Tone Policing

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

I was going to write about memes and art, but since last evening, something has been working itself through my subconscious, and it will have to come out.

Back in 2015 — when I, and a few friends with more idealism than brains, were going through hell without galoshes, in a preview of what would beset the entire country these last two years, i.e. attacks on the fact that we dared defy leftist privilege, and accusations of the basest sort — I was subjected by our own side to bizarre attempts at tone policing.

When speaking of someone who’d accused me of being a white supremacist and using racial slurs — which might be laughable to those who know me, but it’s also one of the vilest things you can accuse anyone of, and in my field the death of a career even on rumors of it — I used a short hand for her name, and immediately our side descended on me like a pack of scolds because using a shortening (not actually derogatory of her name) was dismissive and mean, and “we’re better than that.”

Again, when I started referring to Occasional Cortex as such, I had people come and yell at me, because our side is better than that, and should stand above the fray.

This while these people call us horrible insults, attack us by every means imaginable, and fantasize about our deaths.

I notice some of that bizarre tone policing has receded, as have protests that no such thing exists, when I refer to massive voter fraud.

I take no joy in being proven right. Cassandra really didn’t get half the beating she deserved. I wish the situation weren’t so dire as to strip the well-intentioned of their innocence.

But I’ve been thinking about it. And I’ve been reading about Jane Austen and her time. If you haven’t read her — the movies and series tend to elide that aspect — you don’t realize how religious her work is. Which considering she wasn’t a “fundamentalist” (they existed in her time, as did very strict Christians of other sorts) but what would now be the “Semi-secular middle” strikes one strangely. (If you don’t believe me, read Mansfield Park which is really just a medieval morality play.)

However that’s where the society was, while we are — by their lights, and perhaps not undeservedly — post Christian pagans.

So, how did we get here? Not by rational argument. There was very little that rational argument could do against faith — as we’re finding when dealing with the left’s baked-in faith in Marx and Gaia that resists all proofs to the contrary — and there was nothing rational involved.

We got here by memes, by stories, by derision.

Humans are social apes. At the very back of our brains there is a terrible fear of being ostracized by the band and eaten by lions. And while the better angels of our nature might not abandon us all at once,t hey will, little by little, in the face of “everyone knows that’s stupid.”

Mostly it was a century plus of leftist dominance of entertainment and the media, portraying Christians (or Jews, or any non-Pagan religious faith) as evil and stupid and something to be made fun of.

Drip, drip, drip with jokes and derision and the assumption that such people are stupid and evil.

And now, people are more likely to talk about the power of crystals than their Christian (or Jewish) faith in public. Which btw, leaves those who talk about their Christian faith as the autistic extreme who will make ineffective arguments and mostly seem to prove the stereotype, by complete lack of social couth.

And we’d not dream of talking about how bad it is to travel or work on a Sunday — to cover one of the least intrusive bits of faith in Austen’s time — or to shun someone who has engaged in adultery or abandoned his/her kids.

Because only uncool people talk about that. People no one likes, because they’re stupid and…. and hypocrites because they’re not perfect, and and and.

People have let themselves be bilked out of a foundational stone of Western civilization over stories of how silly it was, and fear of being laughed at.

So– the tone policing….

You see, the thing is that the left also believes those stories they used to upend religious faith and living. They now believe that any opposition to their nonsense must be because we’re all super-religious. What religion varies, but what these people think constitutes an argument would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad.

For instance, on a thread about the ridiculous parents who take their children to drag shows, people kept posting an article about the Baptist Church covering up sexual abuse of children. And they thought this invalided the point that children at drag shows is wrong. … somehow.

The argument in that is difficult to fathom, unless you come from the POV that all adults abuse children, and those who claim not to are a) Baptists. b) hypocrites. (I wish I didn’t think that the person posting it really believes it is impossible to refrain from abusing children, and so might as well do it often and publicly. Seriously, every institution that works with children will have that problem because, duh, pedophiles go where children are. And every one of them will try to cover it up, because they don’t want to be killed. But that doesn’t mean there are a lot of pedophiles. Just that a few operate with inpunity in every institution. And I’d bet you a large sum of money the biggest cesspool is public schooling.)

But the point is, they are now in the position of being adherents to a cult. Unlike Christianity, their cult is not functional. It not only doesn’t lead to better living, no one really can live by it. It’s a collection of incoherence and stupidity that melts at the touch of reason…. or ridicule.

Look, they no longer hold a monopoly on story telling, or communication. Yes, they keep trying to get it back, but their very frantic flailing is evidence of impotence. No winning side in a culture war ever tried to get the government to silence the opponents.

And they are far more susceptible to ridicule than we ever were. Besides not having any clue who we are and what we do.

Live your life outloud, according to your values.

And when they try to attack and ridicule, treat them as the spoiled children they are. Dismiss them with a word. Laugh at their tantrum. Pat them on the head and tell them the adults are talking.

And stop tone policing. Yes, we’re allowed to be rude to those who are impoverishing the future of our children and grandchildren.

We’ve been polite too long. It’s time to let our inner brats come out to play.

It’s time to show just how utterly ridiculous they are. Mock them mercilessly and derisively. Show them for the incoherent hypocrites they are. You don’t need to do much for that, they are all that, and most don’t even have good intentions.

On with the motley. Here is your cushion that makes rude noises, your plastic hammer that goes “honk” and the sign that says “I’m with stupid.” Go use them all on the left. Hold up a mirror so they see that no, no one thinks they’re the good people, lest alone the smart ones.

And if someone tries to tone police, hit them with the plastic hammer, till they exit stage left pursued by a honk.

Laissez le bon temps rouler!

395 thoughts on “Tone Policing”

    2. When dealing with implacable leftists, we do NOT “be better.”
      We crush them, drive them from the field. UNTIL they reform or disappear.
      Game theory PROVES this, mathematically.
      Here’s the game — if you and the other guy both cooperate, you each get one point.
      If one cooperates but the other cheats, , the cheater gets say five points and cooperator gets nothing.
      In a one-round game, overwhelming temptation is to cheat.
      But with multiple rounds, there is a stable strategy, called “Tit-for-Tat.”
      The iterated version represents LIFE itself, And It’s,not about “most points,”
      You both need just enough points to survive winter. Here’s how you get there:
      https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/1998-99/game-theory/axelrod.html
      First turn, cooperate. Thereafter you play whatever the other guy played, the turn before.
      If on a turn he cheats, then the next turn you cheat. If he revert to cooperate, so do you the next turn.
      Virtues of Tit-for-Tat: It starts trusting. It retaliates. It forgives. And it’s transparent.

  2. What our Well-Meaning Conservative Colleagues (i.e. the ones who haven’t sold us out for power, wealth, prestige, and the “respect” of “colleagues” who’d sooner shoot them in the back of the head than break bread with them) fail to understand is that principles are utterly useless when the opponent (who is fighting tooth and nail to destroy you and everything and everyone you hold dear, no less) has none of their own.

    All the moral high ground is is a barren patch of elevated terrain that will leave you completely exposed to, and easy pickings for, enemy fire.

    1. The Reader agrees with what you write. He’d add that we need to remember where the moral high ground is and what it used to look like. He thinks we will want that knowledge it someday. It should not be lost in the coming scuffle.

        1. The Reader can’t disagree but hopes that is not the case that it won’t be in your or his (likely shorter) lifetime. What you cite about the left and its hypocrisy is true, which is why we may have to nuke it from orbit in the meantime…

          1. Barry Goldwater probably said it best: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

            1. I’ll go with Cicero and Cato the Elder on this one:

              Ceterum censeo Marxism esse delendam

          1. I have literally seen a leftist refer to conservatives as evil in a thread and then, in the same thread, complain that conservatives won’t give an inch even when you’re civil.

            That is, they are entitled to concessions merely for manners. Apparently they don’t have to give them.

      2. Agreed. But on the one hand, we don’t want to become like our adversaries, but on the other hand if we don’t start fighting like them, we are going to lose and lose badly.

        1. Agreed. However, the Reader is mindful that we, unlike the NPCs, have souls that also require tending. He guesses that the fact that we can have a debate here bodes well for the future. This is why the Reader is so fond of mockery as a weapon. He is pretty sure the Author would not have given us mockery if He did not intend us to use it at need.

        2. Shooting a burglar is not morally equivalent to the burglar shooting you, because you did not break into the burglar’s house. Most of the Leftroids’ notions of ‘moral equivalency’ are on a similar level of stupidity.

          January 6 2021 was a mostly peaceful protest, after all.

          Hey, if they can do it, so can we!

          1. “Shooting a burglar is not morally equivalent to the burglar shooting you, because you did not break into the burglar’s house.”

            I know, and I’ve given myself many a headache trying to explain that to Left-wing acquaintances (most from college; I don’t think any of them could be considered “friends” any more).

            I meant that more in the vein of Nietzsche: be careful when fighting monsters lest you become a monster. We need to quit playing with kiddie gloves, but we need to make sure we don’t lower ourselves completely down to their level.

            1. I understand what you’re saying. Our problem is right now, it appears that virtually nobody on our side will take one glance into the abyss even with mirrors and a welding helmet, whereas the other side is happily throwing themselves into it and going full monster. That’s why ridicule can be so effective and why they hate it so much.

              The Left have become the Church Ladies they mocked less than forty years ago.

              1. The problem is that the folks on our side know that if they do anything, the Leftist Establishment will destroy their lives and livelihoods, and those of their families. Witness Kyle Rittenhouse and the kid (whose name escapes me) did nothing wrong other than wearing a MAGA hat whilst smiling uncomfortably while an activist got in his face while beating a drum. Everyone agrees that something needs to be done, but nobody wants to do it lest the rest of our side doesn’t follow then and they find themselves alone out in the cold while the Left rips them apart.

                Right now, we have too much to lose. But what the Left doesn’t seem to get while doing their damnedest to take everything from us is that the most dangerous person in the world is the one who has nothing left to lose.

                1. Nick Sandmann on the kid who got smeared, and the problem of cancellation is indeed a difficult one.

                3. Sandmann is now a millionaire courtesy of CNN and the rest of the media that tried to destroy him. Rittenhouse was exonerated and will likely follow in Sandmann’s footsteps.

                  The tide is turning. They haven’t been defeated yet, but they sure as hell aren’t advancing anymore.

          2. Except that’s the exact method used to persecute Kyle R. If he hadn’t g9ne where he wasn’t supposed to (leftist controlled territory), had been unarmed, or had submitted to the beating there wouldn’t have been reason for him to shoot. Same with j6. They entered dem territory (DC) and so the government was fully justified in executing them and locking them up in a gulag.

              1. Ah yes, Antefa is well known for their support for and allegiance to Trump.

                In anyone less evil their desperation would be pathetic.

