Associations A guest Post by David Bock

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*I want to apologize for two guest posts in a row. I’m still late on the serializing blog too. So: Dan had hernia surgery in the beginning of the month for multiple hernias. He’s healing slowly, which is normal for diabetics. This means he can’t lift anything. So I must go shopping with, etc. just in case. On top of added responsibilities because of younger son and future DIL being out (Cats, quails to look after) this week and next, things have entered a vortex of crazy on this side. I got up at 7 am and first sat at a keyboard half an hour ago. This too shall pass. And I’ll write tomorrow. But I had a guest post waiting and chapters are more needful right now, since people are paying for them. – SAH*

Associations A guest Post by David Bock

Associations are funny things. You can be associated with people you’ve never met or ideas that have no bearing on your life or are even diametrically opposed to the ideas you actually hold.

As someone with strong feelings about firearms freedom, especially in a place as unfriendly as New York, this happens with alarming regularity.

This type of forced association occurred in almost every conversation I had with my mother where the subject of guns came up. In our last conversation on this topic, she stated I had too many guns. Mom didn’t quite know how to respond when I instantly came back with “there’s no such thing.”

When I was young, my mother actually tried to blame World War Two on “people like you.” She meant people with my interest in firearms.

If I had a dollar for every time it was suggested I held a certain political position simply because of my respect for the Second Amendment, I’d have a much larger collection of firearms.

For example, in addition to American Rifleman, over the years I‘ve had subscriptions to Guns & Ammo, Shooting Times, Gun Tests, and a few other related magazines. Apparently, some marketing algorithm decided that since I liked guns, I’d also be interested in mailings from cigar distributors, whiskey distilleries, anti-abortion (or pro-life if you prefer) organizations, and various flavors of political mailers.

I don’t smoke (but I do like pancakes), I don’t drink, and while I’m conflicted in the case of abortion, I don’t think it’s the government’s job to make that decision for anyone, pro or con. Needless to say, those mailings did not get a positive response.

Since the Second Amendment is my litmus test for favor, the same is often true with politicians. If I mention that I like a certain politician’s record on gun ownership, I must, therefore, support all their other positions.

Politically, I generally lean small L libertarian. Or as I like to put it, I’m a member in good standing of the “leave me the hell alone” party.

Which reminds me of another example, years ago, I was hanging out with some friends in college and one of them asked me about my personal politics. I answered with something along the lines of “I’m not really sure, but I’ve been told that I’m probably closest to libertarian.”

He came back at me by stating I must be against child labor laws. When I expressed confusion, he said that I claimed to be libertarian and libertarians don’t support child labor laws.

This showed me two things about this person. They hadn’t listened to what I’d actually said and they were more interested in playing a game of ‘gotcha’ then in having a rational discussion.

Before we moved out of New York, I was involved with Cowboy Action shooting, I may start that up again in our new home, but that’s for another time.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, Cowboy Action Shooting is a competition involving lever action rifles, single action revolvers, and double barrel or early pump shotguns at relatively close range steel targets. All this while dressed in historical period or Hollywood cowboy style clothing. It‘s lots of fun.

Anyway, this was around the same time as the passage of the New York State mirror of the Federal Assault Weapons ban, so around 2000. I was at an event and was chatting with some of the shooters. Now, you would expect that folks participating in a shooting event would be generally pro-gun. Nope, their big concern was that the law didn’t affect their firearms and sport. They assumed that since I was there that I must feel the same way. Imagine their shock when I stated my opposition to this law and many of the other gun laws that were already on the books.

It was a few years before I felt comfortable enough to go back.

Since the New York SAFE Act in 2013 and the 2016 presidential election, the false associations people have applied to gun owners have gotten worse.

If it turns out some pro-gun political candidate I commented on approvingly has ties to the Ku Klux Klan. “David, are you part of the Klan?” Mmmm, probably not a lot of Jews in the KKK.

Some elected official makes a negative remark about a member of the Queer community, possibly not even having to do with their sexuality. “David, are you a homophobe?” If so, I’m really bad at it since I was one of the early volunteer instructors with Operation Blazing Sword.

I mention I find almost any comedian funny. “David, how can you support such misogyny?” Why don’t you ask any of my many female friends how I treat women? Especially the ones I taught to shoot.

