the ATF probably) knows what you have. A partial solution is to build “ghost” guns using 80% lowers for ARs or frames for handguns, but these are not cheap and require access to some machine tools, and by the time you buy all the non ffl parts they are not cheap. So far the printed firearms are a joke, but they might get better, the sintered metal looks interesting.

                   One solution is muzzle loading black powder firearms. In many states, California even!, they are not considered firearms at all, are not registered and can be bought by mail or over the counter. Also available are conversion cylinders, again not considered a firearm. The disadvantages are slow loading and somewhat less ballistic performance, but a .75cal ball at 800 fps has a certain authority all its own, and may allow you to pick up a modern weapon registered to someone else recently deceased.
                   So if you’ve suffered a tragic boating mishap lately, you might check out Cabellas BP selections.

                   Just asking for a friend of course

                   1. The FFL paperwork is kept at the FFL. It only goes to the ATF if you give up the FFL. In most states, it only has the address you lived in at the time and the name of the person that bought it from the store, and resale of firearms is relatively unregulated in the vast majority of the US.

                   2. One solution is muzzle loading black powder firearms. In many states, California even!, they are not considered firearms at all, are not registered and can be bought by mail or over the counter.

                      That and the progs keep saying the 2nd only protects muskets….

                      1. they keep insisting it applies to only firearms that existed at the time.

                         Because they think it magically eliminates repeating firearms, because they are completely ignorant of firearms history

                         

                         Made circa 1597

                         doesn’t matter that they were rare or hyper-expensive, they *existed*

                         1. Heck, the privateers of the time owned fully-armed warships.

                            Them: “Have fun with your muzzle-loading rifle!”
                            You: “No, thanks. I’d rather have a 74 gun ship of the line. If you’re so concerned about ‘military style assault rifles’ ‘spraying bullets’, allow me to introduce you to the concept of ‘grapeshot’, as emitted by a 32-pounder.”

                            1. “allow me to introduce you to the concept of ‘grapeshot’, as emitted by a 32-pounder.”
                               That is a riot suppression weapon worthy of the name.

                   3. Surfer, unless you buy all your guns, and supplies, and ammo, with cash, they know what you have.

                      1. No, not really, there are no records kept with ammo

                         1. I think the implication is that they would know what went on your credit card. I guess, then, that it depends on whether you think that the government has all the stores hacked or not, because the data sent to the credit card company doesn’t contain that information.

                         2. Your credit card records show what you bought and where you bought it. OFFICIALLY, the government doesn’t have that information…. except that when they audit the credit card companies to make sure they’re complying with various regulations, they do. And how many of the credit card companies are run by Leftists who would have no problems slipping an anonymous file or six to Fred the Fed?

                            1. they know the amount and where, not what was purchased. esp since some vendors the register isn’t actually connected to the card machine… it only knows dollar values.

                            2. Call me Suspicious but I would not be surprised if, somewhere in all the legislation covering the bank bail-outs there weren’t a few sentences covering such exigencies.

                            3. Um, no. The credit card records show how much you spent and the business name. This is why our bookkeeper keeps wanting receipts for what we purchase with the company card so he knows what category to account for the expenditure.

                            4. There are some companies that can connect your card purchases to your account after you’ve ordered something on line with the same account, but it’s a little…iffy. I ordered some shelves from the walmart site, and suddenly it lists all kinds of consumable items I’ve previously bought in the “reorder” section, but I also got a nasty-gram about having not picked up half of my order, along with a refund.

                               I’d gotten everything when I was there, WATCHED them scan it in, and had the receipt somewhere. (Customer support apologized and offered to refund the entire order in apology for having refunded part of it…gee, how DARE they give me a free shelf… 0.o )

                            5. If that were true, programs like Operation Choke Point wouldn’t even be possible.

                            6. Choke Point was based on the vendor. Vendor does business in “X” so shut down financial transactions for that business.

                               Look, I deal with credit cards. I know because I set it up that our card terminal isn’t even connected to our inventory and invoicing system. There wasn’t even a means to do it. All we enter into the terminal is the card information and the amount of the transaction. That’s it. At no point is what was being sold sent to the credit card company.

                               And the last time I bought a gun at a gun store they used the exact same model card terminal as we used where I worked. So it was literally not possible for them to send the contents of my purchase to the card company–just the vendor (which they get from the terminal’s serial number), my card info, and the amount spent.

                               There are plenty of things to be worried about. This isn’t one of them.

                3. “they call up and ask you if you own guns”

                   Doesn’t that really hinge upon the definition and meaning of “own”? Can any of us truly claim to own anything beyond our persons, our reputations, our ethos and our honor? What is this fixation on physical things, on “possession” as if such were possible?

                   When I consider the time and money spent zeroing the weapon, in cleaning & oiling and the costs of securely storing it is clear that I do not “own” any guns, although it is possible several guns may own me.

                   1. Impossible for guns to own me.
                      My cat is my owner.
                      Even my wife, whose cat she’s supposed to be, comes in second to Miss Greycie.

                4. OMG! You too?

                   1. Referring to: Leaving them to wonder about the rash of tragic boating accidents among people who don’t even own boats.

             3. I have a few CRTs, so I have some electron guns.
                I have a soldering gun.
                I have a couple glue guns.
                I have a tie gun (for trimming zip-ties neatly).
                I might even have a heat gun somewhere.
                Oh, firearms? Sorry, thought you were serious.

                1. I have several staple guns, too.

                   1. A couple nail guns…

                      1. I have beautiful set of nailguns, bought for a song at somebody’s storage unit sale.

                         Someday I hope to buy a compressor so I can actually use them. ^_^

                         1. Y’know, maybe I watched too much Man From U.N.C.L.E. (or just Get Smart) in my youth, but with all the things women are doing to their fingernails these days, I just had this image of nail guns … presumably they’d be small caliber?

                            1. Wouldn’t that be what Honor Harrington has in her prosthesis?

                            2. Interesting assassin’s weapon. Poisoned mini-dart that can be shot out. Maybe up to a quarter millimeter diameter (not much, but if the right poison is used, it doesn’t take much).

                2. Dis ain’t no gun, dis baby is my heater.

             4. doesn’t matter, even the ‘gone down’ number is still 83 million.

          3. Their leadership. . .yes. Which is why they keep trying to disarm us. I don’t think the blind followers have given it much thought. They are so sure they are the ‘good’ guys they never even give thought to the consequences of starting a shooting war with half the country. Never mind it’s the half that has most of the guns and military training. It’s also the half that grows and harvests food.

             1. Well they know the Civil War “proved” urban defeats rural agriculture every time.

                1. Unfortunately, most of the Confederate generals were too much gentlemen to adopt Forrest’s proposal for concentrating on destroying the Union food supply.

                   Grant and Sherman were not gentlemen.

                   1. Grant is, IMHO, the true military genius of the war (and Forrest for similar reasons) not Lee.

                      Lee was a brilliant Napoleonic general. Grant and Forrest realized the Napoleonic period was over.

                      Lee might have known this but knew his best hope was that Lincoln wouldn’t appoint a general who did. That Lee didn’t move away from Napoleonic tactics after the Wilderness, however, indicates to me he either didn’t or was incapable of making the shift.

             2. You see, the arrow of history points in their direction. The future belongs to them. They’re obviously the good guys.

                1. Sort of like this?

                   1. In reality, more like this.

                2. At the rate this is going it’s not going to be the arrow of history pointed in their direction.

                   1. Maybe it will be, but maybe they have painted a bullseye on their chests for that arrow of history to aim at.

                3. Pfui. History has arrow like fish has bicycle.

                   1. Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

                4. Arrow of history might also be middle finger of history.

                5. It’s that absolute certainty, with a religious fervor, that makes it all so bloody dangerous.

    3. Oh, someone will. Someone likely has. After all, The Handmaid’s Tale’s future began with a false-flag terrorist attack on Congress.

11. One preliminary report says that active help was delayed until the scene was cleared and that only then a tourniquet was improvised with a belt.

    Good idea to carry a tourniquet and seldom a downside. People have found themselves in trouble for carrying an Israeli bandage but I hope we have not yet reached that point around here.

    1. The first medical help on the scene was one of those being shot at – a congressman (Brad Wenstrup – R OH) who is also an Army surgeon.

       1. Wenstrup worked on some, congressguys and staffers worked on some, and the Alexandria police with medic training joined in. So a lot was done before the helicopters and ambulances showed up, which was a good thing.

          Obviously better not to get shot in the first place; but being around help, and having proactive helpers, is a big step toward Not Dying.

       2. Wenstrup’s my congressman, and I don’t always agree with him, but I’m glad to have voted for him.

    2. What’s an Israeli bandage?

       1. Product-improved modernized battle dressing.

       2. A major chunk of the reason we have a bunch of disabled guys coming home from over seas, instead of a bunch of corpses.

          1. Slight elaboration:
             those who would’ve lost a finger, don’t.
             Those who would have lost a limb, don’t; they might lose a finger.
             Those who would’ve died, don’t; they might lose a limb.

             And they’re dirt easy to use.

          2. not just disabled guys, there are guys who are like “I got shot here, and went back three months later”

             1. I realized I wasn’t very clear. 😀

                I much, much, MUCH prefer guys with a limp to the corpses of guys who were pinned then bled out.

       3. Latest iteration of the old Quic-Clot base. Stuff does work. I managed to have a piece of blown-up cartridge case slice a vein in my arm. Guy at the range had a kit with that product in it. We wrapped the cut and headed for the hospital. By time we got there the damn cut was pulled together and didn’t look any worse than a small knife cut.

    3. WTF? In trouble for carrying an israeli bandage? I’ve got one in the go-bag in the car, and more things than most people care to know in my wife’s medic kit (former paramedic).

       1. Everything is political at need.

          “……The journalists were identified as Nicholas Davies and Gareth Montgomery-Johnson, who were filming in “sensitive areas” in Tripoli and whose conduct was considered suspicious by the militia.

          “Evidence” that they may be spies was their possessing a “Made in Israel” IDF bandage, which apparently was considered as cause to consider them spies, although the Mossad was not specifically mentioned as a possible employer……” Arutz Sheva

          Much the same issue has come up with body armor as prima facie evidence of American military orientation.

          1. It’s not just overseas, either–There are a couple of cases I’ve heard about where US prosecutors took carrying stuff like battle dressings and tourniquets as indicators of “mindset” and propensity to violence.

             Don’t even ask about how much shit an acquaintance of mine got into for carrying a blowout kit and some prepared Prusik handcuffs. The prosecutor in that case interpreted the presence of medical tape in the blowout kit and the cuffs as being a “rape kit”, and charged him accordingly.

             Apparently, planning and preparation to deal with violent strangers is something that’s going to be held against you, no matter what the actual circumstances might be.

             1. You have to assume it will be held against you. Something to think about for those who go for “tacticool” solutions.

                1. Hah. I’m about as far from tacticool as you can get. What I am is not a victim.

    4. “Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, ….told CNN that he tried to help Scalise, saying, “We used my belt to help put a tourniquet around his leg.” quote from NPR.org

12. Scott Adams has been talking for several months about the Liberal-Left and the Conservative-Right as having a single movie scene going on in their heads, yet seeing two completely different movies. To me, he comes across as saying they’re both wrong, implying that there is some sort of middle ground of truth. However, I don’t buy that as the left has gone so far left, the right has been dragged into what used to be the center. Which means the right is where we all should be, but aren’t.

    This Right in the Center is why Trump is in the White House today, and why the Communist-Democrat-Left-Liberal-Progressive-Socialists lost, and still can’t understand why. The Why, as I see it, is because their candidate was up against both the extreme right Trump lovers, and all the Centrist-Moderate, slightly-Trump-preferers who from CDLLPS point of view, are all on the right too. When you’re not observant enough to see that your opponents outnumber you two to one, you’re going to lose, badly. And it’s going to be a major shock.

    People subjected to major shocks can break. And when it’s their world-view and sanity that breaks, things like this morning’s shooting take place. By tonight, everyone in the country will know that someone has declared open season on any political opposition, and death is their sentence. They will see that the shooter nearly succeeded. They will in many cases think they can do a better job. So I suspect we will see more of these: either copycats, or those who were strongly thinking about it and seeing the opportunity coalesce into a plan.

    I’d be willing to bet that the Secret Service, the U.S. Marshalls, the FBI, and every state and local PD are going nuts making lists of political figures who may need protection, as well as lists of those lunatic fringe people who have a physical capability (guns, explosives, toxics, bio, etc.), a heap of hatred toward anyone, and a pre-disposition toward violence. Had Mrs. Clinton been elected, I might fear a night of shattered glass over this, with the Law Enforcers teamed with the CDLLPS haters going after the deplorables. This? I just don’t know. It may depend on whether or not Law Enforcement start pre-emptively knocking on doors and asking questions of those fringe folks, and how those fringe react. Heaven help us if there’s a racial difference between the LE and the Fringe.