          4. I have literally seen arguments that preventing a parent from taking a child to a drag show means forfeiting all claim to direct your child’s life.

        3. In that, I am increasingly like the operative from Serenity. If restoring a world where principles can matter can be done by me having none then let me to it and curse my name if need be.

    2. “Nice” is going to be the death knell of America if we don’t stop it…The commies don’t care about nice, and we shouldn’t pay any more attention to it than they do…Call a spade a spade, and the hell with the consequences….

      1. At this point, I’d love to see their whole families rounded up, every dollar they own withdrawn and burnt in front of them in a big pile, and place them on the Mexican border with the warning that if any of them ever set foot in this country they’ll be shot like mad dogs. They have been frantically trying to kill us for the past couple of years, fuck them good and hard (preferably with a whaling spear).

    3. I cannot agree that principles are useless in any situation. I will say that you must be careful that you principles are actually principles.
      A case in point Thou shalt not kill.. Does that include when you eat a living leaf of lettuce? How about when you use insecticides? What if you kill a man trying to kill you? It would seem that that Commandment is not actually a principle, but is rather derived from a more complex principle.

      1. That is actually a mistranslation. The real commandment is “Thou shalt not murder.” Just like “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”, which should be “Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live.”

        Nuance really is important. Killing in defense of yourself or others has never been a crime, though there are those who are trying to make it one.

        1. I know, but King Jame had the version quoted and it was cited as a Commandment for many years. The new version is also wrong as murder is a legal term ans as such is not always wrong.

          1. Part of the confusion is that at the time James was the king of England, the English language used the words “kill” and “slay”. To “slay” meant a lawful killing, such as in warfare or self-defense. To “kill” meant an unlawful killing. And so when the translators chose the word “kill” instead of “slay”, they were making a point about what kinds of killing were forbidden (and that the commandment did not forbid self-defense, and so on). The English language has shifted, and that point is lost to us, but the original audience would have understood it perfectly well.

            1. James had also won the title of Defender of the Faith by writing an anti-witchcraft polemic. Needless to say, when it came time to translate, the commission knew what would please their patron.

        2. The first is true, the second, my Jewish friends who are more knowledgeable is not. It is “witch” which mostly meant necromancer, if I understand history correctly, but all the same. It is witch. The poisoner thing is a new age lie.

          2. As one Orthodox cousin put it “don’t try and prophecy or do nasty things with dead bodies and it’s all good”

          3. A Jewish friend of mine (linguistics and translation, in grad school) said it was a bit more general–“worker of harmful magics,” which included necomancy, false divination, and poison, as well as curses, and other various and sundry attempts to cause harm.

            But yeah.

      2. That was the crux of a rather… entertaining… debate in my Bible classes back in college (small Christian school). The Prof argued that in the original Hebrew, the Commandment originally read “Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder,” and that self-defense was not the same as murder. But my ultra-Lefty classmates were all, “NOPE! We think you’re WRONG! Killing is wrong no matter what!”

        Same with “Turn the other cheek.” The Prof argued that, in ancient times, a slap on the cheek with the right hand was a grave insult, but if a Jew laid hands on a Roman for any reason, they would be put to death. So Jews were being insulted by Romans and then being killed for retalliating. Whereas if a Roman were to backhand a Jew or strike with the left hand, that was an assault and the Roman would be in the wrong, and that Jesus’ message was “don’t get yourself killed over stupid stuff like pride. ” But again, my Leftist classmates refused to accept anything other than, “any sort of violence is always wrong under any circumstances!”

        Poor Prof looked like he wanted to start beating his head against his lectern. And I really don’t blame him (I wanted to do the same to my desk!)

        1. A church I went to had a sort-of retired minister (hard left, but not a complete idiot) who thought that “turn the other cheek” was an act of defiance. Might tie into the left hand assault bit.

          1. That’s exactly what it was, per my Prof. Instead of getting into a fight (and then executed) over Pride, defy them. Make them either back down or knowingly commit a crime. Either way, you win and, more importantly, you get to live.

            1. Um… It is not as if the Old Testament does not talk about people hitting other people on the cheeks. And there is messianic prophecy about the Suffering Servant allowing himself to be hit on the cheeks.

              1. Okay, here’s an interesting thing. Lehi in Hebrew and siagon in Greek both mean jaw and jawbone, primarily, and the human cheek only secondarily.

                Also, Samson attacked the Philistine town of Lehi with a donkey’s lehi.

                That is freaking terrible. That is worse than Tolkien saying that Akallabeth translated as Atalante.

                1. Anyway, “They shall strike the judge of Israel on the cheek” comes in Micah right before “You, Bethlehem- Ephratah,” so that’s pretty important. And there’s Isaiah 50:6 and Job 16:10.

                  But I think the most relevant one to the Gospel command is Lamentations 3:30, in the middle of a long passage about how when God send you affliction, you need to suck it up and go with God’s plans. It’s not about the guy hitting you; it’s about accepting certain kinds of affliction as a learning experience.

                  There’s a time for everything, of course, and it doesn’t say you have to stand by when other people are getting hurt.

                2. Along similar lines, I’ve heard a way to capture the pun of God creating an “Adam from the adama” (a man from the earth) might be “God created a human from the humus.”

                  1. Speaking of which, does anyone know how the name of the first female went from Chava (“life”) to Eve?

                    4. That one seems pretty easy, actually– if the “ch” isn’t hard, you’ve got aspirant-sound-ava, that goes to eh-vah, and ending-ahs tend to get chopped off, too.

                      Well, easy compared to the convolutions of all the variants of “John.” Going from “Ionas” to “Jack” is pretty big. ^.^

                    5. CH being a guttural was heard by languages with no gutturals as an aspirated h. Hava. That in turn was lost in languages that didn’t have aspiration, like the one I first learned 😉
                      In Portuguese it’s Eva Eh-Vah. I have no clue why Eve in English, because it’s been forever since I studied the linguistics of word changes in English. I used to be able to. It’s kind of like an equation with sounds.

                    6. Hebrew word became Greek ‘Eva (The mark indicated that it began with an “H” sound: Heva). In Latin the rough breathing mark was ignored and it became Eva. Then Englishmen got their hands on it…

          2. The preacher at the small Methodist church in New Jersey we attended was a former Jesuit and he said something similar. Likewise, the Roman’s could only compel some to carry something for them for roughly a mile. To “gotten extra mile,” would get them in trouble.

        2. Post went elsewhere…

          The community church we used to go to (since closed down–long story) had a rather left-wing, but not stupid minister. (Usually–he should have paid attention to which battles were worth winning…) His take was that turning the other cheek was an act of defiance. If the first was from the Roman’s right hand, turning the cheek would make use of the left more likely, so it might just have been an interesting way to get the Roman in trouble.

          1. Likewise, packing stuff further than the allowed distance meant the soldier was in trouble…. oh.

            Didn’t Jewish tradition hold that seeing someone naked was dishonorable on the person seeing, not the one being seen?
            So the cloak thing…..

    4. Or they’re afraid that fighting in a similar manner will validate the left’s narratives and scare moderates and independents back to the left for another common Well-Meaning Conservative trope I see sometimes. I have seen just enough clumsiness from the types who don’t get the whole social couth thing Sarah mentions to give it some semblance of truth but guys like Musk and DeSantis are providing good examples of how to fight with wit and more people need to be learning from them rather than wringing their hands.

    5. If you want to die for your principles, that’s fine. I don’t hold with pacifism, since I see that as a principle of baked-in victimhood. It’s a sad waste of opportunity for a life.

      Now those of us with a warrior mentality, we’re just fine with the concept of killing to defend our principles. Most of us prefer not to, because most of us are generally decent human beings able to tolerate and get along with all sorts of people; regardless of whether we like them or not. And when you dissect our principles, you usually find them rooted in the concept of being beneficial to us, our families and friends, our community, and our nation. Attacks on those principles therefor are attempts to do something detrimental to you, your family and friends, your community, or your nation. Of course, you should defend against those attacks. And because most of us work in a legal framework of some kind, our defenses tend to be reciprocal and proportional.

      That’s one of the things I like about Donald Trump. His moral high ground is barren, elevated, and exposed; he gets “shot” at a lot. But he’s not afraid to give tit for tat, or unload with both verbal barrels at his attackers.

      1. I’m not sure how I came across as being a pacifist, since that wasn’t what I was intending (nor what I believe) at all.

        I mentioned the moral high ground because that’s the argument I hear from Well-Meaning Conservative Colleagues use that argument when they refuse to go tit-for-tat with the Libs, or insist on playing by the rules that they acknowledge the Left has shredded and used for TP decades ago. “We need to keep The Moral High Ground!” they screech. “We can’t tease or mock or joke about or even use harsh tones when talking about the Left! That’s rude and unseemly! We need to have principals, goshdangit!”

        Like Anonymoose said, Marquise of Queensberry rules don’t work so well when your opponent has taken off the gloves and is coming at you with a machete.

    6. What’s happening is that principles are being confused with courtesy. Principles are things like standing by the Constitution. Courtesy is not snarking about your opponents. The RINOs are saying the word “principles”. But what they really mean is courtesy.

  3. You do not use Marquis of Queensberry rules when your opponent has taken his boxing gloves off and picked up a machete. For whatever reason, we cannot get the “BUT MUH PRINCIPLES” stuffed-shirt National Review GOP establishment crowd to understand this. (Note that I’m not even including the Lincoln Man-Boy Project Association or The Bulwark crowd, because they’re not even on the right. They’re leftists in sheep’s clothing.)

    There are two things leftists understand and fear. One is overwhelming force. The other is ridicule. The challenge is to intelligently choose when to use which option against them.

    1. “…when your opponent has taken his boxing gloves off and picked up a machete.”

      It’s time more for Kid Krotchkicker than Marquis of Queensberry.
      Aw, it that unfair? DAMN RIGHT IT IS! AND A GOOD THING, TOO!
      Actually, that’s far too nice. FLAMETHROWER… no need to get so close.

    2. The fact that National Review has never apologized for evicting the John Birch Society from polite company (even after the USSR fell, the archives opened, and the Birchers were vindicated) tells you what you need to know.
      They’re not after Truth.
      They’re after Power.

      Heck, their mission statement is “To stand athwart History, yelling ‘Stop!’”
      Which presupposes that they are doomed to lose, and the whole endeavor is a romantic intellectual pretension.

      Screw them with a saguaro.

        1. Fitment is relevant; they’d probably like the cholla; they might even like an organ pipe cactus. A mature saguaro, OTOH, would be quite a…ummm…stretch. 😉

    3. There are no rules in a real fight, only winning and losing…That’s one of the first things you learn in martial arts..As Bruce Lee said, if there’s a rock handy, pick it up and use it….