I know I should be patient and calm with these accusations, but it gets harder and harder every year. One day, if I live long enough, I expect to become one of those cranky old men who will tell you exactly what they think in no uncertain terms.

I’m kind of looking forward to that.

100 thoughts on “Associations A guest Post by David Bock”

    1. Well not Catholic (grew up Episcopalian, which is close enough). Involved with the BSA. Oldest of 3 girls in an extended family that hunts and fish. Least anyone think that if there had been a brother that we’d been able to not hunt and fish. Um. Dream on. Trust me does not work that way. Thank God I grew up when I did. I like the outdoors. I like the color blue. I was/am also horse, dog, and cat, crazy. Didn’t think of boys “that way”, until college, rather late in college, by which time, most the males in my class were older; I paid attention to men, not boys. In today’s environment? OMG! No. Hell No. (Okay. The horse crazy part might grant me a stay. But still.)

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  2. You hit the nail on the head when you said they were interested in playing ‘gotcha’. One of my biggest issues with social media is that any public discussion immediately brings in people who are not interested in hearing other thoughts at all, just there to score cheap points at someone else’s expense. I’d like to say this is a phenomenon of those I disagree with, but in truth it is much more general than that.

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    2. That’s a typical Female ploy – inputting a range of behaviors/opinions on the basis of ONE interest or vote.

      Women (those who hang around mostly other women by preference) quickly fall into the “Must Agree With EVERYTHING a Person Says or Will be Shunned” mode of thinking. It’s really an extension of the old Middle School Girl mindset. Sadly, too many people – in today’s world, BOTH semi-male and female – buy into that groupthink scenario.

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  3. I laughed when I read this being a New Yorker myself albeit a different tribe. Cowboy shooting indeed, I can just imagine.

    I remember one discussion when I was accused of being a Republican … shudder …. because of some position I held. they couldn’t wrap their head around the fact that I could be absolutely opposed to one group of psychopathic politicians without supporting the other group of psychopathic politicians. The concept of co-belligerent never occurred to them.

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    1. They’ll always object that “they are not the same!” when you say both sides are equally bad.

      Of course they’re not the same. They’re bad in different directions, aside from the one where they care about themselves and their power more than they do their constituents.

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      1. I would quibble about their caring for their constituents at all. They care only for power and wealth. One side wants to milk their constituents and the other wants to milk and cull them. What’s the point of power unless you reward your allies and punish your enemies?

        Sorry, I’m rather dour today.

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      2. The problem with “both sides are equally bad” is that, in my experience, it’s all too often used to not have to actually think about the issue du jour.

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    2. The False Dichotomy Fallacy is an annoyingly common one. “If you are not A, you are Z!” completely missing everything in between, along with pictograms, runes, numbers, colors, musical notes and abstract concepts.

      Are their minds simply too limited to contemplate more than two possibilities?
      ———————————
      Not my circus, not my clowns.

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        1. I’d argue that’s religion, not God. (Your assertion may be sarcasm, but I’m making the argument anyway.) Religions and their beliefs are codified by fallible humans for other fallible humans. And people tend to think in binary, oppositional terms even when it’s not helpful, so of course religions frame everything that way. One can hope it’s all guided by God, but it’s not the actual word or thought of God; a translated facsimile at best, people putting their words in God’s mouth for their own purposes at worst.

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          1. Some religions. I had thought much the same thing as you when I read it, but don’t want to violate our hostess’s rule.

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            1. I will respond, but I’m at work. I’m not just being sarcastic, even if that’s present because me.

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          2. All religions are a frame for humans to look at God. And all of them are subject to capture.

            https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/disciple.html

            But that’s not really my question. My question is: If dichotomy, the need to choose one alternative over another, is baked into the structure of reality however it came to its’ present state, crying False Dichotomy would seem to be yet another way to say “I disagree with your choice, so it’s a fallacy.”

            False dichotomy is too close to the Marxist “false consciousness” for my comfort.

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            1. In my experience the universe rarely presents us with only two choices. Usually there is a wide range of choices, and a wide range of consequences resulting from those choices. Somebody arguing that I can only choose between two alternatives, neither of which I agree with, just because they are too blind or too stupid to see any others, pisses me off.