    1. I think part of our problem lately is continuing to see the political spectrum as a 2-dimensional one, from “left” to “right”. Really, what we have is the difference between an aristocracy (or “technocracy” as I keep labeling it) and a democratic “left v right”.

       In the olden days (when I was a young voter, and before), the left and the right generally had the same goal, and it seemed to be the same from “top to bottom” in the social classes, that America should succeed. They disagreed on some aspects of making that happen.

       Yes, there were those who would be the forerunners of our current problems (the Kennedy clan is an obvious example). And, yes, the early issues go back about a century in America. But, over the last 20-30 years, the left and the right have unified around a different goal. It’s now about differentiating between the top of the country (the aristocrats) and the bottom (those ‘deplorables’ and ‘clingers’).

       The difference between “left” and “right” now (among the political class, that is), isn’t even over how to get to this “better America”, but simply over how much it should cost. Meanwhile, there’s a whole bunch of folks beating on the hatches, wanting out of the hold, as the ship takes on water and the crew blithely sails on into the storm.

       1. Unless you’re over a hundred, i am pretty sure i disagree. the left’s goals changed to ‘progressive’ and basically socialist early in the last century.

          1. I will concede that is true to some extent. But many elected officials did not yet see it that way. A good chunk of the Democratic party wasn’t progressive, yet. We had Blue Dogs and Reagan Democrats. In the last few decades, they have been run out of the party, to a great extent.

          2. The forties according to Heinlein.

             1. The forties were arguably our first reprieve from it. What with America being at the forefront of the eugenics movement, and the extreme levels of statism during WWI.

                Then some guy with a wacky mustache leapfrogged the U.S. and “Ripped the lid off Hell and let men see it” (my favorite line from Atlas Shrugged).

                1. (of *course* I would remember after clicking post)

                   Case in point: I came across an article a few months ago about how during WWI the goverment very seriously considered making gift giving illegal. More resources that they had the rights to y’know.

                2. No, Heinlein said that in the forties, the communists started taking over the democratic party.

             2. I really think it started with Wilson.

    2. yet seeing two completely different movies. To me, he comes across as saying they’re both wrong, implying that there is some sort of middle ground of truth.

       I haven’t been reading what he is saying as there is a middle ground of truth. I have read it more as a postmodern “there is no truth” although not quite. He seems to acknowledge there are objective facts but contends human beings live much more in their subjective interpretation of facts than in any form of objective reality. He then contends if that subjective interpretation is confronted with objective facts that flatly contradict it crisis occurs.

       He has assigned that crisis as happening much more to the left.

       He has also stated they are the ones more likely to be violent a year ago when he endorsed Hillary for his own safety.

    3. “I’d be willing to bet that the Secret Service, the U.S. Marshalls, the FBI, and every state and local PD are going nuts making lists of political figures who may need protection,”

       They won’t have enough.

       https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/what-i-saw-at-the-coup/

       “That’s when we began to hear of “The Militia of One.” In the end there were too many rifles, and too many willing shooters. A number that was constantly heard was twenty million. That was the number of Americans who supposedly went deer hunting every year, against less than 200,000 armed federal agents.”

       I’ve known this is where we were headed since 2002. When I saw a substantial chunk of “Americans” who were willing to take the side of Islamic terrorists against their own country, I knew we’d get here absent a miracle.

       1. but at this point, the shooters they are going to be lookign for aren’t the twenty million hunters, its going to be a handful of left-wing nutjobs who went and bought an ‘assault weapon ‘and thing they are as easy to shoot as the news tells them.

13. Still early and details may change, but it’s sure looking like the Left’s reckless “punch a Nazi” rhetoric has claimed its first casualties.

    1. Democrats will be Democrats.

       This is nothing new.

       For a time the WWII veterans shifted the consensus towards preventing this sort of thing. It being a temporary aberration is unsurprising. Perhaps it can be restored.

    2. Lefties are already saying Republicans deserved on twitter.

       That will not end well, but more and more I think they believe they will be the ones left standing after violence meaning “they win”. Before you point out how destroyed the nation would be in the process of winning remember they are Satanists of the Miltonian School.

       Their reactions today are the biggest proof I’ve seen.

       1. They have a vision of themselves as fighters and righteous and downtrodden and in the movies those always win.
          Again, may G-d have mercy on their souls. And ours.

          1. Are you still coming to Dallas on the weekend of June 23d Sarah? Sat eve June 24th would be a good time to have a Dallas Huns dinner.

             1. Yes, we are. I will come later in the year, likely, too.

                1. Yay!!

                   1. If this hotel is as good as it seems to be, is on sale regularly, which it seems to be, and we can get really good fares, we might make this our alternate “way writing weekend” two or three times a day. Sure, we can do it in Denver, but a new city to explore in between writing jags is good too. I have yet to go the natural history museum. And I want.

                      1. Oh, sure, start that up again now that I’ve moved. I see how it is!

                         Actually the last time you were there when I was, and I knew it, I didn’t go see you, because I was a bit ill, iirc, and didn’t want to add to anything you were dealing with at the time.

                      2. Unlike Denver, I don’t think Dallas will permit public defecation.

                         You’re on top of Denver’s politics — will people have to pick up and carry off their poop or will that only apply to their dogs’ dooty?

                         1. Eh. In some parts it doesn’t apply to anything. BUT as gentrified as the city is becoming, you should look at this as the “Don’t challenge dangerous loonies, addicts and leftists” legislation.

                2. Any chance you will swing by Chicago one of these days? 😉

                   1. Not on the list right now, but COULD happens.

                3. I hate that I need to say this, but…

                   All of you need to start being more careful about broadcasting location and travel plans, and being more circumspect about being pinned down to specific event plans. If the venue isn’t offering some sort of security plan, don’t go and don’t participate. Also, keep in mind that some of the venues you’re likely to be at are either run by the other side, or have significant presence of fellow-travelers on the staff.

                   I fully expect that this climate of violence is only going to escalate. The next nut job in line may decide to set their sights on non-political figures, and the failures like this morning are only going to trigger more frustration and copycats are likely to come out of the woodwork.

                   Andrew Bolt is only the very tip of the iceberg; these loons are going to start targeting their neighbors and people we never considered as potential targets in the past–It’s all going to be about access. They can’t get at a governor or senator…? Well, this pesky journalist or author is an equally acceptable target.

                   Don’t be that footnote. Cecilia Hayes can likely remember what it was like, being targeted by the goons in Europe back during the Cold War. All of us need to dust off those precautions, and start taking them. Discussing travel plans and so forth openly, and being trusting of these already-proven nutters that operate in the background? Don’t do it. Paranoia may drastically circumscribe your life, but at least you’ll still be around to live it.

                   1. Oh god, yes – Greece (as much as I loved the experience of being there) was a long stretch of jumpy paranoia, and a long, long, long list of precautions.
                      Check under the car before starting it up in the morning. Wear locally-sourced clothing, no tee shirts with American advertising on them, don’t speak English loudly in public, no American stickers on your car, no luggage with service ID, be prepared to ditch your military ID card, travel on a civilian passport, be aware when out in public – especially if in a notably American hangout, don’t wear your uniform in public, or anything like a unit tee shirt, be aware of your surroundings …
                      It was an absolute relief to get to Spain, where the local terrorists were more interested in blowing up the Guadia Civil. Which was rough luck for the Guads, but a nice change for me.

                      1. Check under the car, if you don’t know who’s ringing the doorbell, hit the floor and stay there till they leave, particularly if they’re in a panel van. Oh, and check if you know them from the edge of the wall in the upstairs bedroom.
                         If you walk into a big fight and can’t avoid it, fight like a cornered cat, but be situationaly aware first and anything that sounds bad or just makes you jumpy? LEAVE as fast as you can. That gun fire might not be for you, but what will you get from sticking around? Never be completely unarmed. Never go with anyone to a private place, unless they’re family or very trusted friends. Always sit facing the door and preferably with your back to the window. You hear gunfire and can’t see where, and can’t leave? Hit the deck and seek a protected position.

                         1. Video security systems are not very expensive– I mean “baby monitor system” level not expensive. Set that on the entries, and anyplace that’s good for hiding, and check it from the kitchen.

                            1. They were, though, in Portugal in the seventies…

                            2. Heck, they were in Washington in the 90s! Part of why I am so impressed that they’re a reasonable investment for home security. 😀

                            3. Not exactly cheap in the USA in the 1970’s, either. Pa once brought home an image tube (plumbicon?) that had been replaced in a TV camera at the station he worked at for a while. No idea if the tube just rotated out before it failed, if it had failed, or if it had left on and a CBS ‘eye’ had been burned into the thing. Somehow he never did get around to turning it into a video camera.. and then in the 1980’s…. technology advanced enough it wasn’t utterly insane to just buy a video camera. And now… well, I seem to have inherited this museum-piece once used in television.

                   2. Kirk, I remember what it was like to be targeted by the left during the cold war. I’m not in a mass grave because I fought like a cornered cat.
                      You DO have a point, but I think in Dallas, in a gathering of Huns, I’ll be okay.

                      1. What worries me is that such gatherings of the like-minded on our side are all too likely to become the targets for these jackasses. Going after politicians is about to become a lot harder; alternate targets will be sought.

                         I’m dead serious about keeping everything private, between trusted parties. We’re only about a hop, skip, and a jump away from having to develop a cell structure for ourselves, and go underground. I’d also suggest that entrusting entities like the Tome of Faces, Giggle, and any other public media entity to maintain your privacy and security is just naive as all hell. The government ain’t the only entity that can do data mining–All it would take would be someone with administrative rights on the right servers to open up “private” postings, extract that a bunch of the people they would prefer silenced are in a particular city, find that one of them has made reservations at a particular venue… Pass the info on to the right set of activists, and bang, zoom… We got us a solution to the problem, from their perspective.

                         If nothing else, finding out that you were stalked that way would scare the hell out of most of us, and pretty much tamp down on any “activism” of our own. Or, so they will calculate.

                         Paranoid? Yep. But, is the diagnosis of paranoia really clinical, when there are actually people out to get the paranoiac?

                         I don’t put anything past these people. I really don’t. Too many fellow-travelers, and “like-minded sorts” in the interstices of the information infrastructure we use so casually these days. I’m just saying to take precautions, and be prepared–Which, I suggest, should include provision for deadly force incidents.

                         At a minimum, planning for these events should include someone in the group taking a look at the venue, making sure that the security is good and that there’s limited to no potential for channelization and/or trapping, that there are good avenues for escape, and make sure that someone knows the phone numbers for police and fire response, as well as the best routes to the good local hospitals.

                         Not to mention, should things get really bad, that you have plans for alternate accommodations or safe houses already laid before you need them. We all need to think in terms of “worst-case scenario”, here–And, that includes general rioting or insurrection in our immediate vicinity, not necessarily targeted at us, either.

                         In terms of “lawfare”, too, it would be wise to get things on record with the local police agencies if you face disruption events calculated to discredit you and the people you’re with. Even if it’s something as innocuous as a pie in the face, that stuff is hardly innocent in intent. If they can get someone close enough to you to pie you, that same person could easily shoot or stab you as well. Or, both, using the pie as cover.

                         We may be in the opening stages of a warm-to-hot guerrilla war, a la Argentina, back in the 1970s. Or, West Germany during the Baader-Meinhof years. How long this is going to take to damp down, again, or how far it goes? Nobody knows; don’t be one of the footnotes or a number in one of the tables in the eventual history book, is all I’m saying.

                         1. What Kirk said about Opsec and data-mining on social media. Look how quickly 4chan volunteers were able to identify the antifa jerk who walloped a free-speech protester with a bike lock. They put their collective minds to it, took the footage of the act going down, studied FB posts, and pulled up enough on him to force an arrest warrant.
                            I am absolutely certain that anyone aiming for me could figure out much about me in my meatspace life, although I have been rather … circumspect about posting personal details. (Old habits die hard.) And I am not currently committing violent and illegal acts – at least, not according to the laws as presently written. Although that might change, if certain people had their way. And … I do have a concealed carry license. A matter of public record, here in the great state of Texas.

                            1. Stacy McCain’s experiences with being SWATed might be worthy of consideration, as well–Your assailants don’t even need to be on the same continent with you, if they can co-opt the machinery of the state to do their dirty work.