      1. A big rock. Or even better…ever see “A Fistful of Yen” in The Kentucky Fried Movie? There’s this scene with a 4-speed transmission… 🙂

    4. The stuffed-shirt National Review GOP establishment crowd pretend to be the polite opposition and they get to sit with the “cool” kids in the cafeteria. You can tell they think they’ve benefitted from that association by their screams of “Never Trump!” he actually governed with actual conservative principles minus the tone policing and the stuffed-shirts were appalled… they wanted tone-policing and they still do.

      1. Awww, but there’s NO kill like OVERKILL to Get The Message Across.

        Ponder if after the Beirut barracks bombing that after the withdrawal, the area, for SQUARE MILES had been saturation bombing for a MONTH, how little terrorism there would have been from the Middle East. “Dude, they’re P—ed! And they didn’t even use the nukes!” “This time. Wanna press yer luck?”

        2. “There is no ‘overkill’. There is only ‘Open fire!’ and ‘Cover me while I reload’.”

          Maxim 37, I believe…

    6. i think there are certain Tone Police Conservatives who will be lecturing us on tone when the Antifa kiddies are setting their houses on fire….

  4. If the other side doesn’t recognize the rules (or, especially, any rules)…then it’s pointless to live/fight by “the rules.”

    I’ll take “rude and alive” over “polite and dead.” Or “rude and functional” over “polite and cancelled.” Etc.

  5. Guess I posted this a few minutes too soon; it’s much more appropriate here.

    The vast majority of Americans still can’t believe the Progressive Left are as stupid and evil as they are. They can’t believe anybody could possibly be that stupid and evil.

    This places them at a disadvantage. Everything the Leftroids do takes them by surprise, because they can’t imagine anybody perpetrating such evil and stupidity. Convene a Soviet show trial and imprison their political opponents, right here in America? Naw, nobody’d do that!

    Even when they see it done right out in the open, they can’t believe it could happen again. And again.

    Fortunately, our enemies seem determined to prove to everybody just how stupid and evil they are. Eventually, enough people will have to pay attention, right?

    Right?
    ———————————
    ‘Progressives’ suppress free speech because they don’t have the means to suppress free thought.

    Yet.

    1. “Eventually, enough people will have to pay attention, right?”

      Given the polls, it looks like it is starting to happen. In 5 months we’ll see if the Progressives blatantly fraud their way into retaining power.

        1. Oh, yes – my daughter and I firmly believe that approval figures for the Brandon Mis-Administration are much, much lower than reported.

          1. I don’t know; they’re claiming 40% voted to keep Boudin on in San Francisco. If there really were that many idiots, maybe there actually are 30% that believe the FICUS is doing a fine job?

            O’course, you’d have to find out how many of that 40% were still breathing when they voted…

            2. Oh, I believe that 40%. They’re the ones who live in SF neighborhoods like Noe Valley, Inner Sunset and Outer Sunset, Telegraph Hill, down by SF State, and even the Haight-Ashbury. The 60% came from the Tenderloin, Divisidero, North Beach, Inner and Outer Richmond, Daly City, Fell & Oak…

              1. Agreed. I don’t think Frisco needs fraud to get 40% idiots at the ballot box. (Dammit, I refuse to call it San Francisco, or the hopelessly twee “The City”. The only place I recognize by that name is in London…)

                1. As a former resident of a state bordering the Chesapeake Bay, every time I see “The Bay Area”, referring to Frisco, I think “That little thing? That would fit in the Chesapeake and leave plenty of room for water skiing, fishing and cargo ships!”. They have a remarkable delusion about their own importance and grandeur…

                    1. Yep. Born in DC, got out when I discovered where I was 😉 . Lived in MD, FL, MD again after separation from the Corps, retired in ’06 to AZ. FWIW, MD was much better 15 ya, although the signs were there even then.

                  2. As the redneck from Berkeley, I am very familiar with the western bay.

                    A data point. For 2,000 miles along the west coast, this is the only sheltered bay. So compared to the east coast where good harbors are a dime a dozen, on the west coast, this is the “only bay.” It was so well hidden that it was only discovered by Spanish explorers from land. The Manila treasure fleets would pass by for hundreds of years , and never saw the narrow opening.

                    I give you size, but if you add San Pablo bay, Suisun Bay, and the delta, it is a similar size. There are multiple bays, Tampa, Boston, around the country, each with the right to be called bays.

                    1. My issue was/is with the designation as “The” Bay Area, as if none other exists or is at all important, which I tend to view as condescending arrogance. I give you the importance to the west coast, of course, for the reasons you list. But regarding relative size, and according to Wiki:
                      Chesapeake Bay – 4479 square miles, total shoreline 11,684 miles (lots of estuaries)
                      SF Bay (including sub-bays) – ~1600 square miles, shoreline 400 miles (sounds low, but that’s what a Mercury News article says, and Wiki is silent on that data).

                      So, same order of magnitude, but not really similar in size.

                    2. My issue was/is with the designation as “The” Bay Area, as if none other exists or is at all important, which I tend to view as condescending arrogance.

                      :laughing as she realizes something delightful:

                      You realize that you’re basically upset because they call it “the” bay while other bays exist?

                      It’s a little like being mad at the Rio Grande because, honestly, that ain’t much of a river, and I’m originally a desert brat! ^.^

                      In my defense, I think these things are funny because I grew up in Washington.

                      Yes, I have be amused by people assuming that must be DC…..

                    3. Well, condescending arrogance is a [major factor/characteristic/character flaw] in the SF bay area. SF referring to itself as The City (at least in the Herb Caen days in one of the birdcage liners they sold back then) was pretty noticeable. I’d just escaped the Chicago area and the preening of the Frisco Powers That Be was overwhelming.

                      Pretty yes (at the time). Worth the designation? Nope. Arrogant? Hell yes!

                    4. “…because they call it “the” bay while other bays exist?” Ummm, not really. More like “There’s only one important bay” (and yes, I know your take was included in my comment. Poorly phrased; only the second part should have been stated, as above). FWIW, I was born in DC, so I admit I tend to assume “DC” when Washington is mentioned. But unlike “Bay Area” denizens, I don’t assume DC is superior to the state. The converse by far, in fact, even after the events of the past couple of years of Inslee’s antics.

                      RCPete has it right, and I’d only add that while Frisco denizens define arrogant condescension on the West coast, Noo Yawk may have them topped (another group who refers to “The City”). 🙂

            3. Remember that there are large parts of San Francisco that think that Pelosi is conservative. And that someone over in New York actually wrote an editorial published in a major US publication arguing that Boudin was recalled because of those darn Republican undercurrents in San Francisco.

              Also, for a look at just how insane the Bay Area is, there’s always Zombie’s blog (MASSIVE NSFW ADVISORY), Zombietime. The blog hasn’t been updated in the last few years. But there’s quite a lot of material there to peruse through highlighting both the insanity of the left in general, and the Bay Area left in particular. A strong stomach is encouraged, mind you, as well as massive quantities of brain bleach.

        2. Absolutely…Polls in both elections showed him badly behind, but of course he was always ahead, especially with live voters…

  6. I suspect simple bluntness will also work well. I am not quite at the stage of asking, “Why would anyone need to feel proud about who they screw? It’s none of my business.” But I’m getting close. Being more specific about technique would be perfectly truthful and not mocking….and utterly unsettling to most of the audience, which is the point.

    1. Oh, it’s worse to have all these chicks (they are!) so proud of their “vaginas” (They mean vulvas.)
      If their greatest achievement in life is what is between their legs, they are barely above tapeworm in cognition.

    2. Apparently at some places, not wanting to listen while your gay co-worker regales you with a play-by-play of his or her sexual activities the night prior is evidence of homophobia.

      1. Walmart. Plus, our local homosexual bathes in cologne. You can smell where he’s been for 15 minutes after he’s passed through. And this is a fragrance free workplace….

    3. I have a co-worker who announced last year that she considers herself lgbtq-whatever because she’s “asexual”… i.e she doesn’t actually have sex with her husband (she used the term “partner” of course). Ewww. I really didn’t want to know that about her. Not to mention an incredibly torturous way of going for some kind of victimhood. And pretty rude to the husband to announce something like that in a public forum.

  7. And the, “We have to comply with current social pressure or they won’t listen to us and besides it will keep them from calling us stupid bigots,” is one of the factors driving the decline of the Church.
    Our churches are afraid of being accused of homophobia. In Africa Christians are being shot and blown up on a weekly basis. Guess which group is stronger?
    And in an excess of irony, if the Methodists split, and it looks like they will, a ton of Southern churches will find themselves African sister churches and move right along.

    1. The Church is always LATE to see the trends. And I agree. Africa is coming back to evangelize the west. Which is giggle-worthy. The Author does have a sense of humor.

      1. “Africa is coming back to evangelize the west.”

        The LDS ward I attend was recently ousted from its “home” building and moved to another chapel, so that ours could be sold — to finance 10 new wards in Africa.

        1. Anglican churches headed by african priests are a big thing.
          And in the Catholic church, the BEST confessor I have ever had was an African Priest from…. Nigeria?
          I honestly don’t know if he was as good at preaching, because his accent and a mircophone added up to incomprehensible for me. BUT he was great in confession.

    2. I find myself wondering what if anything can be done for the ELCA. Nuking from orbit comes to mind, alas.

      1. Pretty much most of the major protestant Denominations (UCC, PCUSA, ABC, ECUSA, ELCA) have been circling the bowl since the ’60 as Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy took hold. There are remnants of the Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians that have split off, and there are denominations like the SBC (Southern Baptists) and some other smaller denominations that so far have held out, but even those are slowly getting infiltrated as their up and coming pastors have been educated primarily in the system that has been pushing the LGBTQ crap (heck my daughter’s High school had a Gay Straight Alliance that had been around since late 90’s). Unfortunately for the main line an old joke applies
        Q: What do you get when you cross a liberal pastor with a Fuller Brush salesman?
        A: Someone that goes door to door for no apparent reason
        The main line denominations have been losing congregants/attenders at a fierce rate for 40 years. Their churches stumble on often because at least here in the Northeast they have largish endowments and so can keep the doors open even with only 20-30 families in the pews. However other parts are not doing so well in particular the seminaries, Andover Newton rolled into Yale Divinity, Bangor Seminary just folded, Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge rolled into Union’s seminary. Not to say the more orthodox seminaries are doing much better, Gordon-Conwell Is selling off its Hamilton Campus (100 acres+ ) and consolidating in Boston likely due to dropping attendance (and the fact that the Hamilton property is worth $40-80M just as building lots in Hamilton). Although much of this may be that the Northeast is not friendly to ANY Christianity watered down or otherwise.