              Like the asshole in front of the grocery store yesterday, trying to shame me into signing a petition to Raise The Minimum Wage! “If you don’t sign, you’re condemning all the Wage Slaves to Poverty! You Eeevul Capitalist you!” Those are the only two results his tiny mind could encompass.

              I told him to shove his communist propaganda up his ass. Sideways.

              Simple minds always crave simple answers to complex questions, even though they are always wrong. They start by falsely reducing everything to just two possibilities.
              ———————————
              Anybody that believes employment is equivalent to slavery needs to experience actual slavery until the stupid is beaten out of them.

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              1. Your tag line disposes of the whole “white privilege” nonsense and anything based on it rather neatly.

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      2. I ran away from an academic career, mostly for money to be sure, but also because I realized that the answer to just about every binary academic argument — and they’re all binary, funny that — was yes. It all came down to tribalism.

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        1. They make a big deal about nonbinary thinking these days. Thing is, if you’re either on board with their specific nonbinary scheme or you’re the enemy. Most days, I think blind adherence to theory (usually in the form of Current Thing) is the one true requirement of a “good” academic. Being unable to recognize that blind spots exist, let alone that oneself could have any, is a strong secondary effect.

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      3. For some of them, yes. For others, like David mentioned in the post and James mentioned above, it’s all about gotcha games they can use to smear you as one of the Unclean.

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        1. It’s not even that simple. You don’t have to be Unclean, just not as Clean as they are. In the end, it doesn’t really matter if you are Unclean, Clean-adjacent, or even Clean. They just have to do something to prove that they are more Clean than you are to show their inherent superiority.

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      4. “Are their minds simply too limited to contemplate more than two possibilities?”
        In a word, yes. And only one of those possibilities has any redeeming qualities, and it has nothing else.

        Life is simple when one is also simple.

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    3. /shrug
      I register as GOP. But only because I’m too lazy to reregister independent after every single damn election. (PITA). Frankly, most of the GOP smells like vinegar to me, but the Dems smell like Chlorine gas. Most of the Free State folks I can get along with fine, but some of them are toxic level anarchists. Thing is, there are nuts in every group. The trick is finding a group with the fewest nuts, and the most people you can get useful things done with.

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      1. Well, I imagine that living on the East Coast tends to have certain effects.

        I know a fannish/anime guy who is continually doing gun profiles and military hardware profiles on his blog, and he loves cars and planes and such.

        But apparently being an East Coast liberal is so important to him that he is continually speaking against all the pro-gun candidates, all the pro-military candidates, all the regulation reductions that would help cars and planes flourish, and indeed is in favor of social media restrictions, while running a website with content that would be instantly banned on most social media platforms.

        Also, his Democrat-run town literally still has cardboard pipes despite high local and state taxes, and yet somehow it’s the Republicans’ fault. For everything.

        I literally do not know what people like this are thinking.

        And so, no, I’m not surprised about the East Coast version of Action Cowboy Shooting fandom.

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        1. I think his example is more “New York” than “east coast”. Attitudes run rather different further south.

          At least outside the insanity of certain cities.

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          1. Overcompensating for his hobbies?
            I remember a *Bloom County, * cartoon where Portnoy the groundhog has discovered he’s middle-aged (by groundhog standards; he hit puberty and never noticed). He grabs one of his friends by the lapels (or where the friend would have lapels if he was wearing clothes) and desperately says, “I’m still very, very liberal!”

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  4. One day, if I live long enough, I expect to become one of those cranky old men who will tell you exactly what they think in no uncertain terms.

    –
    It’s never too early to start practicing! :-D

    I’ve found a useful question to be, “Why do you have that in your head?”

    Because what they say has everything to do with them, and nothing to do with you.

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    1. Socialism is legal narcissism, it’s all about how I react with the group, not how the group reacts with me. That’s why I turn my friends into the secret police. You know it to be true.

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    1. I suspect the Get Off My Lawn Party would do very, very well. The only trouble would be trying to organize people who want to be left alone. ;) rueful kitty shrug

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    2. Hum I’m getting close to the point where (large or small “L”) libertarianism is way too far left to suit me and leaning toward young Davie Friedman’s anarcho-capitalism.

      Oh, you’re on my lawn? Is that a six pack of beer or a case of 209 primers in your hand? Come on over and sit a spell.