                               Any time a bunch of “us” get together, someone ought to be doing the “due diligence”, and putting together the escape/security plan, and contacting the cops to let them know that something like a SWATting of the venue is possible.

                               Times are already strange, and set to be stranger. Adapt, overcome, survive–Or, not. Your choice.

                         2. Kirk, cool it. We should maybe have developed a cell structure way back. Now they don’t have the power. That’s why they’ve gone insane. Bah.

                            1. Oh, I agree that the time for going to a cell structure was awhile back; and, that it may be necessary in the future.

                               But, that said, taking elementary precautions now, short of going underground? Probably the path of wisdom.

                               When they had the machinery of government, like the IRS, they could rely on that to shut us up. Now that they don’t have that?

                               There are other ways to go about discouraging dissent, and one of those is making an unpleasant example of those nails that persist in sticking their heads up. All I’m saying is, make it hard for the hammer to find you, and be prepared to deal with the blow if it lands.

                            2. Kirk, my job requires me to meet with fans. This is a way to do it. The alternative is to self-bury. No.

                            3. I wasn’t suggesting that you should forego it, only that the current situation now dictates a wee bit more of the precautionary principle than before.

                               Hell, treat the fieldcraft as cosplay–Have some fun with it, but for the love of Ghu, do it. At the least, think through what could go wrong, and wargame some responses.

                               Right now, we’ve got no more idea of whether this is just another point on the curve, or the peak. God willing, it’s the peak–But, even so, it’s a good idea to behave and plan as though it might not be.

                            4. if she doesn’t advertise where she is going when she’s going to meet fans, the fans won’t know to be there.

                            5. Right.

                            6. My kid brother explored Daoism and, if I understood his explanations correctly, if your fans were meant to be there they would have arrived there without your notifying them.

                               There are sound reasons I have not pursued Daoism.

                            7. Also, honestly, I’m small potatoes. Yes, they’re going to start going after opinion makers. When they go after the other instapundit stringers, I’ll worry. BUT right now I’m microscopic.
                               Okay, larger than vile 770, but microscopic, nonetheless.

                            8. But your house sitter might have an exciting time if the wrong crowd thinks your house will be empty.

                         3. “is the diagnosis of paranoia really clinical, when there are actually people out to get the paranoiac?”

                            Yes. Paranoia is a mental malfunction even if there really are people out to get you. It describes a nonfunctional response to circumstances.

                            a mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions and the projection of personal conflicts, which are ascribed to the supposed hostility of others, sometimes progressing to disturbances of consciousness and aggressive acts believed to be performed in self-defense or as a mission.
                            http://www.dictionary.com/browse/paranoia

                            Actual persecutors do not render the delusions valid.

                            1. Wait, what…? Are we going here?

                               “Actual persecutors do not render the delusions valid.”

                               Lemme see if I follow you here… I’m a German Jew in 1933, and I go to see my shrink, thinking that the rest of German society is out to get me. You tell me, as my psychiatrist, “It’s all in your head… You’re a German citizen, you fought in the Great War… Nobody wants to hurt you…”.

                               Nonetheless, I persist in my “delusion”, thinking that the rest of Germany is out to get me and mine. That’s what more than a few German Jewish applicants were told, when they applied for asylum in various countries.

                               Now, tell me: AT WHAT F**KING POINT DO MY “DELUSIONS” BECOME VALID?

                               Is it when they’re rounding me up to “go East”, or does it happen when I’m stripping down for the showers? And, does it make the slightest amount of difference if I’m delusional enough to still be believing the German gentiles are out to get me?

                               Crazy people can make rational threat assessments just as well as the sane can, and that’s what we’re really talking about, here.

                               Telling someone they’re just being “paranoid” when they’re making perfectly rational observations of the environment around them is gaslighting in the purest form possible. You make the entirely subjective diagnosis of “paranoia”, and the subject is actually being persecuted? That sounds an awful lot like the way Soviets diagnosed dissidents with mental illnesses, to my ear.

                               What one man calls delusional mental illness can be someone else’s clear-eyed and superior understanding of the world around them.

                            2. You can be both delusional and persecuted, yes. They are not mutually exclusive, no matter how many examples you contrive.

                               “I have found you an argument; I am not obliged to find you an understanding.”
                               — Samuel Johnson, Boswell’s “Life of Johnson”

                            3. More concisely:

                               Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there isn’t somebody out to get you; just because there’s somebody out to get you does not mean you are not paranoid.

                         4. The most basic problem is: we do need a safe, secure online way of communicating to each other – if only to be able to disperse helpful or necessary information and I am unsure there is such a venue – one we could lock down and harden against attack and breach-which, I will tell you now, is a 24/7 job. Hackers for hire exist in every timezone; and the more techy SJwankers don’t have day jobs while the rest of us have lives. (No, really, ask me how I know!)

                            Even if there were a locked down secure net place it can be hard to get people to switch to secure comms – simply because it isn’t something they’re used to, and because of the thought that its not necessary, and how do you get the info to access it out to folks you only know online? Also, ‘ugh yet another thing to check online.’ As we’ve seen over the last few years, mailing lists or emails aren’t completely safe, while there are certain chat apps and phone messaging that have encryption it’d require we all use it; and … yeah. It’d be bloody inconvenient, logistical hell. Also, everyone has reasons they don’t use one thing or another. Ask Kate Paulk about the last time we even tried to have a chat about basic online security aimed at not losing your work to malware. It devolved to ‘whose OS is better/ mac user assholery bullshit, goddamned fucking frustrating.

                            I haven’t quite gotten to Celia Hayes’ Greece period having to check, thank gods. Hope that none if us have to, but… sinking feeling and all that.

                            The flip side of it is, it is incredibly isolating to live this way. And I’m already there. I get where you’re coming from, and I do agree, but…

                            1. Grumble – there was stuff after the ‘…’

                               Namely: but authors need to get out there, meet with fans, connect. Isolation is not an option.

                            2. The time to think about such things is now, when they’re not yet fully necessary. When they become necessities? It’s too damn late.

                   3. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
                      “Was out of state at $EVENT.”
                      “And you didn’t tell anyone?”
                      “Why announce, ‘Empty house’ to who all knows?”

                      And this is a nice, quiet, little middle-of-nowhere town.

                      1. Our house won’t be empty. 😀

                         1. No residence with a Mad Scientist (sometimes) in it is ever truly empty.

                   4. Texas honors Colorado carry permits.

                      “Five quatloos on the angry lady with the .357!”

                   5. All of you need to start being more careful about broadcasting location and travel plans, and being more circumspect about being pinned down to specific event plans.

                      This should be standard procedure anyway and for anyone. That’s not always feasible, but everything doesn’t have to be broadcast to the world at large.

                      1. Knowing you’re going to a con on specific days means you won’t be at your home. It does not preclude leaving an angry skunk, a hungry wolverine, or an enraged minotaur in the house until you come back.

                         1. Or an armed young man. 😀

                         2. an enraged minotaur

                            Uhmm… not advisable. Might not be much left when you return. (And what ARE you doing to cause such rage, hrm?) Though that would be quite effective.

                            1. How to enrage a minotaur:
                               (1) Pump him full of PCPs.
                               (2) Take away his cows.
                               (3) Run like hell.

                            2. That’d certainly do it.
                               But that house? Hope you didn’t value it.

                   6. I don’t have Sarah’s email address or I would’ve sent her a private message.

                      1. Well, I’ll be announcing it for local huns when we decide on a place to eat, Emily. Don’t worry. Any hun gathering is by definition well protected.

                         1. Considering those of us who live in Plano…….

          2. Unfortunately, that shooting, and the others to come, are what the Progressives want to have happen. I noticed Pelosi’s immediate pivot to “we should all get along” (if you Republicans would only stop being unreasonable and give up on gun control), and their top mouthpieces pretending to be reasonable while their street troops howl for more blood, and regret that it wasn’t Trump who was shot, and that Scalise lived.
             Progressives, like terrorists, seek to influence the government to change official policies to reward them and punish their enemies, while allowing themselves to attack the undefended with impunity.
             As people with little sense of history, Progressives seem to believe that if they can cause a civil war, that it will be like they imagine earlier conflicts were, and that the conservatives will line up like the British at New Orleans, or Picketts’ men at Gettysburg, to be slaughtered by the overwhelming Federal forces of social justice. Bullshit.
             If they are lucky, they will get collapsed cities (see, for example, the county-by-county election map, and consider how little reserve of resources exist within those cities, and how dependent they are on reliable transport systems – so, how’s that just-in-time delivery working for ya?)
             If the trust and courtesy which allows our society to function does actually break down to conflict on a local level, we all will be lucky if it does not get as bad as the Kansas/Missouri border conflicts of the Civil War, which make the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland look like a school picnic.
             Prayers for the wounded, thanks to the Detail members who stood to their salt and shot it out with this a**hole, saving many more.
             By the way – reports from Illinois showed that the shooter HAD an valid Illinois Firearms Owner ID Card – passed background checks, etc. and probably purchased at least his pistol legally. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/james-t-hodgkinson/congressional-baseball-shooter-729035
             JPDev

       2. They Lefties are only saying that because they know (and are trying to deny) they are losing. Circling the wagons tighter is not the act of a confident, expanding polity.

          Most in America pay little attention to politics and when it seeps into their attention their reflex is “The Democrats want to help people. That seems nice.”

          The message the vast uninvolved in America are receiving today is not that one. And come election day next, the thought uppermost n their minds about Democrats will not be, “They seem like nice people.”

          Good lord, even Bernie knows this is bad for the brand. Somebody, somewhere, is undoubtedly screen capturing these tweets and archiving them for use in the future. Kathy Isis Griffen and Julius Trump are not the face you want representing you.

    3. Hoping that the crazy bastard’s FB and everything is archived. ALL OF IT.

       1. Mike Cernovich has a copy archived on his website. Good thing, too, because within a couple of hours deFacebook had memory-holed it.

14. “She knows or should know that on sight no one can identify me as any race.”

    Don’t be silly, Sarah – most of us can easily identify you on sight as a member of the human race. 🙂

    1. Have you ever seen her without her morning coffee?

       1. (BTW, I have not. I’m surmising based on other people I know, before they get their first cup of joe.)

       2. Right? I just learned to walk upright and I am looking for fire.

          1. You’re a bear?

             1. LOL. yeah, I liked that story too.
                Looks at claws. Dragon, actually.

       3. I’ve seen the self-portrait. Definitely did not look human.

    2. Wow. you do? I always thought it was Homo Neanderthalensis.

       1. Neanderthals are humans, too!

          1. As older son tells me daily. It might be self-serving.

             1. My physical anthro teacher used himself as an example of a robust form Neanderthal.

                1. Older son. Seriously. Also both of us have Neanderthal teeth and hips, apparently. Who knew?

                   1. Eh, genus homo. We got around. *grin* I’ve got the brow ridge, and the teeth myself.

                      1. Son has the brow ridge. Myself, not noticeably. Probably lucky. 😀

                         1. Nah, female. *grin* The muscle attachment point rugosity is linked to testosterone during puberty. Put it this way: the skull is the no. 2 place to determine sex (after pelvis, of course). Women nearly always have a smoother frontal, smaller jaw, and suchlike.

                            The texts call it “neotony” which means “childlike.” It’s rather backwards. Guys are built more rugged- I would argue it’s men that are different, and women more the baseline human form. Children look more like women (looking at the bones, that is) than men.

                            You’ll see some women with the suprorbital ridge, but it’s likely they were either atheletes, or would look more like my old honors professor if they’d been born male. That guy could balance a pencil on his brow ridge, easy. *grin*

                            1. Gracile form equals female, robust equals male.

       2. OK, “A” human race…

    3. Human is a species.

15. This is the kind of thing I’ve noticed for years, and the kind of thing my wife noted as a warning sign. Not the violence itself, but the opinion that the violence is understandable and good. Too many people in the U.S. have totally incompatible philosophies of government for peace to last. And contrary to what anybody says, the way to make sure your children survive when it goes really bad, as it appears to be doing now, is to keep your head down and your mouth shut.

    1. I’m not going to do that. I’m not one for picking fights, but I will speak up when I feel the need to do so.

    2. Not sure about that. It’s better to be a live lamb than a dead lion, but it’s always better and often easier to be a live lion.

       1. “It’s better to be a dead hero than a live louse. Dying is messy and inconvenient but even a louse dies sometime despite everything he can do to prevent it and he’s forever having to explain his choice.” (From memory so perhaps slightly paraphrased.)

          “Ooh, that’s a tough one. A gentleman is supposed to be someone who’d rather be a dead lion than a live jackal. I’ve always found it preferable to be a live lion, and generally easier.” (likewise paraphrased from memory).