        1. When I was in junior HS, we were attending an ALC church (Danish Lutheran, later part of ELCA). Dad was on the board (treasurer, I think), but when he had a heart attack, the minister was so wrapped up in the civil rights stuff in Selma, Alabama that he forgot about the congregation in the Chicago ‘burbs. Complete radio silence from the pastor then. Mom (half-Danish) got fed up, and we moved to an LCA congregation (Swedish, go figure) nearby. The pastor tried visiting afterward, but that ship sailed and sank.

          Last I heard, that ALC church was on permanent life support, with ministers provided by the synod. Same building that they constructed in the early ’60s, with max room for 200 worshipers. FWIW, there’s a thriving Roman Catholic presence in the town, with a K-12 school nearby. It’s been 8 years since I’ve been in the area, but the old LCA church seemed to be going moderately well at the time. OTOH, the ELCA has gone underpants-on-head crazy and doesn’t seem to be long for the world.

          Flyover Falls has a smallish ELCA church, as well as one or two Missouri synod churches, and a small Wisconsin one. Haven’t been in town for a service in years, but the ELCA church was trying its best to forget the parent synod.

        2. “other parts are not doing so well in particular the seminaries”

          When Brigham Young University was founded, there was a great debate among the LDS leaders about whether or not to include a seminary for training and licensing “official” preachers like every other Christian church, but the final decision was not to do so, on the grounds that every member should know the doctrines well enough not to need someone to tell them from the pulpit what they were supposed to think, and that all the members should minister to each other in times of need.
          So far that’s worked out pretty well.

          Side note: the high school youth attend religion classes daily, usually before going to school (6 am in some cases!) and those classes are called the Seminary Program. When AesopSon #2 was called to a mission in Brazil, the government there required proof of religious training for issuing visas to the missionaries, and they all duly presented their Certificates of Graduation from Seminary.
          Having heard many of the youth I knew give doctrinal talks in church services during their school years, I suspect they were better trained than many graduates of more traditional seminaries.

  8. On the subject of “being better than them” I have long made the metaphor that the Marquis of Queensbury Rules are fine in a sporting contest with a referee and judges to make sure that both sides follow the rules and sufficient penalties for non-compliance. In a knife fight in an alley, it’s a good way to get dead.

    We need our own speciealists in “ungentelmanly warfare.”

    1. Yes. When the Progressives play by the rules, its either Chicago Rules or the Alinsky’s. It would be well to take then into account when fighting them.

    2. $WORKPLACE sent an email about ‘active shooter’ stuff. Just an email, nothing more, BUT while they pushed the “evade, barricade” bit, they also did say that if that was not workable, and the only choice was to fight, then FIGHT HARD AND FIGHT DIRTY AND FIGHT UNTIL THEIR AIN’T NOTHING LEFT TO FIGHT ABOUT. Almost in those words, too.

        1. Probably Sheriff Grady Judd in Polk County, FL, the county spanning the gap between the Tampa and Orlando metros. Guy gives the best crime public information briefings ever. He’s one of the few things that MIGHT get me to move to Florida but Shesellsseashells has hard-vetoed ever living there, Ron Desantis notwithstanding. Too hot, too buggy. Although given current circumstances, I should check with her again. We have no plans to move off our little hillside outside the Charlotte sprawl, but you never know.

                1. I’ve managed not to kill mine.

                  Yet.

                  This year.

                  ….since we literally lost the last bit of my three year old mint plant, which I’ve been desperately TRYING to grow (in Iowa soil! You plant rocks, and get boulders!) to a deer walking up and eating it, this is a “rather good” summary.

                  3. The damn deer ate the leaves off the marigolds we planted with the tomatoes. The tomatoes are in frame-cages, and are fine (and not nibbled). The marigolds are dead.

                    If this goes on, the deer may be dinner (several times. They’re Guernsey sized).

                    4. So help me, I have planted mint and it…. failed. I do not mean “failed to take over.” Nor do i mean “failed to thrive.” I mean “failed to survive.” No green thumb. Brown/black hoof…

                    5. I planted an lemon-mint herb. Neighbors hate me, or would if they knew I planted it. I can’t get rid of the stuff. It crops up everywhere. Even where I didn’t plant it. Should be okay for a few years now. We just put down weed cloth in most the plant beds. But it won’t last.

                    6. When I was a teenager, parental units gave me an aloe vera plant. I’m not sure why, but they did. I kept it in a pot, in a windowsill, and I watered it and took care of it.

                      It died. I. Killed. An. Aloe. Vera. That is supposed to be physically impossible and yet it happened.

                      There’s a reason Shesellsseashells handles the garden and I just make the paycheck she uses to buy seeds…

                1. :sighs: I wish I could vouch that Iowa was significantly cheaper, but we do have a lot of folks coming in ATM and the “grandma’s house that sat vacant for 10 years” places are largely gone.

                2. Yeah. My parents retired down there and moved in to a new place just weeks before lockdown hit. Comparable houses are now selling for about 1.7 times what they paid. Other costs aren’t too crazy, but housing has gone OMG pricey. Besides the climate, I blame de Santis for doing a good job, and the likes of Cuomo, Murphy, and Wolfe for doing such bad jobs.

            2. I’m with SheSellsSeashells. Mother in law lived in Naples and then Ocala. Naples was EXPENSIVE but a fair bit to do, Ocala was pretty but empty. One odd thing to me is that Florida is FLAT, highest point in the state is like 150′ above MSL, most of it is barely 20′ ASL. For a place that can get category 4 and 5 Hurricanes this is a bad thing. Sea surge can flood large parts of that in a storm moving across that state from the gulf. Humidity on the Gulf side is brutal, There are snakes and bugs galore (including cockroaches that I’d swear were the size of chihuahuas ). For the present and foreseeable future I’m here in the northeast, perhaps migrating a bit north to NH if it doesn’t get turned into a MA look alike.

              1. I like NH. Better than MA, anyway. Sununu is pretty rino, but better than Baker. The FreeState project imported some fairly active libertarians, which helps. And the legislature is currently Republican. I suspect election fraud of some kind for the dem senators and reps though, so if we can’t fix that…

                1. NH does pretty well. It does swing back and forth in its bicameral legislature (or at least has been since I worked there (Nashua) from 1983-2005. Somewhere in there when the Dem’s were in charge they put in place same day registration which is as prone to abuse as universal mail in voting. This has made parts of NH in particular Durham and its environs (due to UNH) a source of nonsense. Lots of voters registered but never getting NH licenses or car registrations have led to suspicions of Massholes crossing over (or even being bussed in some cases). The current legislature has so far failed to tie that back down.

                  1. I’ve heard that Rye is also a source of Masshole votes, due to lots of summer homes and people voting both homes.

                    1. And because NH and MA don’t really play nicely together neither one has will share data so they can compare voting rolls. Durham is a bigger issue, Its total population is 15,500, probably only 10K+- is voting age but UNH has an undergraduate population of 11,000. Statewide races Often have margins in the low thousands so those races can be driven by Durham’s swing population. The double vote in Rye/ Seabrook and the seacoast just adds to that margin of slop. And NH Population is heavily border with MA and commute areas driven by MA escapees who want the lower costs/taxes but then vote in the same stupid old fashion…

              2. Um. Humidity anywhere not PNW, Confidential Divide states and west (essentially the western 1/3 of the country), is in your face “Brutal” Humidity. Sure PNW has “humidity”. It is called Rain. It isn’t ever the type of “drenched and not a cloud in the sky the second one walks out the door”, not ever.

                1. Ugh. One ride through Misery Missouri in late June was enough. Felt like I needed a machete installed on the front of my bike to cut through the air. Like you could reach out and wring a cup of water out of it.

                  On the upside, there were fireworks stores every 10 miles. 😀

                  1. I’ve been east of the Rockies 3 times in 65 years. Twice in August, Virginia, OMG!!!! Once in March to Florida. Even then it felt like being slapped in the face when we got out of the airport. Just had rained and the humidity was already starting to rise. OTOH we never let the rain hold us back in Disney World, unlike others, and only a little at Kennedy. Okay, the rain and wind coming off the Atlantic to the swamp was down right cold even to someone used to rain in March in the Willamette Valley. The tour guide (required to take a shuttle to the museum) said weather was so wet and cold that even the alligators and manatees were hiding. Did see some, just not as many as should been out and about.

      2. Our school district has active shooter training every year. We are taught how to rush and fend off an attacker buy throwing books, laptops or whatever we have at hand. Throw stuff, then throw yourself at his knees to get him down then beat/disarm him.

        The key thing is all these vermin have a scenario running through their minds about how this will go for them. It never includes resistance from the victims, just maybe crying and pleading and bleeding.

        Interrupt the scenario and you have a chance to get them off guard and prevail.

        Our very large and formidable SRO was taken down and neutralized by a tiny librarian and two teacher’s aides, easily. And he KNEW we were behind the door ready to pounce on him.

        Best use of a pile of 6th grade math books and sensible shoes I’ve seen.

        We are also encouraged to look around our rooms and offices and run scenarios through our own minds how we might resist with items at hand.

        It’s called ALICE training.

        1. Throw chairs. Lightweight metal-framed ones are particularly effective. Hard to fend off, and then they sort of tangle up the feet. Four or five chairs pile up into a barricade that will take a little time to get through.

          That is, if you can’t just pull out your concealed pistol and shoot the dirtbag. It’s always best to have a gun in a gunfight.
          ———————————
          The Democrats trust violent criminals and terrorists with guns more than they trust you.

        2. When I was still teaching in university I had a plan for getting out of my office in case of an active shooter, and I had plans for each room I taught in. I started it when I had two kids in wheel chairs and we once had a fire drill and the fire marshal told us to leave the kid in the chair in the classroom and they would get him out. I was appalled, students were appalled (we were on 2nd floor). I told the class that we needed a plan. Two of the guys were football players. They said they’d carry kid out.

        3. My husband loves getting to play the bad guy– views it as the best LARPing ever, he gets paid!– exactly because it’s so awesome to get people to think through what to do.

          Old screwdrivers, pipe wrenches (both the wrench-for-pipes, and the foot-long-chunk-of-pipe-that provides leverage), the maglight clubs….. aaaaaalllll kinds of improvised weapons.

          1. I’ve stopped using the 4-cell Maglite because it’s tough to feed it batteries and bulbs, but it might just be a good idea when I have to trek over to less civilized portions of Oregon. (That’s in addition to the rest of the goodies…)

            1. I honestly use my phone for light, the cheap maglight I got thinks that it’s in a horror movie. Dramatically obnoxious failures left, right and center.

              …. it is basically a nice, heavy pipe with a hand-grip on one end, though.

      3. Yeah, we have to take “workplace safety” training every year (financial industry, we have to take ridiculous amounts of silly annual training that never changes) and that’s apparently a DHS thing…”run, hide, fight” in that order. And they tell you if you fight, accept that you will get hurt and push through it because you are literally fighting for your life, and don’t stop until one of you is disabled.