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  6. Guilt by association, bad, and even often a felony (Accessory after the fact? Maybe, probably, true in some cases but also because of, many unjustly jailed.) but still a well known fallacy.

    And “…if I live long enough, I expect to become one of those cranky old men who will tell you exactly what they think in no uncertain terms.” Yep. Me too. If I live long enough, like for 5 more minutes.

    You don’t drink David? Oh then you must support….! GRIN

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    1. I hit the “What are they going to do? Fire me?” Two minutes after I gave my notice. Not that I aired any political opinions. That comes under “none of their business”.

      Also, hit the “Oh. This is why grandmas get away with what they did!” Seriously. “Don’t care what you think of me” and “I told you so” are very common, if I care enough. Normally don’t care enough.

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      1. Funny story about :What are they going to do, fire me?”

        Way back in the 90’s, I worked for the now-defunct Hancock Fabrics. The store, after they moved it and expanded it, wasn’t making money, although shrink was less when I was working, so they decided to close the store. (The Hancock’s on Salem Avenue for those long term Dayton residents.)

        First they were going to close us before Halloween, then, a week before Halloween the bigshots realized that they would miss out on pre-Christmas stuff, so they decided we would close the Saturday after Black Friday. Now, for weeks they had told people we were closing in October, so all the part timers dutifully found other jobs. Except me. I had a new office job to go to after the first of the year. So I stayed. Me and the store manager, the assistant manager, and two keys. Five of us to run a 35,000 square foot store with big “Store closing, everything must go” signs. Running it with regular hours. The managers all gave the difficult customers to me. They were continuing to work at other stores for the company. I wasn’t.

        I felt free to speak my mind. It was wonderful but exhausting. I was working 50+ hour weeks (Yay overtime!) and had people who did not understand why we just weren’t giving bolts of fabric away for free. What do you mean, I have to pay $4 a yard for this ($26) charmeuse? What else are you going to do with it? I’ll just wait until you throw it away then. To which, I would say, “Are you stupid? We’ll wrap it up and send it to another store.” They would tell me I was disrespectful and my mantra became :What are they going to do, fire me?”

        One woman demanded to see the manager. Well, the regional manager was there that day (just before closing) and told her he would rather fire her than me. Heh. Take that!

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        1. In my case it isn’t that I started dodging work, exactly. However I did start dodging some clients calls (the brand new phone system helped with that), and stopped answering any calls, between 11:30 AM and 1 PM (got lunch on time after 12 years, go figure) after 4 PM, so I could be sure to leave at 5 PM. Honestly, started both of those once I made the decision but hadn’t given notice. I did work hard to not leave them without a detailed list and documentation of certain aspects that only I had a clue about. Not that they could figure it out on their own, after all I followed protocol. But should have made it a lot easier. Whether anyone paid attention to the emails I sent out or not was not because I didn’t (the answer to that was ‘not a chance’ as came up after my last day, oh well).

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  8. Maturity is not being afraid to tell people what you really think, and doing it politely. Old age is just cutting out the time wasters being nice about it.

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    1. By the way, every time my wife makes some comment that includes pasting the “Republican” label on me, I politely reply that I am in fact NOT a Republican and have not been since Reagan. I like the “leave me the hell alone” party. (And will likely vote L in the next gubernatorial contest, not because I’m a “Big L”, but because I’m a little L, and just because I’m contrary and neither of the major parties has impressed me much over the last 40 years or so.)

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      1. Make those bitches earn your vote, my apologies to all the honest god fearing bitches out there for the comparison.

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  10. Ok – two things: One, good grief – take a break and deal with the challenges life has handed to you and don’t worry (too much) about “us” we may singe the curtains but we won’t burn the house down. Now for Two: Yup, already a cranky, retired and old and in the get-off-my-lawn group sort of like Eastwood in the movie with an M1.

    As for associations, yes indeed we need to review them and work on them all the time. I’ve got a few (very few) that have withstood the test of time and a few currently that are in the “working” category. If someone wants to put you in a specific slot – they have only defined themselves. You be you and when finding someone that agrees and isn’t blinded by foolishness you have connected. Carry on! Oh, yeah – please tread lightly on the lawn the landmines are still settling in.

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  11. “One day, if I live long enough, I expect to become one of those cranky old men who will tell you exactly what they think in no uncertain terms.”