          1. thank you. I was remembering it from Portuguese and knew it was faulty.
             BTW I’ve found he’s actually right. It’s easier.

             1. From two different books giving slightly different perspectives, both of which I agree with in their proper domain.

             2. I think different experiences have taught us different things. Your choices are more noble, but they’re not mine, and I’ll bow out now. Good luck to you.

                1. I won’t reproduce it here, but Patrick Henry’s speech before the Second Virginia Convention, 1775 is a good exposition of the lions vs lambs issue.

                   Life is not so dear, nor peace so sweet to me, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery.

                   1. Also, the more you keep quiet the more tyranny grows. I have sons. We’ve been quiet too long.

                      1. Amen to that! It’s not just my freedom at stake here.

                      2. I’m curious, Sarah. How much had you read about or by the Founding Fathers in your younger years? Or later?

                         1. Only the last ten years, I’m afraid. Weird, uh?

                            1. Well, it took you that long to run out of other stuff to read. 😉
                               (And, maybe to be pushed to understanding your leanings.)

                2. Different tactics– and that’s a good thing.

                   In this situation, we want a bunch of different options– all heading the same way, but some walking, some pulling, some pushing, some steadying…. if everyone is trying to push and pull at the same time, you churn the road up, exhaust everyone and usually step on each other.

             3. “A brave man dies but once. A coward dies a thousand times.” (Sorry, Bill, I egotistically think that mine scans better…)

                Dying once is, well, not okay, but it’s in the basic contract. A thousand times is an option, that I’ve decided not to take up.

16. Yesterday we discussed it looking like Bloody Kansas.

    Looking at liberal twitter including the Vox reporter who now claims he was joking said if the gunman had health issues it was self-defence I would say thinking it will be Bloody Kansas is now useless.

    This man drove from Illinois and made sure it was Republicans he was shooting. Leftists are out crowing it was karma and justified and so on.

    This morning I think we entered the Bloody Kansas phase.

    1. Definitely!

    2. Check out Mark Steyn’s column on today’s events at steynonline.com

    3. “I remain optimistic and hopeful.”

       I’m not sure that today is a day I’m particularly in contact with reality, but this is still true. (Long story. For private reasons I’m grumpy today, may be grumpy tomorrow, and hopefully won’t be grumpy for ever. Sleep is good, and I’ve always had reservations about painkillers.)

17. Odd how they declare that those who disagree with them are evil monsters, since their actions make it very apparent that they are the ones who are evil.

    1. Projection. If they can project all their evil onto us, then obviously killing us will destroy all the evil in the world!

       1. Proverbs 28:1

          “The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.”

          From this bit of biblical wisdom, one may also safely extrapolate that when someone is accusing others of something, ’tis something they are either planning to do, or would do when they were in the position the accused is in. Also, when they highlight it enough, you know they’re thinking along those lines already–Which is why you can take it to the bank that all this crap they’re trying to bury Trump under is probably coming directly from the former administration. If something had happened that would have allowed Obama to either delay the elections, or to call them off entirely…? Yep; that’s exactly what they accused Bush of doing, and I think the fact that they immediately went there shows they were thinking along those lines already, for themselves. As well, this whole deal where they made Trump out to be some nutter for “…refusing to accept the results of an election…”? Yeah. I’d love to know what the f**k is being passed around on Podesta’s email list, these days…

18. They may think they’re ‘oppressed’ because their books don’t sell, no matter how many awards they give themselves. Whereas Sad Puppy authors are at least making midlist sales.

    Gotta be a conspiracy, can’t be because the Marxist aesthetic is as ugly as the imprint of Satan’s scrotum that it was lifted from.

    1. You know, that’s the best description I’ve read of it “imprint of Satan’s scrotum.”

       1. I thought the imprint of Satan’s scrotum was Tor 🙂

          1. That’s gotta hurt!

          2. The Torlings have been pretty quiet lately…

             1. nah. We’ve just been ignoring them. I’ve been looking at their buying decisions. I don’t think they’re long for this world, poor things, as a house, I mean.

                1. Have they finally gotten all they could out of the “Cash Cows of Dune” series?

                   1. I don’t know.

                   2. The market on that one is getting lean. Mostly observation and anecdatum, but the clones aren’t anywhere on my Amazon feed anymore, and I did pick up Dune a while back (gift for a friend. Book wasn’t really ot my taste).

                   3. I think David Weber’s contract is up, too – at least he actually ended the last Safehold book with an ending. Those were the last reason for me to even look at their release list.

       2. Thanks! Although I’m pretty sure Orwell would have come up with something similar if he’d written 1984 in the modern age.

          (Recipe: 1984’s ‘boot stamping on a face forever’ + modern first-person-shooter players ‘teabagging’ downed opponents + medieval devil-worship supposedly involving kissing the devil’s anus + Alinsky declaring himself a disciple of Lucifer.)

    2. They may think they’re ‘oppressed’ because their books don’t sell, no matter how many awards they give themselves.

       Bingo.

       1. They could sell much much more so very easily, even without changing the leaning and content, though there would likely need to be a lowering of purchase price. But the big thing is the form factor: Printing on Charmin or such would do wonders for sales.

19. There was a post at Insty recently (not I think posted by Sarah) about the abysmal failure of higher education to teach critical thinking.

    I think it may have been one in the WSJ. Mind you in my googling to find it I found similar articles decrying the lack of this skill in graduates going back to at least 2006 so this isn’t exactly a new problem. It occurs to me that the fact that we seem not to have this important life skill taught probably explains a good deal of the groupthink and intolerance we’re seeing in the younger generation. These people seem unable to grasp that others might hold a different view to them on pretty much anything from abortion to climate change to LGBTWTFBBQ rights. If this continues it seems to me it will be disastrous for society as a whole

    1. “…the abysmal failure of higher education to teach critical thinking.”

       It isn’t a failure. It is a policy. Deliberate.

       The reason is that even a cursory examination of Marxism, Post Modernism, Feminism as currently espoused, et cetera, reveals them to be a juvenile tissue of lies. Not even internaly consistent, much less mapping to reality. Critical thinking allows the student to get out of the box they made for us.

       Teach critical thinking at home. Dissect arguments with your kids at the dinner table. This stuff isn’t hard, you know. Guys pretend its hard to make themselves look smarter.

       1. They don’t teach. They indoctrinate.

    2. The problem with teaching critical thinking is before you can do that, you have to have something in your head to think critically about. The “Anything But Knowledge” curriculum has issues with that.

       1. Riddles, puns, Father Brown mysteries…. the mom’s group down here is big on this show called “Brain Games,” it’s awesome because it’s pretty good, but you can apply what they teach you TO THEM and get even more out of it!

20. I see that folk like you and Larry get a lot of heat, catch a lot of flak, for the things you say (let alone the things you don’t say but people attribute to you anyway).

    However, you can probably take it as a compliment in a way. You’re living rent free in these people’s heads and they think you’re important enough to attempt to silence. The expression I’ve heard is that if you’re taking flak you’re probably over the target. Not quite, of course. But if you’re taking flak people are afraid of your payload. I don’t get that kind of heat despite being probably about as libertarian as you are and at least as outspoken. But that’s because I’m a nobody. You’re not and they know it.

    As for the future, I’m not worried for my sake. If things really go hot (I rate them as “uncomfortably warm” at the moment) I don’t really expect to survive it. I’m okay with that. Not my first choice, perhaps, but folk who’ve seen me posting here should know that in my personal philosophy there are far worse ways to go than “going down fighting”. (I’m Asatru. It’s kind of our thing. 😉 )

    No, I’m worried for my daughter’s sake. May the Norns show one instant of pity, please.

21. I stopped going to cons when I would be invited halfway across the country and then ignored in the programming, or put on a panel half and hour before the official start on Friday, or given a reading at four o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Then even my local BayCon, where I had continuous presence, started giving me bad timing. I never thought it was about my politics but due to my lack of book sales, insufficient personal charisma, or distaste for overt drama. One of my books even had a transgender character before it was trendy.

    1. Yep. That has been my history at cons, but I don’t think it’s lack of sales, because I’ve seen who they put on good panels.
       My first series (the magical shakespeare biogrpahy) has a gender shifter.

       1. So, are KP’s Vampire Con stories Wish Fulfillment?

          1. I don’t know. Ask Kate.

22. c4c

23. Sorry I haven’t read everyone else’s comments so far. I think I’m in denial about this; I really want to think that going after your political opponents with violence is a real thing in my country. Now I’m going to wall off my feelings and thought on the subject (having prayed about it hours ago) and get back to work.

    G-d bless you and keep you and make His face to shine upon you.

    1. You know, it would be one thing if the shooter had proof of felonious criminal activity by the good Congressman, and had shown that the law would never bring him to justice. But that never happened. The entire country knows that Hillary committed multiple felonies, gravely negligently got people killed, yet you don’t see any of us deplorables lining up to render vigilante justice against her.

       And they cry about how intolerant and violent we are. Crocodile tears and lies.

       1. I suspect that when and (hopefully, emphasis, hopefully on if…) if the right starts doing this sort of thing, there are going to be vigilante trials held, and at least the semblance of due process before slipping the noose over the neck of the appropriate politician. I really don’t think there will be much in the way of indiscriminate bombings and shootings, just carefully targeted and fully justified (in a quasi-legal sense…) judicial killings.

          Day that starts happening, I hope I’m dead and gone, because I don’t know whose side I’d be on, for that…

       2. Hillary – YET…, there’s still time for it to happen before she dies a natural death from her extreme idiocy.

24. My moment of awakening was when I found out someone I knew
    Thinks anyone who’s not a leftist Democrat or further left is a Republican,
    Thinks Republicans only want to do well so they can shit on everyone beneath them,
    And thinks I’m one of them.

    No contact since, and I’m a lot less willing to be polite to people who come out with crap like that.

    1. Same here. Knew him from high school. Got so he wouldn’t even listen to facts during arguments. Ended up unfriending him on the Book of Faces because he got so toxic.

       1. yeah, a lot of my acquaintances from the vfx industry are on their way to the unfriendings

    2. For the first time in my life, a month and a half ago, I was in a situation where folks just assumed I am not a Democrat/leftist. An entire group of folks, my age.

       It was…startling. Nice, really nice, but startling.

25. Sorry you had to deal with that hun.

    On a second point, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Those who engage in Witch Hunts come in two types – those who think it’s righteous and a moral duty and those who know better and know how powerful they are going to be because of them.

    Only the innocent get caught and killed in those damn things.
    ~One of your friendly Witches

26. c4c

27. When Senator Giffords was shot, after what could be creatively interpreted as right-wing incitement—they blamed Republican rhetoric.

    When Rep. Scalise was shot, after a long list of left-wing incitement—they’re blaming Republican rhetoric.

    Consistency is a virtue, I suppose.

    1. I’m a funhouse mirror of that.

       Re: Giffords, I thought telling the lack of discussion of whether a history of marijuana use was relevant.

       Now, I’m wondering if 66 is too young for a ’60s radical hippie stoner.

       1. Born 1950 or 1949 so no, it is late but it is still well within.

          Also primer for “me decade” drug abuser.

       2. Nope. “Summer of Love” was 1965 or so, but college drug use was still going strong in 1974. U. Utah Phillips was singing the praises of the IWW folks on campus back then… Come to think of it, 1972 was the first year of the 18 year old vote, and the campus radicals had designs on the town government. Last I heard, they succeeded.

          1. Summer of Love was actually 1967…same summer Surrealistic Pillow came out.

             1. Yep. “Strawberry Fields” was the soundtrack to the cafeteria that fall. I got some cred with the greasers in shop class because I knew the psychedelic dirty jokes. 🙂 [Don’t ask] Saved this geek a lot of hassle, though I think they pitied my poor welding…

28. “NO ONE WHO KNOWS ME CAN BELIEVE”

    Been there. I used to believe that I could be friends with Progressives until some very close friends drank the Obama koolaid. That didn’t end well. I hate that people do that sort of thing. I know it feels crummy.

    As for the shooting… First, I’ll wait for a few days for more details to come out before I make a judgement. We have all seen how badly the news media gets things wrong. My gut on this one says it’s a simple case of a disturbed individual acting out. Will this particular event be the thing that “warms up” our current political/cultural cold war? We’ll see, but I don’t suspect so.

    1. It used to be that you could be friends with ‘liberals’. Until the progressives politicized everything. You used to have things that weren’t political, you could talk, you could be yourselves. Now, nothing is exempt from the fight.

       And, the progs have dragged the Overton Window so that your former ‘liberal’ friends no longer qualify as that – they are progs, too.