        1. Avoid, Deny, Defend was ours. Several videos, partly stupid and partly useful. Basically gave us permission to wage guerilla warfare and run through the steel, if we have to.

          Last time I watched it in Spanish, because the English version was buggy. A little bit simpler language than in English. And it turned out that “ingles” without the accent mark means “crotch.”

          So I have permission from work to hit baddies in the ingle or ingles.

      4. Previous workplace had a mandatory one-hour seminar on ‘active shooter’ response. At the end of the session, the proctor (proctee?) asked waht the proper response to an active shooter was. I raised my hand, and when called on, replied, “Two to the chest, one to the head.” My answer was not in line with company policy, nor was it well-received by the PTB (though some of my co-workers gave me high fives afterwards).

        2. We recently purchased our first pew, a Glock 48. Last time I was at the range I shot a rental P365XL and hoo boy did I fall in love with the thing. 12 rounds, double-stack, suitable for CCW if I ever get mine, fit my hand so much better than the wife’s new G48 (which is a nice pew, don’t get me wrong). I know everybody says if you’re inexperienced with pews and pew accessories–said in best Hank Hill voice–go with the Austrian plastic boys. But dang that Sig felt good. Better than I was expecting for something that relatively small.

          1. I know everybody says if you’re inexperienced with pews and pew accessories–said in best Hank Hill voice–go with the Austrian plastic boys.

            :quiet voice: I tell folks to go with a nice, solid, .38 special. The ones that look like they’re a prop from an old detective movie….

              1. :grins, thumbs up:

                I freaked out the guy behind the counter, he wanted me to get one of the cute ones in pretty colors– as did my parents– I explained that I wanted to be able to beat someone to death with it if I ran out a bullets.

                … to be clear, I think that’d be a bad idea, guns are not melee weapons.

                BUT.

                The attitude matters, and I don’t have the presence to pull off “stop or I will shoot” persuasively if I have a shiny, turquoise, bejeweled toy made of aluminum.

                If I am thinking “K, I have five shots, and THEN is he too tall so I go for the knees, or can I go for the temples?” then it will convey to the goblin.

                1. Foxfire, -you- are the weapon.

                  How I wish your attitude was more common. I would spend less time on repairs and more on mopping.

                  1. Whoops “Foxfier” , apologies.

                    My spellchecker gets the best of me sometimes.

                    Fix my typos? Nooooo…….

                    1. All good, I would’ve been Foxfire but there’s a dude in Russia who got to the correct spelling first on the Yahoo message boards, lo these many years ago. ^.^

                    6. All of the above, really, plus being a word-magpie who just…latches on to things. I was heavily involved in a space-combat game at the time and used “Foxfire” for my handle because I liked the “elusive” connotation. (Met Anonymoose there, too. :D)

              2. I’ve been looking for a Ruger in .357. Had a Security Six back in the Reagan era, one of many I regret selling off.

                1. They’re available, but like everything else they ain’t cheap ($600-$800). I saw a couple at Healey’s on Thursday, and I think Sportsman’s Warehouse in Chandler has a few. Or check the online auction houses.

            2. The sweet little asian lady who worked Swing shift at a Silly Valley hospital found that the 1911 and her hands were a perfect fit. Go figure.

                1. Yeah, I was always confounded by the comments about the .45’s “heavy recoil” in a 1911. Not to me, it isn’t, and I’m not Rambo. A full-power.38 Spl in an LCR is worse. By far.

                  1. Well, I’m 4’11” and about 110, and the 1911 is one of the easiest, most enjoyable weapons I’ve fired. Perfect for me also in that it rattled like a spray paint can and you could run a truck over it and just dust it off afterwards. (I tended to be hard on everything I didn’t misplace. 🙂 )

                    1. I’ve a G17. Carry it all year. Appendix is the shizz. 20+1? Yes ma’am. Guess it’s a good thing I’m the tallest leprechaun ye ever did see.

                    7. Yeah, a Milspec 1911 isn’t quite as accurate as a “tuned” version (the rattle is significant), but it’s probably the most rugged and forgiving military auto ever produced. I have a Webley Mark VI that’ll take even more abuse and still run, but I really don’t want to carry it on any regular basis, especially concealed. In fact, good luck concealing it… 😉

                    9. You might be surprised; check around. Even a 1911 is concealable with the right rig.

                    10. I confess I got tired of trying.
                      I’ll give it another go here after awhile, just got frustrated with the process.

                    11. Kathy, you might want to check out the Kahr Arms CW45. .45 ACP, 6 in the magazine +1 in the chamber.

                    13. But unlike a 1911 (or even a Smith M&P45) a Kahr is light enough that recoil tends to be…sharpish. No worse than a full-power .38 Spl in an LCR, but significant. (Disclaimer: While I’ve fired the LCR with full-power loads quite a bit, I haven’t fired the Kahr; I’m relating what an acquaintance who has fired both said.)

                    14. “Sharpish” is a good description, and it’s the reason I haven’t chosen what I consider to be small caliber for CCW. If I can’t spend a few hours at the range without significant wrist pain, it doesn’t work for me.
                      But I’m open to suggestion. I need to go to the range and spend some time with different weapons. Only trouble with that is I HATE indoor ranges: cold, loud, more cold, more loud. Claustrophobia. Yuk. It takes work to get me there.

                    15. I’d hesitate to suggest a particular weapon; it’s a fairly personal issue. My best suggestion would be to find a range that offers a selection of rentals so you could try several and find one that suits you, a whole lot cheaper than buying until you find one you like. 🙂 That said, however, don’t discount small revolvers for CCW, especially “hammerless” (actually, shrouded hammer), in “medium” calibers (.32 Federal Mag, .38 Special +P, 9mm, etc; even .357 Mag if you avoid the “bear-stomper” loads; I’d go with either Black Hills Honey Badger or Underwood Xtreme Defense, both are fluted monolithic copper solids with excellent performance); they have the distinct advantage of being very reliable, and of requiring no extensive training to use and to clear malfs; simply aim and pull the trigger, if it doesn’t go “bang” simply pull again with a new cartridge automatically under the hammer.

                      Bottom line: It’s up to you; get some local advice from a reliable source (not Internet Rambos). And have fun!

                    16. If you get a .357 Magnum revolver, you can shoot .38 Special with it, including all the P’s and +’s you want. You DON’T want to shoot .357 Magnum with a .38. So if that’s what you’re looking for, find a .357 Magnum pistol and ammunition combo that suits you.

                    17. Correct. I tend to load my target loads for .357s in .357 cases, just to avoid having to remove the fouling ring from the fronts of the chambers left when the shorter .38 case is used; most people don’t bother and use .38 cases. And if you don’t reload, AFAIK there are no .357 target or .38-level loads offered (I could be mistaken about that).

                      And I’d note that almost all decent revolvers chambered for .38 Spl won’t accept .357 cases, but there’s always the oddball that will. Caution is always indicated.

                      And I think we’ve pursued this off-topic thread far enough… 🙂

                    18. Yessir I think so and thanks for all the great info and recommendations. Much appreciated.

            3. I tell them to get a pump action 20 gauge youth model. (Shrug) Four points of contact makes hitting your target much easier. Not to mention over twice the energy.

              Pistols, they’re a bit personal. I’m kind of a Ruger loyalist, but what’s best for anyone might vary. A lot. But nearly all of them will function reliably.

              1. For anyone not a “gun person” I always recommend a revolver; if it’s for CCW, and the person has normal finger strength, one with a concealed/shrouded hammer. Pull the trigger, it goes “bang”. If for some reason it doesn’t bad ammo, usually), pull it again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Not until you think the perp is dead, until he thinks he’s dead (or until the threat has passed; an important legal issue). And no, I’m not a lawyer…

  9. Mockery is so easy and effective it almost feel sinful to employ it at work.
    Almost.
    In typical retail fashion, my employer has abandoned all pretenses and has scheduled me for the worst of the worst hours, and days off that have no relation to what was agreed upon. So, they shall reap the whirlwind of mockery and average behavior.
    I offered my best and it was abused, so I’m looking again/still, and will laugh at them while I prepare to move.

      1. I’m blessed to have that option even now, Doug.
        I confess to being frustrated today. F’ing Walmart. I gave them three weeks of hard work and they have done all they can to destroy my good attitude and spirit. New days off. Only 8 hours between shifts. Forced to the cashier line.
        I can’t say I won’t ever head to East TN, but other than the job environment, North Idaho suits me to a T.

        1. Sounds like NW Walmarts are just as horrible to work for as their SE counterparts. I’ve got plenty of horror stories of my own to share, especially about the one I was unfortunate enough to spend three years at. Hope you find something better soon!

          1. Bless you! I have an interview Tuesday for something that might work well. I’m in God’s mighty hands…. And yes, they are all the same. Barbarians.

            1. Good luck! And indeed they are… Short version of my experience is getting stuck with a particular filthy job that hit all of my weak points, played to none of my strengths, and using the results of hitting said weak points to justify keeping me in said filthy job prone to abuse from both lazy staff and abusive customers (pretty sure you’ve figured out which one). I was glad to escape to my current employer when I did, even though they’ve now declined to Walmart levels of evil (including starting to ramp Covidiocy back up).

        2. If there’s one in town try a Fred Meyers or a Kroger. Two members of my household work at Fred’s in Boise and are valued and appreciated and told/shown as much by their supervisors and coworkers.

          1. I worked for FREDDY’s till I couldn’t wear a face covering. They refused to rehire me when I moved to Idaho.
            Good suggestion though.

            1. I’ve been noticing fairly high turnover at the Fred’s in Flyover Falls. The big independent (mini chain, F-Falls, Medford, Roseburg) seems to have much lower turnover. As a customer, they each have their strengths, but the checkout line at Fred’s is nowhere near as much fun as at the indy. (One of the regular checkers has an ATTITUDE and a great sense of humor. She’s also the goto trainer, lord help the innocent.)

        3. Good Luck with the job interview.

          Son just changed jobs. He just finished his 2nd week. Last job he was at for 10 years and left the supervisory position. Cost? Very little. Not a supervisory position. Same type of work. “Lost” $2.50/hour (including the $1 swing differential). But also “lost” the copay of $85/month for catastrophic (essentially) medical insurance (per year: $6k deductible, $12k out of pocket). Lost the required overtime. Still can work overtime, just it isn’t required. He is off swing hours. Was recruited by ex-coworkers that work there now too. They setup a tour and managed to have the appropriate hiring person there for an impromptu interview, convincing him to bring his resume. Two weeks and his ulcers are already behaving a lot better.

          His only possible problem was insuring his old employer followed rules and paid all the PTO earned. They’d changed PTO rules because of all the people they’d been getting and quitting. So PTO earned wasn’t earned for just payout if you quit, unless worked for company 5 years, and gave 2 week notice. He did both. But give said company, he figured on shenanigans for the last two weeks PTO earned. Didn’t run into any problems.