    It is quite refreshing. You don’t even have to be all that old to do it.

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  12. “One day, if I live long enough, I expect to become one of those cranky old men who will tell you exactly what they think in no uncertain terms.”

    Its over rated. I’m old, I don’t give a sh1t, and they haven’t changed.

    You tell people what you think and why, and you even include citations with footnotes, and they will still say all the exact same sh1t they say to the “polite” version you’re serving now. Honestly, that’s my experience.

    It is interesting though, that after being That Guy since the 1980s I had more than one person quietly come to me for advice during the Plague Year when it looked like it was all going to hit the fan. So surprising to see what fields those little seeds had sprouted in.

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    1. The fact I love to remind them is that they’re just one of however many billion people are on the earth and most of those people don’t agree with them. And most of those other’s are people of color. Then I ask them why they hate people of color? It generally doesn’t go well from there.

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  13. Well-said, and that’s a subject that absolutely needed to be addressed. Both the blind assumptions of agreement and the gotcha games with smears in mind are utterly maddening.

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  14. One of Niven’s Laws: “There is no cause so noble some shitheads won’t follow it.”

    Obvious corollary: “Just because some shithead has the same opinion as me about one thing, doesn’t say anything about me.”

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  15. And on a good note, this month marked 48 straight months with a million guns or more sold. Hallelujah praise be to Moses, John Moses Browning that is….

    That other Moses is cool too. Snark

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    1. And that ignores private sales and blackpowder “muzzle loader” guns.

      Note: a cap-n-ball revolver is also a “muzzleliader” and not a federally papered firearm. Some states say otherwise, but in most US places they are over-the-counter items.

      BP guns are useful items for “things fall apart” planning.

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  16. I associate Roberta Flack singing “Killing Me Softly” with assembling an Estes model rocket in my parents’ garage back in the mid-1970s…

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    1. We wanted to try and make mortars out of them, never did, we did make polish goose guns though.

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          1. Boy Scouts: A bunch of pyros with supervision and a goal. 🙂
            …………………..

            Some of them are even under 18. Some are even male. What? Us girls don’t want to know how to make a campfire too?

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            1. Be quiet about that.

              The nutcases might believe that “girls who enjoy camping & building campfires” are really really boys inside. :twisted:

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              2. The nutcases might believe that “girls who enjoy camping & building campfires” are really really boys inside. 😈

                Gee I sure hope they don’t get downrange of my launchpad.
                Being a girl and all, my aim isn’t what it could be.

                What does THIS button do???

                *giggles.

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                1. Chuckle Chuckle

                  For some reason, I believe that your aim is very good. :wink:

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                2. Being a girl and all, my aim isn’t what it could be. What does THIS button do??? *giggles.
                  ………………..

                  Not much for a giggle jam. But you know what? I think I’ll join you.

                  ;-) ;-) ;-)

                  Oops.

                  (*) giggle

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                  1. Had six sisters growing up, the only reason they let their husbands set off the fire works was because they didn’t want to. It was much more fun watching their idiot husbands play, and drink at the same time.
                    “Your husband is such a clod” Sister #1 accusingly said.
                    “Maybe so, but he brings home a good paycheck” Sister #2 in husbands defense.
                    ‘There is that”. Sister #3 said backing up sister #2.

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                3. Reminds me of some picture from somewhere (such precision!), gal with caption or speech bubble, “Yes, I throw like a girl. You better be wearing a cup.”

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            2. For the record, asserting that all boys are pyros does not exclude girls from being pyros as well. It is merely observing that a boy left alone with flammable objects shortly results in fire.

              Ironically, I think it may have been our deacon who lit the incense box on fire one Easter. That was an accident though.

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            3. I learned in Brownies and Girl Scouts how to make a campfire, cook on it, etc. I feel that I got good skills.

              My brothers’ troop taught themselves many ways to burn things that were not intended. And many ants lost their lives in the process.

              OTOH, I think knife instruction in Boy Scouts was superior in seriousness to what we got.

              Nobody died or had property losses or emergency room visits, so I guess both ways worked.

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                1. Over the last 40 – 45 years? Definitely. Not all GSA troops, but good way to bet. The reason why Venture Crew took off like it was on fire. All girl crews were often GSA troops co-registering as BSA Venture Crew. Opened: Philmont, Northern Tier, Florida Sea Base, and other options. Plus, dads could be trek leaders as long as there was one registered woman leader (where girls were part of a crew).