       1. LOL!! Funny thing is, I AM one of those “former liberals”. Although, admittedly I think we may be talking about different kinds of liberals. I’m more of a classic liberal who believes strongly in individual rights and liberties and having a small government staying out of the lives of the people (with a side of free market Capitalism).

          I suspect your comment was more referring to “Democrat” style liberals, in which case, yes I agree.

          1. Yes. And why I used single quotes around it.

          2. I think your version of liberal morphed into Libertarianism. Or as I like to call them, Constitutional Anarchists.

             1. Yes and no. The very idea of “Constitutional Anarchists” is an oxymoron (speaking literally, not intended as an insult). And that was exactly my experience when a friend dragged me to a few Libertarian party meetings years ago. Some of it was “yea! I may have finally found a political home!” then the rest was “Huh? WTF are you guys smoking?” Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against Libertarians. Frankly, “voting L” is kinda a default for me when I don’t like either the D or the R candidate (which is usually). I just didn’t fit in with the local Libertarian party people, and wasn’t inspired to join.

                1. “Huh? WTF are you guys smoking?”
                   That’s what turns a lot of folks off about some libertarians. 😉

                2. Some of them really ARE anarchists. Every political group covers a range of political belief and practice sets.

                3. This is why I’m not a capital L Libertarian.

                   1. If I had a nickel for every time some big L “Libertarian” told me that I was a horrible person who “compromises essential liberty” for thinking that I’m not going to get everything I want immediately (if ever to be honest) and that looking for what little bit I can get now is the way to go and that sometimes you’re in a losing position and the best you can do is try to minimize/slow the loss in the hopes of coming back with a better hand (so to speak) later…

                      Big L Libertarians are their own worst enemy.

                      1. I agree. The all-or-nothing types are delusional. Especially the “ALL LAWS ARE IMMORAL!” ones. Yea, like abolishing ALL law is ever going to happen. The best way to handle absolutists like that is to just point and laugh.

29. *sigh* MileHicon hasn’t been fun in years. I’m always kinda debating if I’m going to go the next year. I’ve ended up going rather than not because it’s the only place during the year that I can meet up with my people, even if they’re less and less my people. I don’t think I’ve changed that much…

    1. I’ve more or less stopped going to MileHiCon. The really worthwhile panels are (for me) fewer and farther between, and throwaway comments from many of the regular panelists and attendees indicate that I’m not welcome because I don’t drink the same Kool-Aid that they do. Even the panels that sound interesting end up filled with the crazy. One panel I attended on artificial languages had nothing on any of the ones I’m aware of (apart from a couple of passing references), but had major time devoted to one woman’s scribblings in multiple colors and overlaid in all four orientations of the paper. IIRC, it was “therapeutic.”

       The art show, some of the video room, and the dealer room are about the only things I’m interested in anymore. Even there, you find discrimination and violence fantasies against the right side of the political spectrum. Once (and I think I’ve mentioned this here previously), a dealer came back from the art auction with a picture he’d bought that showed a large tree overhanging a small island, and loudly proclaimed to his friends and anyone nearby, “… and this is the tree we’ll hang Bush and the others on after the revolution!”

30. One of the casualties of the fandoms I follow is that like two-thirds of the people I interact with through social media fall under extreme-liberal progressive viewpoints and lifestyles. The news showing the posts from the shooter’s Facebook feeds, trying to use that to justify the fact that he was a violent nutter just engender a sort of bemusement from me, because I see those sort of “eat the rich, Drumpf is a Russian plant meant to destroy our democracy” posts CONSTANTLY from people I interact with pleasantly otherwise.

    Never for a second do I think that they would shoot me if we were to meet in real life.

    The problem here is as you say, it’s not just the violent, over-exaggerated rhetoric, it’s people latching on to it because they’re so isolated from other viewpoints that they don’t know otherwise. And it happens on both the far left and the far right.

    1. “Never for a second do I think that they would shoot me if we were to meet in real life.”

       I’m pretty sure a lot of German Jews thought the same thing about their neighbors, customers, and clients.

       The real problem with your sentence, there? It isn’t that you’re wrong, it is that you naively think they’re going to be shooting at you as you ideate yourself. They won’t be–They’ll be shooting at the caricature of you they have in their heads, the one where you’re the two-headed ravenous monster that’s trying to eat them. You’re still going to wind up just as dead.

       You are not dealing with sane people here. Do try to remember that fact, if you want to keep living.

       1. THIS.

          1. And place yourself if you will back to 1930s Germany: Even when all of your neighbors and acquaintances declined to show up and bash out your windows and beat the crap out of you in the street, your windows were still thoroughly bashed out and you were still left thoroughly beaten by the true believers and only a couple of your neighbors.

             Their pulling the curtains so they didn’t have to watch may have provided your “restrained” neighbors some lessening of guilt to go with their self preservation, but for you, the end result of their not joining the mob at your place was null.

             1. The towns and villages over which the smoke of the ovens wafted nearly every day.

                Even when rounded up at gunpoint and forced to see the camps by Allied soldiers, some still refused to believe.

          2. Absolutely +1.
             Kinda like having Muz friends – spent 30 years in and out of the ME and have a lot of friends over there.
             That said there is no doubt in my mind that if the imam in their local mosque had preached they should kill an American while I was there, I would have been convenient. (In fact that actually happened to another Embassy employee in Jordan while I was there.)

       2. See, that’s the kind of thinking that bugs me. I have nothing against people who want to exercise their 2nd amendment rights and go out to get Conceal Carry permits, but I think it’s wrong to assume that everyone you meet literally wants to murder you and will do so in cold blood if provided the chance.

          Because I bet they’re over the other side of the fence making the same arguments about us. Responding to prove their suspicions correct only speeds up the hyper-polarization.

          You may think that poorly of humanity, I think I’ll stick with thinking most people are idiots in large groups, okay folks individually, but not inherently evil.

          1. You’ve never had anyone really try to hurt you, ever, have you?

             Trust me on this one–The first time someone puts a knife to your throat for the couple of bucks you’re carrying in your wallet, you’re going to suffer an epiphany about the “milk of human kindness”, and the entire idea of putting your trust in your fellow man.

             Having been there, all I can say is that my “fellow man” is a right bastard, and I really only trust him when I’ve got the ability to put his ass in the ground if he makes it necessary. I haven’t gone willingly unarmed since I was 21, and won’t ever again.

             As a corollary? You will never know when the wolf is going to show up, or which guise he’ll choose. Be polite, be professional, but be prepared to kill everyone in the room, if they make it necessary.

             1. Like I said, I’m not going to knock anyone who feels spooked by this and arms up as a result. I’m just saying that thinking “everyone on the other side will murder us in cold blood if given half a chance” is the same mentality that drives paranoia in the liberal progressive side too.

                1. Mass political movements can do a lot of evil while being made up of fairly ordinary people.

                   I’m fairly confident that Kirk’s reservations are not just about the left. I suspect Kirk is cautious of people of every political stripe, to include no political preference whatsoever.

                   This post addresses political delusion, so he speaks to that, but I am sure he would not tell you to, say, trust a strange man on the street moving erratically with poor peripheral motor control.

                   1. No, I’m an equal-opportunity paranoid; I trust no one.

                      However, I’m also fully aware that the left is generally the one to espouse and use violence as a tool. It’s what they do–It’s built into the mentality most of them have.

                      Look back on the early Obama presidency–Lots of folks on the right were talking armed resistance, but they were mostly framing it as “We’re gonna have to defend ourselves and our homes when the government comes for us…”. The left, this time ’round? They’re framing it as needing to take up the offensive, because that’s how their minds work.

                      Go back a few hundred years, and you’re gonna be hard-pressed to find more than a few instances where the “right” initiated violence, except in pre-emption like in Pinochet’s Chile. They don’t want to talk about it, but the real deal in that case was that Pinochet pushed the button before Allende could get his machinery going to fully implement his takeover.

                      And, of course, your average leftist will steadily proclaim that “the right” doesn’t need to initiate violence; they’re “already in charge”.

                      There hasn’t been one time, one instance since the French Revolution, where this kind of crap has turned out well. Farging idiots are trying it all over again… I bet money that somewhere someone is passing around copies of Marighela’s urban guerrilla fantasies, and expecting it to work, this time…

                      I wonder what we’re gonna use as helicopters, this time? Drones?

                      Bah. A pox on all their houses, left and reactionary right. Although, I do feel less animus for the right, because they’re generally not the ones who start shooting…

                      1. “The left [a]re framing it as needing to take up the offensive, because that’s how their minds work.”

                         When speech with contradicts their delusions is characterized as assault, their acts of depravity can be viewed as defensive (especially if the viewer is an idiot.) Your words, your refusal to bend the knee to their demands, is the affront and their response is merely seeking to correct the imbalance and restore Justice.

                         “There hasn’t been one time, one instance since the French Revolution, where this kind of crap has turned out well.”

                         Agreed – but there have been times when it was averted short of mass bloodshed. The War of Southern Secession was delayed a good several decades and could conceivably have been avoided altogether, even though no man knows how. We avoided a nuclear exchange with the Soviets and many of us are old enough to appreciate just how near that was to happening … on multiple occasions.

                         1. We avoided a nuclear exchange with the Soviets and many of us are old enough to appreciate just how near that was to happening … on multiple occasions.

                            Or young enough– it’s the folks there in the middle, who were actually taught that it wasn’t a risk, who cling to the “wasn’t ever going to happen” thing.

                            If one is young enough, and didn’t have someone wedded to it enough, the subject just never came up.

                            1. …it’s the folks there in the middle, who were actually taught that it wasn’t a risk, who cling to the “wasn’t ever going to happen” thing.

                               I’ve even heard claims that it was all a propaganda campaign instigated by former Nazis after WWII, and that the USSR wasn’t even a threat.

                      2. “…equal-opportunity paranoid.” ABSOLUTELY. I believe I already mentioned carrying in DC.

                2. Been jumped by a gang just walking on the side of the road.
                   Been beaten by a guy I was going to offer to help drive out of a snow-covered parking lot who blamed me because my truck was parked where he’d rather have parked. Same nutter who was going to come beat the crap out of me a couple months later, but his girlfriend convinced him not to because she knew I had guns in my apartment finally. (Thin walls, loud voices.)

                   Sorry Sunglass, evidence points to Kirk having a more accurate picture of your fellow man.

                3. Except that we have far more (and more recent) historical examples from their side (even if you swallow the lie that Hitler and Mussolini were right).

          2. I don’t thing everyone is out to hurt me. But some people are. However, here’s the thing: I don’t know which ones are. There are people I feel quite certain do not mean to harm me but I also know people who thought that who later turned out to have been wrong.

             I don’t know. Just like I don’t know if this drive home will be the one where someone runs into me.

             Being prepared against the eventuality is just good sense.

             1. This sentiment I understand 100%. This is why the people who immediately jump into pimping out gun control talking points following this are idiots.

                1. Honestly, those who started spouting gun control cr*p made me think they just want things easier for their goons. That how it worked in the first days of Reconstruction.

                   1. That’s how it’s always worked, whether it was the Romans, the Mongols, or Hitler’s goons. They say they want to reduce violence, but what they really mean is that they want to reduce violence directed against themselves when they come for you…

          3. Consider Kirk’s background. He tells of interactions with some very unpleasant people, some of whom had a very good innocent act.

             I do not think the left has as many people groomed into such a delusional state as Kirk seems to imply. Nutjobs aren’t easy to turn off and on, and I don’t think we’ve seen enough domestic terrorism for that model.

             On the other hand, of the Democrats that I know, there’s maybe one I’m confident I understand well enough to be sure they aren’t in such a delusional state.

             Most people can be good, and you will still have problems dealing with the ones who aren’t that you cannot detect. (I’ve made the assumption that my eyes aren’t up to that task since early childhood. If you are that good reading people, more power to you.)

             1. The problem is that the reality of the whole situation is the one highlighted by Wednesday Addams in one of the modern Addams Family movies:

                When she’s asked where her costume is, because she’s dressed as she is every day, her response is that she came as a homicidal maniac, because “They look just like everyone else…”.

                True evil doesn’t have a real definitive signature; you can only know it by its actions, and by the time someone like Heinrich Himmler or Ted Bundy has demonstrated his true heart, well… It’s generally too late.

                This is intellectually very easy to say. Believing in it, and operating in daily life as though it were a truth of the universe, which it is, well… Not so easy to do, until you’ve met the elephant. After that, it’s all too easy to visualize that sweet little girl down the street as the kid who might drown your toddler for kicks. You just don’t know, until you do. And, when you do? Best to be prepared to deal with the facts as they present themselves.