    2. Remember, Kathy, your fellow Walmartians do not always have your particular advantages. But they WILL appreciate lighthearted leadership in the face of oppression.

      There is a reason Dilbert is so popular. Everyone knows the boss and the system are stupid beyond belief.

      Go forth and raise the spirits of your fellow oppressed as only you can. I feel quite sure you are where you are for a reason. As are we all.

      1. Some years back, I had an internship at a software development company, and one of the bigwigs came down and had a conversation with my manager. Bigwig was making impossible demands of our department, manager was explaining why it was impossible, bigwig brushed her off and basically told us they didn’t care, they’d already promised it to a client, get it done.

        So, that same manager kept a 365-day tear-off calendar of Dilbert comic strips on her desk, and our department’s morning ritual was to gather ’round her desk when the workday officially started and watch as she ripped off yesterday’s comic and revealed the current days.

        Two days after the conversation with the Bigwig, the comic of the day was Dilbert and Pointy-Haired Boss having the exact same conversation, practically word-for-word, that Bigwig and Manager had had, that the entire department was witness to.

        I couldn’t read Dilbert for years after that because I realized OMG I am living in a freaking comic strip! It wasn’t until the past year, after I’d been out of the software industry for a while, that I could read it again, but there are still strips that hit too close to home for me to laugh at.

        1. I quit reading Dilbert when I worked as a contractor for Third Fleet in San Diego.
          It was ugly, and awful, and the comic strip detailed every aspect.
          It wasn’t funny.
          I still don’t read Dilbert, and I think a lot less of Scott Adams than I did in 2016.

          1. Kathy, what years did you work for 3rd Fleet? When I’m onsite, it’s usually the other side of Catalina Blvd. IYKWIM. You can direct message me from my LinkedIn account if you don’t want to put anything out publicly. My icon links to my LinkedIn account.

            1. Will send a more complete answer after work. I worked up the hill on Point Loma, not down at the main facility. 2004-2013.

          2. I like Dilbert because it’s ugly, awful, and details every aspect.
            I have a considerable amount of respect for Scott Adams and am amazed that his strips are still relevant today.

            2. My experience is that all the really, really bad managers think they’re Dilbert. Two of the worst I worked with had their offices papered with copies of Dilbert cartoons. I figure most managers are the pointy haired guy, a few are Dogbert. Me, I became Wally around 2006 and it’s been great since.

            3. I had a lot of respect for Scott Adams, but lost it with his political takes. He’s gotten a bit out of touch.

              1. I don’t know what his political takes are anymore, as I stopped following when he stopped writing them (video is such a slow and frustrating medium to extract information from), but he did a lot of good for me in 2016/17.

                1. He is a smart guy with certain expertise, but like Dr. Peterson, he is running on a corrupted information stream which leads him to incorrect places.

        3. I’ve said for years that Dilbert is a documentary….. or the operations manual.

      2. Ach! Between you and the Holy Sprit, I am outmanned.
        I am here for a reason, and learning to reject anxiety, take being screwed in stride, dealing with shrieking customer dogs…. and standing tall as a light in a dark place is apparently the reason I am there.
        It helps to be reminded that there’s a reason for this, uncomfortable as it is, so thanks. 🙂

      3. The true horror of Dilbert is not that the boss is an idiot. It is that he is skillfully responding to the incentives offered him by the company. He is doing exactly what advances his career and gets him money. It just has no relationship to what advances the company’s or anyone else’s interests at all.

        3. Thomas Sowell has repeatedly noticed that many things that, in larger perspectiver are, shall we say, “suboptimal”, are, nevertheless rational once one considers the incentives and constraints in place. Something that has a short term benefit, for instance, even if it’s highly destructive in even the medium, let alone the long, term, is nevertheless entirely rational for a politician to promote and pass because by the time those medium to long term results come to fruition, the election is over and often the politician has moved on to other office and his (or her, or its) replacement is the one to deal with the fallout. And said replacement likewise has the same incentive for short term “fixes” and to blazes with the longer term effects.

          Thus the popular political game of “kicking the can down the road.”

          1. Yeah. Which is why it is our challenge to figure out how to balance those near, medium, and long term incentive structures.

            And I think it needs balance to work, too. It we just focus on long term only, we may not get there, or end up in entirely a spot we did not want: predictions get notoriously dodgy the further out they need to go.

                1. Think I can, maybe including how dealing with entrenched power structures resistant to change are another part of that “arrow plugging the wound” phenomenon–45 was actually doing a good job of dealing with the “arrows” given the issues I was talking about but that “entrenched power structure (infection getting into the wounds maybe?) got in the way.

                  1. “45 was actually doing a good job of dealing with the “arrows” given the issues ”

                    But the Democrats (and often Republicans) always add new ones faster than the old ones can be removed, and Brandon is sticking the already-removed arrows back in.

                    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/07/which-trump-regulations-were-overturned-biden/619583/
                    “The Trump administration seems to have fundamentally underestimated the difficulty of changing U.S. government policy”

                    1. More like, Trump got the leaky dam mostly plugged up, against fanatical opposition, and now the FICUS is pulling out all the patches with the fanatics’ help.
                      ———————————
                      The Democrats are willing to burn America to the ground, so long as they wind up squatting on top of the ashes.

            2. And it’s one of those reasons why we need to start demanding “lawmakers” do a 7 generation risk-cost-benefit study for every single bill. No study, and study but no long-term benefit, then no law.

              1. But it’s so easy to fiddle numbers when persons have no integrity and funding is tied to it. I kinda liked the idea of the board of idiots requirement for laws (in an Anvil story)

                1. Even when people do have some integrity and funding is tied to it, everything will bend in that direction. That’s how global warming became “settled science.”

                  1. Before everything bent in that direction, some evil people in the ‘climate change’ clique ‘hacked’ the peer review system and drove off any dissenting opinions by the simple expedient of never letting them get published.

          2. My first full time job in my current line of work was for a joint venture of 2 companies, with only a single contract–writing the environmental impact report for putting a bunch MX missiles in old ICBM silos. As the report was finalized, work ran down, and people were laid off. At that point the CEO of one of the parent companies visited our office to give an award to our president (or whatever title he had).

            So we had an all hands with about a third of the staff we had had 2 months before. He gave an award to our head honcho, noting that it included a monetary component. He then noted how it was due to the good work that ALL of us did. You can imagine what a morale booster that was. To add special insult on top of that, as one of the programming staff, I actually had seen everybody’s salary, so I knew that our head honcho already made 3 times what everybody else did.

          3. New manager came into the powerplant where I worked. For 12 months, he cut labor costs (mostly by eliminating/deferring Preventive Maintenance). Numbers looked so good he got promoted to manage a bigger powerplant. Poor bugger who replaced him, in the 13th month, started having to deal with unplanned outages, mostly caused by – deferred PM.

  10. but, but, but what if I /am/ stupid?

    I mean, there is some evidence that I am not too bright; I have given up seeking out stuff that I have been told is smart.

    And, I identify as anti-intellectual.

      1. That isn’t what all the pseudo-intellectuals are telling me.

        And they mostly identify as knowing and caring more about the life of the mind than I do.

        1. Thomas Sowell defined Intellectuals in a way that illuminates much: Intellectuals are those who make their living producing not goods and services but ideas, with the value of those ideas determined not by any real-world results, but rather by the approbation of other intellectuals. It’s basically one, big, inbred family. (Not my first description, but I cleaned it up for this forum.)

          1. Hayek did him one better, when he defined intellectuals as “second-hand dealers in ideas” – people whose job is not to think of ideas, but to acquire them and pass them on.

            1. That sounds like a really big complement, honestly–hard to stand on the shoulders of giants if you never get the footstools.

            2. Honestly, that’s how I’d describe true scholars. People who gather up ideas with the notion of passing them on, or at least making them available. And actually know them well enough to explain and include all the fiddly bits that make the second hand ideas make SENSE (or let you see why they don’t make sense and didn’t work and why we did something else as humans.)

              1. So yeah, that one seems much less of an insult than the other. (and means the nasty stripe are the SLEEAZY second hand idea salesmen.)

        2. And there was a thriving business of leasing them books for their backdrops when the work from home thing started.

          Just be clear on the caliber of individual we’re discussing.

        3. “…they mostly identify as knowing and caring more about the life of the mind than I do…” These people are intellectuals, just like “Lia” Thomas is not a male beating up on females.

    3. Depends on what the meaning of intellectual is, to paraphrase a former supposedly intelligent president.

      They have skinned academia, are wearing it as a skin suit and expect our unquestioning allegiance, to paraphrase an actual intelligent person.

      Bless their hearts but they are dumb. True intelligence involves a recognition of reality.

      1. “What is a woman?”
        A human being with XX chromosomes, who normally produces eggs, and normally has, or had, the working body parts to gestate an embryo from conception to delivery of a baby. Genetic and developmental differences may negate egg production or gestation, but the minimum of XX chromosomes are non-optional.
        Amazing how many “Intelligentsia” can’t figure that out.

  11. Trump’s (usually deserved) mockery of the left and successful reversal of Ailinsky’s tactics is in strong measure the cause of both his popularity with many on the right and of the abhorrence he is viewed with by RINOs and the left. And the latter are very gleeful when they use those tactics against the right.

      1. Indeed, both Grant and Sherman seemed like very decent folks. But when things required them to get ugly they got ugly with a will. That’s the model we need.

        1. Wasn’t Sherman’s entire doctrine that, the more painful and horrible the war is, the quicker it will end and the fewer people will get killed in it?

          1. I think that sort of sums up his view. He is kind of one of the first proponents of what we would call “total war”. That and his “If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve” make him a very unique individual. His devotion to his men often using his own wealth to care for men who hard served with him but fallen on hard times is quite admirable.

                  1. Wikipedia: “In recent history, the viable candidates in the race have primarily been Democrats.” The last Republican mayor of Atlanta was elected in…1879.

                    Yeah, I guess you could say there’s only one party that owns whatever that city has become, for good or ill.

                    1. They stuck the American nissei in Manzanar. I won no prizes scornfully telling some of my co-workers if they’d been around in that “state of emergency” they’d’ve helped load the cattle cars.

                    2. @OvergrownHobbit I remember in middle school–the class was acting out The Lottery and we were given the option to stay in the library during that time if we wrote an essay stating WHY we chose that option. I was the only one who took it. I could see too many of my classmates enjoying the thing.

          3. Both him and Grant. Both believed that more pain now meant less pain in the long run. And once the war was over, that was it. Which is why Grant’s terms to the men of Lee’s army at Appomattox were very generous (something Lee would later note). IIRC, Sherman actually got into trouble for being too generous with Johnson’s army when word of the terms that he’d offered reached Grant and DC, and was required to renegotiate the terms of surrender with Johnson.