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                  1. I blame the back end. The GSA idea of “get your friends together and form a troop that ages with you” guarantees two things: Amateur leaders and burnout. My mom was apparently a great GSA leader, but I’m the youngest and she was done. Result? Increasing difficulty finding a troop as I aged that had anything in common with what I wanted to do, and eventually no troop at all.

                    Oh, and the way the camps are set up, with individual campers, means that camp counselors had to be trained adults 18+ AND they had to pay for their CIT time at twice the cost that the campers did. In today’s terms, that’s shelling out at least a grand a summer in order for your daughter to be able to work at a camp with low pay after they’ve turned 18. Gave up the dream of being a summer camp counselor until an accidental conversation with a friend led to a BSA summer camp job at 17, which I continued for four years. Yes, I loved it. Could have done one more summer but rightly realized that I would have hated it. (Couple of reasons, one being that I’d been in the same position for three years at that point and had no options to move higher due to the regulations on female staff at the time. Another stressor that I didn’t realize at the time is that our council is a bunch of idiots when it comes to summer camps and refuse to do basic investment in the facilities—that comes due in weird ways.)

                    Anyway. The BSA has continuity of troops, institutional knowledge, lots of trainings, and at least a theoretical plan for replacing leadership along the way. The GSA is almost a matter of luck when it comes to that.

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                    1. The BSA has continuity of troops, institutional knowledge, lots of trainings, and at least a theoretical plan for replacing leadership along the way.
                      …………………..

                      Institutional knowledge 100%. We bowed out about 7 years after our son earned his Eagle, which was after son graduated from college. We chose to not go the professional BSA volunteer route (we might have gotten a bit burned out – Tiger Cubs, Scouts, Venture Crew, and District, to National Jamboree x2, often at the same time). Have we told the two troops near us that we are available? Yes. Not registered, which we’d have to do if called on, as well as take the youth protection, but why bother if we aren’t being asked. Rightly so, parents with similar experiences with youth participating, have stepped in and learned. We do know many people who when they die will deservedly have BSA specific memorials, because they will die still registered and still volunteering.

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              2. I learned first in Girl Scouts too. But back then GSA was a lot closer to BSA in goals and means. (Trapper Camp).

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  17. Re: Action Cowboy Shooting — I actually have heard of it before, because Detective Kenda (of Homicide Hunter fame) talks about it in his autobiography. He and his kids are all in it and good at it, and apparently Mrs. Kenda does the period garb part.

    Kenda’s autobiography is a tad bit disturbing of content in points (plus he yells at the listener early on, just as a power move/warning), so it was pretty heartwarming to hear him talk about his hobby and his friends in the hobby.

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    1. I looked it up. Kenda’s nom de cowboy is “Joey Fogerty.” His son’s is “Big Dan Doherty.” The daughter actually doesn’t compete with them, so I remembered that wrong.

      Kenda’s shooting team was called the Colorado Shake Tails. (With a rattlesnake theme.)

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      1. By and large, Cowboy Action Shooters are good folks.

        Main organization is the Single Action Shooting Society, sassnet.com. there is also the National Congress of Old West Shooters, ncows.com

        Lots of videos online. It is even more fun than it looks.

        Why, yes I do. (Grin)

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  18. All this while dressed in historical period or Hollywood cowboy style clothing.

    Off topic from the post, but this bit made me grin, because the history of cowboy outfits in movies is, well, interesting.

    In the silent days, there were three cowboy actors so popular and influential that even non-film buffs might have heard of them: Tom Mix, Harry Carey, and William S. Hart.

    Tom Mix started as an actual cowboy, got hired as an extra to add authenticity to a few cowboy movies, and ended up starring, writing, and directing his own films. As his fame grew, he leaned toward more and more outrageously designed outfits, and became a precursor to the sorts of costumes that Gene Autry and Roy Rogers would later be known for: spangly, bright, and not remotely historically accurate.

    Harry Carey and William S. Hart were both theatrically-trained professional actors, neither of whom had any experience of the west before starring as cowboys in the movies. And both made a point of making their cowboys authentic — gritty, dusty, not a sequin to be found.