             2. I am under VERY strict orders to never, ever, EVER pull over for hitchhikers or– even worse– people whose car obviously broke down.

                We’re in an area, now, where it is a serious, known tactic to be able to hijack a vehicle, usually to do a quick run of illegal goods— and besides the obvious thing with a bunch of kids and a car, they do not like to leave witnesses.

                I actually did already know about that tactic– my grandmother avoided it basically by being a mildly superstitious I-just-have-a-feeling gal, where she was going to stop and then slammed on her gas and watched the guys lunging out of hiding in her rear-view mirror– but I didn’t know the “baby carrier” variation.
                Baby, abandoned on the side of the road– it’s especially favored because you tend to get women, not couples or men.

                1. Heh. There be good reasons we encouraged the Daughtorial Unit’s interest in the Childe Ballads …

                   Ian & Sylvia also did a version (called Jickson Johnson), but I think the lyrics are clearer on the Matthews Southern Comfort cover (and the pedal steel is outstanding.) Peggy Seeger appears to be the person who popularized the song (calling it Johnson Jinkson.)

                   Johnson he was riding along
                   As fast as he could ride
                   When he thought he heard a woman,
                   He heard a woman cry.

                   Johnson getting off his horse
                   And proceeding to look all around
                   Till he came upon a woman
                   With her hair pinned to the ground.

                   Woman, dearest woman,
                   Who has brought you here for spite?
                   Who has brought you here this morning
                   With your hair pinned to the ground?

                   It were three bold and struggling men
                   With sword keen in hand
                   Who have brought me here this morning
                   With my hair pinned to the ground.

                   Johnson being a man of his own
                   And being a man in bold
                   He took off his overcoat
                   To cover her from the cold.

                   Johnson getting on his horse
                   And the woman getting on behind
                   Down that long and lonesome highway
                   Their fortunes for to find.

                   They rode on and further on
                   And nothing could they spy
                   When she put her fingers to her ears
                   And gave three shivering cries.

                   Out sprang three bold and struggling men
                   With swords keen in hand
                   who commanded Johnson
                   Commanded him to stand.

                   I’ll stop then, said Johnson,
                   I’ll stand then, said he,
                   But I never was in my life
                   Afraid of any three.

                   Johnson killing two of them
                   Not watching the woman behind
                   While he was upon the other one
                   She stabbed him from behind.

                   The day was clear and a market day
                   And the people all passing by
                   Who saw this awful murder
                   And saw poor Johnson die.

                   1. Nothing new under the sun….

                2. I… really can’t even describe what I would support as punishment for people who would use an “abandoned” baby as bait.

          4. “See, that’s the kind of thinking that bugs me.”

             Yeah? Thought experiment: would it be a good idea to go down to the bad part of town, wherever that is in your town, and stand on the bad street corner with a $100 dollar bill sticking out of your ear? You’d want a gun.

             Got that visual firmly fixed in your mind’s eye? Okay, now you are on a nice street in San Francisco. You are wearing a Trump hat.

             As of today, those two are now the same situation. If you’d take a gun to the bad part of town, you better be thinking about taking one to the nice part too.

          5. The issue is that everyone has their snapping point. It is not a question of whether you would kill, but rather what would be the trigger that gets you into that mindset. In many cases you can catch the tells for the nutters but the ones under radar are always there.

             If things come to blows, it won’t be cold blood. They will see you as a threat just as you would if they came at you with a pistol or knife. That is the scary thing about the “Your words are violence, our violence are words” mindset coming around.

             This is where Mattis’ three P’s come into play. Just like you (should) plan an emergency egress from a building or plane, keep an extinguisher in the kitchen and anywhere else you may light things on fire, have an alarm system, etc, you must plan how you can defend yourself if things go sideways. Notice the shock and surprise that come from folks next to serial killers that ‘I never would have expected it’ and just keep that in the back of your mind.

             My personal standard, regardless of whether it’s personal or I’m working is that I will be civil and treat you normally until you give me reason to change that. But I always have my escape route and plan. 911 work and experience has drilled that into me.

             1. Notice the shock and surprise that come from folks next to serial killers that ‘I never would have expected it’ and just keep that in the back of your mind.

                I was recently certified via Virtus– basically, “sex predator identification tactics” for Catholic groups– and the thing that kept jumping out at me was that the stuff they said to look for in child predators was the same thing that I already looked for… in potential terrorists. And it holds for most of the other predators, too.

          6. The whole point is that it doesn’t have to be everybody that wants you dead, or finds it an acceptable sideffect– same way it doesn’t have to be everybody that’s willing to risk life and limb to protect a stranger.

             It just has to be ONE person around when there’s an opportunity.

             1. …and of course, I should have refreshed the page before my response. 🙂

                1. Nah, you know what I’m saying, and I know what you’re saying, but someone might know what you’re saying and not what I’m saying, or other way around.

                   1. Point.

          7. …I think it’s wrong to assume everyone you meet literally wants to murder you and will do so in cold blood if provided the chance.

             I think you’re misinterpreting the mindset, here. It’s not that people are assuming that everyone wants to do such things. What he’s saying is that you do not know exactly which people DO want to do such things.

             If 9 out of 10 people are harmless, then 10% of the people you meet are dangerous. And if you don’t have some magical mental gauge, you’re not going to know which ones are which. So you need to be ready for that 10th person, in case their dangerousness is aimed at you.

             1. Yeah, and as I said, I completely understand why people are choosing to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights following this shooting.

                I just was perturbed by seeing some on the right go “welp guess it’s a literal civil war now” and advocate for the kind of language that would then justify people going out and doing their own shooting of liberals.

                This comes down to self-defense = good, intentional murder = bad, which I think everyone here can agree on.

                1. The real question is, when is the right time to start your own violence? Do you wait until they take over the government, and start enacting their policies like gun confiscation? Do you do it before they start winning elections, and manipulating the levers of power?

                   As a Gedankenspiel, a “thought-game”, I suggest you cast yourself into the role of a “decent German” of the 1920s-30s: You see the Nazis for what they are, and where they are going. You see that oh-so-clearly, but are powerless to stop them because your neighbors are blind to reality.

                   Where and when do you do something? What do you do, in the first place? Where are your decision points? What are the “bridges too far” for you?

                   I fear I don’t have good answers, and I honestly don’t know what I would have done, were I a German of 1930. I know what I like to think I would have done, but have you ever seen that picture of the one German in the crowd who’s not making the Nazi salute? I kinda like to think I’d have had the balls to be like August Landmesser, but… Who knows, until that choice is presented to you? His is an instructive tale, BTW–I’m surprised he hasn’t had a movie or a novel made about his life. He should be celebrated, at least as much as that Polish officer who infiltrated the death camps.

                   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Landmesser

                   All of us should learn the lessons of August Landmesser, and honor his memory.

                2. This comes down to self-defense = good, intentional murder = bad, which I think everyone here can agree on.

                   Sadly, what we may be heading for is a “third” situation.

                   IE A state of civil war where “sides are chosen and people who don’t chose a side are considered enemy by both sides”.

                   I think most of us think the “third situation” will be terrible but may be what will happen. It’s not something anybody sane wants to happen but the “world” doesn’t always give us “what we want”. 😦

                3. I shudder to think what someone like that could do with the town voter lists.

    2. “Never for a second do I think that they would shoot me if we were to meet in real life.”

       You’re probably right about that. But you better believe they would stand aside and let somebody else shoot you.

       A hard lesson that I’ve had to learn over and over again since childhood: when there’s trouble, no one is going to help you. No. One. They will either be frozen and therefore useless, or they will be passively getting out of the way.

       Later on, after you’re dead, some of them will feel really bad they didn’t do anything. Most won’t.

       You want a friend? Get a dog.

       1. Damn straight. Even a Shitzu will attack someone threatening his human. And they can jump just high enough to do serious damage.

          1. If nothing else, they bark like hell and warn you to duck.

          2. I’m actually more worried about small dogs than big ones– the small ones tend to get “oh, that’s cute” passes.

             Thank God my mom taught me to “speak” dog, at least as far as looking like a bigger predator. I haven’t been bitten in years. (Mostly? Respect things that can be boundary lines, and don’t turn your back; it doesn’t say “I don’t fear you,” it says “I am easy prey.”)

             1. Read the dog body language (ears forward, tail wagging – OK to approach) … go down on one knee to their level and let them sniff your hands before venturing a petting. I’ve never had a bad encounter, following that practice.

                1. Doesn’t work for dogs that are, basically, insane– stuff that adults, or people who are noticing things they don’t even realize they notice because it’s so basic, are also important.

                   My sister’s arm got opened up by a dog we knew, because he still did all that– but he’d basically been driven insane by the kids who’d walk home from school and tormented the chained up dog.

                   He’d wag his tail, ears forward, mouth big and open and a picture of “Hey, boss!!”– but his body had a sort of… tension? Like he was about to lunge.
                   Because he was.

                   There’s also the issue that a non-insane dog can still be poorly socialized, especially if they’re small, and do “playful” nips that can do serious damage. (I have a lot of puppy scars– they really don’t know, y’know?)

                   1. In fairness: I don’t heal for crud. I have scars from stuff that I don’t even remember happening, while my husband can point to stuff where he knows the arm was laid open to the muscle and deeper– but there’s nothing, not even a light area when he gets sun.

                   2. Likely I have been subconsciously reading the “no-don’t-touch-me-back-off” signals from freaky dogs all this time. I don’t touch dogs who have that freaky ‘no-touch’ or even the dubious vibe. Never been bitten, or attacked by a dog.

                      1. Most SANE people do– it took me years to figure out why I had a “no, no NO!” response to some dogs. (Mine is calibrated wrong, it gives false positives for just excited dogs, but it does catch the insane dogs.)

                         It’s just one of those things where…well, fish really can’t see water.

                      2. Note: this only matters for rule-following idiots like me, or “all animals are awesome” people like my sister.

                         Some huge percent of folks will not need to have it pointed out, because they are not either utterly blind do dog body language (idiot me) or so loving and kindly as my sister. (freaky thing, IT USUALLY WORKS)

                         I’m usually in the “pretend the animal isn’t there” category because of the above mentioned issue, and it will get me bitten if I turn my back on an idiot rat-dog. Instinct works for most bigger dogs.

                         1. Here’s the thing… Dogs are often really, really good at “reading” people. It’s what they’ve been selected for for a long damn time, maybe going back almost half a hundred thousand years. In that time, they’ve gotten really good at discerning the “tells”, and if you’re a person who exudes goodwill and love towards all things canine…?

                            They can tell. Believe me, they can tell. I’ve seen an acquaintance of mine, who sounds like your sister, who utterly lacks judgment with dogs. You despair, thinking there is no way she’s gonna avoid getting bitten, but… Jeez.

                            Mutual acquaintances of ours had this near-feral Pyrenees bitch they rescued, who was pregnant. Said bitch denned up under the front porch of the old ranch house, and our friend the crazy lady with no dog boundaries showed up early on a visit out to the ranch… Guess who they came home to, with the near-feral mother dog proudly showing off her week-old puppies to the stranger, and letting her handle them like she was fully entitled? Yep; our dog-crazy friend.

                            That doesn’t sound so odd, until you hear that the family had had to cede the old ranch house over to the Pyrenees bitch, because she wouldn’t let anyone or anything even close to it, once she’d set up her housekeeping in her little den under the porch. Our friend shows up, out of the blue, never met the bitch before in either of their lives, and then they’re suddenly best of buds, and she’s the surrogate mom, cooing over the puppies like a lunatic–And, the psychotic raving half-feral bitch that was the mother? She’s like “Oh, wow… Look what I did!! Aren’t they cool!!” with her.

                            Should probably mention that there had been some serious debate about whether or not they maybe should shoot said semi-feral, once she weaned the puppies. That’s how unapproachable she was. After our friend worked her magic, she suddenly decided that maybe people weren’t so bad, after all, and became a lot more tractable.

                            Go figure. I heard that story, and I’m like “Yeah, that’s Sandra…”. I swear to God, one of these days I’m going to hear of her walking up to one of those “maddened pit bull” situations, and she’ll either be mauled, or the dog is going to be eating out of her hand.

                            1. I’m actually really glad to hear that isn’t unheard of, because my sister has that effect on almost all dogs– just not this one once-friend driven-crazy dog.

                               FFS, she picks up wild chicks to show people, then mommy comes back and takes them back….

                               My dad is a bit more sane, but has a similar effect on wild animals– “Oh, look, bar cats? Yeah, I’ll scratch your ears… kittens? Here, bring them to me– OK, adopting them out, and they’re TAME at the time….”

31. “May G-d have mercy on their souls.”