      2. “I cannot spare this man. He fights”
        Lincoln certainly understood and approved of General Grant’s approach to protecting principles – I don’t think either one would be sympathetic to “tone policing” as the appropriate way to win battles.
        https://allthatsinteresting.com/abraham-lincoln-wrestling

        Lincoln had such a talent for grappling that he was eventually inducted into the wrestling Hall of Fame. With a stature of six feet, four inches and the strength of a well-fed 20-something, young Lincoln was so good at wrestling that he only lost once in a span of 12 years of competing. In fact, his political rise in the 1850s can, in part, be attributed to the legendary tales of his youthful athletic talent.

        Let’s shatter the myth of Lincoln as perpetually old, bearded, and soft-spoken once and for all. His prowess in both hand-to-hand combat, and routinely identifying his opponents’ weaknesses, might have actually helped the strategic politician in his later life as President of the United States.

        Lincoln’s legendary defeat of the town bully Jack Armstrong, described in the article, exemplifies the value of using force when needed, but not descending into vengeance.

  12. “I was subjected by our own side to bizarre attempts at tone policing.”

    People who think they are the smartest one in the room, and that everything will go so much smoother if we stupids would only do it their way… are not found only on the Left.

    I applauded your use of the epithet “Mary of the Three Names” at the time, and I applaud you now. An epic burn, my dear, and well deserved by the target.

    Currently the “official” SF Fan “community,” (scare quotes intended, because what a scary bunch of friggin’ harpies) is in the process of making said “Official” “Community” a hell-scape of personal attacks, backstabbing and character assassination. Good ol’ Mary is right there in the middle of it all, stabbing away like a champ, twisting like a serpent to avoid the knives aimed at -her- back.

    I think, if I am not too optimistic, that this s* isn’t selling anymore. There was the recent de-Wokening ™ of Netflix, and today I read that the Warshington Poost has summarily fired a newsroom reporter for defaming the Poost and her fellow workers all over social media.

    Post-pandemic, the people who were all told they were going to die in March 2020, and who watched our Great Socialist Leaders comprehensively screw the pooch for all of 2020, 2021 and so far in 2022, those people seem to not be inclined to listen to SJWs whinge about their “culture of toxic Whiteness/Maleness/Whatever” and are shutting it off.

    “What the Klingon has said is unimportant, and we do not hear his words.” Dr. McCoy, Friday’s Child, 1967.

    1. The fired Post employee is a bit more complicated. She’d sued the newspaper over claims of a sexist, misogynist workplace. But her suit had been dismissed by the court. So her employers were already annoyed with her. Then she went on her spree of badmouthing (initiated when a co-worker posted a woman joke on social media), and ignored attempts by both her co-workers and management to peacefully defuse the situation That included a direct order to all employees to play nice with each other. But she decided that the rules didn’t apply to her. She might also have been looking for something that would justify reopening her lawsuit.

      And so… Buh-bye! Sent via E-mail, no less, probably since having her alone in an office with the person firing her was seen as too risky.

      2. I liked the headline “Bi Bi Felicia”; given the “offensive” joke it was about as good as it gets.

  13. This is perhaps peripheral to the discussion here, but I came across two papers recently that would probably get tons of leftist derision if they were noticed:

    Providence and the magnitude of the universe: A theistic argument for space settlements
    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dial.12737

    (I can’t find the second paper immediately, but when I do I’ll add it as a reply to this message.)

    And “I aim to misbehave” is a pretty standard SF trope. Why in the world would we do otherwise?

    1. Very cool. I admit to both Christian faith, and a love of SF. ( surprise, I lurk here). It is fascinating to ponder that maybe God made the universe to settle. Very manifest destiny like.

        1. ooo. Shiny idea. But aliens roasting missionaries is not as visceral a thing as cannibals.

    3. I wanted to pop in here and comment on this, after reading the paper. I think the one theory that is missed entirely is that as God is infinite, so might be Creation. In both directions, macro and micro.

      What effect that has on whether we find ‘intelligent life’ on other planets, well, infinity times any small chance is a certainty . . . So I am in the camp of ‘We will one day find life’ – type and amount unknown. Probably completely unexpected and designed to dump all our theories on their head.

      Think about it. Why would a Creator design a universe that has a potential end point, for creatures that were designed to be infinite? We were immortals . . what is the one thing sci-fi authors warn about immortality – the ennui of sameness & boredom. What if there is ALWAYS something new to strive for, more to find?

      Although it sparks a question in me – what if Creation was meant to always expand. . . but was arrested mid-development in the Fall.. and what would we find at the edges, in the Void. . .

  14. The only tone policing I tolerate are:

    Instrument tuners, usually mechanical or electronic devices but sometimes people.
    Those arguing equal temperament was a mistake and we should return to Pythagorean ratios and key specific instruments as a result.

    As far as not calling Leftards names, those who don’t like it can f***ing blow me.

    1. Are you sure you want all those diseases anywhere near you? I mean you don’t wanna get monkeypox. But I guess if you wear a mask you’re safe.

  15. There are times, pleasant times, when being Dudley Doright is appropriate. But we are in Vimes and Carrot territory.

    Pray we never need to call on Nobby Nobbs

    2. I think you’re overlooking the “a good man will just kill you” bit.

      We’re in Weatherwax territory, coming up fast on Stoneface.

        1. Many hardware store hatchets are surprisingly well balanced, and useful for “finess” work, as well as more basic work. Shop around. Life is too short to waste using bad tools.

          Must be channeling some of my kinfolk. Heh. Of course various frontiersmen favored them, too.

          My sister kept one handy as burglar repellant. Hm maybe it is genetic.

          1. Great great great grandma with her wood chopping ax convinced the French that the village was not a great place to quarter in.
            She had a pretty teen daughter….

        2. Allow me to recommend the products of RMJ Tactical. They make an outstanding (if pricey) line of tactical tomahawks, knives, and other persuaders. No, I don’t get a commission.

        4. I need to get me a decent hatchet. I have a homemade mace in the truck in case there’s an emergent need for face-to-face social work, but the problem with it is that I can’t plausibly say it’s a tool.

          1. Try a two or three pound “engineer hammer”. Basicly a one hand small sledge.

            For knocking rusty wheels loose, once lug nuts are off, of course.

  16. If you don’t believe me, read Mansfield Park which is really just a medieval morality play.

    Well, she parodied the gothic, the bestseller genre of her day, in Northanger Abey, and in the end, the gothic novel is a secularized and quite often sensationalized medieval morality play.

  17. And now, people are more likely to talk about the power of crystals than their Christian (or Jewish) faith in public.

    Crystals? LOL…an Oscar-winning actress (which might not impress you but is mainstream unlike say a porn actress) owns a company that sells a jade egg for your vagina and a candle called “Smells Like My Vagina” (and which has a tendency to explode) while encouraging steaming of the same location (she does seem to think she’s nothing more than her well steamed and Yankee Candle Shop scented hoohay).

    I’d be happy to get back to crystals.

    1. Ugh, even I know which one that is and I avoid most Hollywood crap for a reason! She’s a nut if there ever was one…

    3. ….someone is using an incontinence treatment for women as a sexy watzit?

      That’s for strengthening the muscles in the female pelvic region. The exercises are advised for pregnant women who hare having that kind of issue.

      Good grief….

      1. Keggles for sexy have been promoted for both men and women for years. They are recommended for men with ED on a regular basis.

  18. I like this article for multiple reasons.

    First, because the Blood of Christ compels me to try to reach those in peril of their souls and ask them to consider the tremendous love God has for us and the great lengths He has gone to in order to ask us to just believe that He loves us and wants to save us.

    Second, because, in spite of occasionally being paid to be the team asshole when interacting with our suppliers, I really do want eveeyone to accept we often believe the same things but use different words to describe it. And we can only discover our similarities by allowing freedom of speech and respecting each others’ right to be flat out wrong.

    Third, I got my official confirmation of being 5 years cancer-free and had quite a celebration with my cancer doctors. And so, for me, the duture is brighter. And I want tgat for everyone else, too. Even Puddinpants, who, like me, deserves an eternity in the lake of fire, but can avoid that by simply repenting and asking God to save him.

    Finally, I want Americans united in restoring our nation, lifting each other up, and encouraging personal responsibility, a strong work ethic, and running away from the type of big government that tries to rob us of the joys of being adults.

    We do not need minders. We do not need censors. We do not need the government replacing individual charity and compassion. In fact, that type of government is just jack-boots and truncheons and internment camps.

    Live free or die, America!

  19. And I’d bet you a large sum of money the biggest cesspool is public schooling.

    Two decades ago known numbers from the Catholic Church in California and public schools in the state were published (I think in TWS). Simple math showed you that your children were much more likely to be abused in public schools than in the Church (and yes, I did use just the published number of Catholic children to get the per capita rate, not the whole state).

    Yet, which one has the legal ability to force you to give your children to them?

  20. “…the POV that all adults abuse children..” is the point of view of people who have zero concept of what a parent is or does. Someone who espouses that POV is suffering from the mental illness of dementia, and should never be listened to for advice or direction. You might want to keep an eye and ear on them in case they are prone to violence.

  21. Well said on all counts and you even got to one of the big sticking points on matters of faith with me on the types who validate the narrative making the whole thing even harder to embrace. There’s a reason most of those stereotypes come from the South, unfortunately, and it’s one more thing I hope to escape if these delays don’t stop piling up…

  22. I got an exasperated “Dad, read the room.” from a teenage daughter last week.

    It was nice to have immediate feedback about having done the right thing. 😀

  23. I always wished Trump would stop texting but didn’t forget what Lincoln said about Grant, “I can’t spare this man, he fights.” or perhaps George II when told that General Wolfe was mad “I hope he will bite my other generals.”

      2. I thought he hurt himself more. I sorta came round on that, but as much as I enjoyed it I think it cost him too much.

        1. If he had not texted but had written strongly worded letters or promoted hashtags such as #Bringbackourgirls or anything else at all, they still would have come after him. And the NPC sheep who never miss a 30 minute hate cast would still be convinced to hate him. Nothing he could have done differently would have helped him with the haters

        2. If Trump’s opponents were blabbing about what he was tweeting, they were typically not focusing on, thus not effectively opposing, what he was doing.

          Note the quiet since leaving office.

          1. Like cats to a laser pointer, so we’re the days of their lives.

            The ridiculous stuff they got all hysterical over….

            It was very illuminating for those of us with eyes to see.

  24. For instance, on a thread about the ridiculous parents who take their children to drag shows, people kept posting an article about the Baptist Church covering up sexual abuse of children. And they thought this invalided the point that children at drag shows is wrong. … somehow.