    So the authentic cowboy was the most theatrical and innaccurate, and the two theatrical gentlemen are remembered best for their authenticity. :D

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  19. Another group that makes assumptions tends to be, “fiber artists.” (I think of myself more as an artisan). And most of them assume that of course you, like them, are up-to-the-nanosecond progressives. This leads to the occasional awkward moment.

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      1. OMG, screenwriters and film buffs. Yeah, there are a few who are not leftdroids. You can tell by how they don’t loudly assume that everybody agrees with them, and how disagree-ers are Nazis and Wacists.

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        2. I should add the professional vendors are a mixed bunch. It’s surprising what some of them will say when they realize you won’t cancel them.

          Liked by 2 people

  20. “Another group that makes assumptions tends to be” — just about any kind of public performers, artists of any medium, musicians, and writers.

    I have been shocked twice (and that was 2005-2009, so not even in the current obsessively woke era) when I attended (a) a concert by a renowned Irish harper; and (b) a book signing by a renowned Denver SF writer who shall be nameless, where the performer blatantly assumed that everyone in the hall / room was of the same political persuasion (and the harper wasn’t even American!) — we must be, because we like their work, and those Evil Republicans couldn’t possibly be that cultured.

    Of course, we were too polite to get up and walk out, but sometimes I wish we had.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. There was one occasion in Dayton, at a fairly high priced Celtic music concert at a nice venue, when an Irish singer from Ireland started passing casual remarks like that. It was not a good time for it… And part of the hall cheered, and that encouraged everyone else to boo. A very nasty boo. So the others tried to cheer more, and that led to even more booing.

        The singer looked visibly shaken (because Dayton is always nice and polite and happy, as a Celtic venue), and that was the end of passing casual remarks.

        It is all fun and games until you mock the wrong thing, without even knowing what you are doing. And that was back in 2004 or something.

        Liked by 1 person

  21. I’m a leave-me-the-hell-alone-ist too.

    Sometimes I also say I’m in the Treebeard party: you know, the part where he says, “What side? I am on nobody’s side, because nobody is on my side.”

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    1. “Sometimes I also say I’m in the Treebeard party: you know, the part where he says, “What side? I am on nobody’s side, because nobody is on my side.””

      I think this too! Does that mean we are a side!?!

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  22. I do wonder if David’s mom and Mama Raptor are related. The other day (can’t recall if it was yesterday or the day before), I was bemoaning the fact that a rifle that I want to add to my collection (a good M14, ideally a Fulton Armory Black Hawk Down DMR version) is so expensive, as a good-quality M14 that will hold up to long-term use starts at about the $3k mark.

    Well, Mama Raptor went off. Because not only should I be saving my money for important things, I already own WAY too many guns, nobody needs that many guns, and the fact that I own guns at all makes her, and I quote, “deeply uncomfortable.”

    This, by the way, is the same woman who cam to me back during the Summer of Saint Floyd begging for my help in picking out a gun of her own… and after about eight months – not joking – of back-and-forth decided that she didn’t have it in her to actually shoot somebody. But she claims to have absolutely no problem with beating up a bad guy with a cast iron frying pan. And didn’t take kindly to me pointing out that said frying pan would do a hell of a lot more damage than the 9mm PCC I was guiding her towards.

    I swear the woman as the worst case of Gell-Mann Amnesia I’ve ever seen. She knows that the main stream media is lying about the economy, she knows that they lied and are still lying about The Unspecified Virus of Unknown Origin, she knows that they’re lying about Trump and the election, she knows damn well they’re lying about Hunter and the Biden Crime Syndicate, but she takes every single thing they say about firearms as The Inerrant Gospel Truth.

    Sorry. Rant/Gripe-Fest over. We now return you to your regularly scheduled comment thread.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. “…decided that she didn’t have it in her to actually shoot somebody.”

      I’ve heard that so many times out of so many different people (including family), said so many different ways, it nearly makes me want to hurl when I hear it again.

      These are the same people who wanted to chuck us in jail if we didn’t get the jab. Remember that? Yeah, I do too.

      Liked by 1 person

  23. Yes, this would be a place I could get in a good giggle.

    In meat space I would never give myself away like that.

    I would quietly plot a retaliation they would never see coming cause they are dumb.

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