    We are far too close to the point where G-d alone has the reserves to have mercy. When that happens, G-d help us all.

32. This reminds me about the comments I saw on news articles when all those wildfires were tearing through the South earlier this year. All the highest voted comments were snide comments along the lines of “They deserve it because they voted wrong”, “It’s their fault for not believing global warming”, “We don’t need to help them. They can just pray to their imaginary God”, ect ect. And people were posting these things on Facebook with their real names attached to it, not even having the decency to hide behind a fake name. Even if only the extreme nutty fringe acts on it, it’s scary seeing how many people at least claim to believe that half the county deserves to be attacked or have their homes burned down.

    1. Exactly – the viciousness of it, and the lack of shame about being that vicious – was absolutely breathtaking.
       One of my books (the second of the Adelsverein Trilogy) deals with the Civil War, and how over the space of a mere ten years or so — people were so brought to hate those who disagreed with them that they were willing to slaughter each other in job lots.
       Now I am seeing what I grew up knowing and writing about … played out in real time.

       Kirk’s comment – about them not seeing the “you” but the hideous image they have built up in their own minds of “you” and thus fit for righteous slaughter – is on the money.

    2. Eyup. Same comes when you look at the stories about the suicide and opiod crises (TBH they are two sides of same coin). The amount of comments that say “it’s deserved”, “they are only getting even with what the superior races (Not in so many words, but you do the typical copypaste and you had the next KKK newsletter for the FBI, ATF, et al) had to deal with since forever”, and yes the standard religious bigotry.

       And this all desensitizes people to it. It dehumanizes others the more it is read.

       1. “Same comes when you look at the stories about the suicide and opiod crises (TBH they are two sides of same coin). The amount of comments that say “it’s deserved”, “they are only getting even with what the superior races (Not in so many words, but you do the typical copypaste and you had the next KKK newsletter for the FBI, ATF, et al) had to deal with since forever”, and yes the standard religious bigotry.”

          Why shouldn’t they feel that way, and have no qualms about expressing it?

          After all, we have writers at the supposedly “conservative” National Review, Buckley’s baby, writing articles saying the SAME DAMN THING (see Williamson, Kevin). We had the same “conservative” writers busily telling anyone who would listen that Trump voter = alt-right – raaaaacist / sexist / fascist / deplorable. The number of times I heard lefties screaming “Of course you’re as bad and deserving of hate as we say! [Insert “conservative” name here] agrees with us!!!!!!”

          We’re still seeing it today; just last week, John “Benedict” McCain was overseas saying that Obama was a better President.

    3. Notice the shooter had two Facebook accounts– but they were both under his own name.

33. The extremists have assumed control of the Democratic party and left. They are not good, but misguided people. They are bad, dangerous people. There will be more bloodshed, but they will be surprised at how much of it will be theirs.

    1. I know. I know.

34. The more people there are saying such things, the more people there will be acting on them. Yesterday’s extreme nutty fringe is today’s respectable opinion; yesterday’s respectable opinion is today’s enforced orthodoxy.

35. I wish I had words of comfort. Unfortunately, your appeal for them to stop spewing cr*p will fall on deaf ears because they don’t consider it cr*p. They either have not paused to evaluate their opinions, in which case they probably won’t, or they’ve drunk the cool-aid. Either way, i don’t look for it to stop.

    The hard thing is to realize that even old friends likely see us as the enemy. We may, in the words of Lincoln, have “. . . Malice toward none and charity toward all . . .” but that doesn’t mean they hold no malice toward us.

    This means that, as Kipling wrote, “Watch your man, but be polite.” I don’t think we can assume that they don’t hold malice, not unless it’s proved otherwise. In the same way, if they confirm that malice in word and deed, we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking they are “just joking,” or are still our friends, or ever were our friends.

    That sounds cold and paranoid, but the question is no longer whether we’re paranoid, but whether we’re paranoid enough. That’s not comforting, but maybe prudent.

    The downside is that it can accelerate the division in this country. That’s mollified by “Watch your man, but be polite,” but the potential remains.

36. The Progressive Left has finally woken up to the fact that they are losing power, and like most self-selected elites before them they are descending into full bore delusion and madness. I see no evidence that they will go quite as far as the Confederate leadership; they may think they have far more ability to kick ass than the facts support, but they don’t seem to believe quite as much idiocy in that regard as the Souther Aristocracy did. But they are going to get violent in spots…and deeply regret it.

    Hang in there. This too shall pass. In fact, it will HELP this pass. The more they go batshit crazy in public, the more people who have something approaching sense will turn out on election days to make sure they don’t win.

    1. That we so hope. That the more sane lefty element who has been trucking along, slurping the Koolaid will realize the subtle (or not so-subtle-poison that it is, and have a ‘come to Jesus’ rendezvous with reality.
       No – not holding my breath, But I am an optimist, and I can hope.

37. Irony:

    http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kevin-baker/2017/06/14/ny-daily-news-writer-goes-nuts-over-scalise-shooting-blames-white

    1. Should have added: the writer is Shaun King.

       1. Ah, Talcum X. *ignores link then*

          1. Should have also added: the writer being talked about is Shaun King. 😉

       2. TalcumX

38. Antifa’s official statement on the shooting:

    https://twitter.com/OfficialAntifa/status/874977210930802688

    1. Refusing to realize that THEY are the fascists.

    2. A more confusing nutter site I’ve not seen in quite a while.

       1. Antifa, or Twitter?

       2. Okay, I take it back. I’ve been reading comments on MSNBC about the shooting. God help us all. The Communist-Democrat-Leftist-Liberal-Progressive-Socialists are calling for more blood, and blaming the conservative right for the violence in the first place.

    3. They have apparently taken that down and have tweeted this in reply to people calling them terrorists:

       https://twitter.com/OfficialAntifa/status/875370435894009857

39. c4c

40. Yes. She’s average and she thinks average thoughts. She’s a good little girl and she believes what her teachers told her.

    But her teachers were lying to her. Not that they knew, because they were good little girls that believed what their teachers told them…

41. Sarah, I thought of your previous post the instant I heard about the shooting on a talk radio show this morning, about this cold civil war heating up, about keeping our powder dry and being ready for violence to be thrust upon us.

    You may not be a prophet in the Biblical definition, but God is whispering to you nonetheless! Take care, and stay safe.

    Looking forward to meeting you in LibertyCon, as well. We can be almost disablingly polite together.

42. When Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders are showing more grace than you are, you really need to examine your life…. *looks at the facebook trolls*

    1. Huh? Read a commentary by Second Amendment Foundation founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb this morning on Fox. I think he was seriously missing the point. Democrats like Reps. Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and many of the talking heads at CNN and MSNBC have knowingly, and deliberately been engaged with “Hate speech and actions incite this kind of violence” for months. The evidence of their behavior is this is EXACTLY the kind of violence that Waters, Pelosi, Schumer, Obama, and Clinton want; and they want lots more of it.

       What Mr. Gottlieb and the rest of us need to be asking is: “Why are the Democrats encouraging and creating these acts of violence?” And, “What are their goals that this violence serves to achieve?” I doubt that it is for the benefit of America, or Americans.

       1. They say stupid stuff because they’ve always said stupid stuff, to no effect other than getting lots of money and praise.

          Suddenly, stupid stuff ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

          They come out and condemn it.

          How about we attack the guys whose response to stupid stuff is “Good, you deserved it,” instead?

          1. That is one sign I’m seeing for hope. Them idjits in congress apparently weren’t prepared for this. That whatever they said for PR and adcopy, they expected the status quo for the functioning of congress to continue as always, aren’t prepared for it to change to offended nutjobs adjusting the makeup whenever, will resist that and may even fix things now.

             1. I’ll give 40% credit to “Gee, maybe this did go too far,” 50% credit to “Holy moly, they shot at one of the ruling elites – that’s me! We can’t have that!!” and 10% random neuron firing (Maxine Waters is 100% the latter).

                1. Maxine Waters D-Inanity

          2. No, attacking the instigators as well because in a day or so the peloishit and her dem-comm friends will be spewing their hatred again as usual.
             I’m so old I’ve my pot of patience and understanding in long emptied by these enemies of my country.

43. Amen. Gives me the cold grue also.

44. God might, but it is unlikely. That requires true repentance, and most of they are so far from a state of grace they do not understand they need repentance. And I sure won’t. I swore an oath 40 years ago to faithfully defend and protect the Constitution….and the funny thing is, there were no caveats about it ever ending. Tens of millions of us have sworn that oath…and if this gets as bad as I fear it is going to get…..well, the French Revolution is what I fear. And I will protect and defend the Constitution, never doubt it. Against whomsoever it requires.

45. Being close to 60 years old, politically active all of my life, heck even have a poly sci degree, I’ve become so depressed about the state of division in our country. The last primary/election cycle started my downward mental spiral, I couldn’t vote for either major party candidate, still feel that way too. I voted though going in I knew it pointless, there were other offices I wanted to vote for.

    Unfortunately though, the discourse since November has really ratcheted up the vitriol on both sides. There is no ‘middle ground.’ Indeed, I even see the crazy talk in my own millennial adult children and their friends. These are ‘kids’ that are all very successful in they are employed and well compensated in chosen fields. Shoot, one even marched with the vagina hat! (See why I am depressed!)

    I have more than a few friends that are liberals and have been as long as I’ve known them, in a couple cases 30 years or more! I’ve never assumed they were not voting for whom they considered the best person in their opinion. I might find their criteria in making decisions faulty, but never their intentions. Nor do I assume bad motives involved with politicians I disagree with, again I just think their conclusions wrong in how to approach problems-problems that nearly all people agree are real. The differences being mostly on what people think is the best way to deal with those problems.

    While the conundrum for me occurred with the last election, the assumption of bad intentions seemed to begin with the election of GW and has only grown worse. Indeed, it is most likely why we faced the choices made it possible to be faced with the choice of Clinton or Trump.

    1. “the assumption of bad intentions seemed to begin with the election of GW”

       I think the assumption began with Reagan (I remember their snarky attacks on the feeble-minded old dottard) but they had a hard time defending Carter. Recalling their attacks on Nixon I cannot say they weren’t presuming bad intentions even then.

       Eisenhower they had trouble with, as his national reputation made such criticisms self-defeating.

       OTOH, having recently finished Ronald C. White’s biography of Grant I feel confident their willingness to impute bad intentions extends at least to the War of Southern Secession.

       Now I think upon it, Jefferson and Burr did not blanch at such slanders of Hamilton, Washington and Adams.

    2. There’s reason to suspect it started in ’92, but that we started seeing certain indicators in 2000. Why go full court press on GWB just because Gore lost to Bush, unless the Democratic Party had pretty much been hollowed out by the Clintons at that point?

       If this is heavily driven by Clinton ambition, it may have no choice but to die off five, ten, fifteen years if and when Chelsea fails to develop the ambition and ability to replace her parents.

46. If they call us evil, then we wear targets, because if we are evil, harming us protects the innocent. The feeble-minded or those full of rage are susceptible to such language.

    Similarly, if we call someone traitorous or the like, we are in effect saying they should be killed to protect the country.

    While conservatives have not got the track record of mass shooting of women and children that the left has collected, we still need to avoid pulling out the pins on our grenades.

47. OMG. I know Rose Beetem too. I guess I’m also now on her shit list. Let me make sure. Yes, Rose, I’m a constitutional libertarian. I worked for really really really right wing Republicans in Congress – both Houses. I worked on the Iraq policy desk at the Pentagon during the oughts. So I am obviously a woman-hating, gay-hating, put-something-here-hating person. So be it. My daughter already hates me and won’t talk to me and wants me dead because of my politics. (Yes, Emma Kyger.) So add me to the list, Rose. I am a Sad Puppy through and through and find what has happened to fandom and SF to be incredibly sad. It’s dead, Jim, as they say. You folks killed it. Yes, you. And now I see the attempted coup ongoing and I fear for my country. *sigh*

    1. Daughter hates you? May be time to readdress your will, heh, heh.

    2. I love everything about this comment. It delights me so! *clapping!*

48. Sarah Hoyt homophobic? ROFL ROFL ROFL. Being a gay fan who has corresponded with this lovey and talented writer, there is not a homophobic bone in her body. She treats everyone as a human being, worthy of respect, until they prove otherwise. She writes exciting and excellent SF, without political agendas – she writes a good story. There is so much of current SF that I can’t read anymore, I detest the constant political and cultural indoctrination that is written in the guise of a SF story. Thank G-d Sarah Hoyt is still writing for us ‘wrongfans” :).