    The argument in that is difficult to fathom…

    It’s not that hard to fathom, mostly because it’s not an argument. It’s either a tu quoque fallacy or real “whataboutism” — not the kind that midwits label any comparison at all that makes them look bad, but the real thing, an attempt to “chaff and redirect” the conversation without addressing the point raised.

    And it is exactly the kind of argument that Catholics made when the church scandals arose fifteen-ish years ago. “Well, you know, actually the public schools are much, much worse than the Church!” (This was, recall, pre drag-queen story hour. And when asked for evidence, it was usually “everybody knows” rather than specific cases. It’s weird, but schools have seriously degenerated in just fifteen years, and they were awful to begin with.) And when it was pointed out that the public schools did not have a two thousand year history of proclaiming morality to the world, but the Church did, the chaff and redirect was often “but humans are flawed, and this is exactly what the Church teaches, and since the Church is a human institution this is exactly what you should expect.”

    It’s not an argument, it’s a continual attempt to force renegotiation of the terms of the “debate” so that one’s own side isn’t “bad”, using whatever means are at hand. Addressing the problem is utterly beside the point, the point is to make your preferred side back into the good guys. Once that’s done, as far as this sort of arguer is concerned, then the conversation is done.

    This sort of dishonesty is not the domain of the left, merely of most humans.

  25. Sudden, mad urge to write “In defense of tone policing,” in the style of Chesterton, which would boil down to doing so allows many routes to a shared goal– just gotta remember not to denounce making fun of folks more harshly than we do, oh, wishes for death or false witness…..

  26. Now you’ve done it. You are making me quote H.L Mencken:

    The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few religious dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Dowie’s whiskers broke the back of Dowieism. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to compromise and surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation… But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Harvey — and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Jenner? Or Lincoln? Or Darwin? . . . They are laughing at Nietzsche yet . . .

    “The Test of Truth” in Damn! A Book of Calumny, p. 42-43 (Kindle Edition)

    2. “Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to compromise and surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation”

      I don’t know the joke, but one of the “selling points” of the early LDS Church doctrine to practicing Christians of the time was Joseph Smith’s repudiation, through revelation and also in the Book of Mormon, of the much-disputed practice of infant baptism.

  27. “Tone police!”

    “I am citing you for doing 5200hz in a 3600 zone.”

            1. Working for ACME, I might be just a wee bit biased, but I’ve not had any issue. Then, I read the manuals with great care, too. That coyote… well… he gets ahead of himself, and… well now.

        2. Also, when you get it back, you might wanna dial back a wee bit. The ACME engineers are.. how to put it… rather… enthusiastic… regarding output power. They consider Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor a mere piker regarding such.

        3. The aardvark was in the rose garden, giving directions to bees that blundered in from alternative universes, and disclaims all knowledge.

          Anyone want to ask Fluffy?

            2. The aardvark assures you that in all the dimensions that exist, never do the bees identify as fish.

              He won’t go bail for hornets, though.

                1. Abe Lincoln once said the following.

                  Question: If you can the dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does the dog have?

                  Answer: The dog has four legs because calling the tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

                  IMO That applies to California’s “decision”.

                  1. The Reader agrees. Also notes that there are no biologists on that Appeals Court. The Reader’s son (who is a lawyer despite the Reader’s best efforts to point him elsewhere) laughed hysterically after reading the decision.

                2. The aardvark said what the bees identify as. He said nothing about courts.

                  He will assure that this world is the only one loonies that way.

                3. “…California must be in a dimension beyond the aardvark’s reach…”

                  California is in a dimension beyond the reach of anyone sane. I read the text of the decision when it was published; all I can say is that not even Gordias managed that level of twisted. (“Calling Alexander; cleanup on aisle 3!”)

                  1. Somewhere, I have a picture of the door to … Bob and Busters, I think it’s called, a big arcade pub place, lots of branches, but the point is they have a sense of humor.

                    The door to the one nearest Coronado has a big sign you CANNOT miss on entry, “CONTAINS SUBSTANCES KNOWN TO CAUSE CANCER IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA”

                    1. Aha, the most ubiquitous warning in the US; I’m waiting to see it on bottles of water. Is there anything which doesn’t cause cancer in Californios???

                      Good sense of humor indeed; thanks!

  28. Never forget that Buckley and his ilk came from the same Ivy League snob schools as the ringleaders of the Left. So they were obsessed with being thought of as “nice” by their neighbors and school chums.

    We aren’t. Not products of the snob schools, not “nice”. We are a force for Good. Emphasis on both Force and Good.

    If you want to know the character of a man, find out who hates him.

    1. One of the targets on the Right for Buckley’s policing was the John Birch Society – “not our kind, my dear” – and Luke has pointed out that the Bircher’s POV was later vindicated (as was McCarthy, when the Venona Papers were discovered in the Soviet archives).
      Perhaps true conservatives should have stood athwart National Review shouting, “Stop!” back in the day.

      https://accordingtohoyt.com/2022/06/10/tone-policing/#comment-851511

    2. “We are a force for Good. Emphasis on both Force and Good.”

      Hear, hear! And we all have little lists…

  29. I’ll confess to a snarky side that likes to cook up new lyrics to old tunes. Preferably cheerful ones.

    Example (cue music of “If I Could Talk to the Animals”)
    If I could talk to the liberals
    Just imagine it
    Chattering with chumps in chump-an-zee
    Nattering with nitwits
    Lounging ’round with lackwits
    Five min-utes would be enough for me
    (all I could stand)
    First I would ask
    Why do you hate this country
    This lovely land
    of bles-sed liberty
    Then I’d inquire
    Why do you hate your neighbor?
    What has he done
    to thee?

    (OK, I’m still working on it)

        1. 0bama was instrumental in getting Biden installed.

          –
          I know. But … After all what was the primary reason that Biden stayed VP those 8 years? The same reason current VP hasn’t gotten the top job. As bad as Obama was, his VP was worse. As bad as Biden is, his VP is worse.

  31. 2 + 2 = 5; black is white, up is down, and Mr. Biden tallied 81 million votes in the 2020 Presidential Election.

    When they’re not busy (endlessly) virtue signaling, white liberal (progressive) supremacists insist that anyone not agreeing with them or not flying their colors is an ignorant, bigoted rube. The truth is that white liberal supremacists are all lemmings, incapable of independent thought!

    Let the ‘mock fest’ begin!

      1. Er… 2=2 being less than 4. Adding significant fractions of c. Adding valumes of pure water and pure ethanol. I do not recall cases of 2+2 being greater than 4.

        1. Diet Coke + Mentos, Devil’s Toothpaste, sulfuric acid + sugar, I’m sure there are a lot of other chemicals that produce compounds with greater volume than the original reactants.
          ———————————
          Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

          1. If there were such a thing as the Law of Conservation of Volume, this would matter. There ain’t, and it don’t. The mass of any chemicals involved in a reaction never increases as a result of that reaction.

  33. Off-Topic (or is it?)

    If anyone has not yet read https://accordingtohoyt.com/2013/07/01/nsa-file-capture-obtained-by-this-writer-at-great-peril/ that should perhaps be rectified, especially if a laugh or at least smirk is need. I can only imagine the nonsense of misinterpretation of current communications. Or maybe I can’t quite manage that feat.

    And having re-read https://accordingtohoyt.com/2017/11/18/free-short-story/ I can say that I would like to read of the (mis)adventures of Nephilim Kentucky Jones and Associate.

    And, just to make things complete: Moo!

  34. Tone police? I hold with those who claim that being lewd and crude is too often a distraction from being sharp and pointed. Having had sufficient experience on the receivng end with ridicule snd mockery, I prefer to reseve it for ideas rather than persons. There are some ideas that are so foolish and pernicious that they should .be mocked, and thoroughy, by someone who knows how.

  35. One must also do it in a way that is best suited to one’s own self. Each of us has our own particular approach; that style which suits you best in real life is probably the best online as well.

    I prefer gentle humour, but my own style can veer wildly into taunt territory. I have to reign that in, because I am ‘the Preacher’s Wife’, and I am held to a more narrow standard… the standard of the Potluck Church Ladies. Since my Deacon’s Wives are still alive, I must honor the Mothers of my Church and Christ as well, lest I am called before their nursing home beds to be chastised.

    One does not know the meaning of chastised until one deals with a 90 year old little Church Lady.

    1. I suppose “the preacher’s wife’ is more restrictive than ‘the preacher’s son’. I have met “the preacher’s son’… and if anyone thinks I have Religious Issues, they’ve NOT MET ‘the preacher’s son’. I suspect he scares demons, and NOT with the Bible, if you know what I mean.

  36. ASfor policing ‘tone’… those who REVELED in playing The Wicked Witch Is Dead when Lady Thatcher died are utterly unfit and therefore irrevocably disqualified to get a vote on such things. (But watch that tune mysterious disappear from WokeYouTube for a while after Hillary goes the way of Clinton associates, even if not by “suicide.”

  37. We need to rehab the word “hypocrite” so we can use it appropriately. A hypocrite isn’t one who fails to live up to ideals, but one who doesn’t think those ideals apply to him. Someone who knows what they are doing is wrong and feels shame isn’t a hypocrite.

    I occasionally tone police, but only in a practical sense. If you actually want to persuade someone a mocking tone can put people off. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a time and place. The “we’re better than that” is just nonsense.

    1. Except that if people can fail to live up to their ideals, the entire leftist project fails, so they can’t allow that.

  38. It is a mistake to consider Neo Marxism, or Marxism of any stripe, for that matter, an “ideology.” It is a religion that is at least as aggressively expansionist and totalitarian as radical Islamism. Unlike Christianity or Islam, Marxism has no fixed doctrine, rather it shits to fit its long term goals, power and control. This is why the Woke Supremacy eats its own, it needs an enemy to justify its existence. Once it has defeated, say hetero marriage, it must set up another enemy, eg. sexual dimorphism. Therefore they must always be the barbarians at the gate; once inside the walls they must designate another wall and gate to storm.

    Civilization works because its members act civilly to one another. Civilized men, bred to civility, are at an insuperable disadvantage when facing the barbarian, who is contemptuous of weak and effeminate civil manners. The barbarian laughs as he puts the civilized man to the sword while the poor sod whose guts are falling out is apologizing for having offended the bloodthirsty brute. Think: Gary Larsen’s Wimpodites.

    Therefore the Christian West, in reacting to the Wokester Barbarians, is making a fundamental category error: the barbarians are not posturing for advantage, they really, really do want us dead. In order to overcome the existential threat the rules must change. Civilized man must drop civility and unleash his inner barbarian in order to survive. We are “better than that,” and will restore civilization once we’ve knocked the ever living shit out of the adherents of Marx’s legion of demon wokesters.

      1. Yep; caught that one. A winner indeed. And I was unaware that “Freudian slip” applied to typing… 🙂

Comments are closed.