49. Not all leftists are the problem here, only a few extremists. It’s like a disease. But like a disease, the actions of a few problem entities affects all. So let me warn the left that they should act to cure the disease, quickly. Otherwise, history shows that the innocent that are affected may decide to destroy the carrier.

    1. only a few extremists.

       It may be “only a few extremists” actually committing the violence (although how many does it have to be before that excuse stops working?) but there are plenty of pre-“road to Damascus” Sauls out there who might not be throwing the stones but are more than willing to hold the coats of those who are.

       1. Which is the precise problem with the “moderate Muslims”.

          Ain’t none of this gonna end well, I’m afraid. And, right now, the forces of chaos and disorder are looking like the “strong horse”, so I fear the actions which will have to be taken in order to stuff them back into the bag nearly as much as I fear those chaotic types…

          We’re all going to have to make some ugly decisions, and do some ugly things, should the world they’re trying to call into being come about. The leftoids don’t realize it, but they’re summoning the demon as we speak, and there’s no telling whose side that demon is going to wind up on.

    2. Part of the problem is that a lot of the diseased ones are on tv and the internet, constantly spewing forth their bile. These are the folks on MSNBCNNBCBSABCESPN, not some nutjob in a dark corner of Twitter. But that nutjob is watching and listening to them from his dark corner.

50. Poor, Sarah. Please, please take this with the kindness that it is intended (and with the gratitude for your free MHI stories). I completely understand why she is pi$$ed at you. I don’t approve or agree, but I understand. You write things like: “And the only reason HAS to be because he disagrees politically with her” and “And yet she can believe the narrative over her lying eyes.” and “This is because what they were taught in school (I know, I was too) is Marxist aesthetics. They judged the story on how Marxist it is. ” which make me think you have no idea what is going on. And maybe excessive Oddness prevents you from knowing it but I will try to explain it as I understand.

    I don’t think she (and certainly Leftists in general) believes “the narrative” and she probably doesn’t (and Leftists in general don’t) get so invested in what other people’s political belief’s really are as to hate them over it, and certainly she didn’t learn Marxism in school. What she probably learned in school… what THEY almost all learn in school is : these are the mouth-sounds you need to make in our social mouth-sound game to advance in status and wealth. The advanced ones learn: this is the method of identifying changes in the fashion of mouth-sounds and so be more secure and higher status/wealth by keeping on the cutting edge of the mouth-sound game; and you HAVE to learn these because that is how wealth and status will be determined in your society. And she is no doubt one of those people who studied hard and worked hard and spent all kinds of effort and worry to pay attention to the mouth-sounds others were using and the status of the other players in the court politics of the game and catch every inside joke and just what the subtleties of them were and carefully memorize every shibboleth. She busted her @$$ in this damn game! She EARNED her status, darn it!!! And then YOU, and people like you come along and say “Hey, these mouth-sounds you are obsessing over pronouncing just right and in just the right order and at the right time are really symbols that mean things. And you are mouthing all the wrong meanings. I think we should completely change the game you worked your whole life learning to be based on the word meanings instead of fashion. And, of course, you and yours will have to lose all the advantage you worked so hard for. Isn’t that fair? Hey, why are you mad? Why all the screaming? What did I say wrong? Why are your new mouth sounds completely at odds with what you surely know about me? Didn’t you hear I want it to be the MEANINGS we score with now, not the FASHION?”

    She is not a Marxist. Did she take all her earnings and distribute them to others based on how much they need it? (Apologies if she does) Then she’s not a Marxist. She learned to make mouth noises to win the court-politics game in her society that just happen to come from folk Marxism. In some other time they’d have come from Confucianism or American Patriotism or Atenism or, yes, Nazism. And she’d have been just as good at those mouth-sound fashion games as she is this one and she’d have just as little investment in the meaning behind the mouth-sounds and the facts of ‘the narrative’ as she does now. She almost certainly doesn’t hate Mr. Martin (or you) because of your political beliefs. She may not even be able to conceive that other people take their political belief’s seriously except as a way to power or self-satisfaction (the way most Republican politicians simply cannot believe that their constituents oppose illegal immigration because it is against The Law as opposed to “the law” being a club you wield against those you dislike; surely no one is enough of a Rube to just believe in The Law as a thing in itself outside of power or personal interest and ‘controlling legal authority’ and ‘presecutorial discretion’). She may well believe that the only reason you want to switch the mouth-sound game rules from Fashion to Meaning is because you are terrible at the latter but will have an advantage in the former. Since she has a huge, life-time investment in the former and is likely completely baffled by the latter, she HAS to stamp out any hint of such a change. YOU ARE THREATENING A CHANGE THAT WILL TAKE BREAD OUT OF HER FAMILY’S MOUTH!

    I wrote that I understood her anger (but do NOT approve). I think I do. It is the anger of a person who their whole life was told and taught that if you play be a certain set of rules you will be rewarded. And they played by those rules, they worked hard to learn those rules, and worked hard to follow them, sure in the repeated promise that they’d be rewarded. And then just when they think they are secure in their rewards that they have earned… someone comes along and says “stupid sucker… those aren’t the rules at all, we had these secret rules over here that we didn’t tell you about… they are basically ‘we win; you lose’, and now you don’t get your reward… screw you chump.”

    It is the EXACT same source of anger for people who were told that if you elect Republicans to Congress we’ll repeal Obamacare and stop illegal immigration, only to find out the rules were: promise what the Rubes want and then you can loot the treasury. It is the anger of people who thought ‘my money at MF Global is protected by law’, only to find out the rules were ‘we are a nation of men, not of laws and John Corzine is and Important Man’. It is the anger of white working class people who were told that if they bust their @$$ and work extra shifts and their wife works too and they both miss irreplaceable time with their kids and live exhausted they can afford a house in a good school district that will guarantee their kids have a prosperous future, only to find out the rules are ‘we are going to give your kid’s slot at that nice local school that you thought you were buying to some black kid from the ghetto and we’ll bus your kid across town to his old failing school.’ And if we are honest it is also the anger of the Berny-bot Millennial who was told his whole life that a college degree of any kind was a ticket to financial security and a good job, only to find out the rule was ‘well, that used to be true but then we looted the schools to fund our pet projects and employ our friends and now your degree is worthless and you get to pay for it all the rest of your life.’ And also those who were told that if they risked their children’s lives sending them to America then ‘I will make it legal’ for you to live here in the land of easy money and your progeny will be rich Americans too, only to find out the rules are ‘no, I can’t actually get the votes to make it legal after the fact so you’ll just have to live in the shadows and maybe be deported at any time.’

    YOU thought you were learning the game by reading the actual rules printed on the inside of the box top. She (at least most Leftists) learned the rules by carefully watching the other people playing. Now that y’all are playing and she is winning you are pointing to the box top and saying that nowhere does it say that she get money for landing on Free Parking. She is furious that you aren’t playing be the rules everyone else taught her and she probably thinks it is no coincidence that if suddenly everyone followed the rules you wanted to use (instead of the ones almost everyone else has been playing by so long) that YOU’D be ahead instead of HER. While you were worried about meanings and truth and what the box top said she was learning her society’s rules by paying attention not only to things that you didn’t notice (and that she may think you feel you’re too good to sully yourself with) but that due to your ODDness that you may not even be able to fully perceive!

    I’m not saying it’s right. She is wrong. You are right. I am not defending her. But don’t think it is because she BELIEVES in Marxism or the Narrative the way you believe in Liberty or that she CARES about someone’s political beliefs or what her ‘lying eyes’ tell her the same way that you and other ODD people do as a thing that is separate from and more important than a person’s own success or happiness.

    Not only is she likely not a Marxist, and that she probably doesn’t care about fighting racism… it may well be that she is a racist herself in her own personal affairs in things like who to rent that investment property she worked so hard to get fixed up to. She may know that, of course, Obamacare would result in Death Panels but she doesn’t have to worry about that because she is a Good Democrat. She may know (as was explained to me by a patient Economics TA at a prestigious University) that, of course paying people to be out of work doesn’t reduce unemployment… but you are too young to know what the 60s race riots were like and if we don’t placate THOSE PEOPLE with these trifling payments then there will be more and worse… go back and read your history, Rome did it too… but of course we can’t SAY THAT so this is the way we have to justify it that looks right. But what she knows or believes or values is not what The Game she learned says you should base your mouth sounds on. So trying to interpret her thoughts or feelings from her very fashionable mouth-sounds is a fool’s errand. I’m sorry this is so long. I didn’t have time to make it shorter.

    1. TL:DR — no, she IS a Marxist. Marxism is a tool to power. Real marxists never give up anything “to the poor” They make other people give up things to the poor.
       And hey, I learned the same mouth noises and played them on advanced, only I care more for truth.
       And in the spirit of truth, you’re being a sheep about the repeal of Obamacare, etc. This is what the permanent insurgents are saying. It’s not true. Yeah, sure SOME Republicans are playing a rube game. John McCain, R-Treason, for instance. But the fact is this is a parliamentary system. They’re TRYING (sometimes very trying) but permit me to tell you seeing the way Obamacare is wound through our economy/health system if you removed it all the chaos would be such that if the Dems understood it (they don’t of course) they’d insist you repeal it totally and do nothing to ease the fall.

       1. TL:DR

          Fair enough, your time is better invested in writing stuff. But the next time you HAVE to take a break you got a Right Angle mention for “Roll Left and Die”:
          https://www.billwhittle.com/right-angle/fake-news-knows-hes-money-man

       2. I think ctaylor has a point, though not quite the one s/he* thinks. (I won’t dispute your point about the particular person that sent you over the edge.) The point (drloss pointed out something similar on Tuesday) is that a lot of folks are not believers in the nonsense. The problem is they’ve never applied any critical thinking to it, at all. They don’t have to be believers, as long as they are followers.
          These are the folks who might be peeled away. If you can only kickstart their critical thinking faculties.

          But, as you’ve noted, Sarah, they have been immersed in the indoctrination. It permeates not only the schools, but now our popular culture. It’s everywhere. It’s their worldview.

          (* Sorry, but I haven’t paid enough attention to your comments to know.)

          1. Let me adjust my position…
             They are believers in the most basic sense. They simply assume it to be true. But they aren’t the “true believers”.

             1. Meh. Even fellow travelers advance the banner.

                1. Which is why they are recruited. Or indoctrinated into being.

          2. s/he*

             My preferred gender pronoun is Colonel*.

             *pronounced like it is spelled, however.

          3. Yes, this.

51. “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.” – Thomas Jefferson

    We could use more of that attitude today.

    1. Knowing about the severance of Jefferson’s friendship with Adams makes this merely one more example of Jefferson’s deeds failing to match his words.

       1. Well…. There’s evidence that Adams (and Abigail) were the ones ending the friendship over the tactics used against Adams by Jefferson supporters but Jefferson didn’t understand “why they were upset”.

          Of course, that doesn’t say much good about Jefferson. 😉

          1. Jefferson: Nothing personal, John, it’s just business.

             Given the many instances in which Jefferson spoke out of both all four sides of his face it is a wonder he fought no duels.

          2. From what I took from my reading, I think that Jefferson was probably someone who’d get diagnosed with something along the autism spectrum, and I’d further bet money that there was something organically “odd” about his brain. The man simply didn’t think the way his peers did, and had a very obsessive/compulsive air to him, when you read the biographies.

             I’m always hesitant with these “Diagnose historical figures with fad of the day…” deals, but I think Jefferson is a case where such a diagnosis wouldn’t be too far off the mark.

             Weirdly, the one guy I knew from my service days who claimed descent from him was also strangely insensitive and obtuse to the feelings of others…

             1. Jefferson– specifically, his library, with the books sorted by size (and color? Can’t remember) and my grandmother’s, um, “prickly” nature, then looking at how she organized stuff, is what made me realize that being a “geek” could be disguised by formalized manners.

                If standards of conduct are formalized enough, it doesn’t matter that you can’t read people– you can convey the “I’m trying” information well enough for most public things.

                1. I’m not so sure that it’s “I’m trying” as it is that everyone was so heavily masked and cloaked in the formal rules that you didn’t see through them.

                   Those rules were both harshly enforced (see dueling) and still possible to escape (open frontier). Nowadays, that open frontier safety valve is gone, not just because of less open and unclaimed territory, but also because almost no one can actually survive without the web of connections to exchange specialized skills and products that one person alone can’t obtain. We have to live with so many other people that someone will see through the mask.

                   1. There isn’t a standard format of manners, either– we’re all supposed to be “spontaneous” in exactly the right way.

                      I think half the reason the left is so bat-#$@# is that the residual manners are wearing off; not only have not all kids been formally taught them, but the cost of being the polite one is simply getting too high.

52. c4c

53. Pingback: “But she knows me !” « Samizdata

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