A Perilous Moment

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

A friend and I used to joke that when we’re very old — considering she’s much younger than I, but we both come from long-lived families — we’ll be considered raging left wing extremist, while having changed absolutely nothing about our beliefs.

Is she right? I don’t know, but I can tell you I get the feeling she might be. And that scares the living spit out of me. And it should scare the living spit out of you. And I don’t care how right wing you consider yourself to be.

First because change that fast, even if it were for the best, will kill a lot of people. Some of them directly as they find themselves the target of mobs on one side, the other and neither (once the mobbing and mob violence get started, people get killed because someone else envies them and riles up a crowd against them as much as for anything else.) Second because when a movement starts going, particularly a “we’ve had enough” movement it’s really easy for the power hungry to hijack and take control, and a lot of the extremely power hungry are … um…. poisonous. At the present moment there are leftists moving right fast and bringing all their assumptions of what the right is with them. So they think they’re being right wingers by hating everyone who tans deeper than blue and also the Jews, (of course.) This is not what the American right is or has ever been, but like states getting overwhelmed by Californians, the right could be overwhelmed by these people. And that would mean our destination would frankly be very similar with where we are, just with the groups of people in power inverted. Third because dislocations on this level will utterly destroy every institution, every job market, everything–

So, what chance do we have of to get through this without it all falling in the pot?

I don’t know.

Someone at powerline stated, as if it were a great discovery, that we’re in a cold civil war now. Sigh. We’ve been in a cold civil war for the last … well, at least for four decades. Ever since I’ve been here.

The reason most of us didn’t know it is because the left had control of the media. So back in the stone age, aka, the eighties, we were surrounded by leftist propaganda, and we thought we were the only ones of us who kept everything bottled up and secret. It’s hard to have a cold civil war when you think you’re a side of one.

By the oughts though, with the net, it became obvious there were two sides, and we were in a cold civil war, with occasional outbreaks of violence, always from the left. (Or some crazy people, okay?)

And then … well, here we are.

And what an awful day the morning light disclosed. Are we in a cold civil war? Dear Lord, I hope we are. because the alternative is awful.

This morning I saw something that scared me spitless. More than anything in this horror show we’ve been on. It was in this article: Fired MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd defends twisted remarks about Charlie Kirk killing that got him axed.

It was the remarks. It wasn’t that they were crude and gross. You expect that. it’s how they completely depart from reality.

“I said in the moment that we needed to get the facts because we have no idea what this could be and that it could easily be someone firing a gun in the air to celebrate the event. Remember Kirk is a diehard advocate of the 2nd amendment.”

Yes, guys. they thought “Right wingers” were either Muslims, or rooting tooting rednecks of the sort that no one has seen outside Snuffy Smith comics, and those aren’t even exactly popular now.

They thought that we would “celebrate” a very mild mannered man who was center-right coming to a college campus to talk to people by…. firing guns in the air.

I have no clue how it’s even possible to imagine this. I feel like we are talking to people in the thrall of an evil spell and unable to see what’s actually before their eyes.

And that’s a problem. Charlie was trying to reach them. He was trying to get them to see reality.

We can continue trying.

But we’re clog dancing on on a powder keg. I pray a lot. And of course we are a country of miracles.

Let’s hope we’ve not exhausted our share of those miracles. I’m very proud of how measured the striking back has been. People on our side are behaving better than I thought possible in the face of extreme provocation.

Maybe just maybe we’ll squeak through somehow….

Keep moving and don’t look down.

181 thoughts on “A Perilous Moment”

  1. Pray, Brethren, until you have the knees of a camel. Today’s reading from the Epistles is 1Timothy 2: 1-8. And keep your head on a swivel and your powder dry.

    Also, this is a good time to have your towel close at hand. IFYWIMAITYD.

    Liked by 3 people

    2. History has its seasons, events lead to reaction and counter reaction. For 250 years, maybe longer, America has gone through periodic revivals. We are overdue for a revival and I think we have been trending that way for a decade or longer. The majority of people are waking up to the evil and there will be overreaction. But I have faith that the majority will not lose their souls in the change and we will remain basically a good and just people after the dust has settled!

      Liked by 2 people

      1. On this topic, it’s worth noting that there were some who saw the Great Awokening as the religious ‘revival’ of our times. One can see where they were coming from.

        On the other hand, we’re seeing more and more how shallow that particular pool is.

        Liked by 2 people

    5. It’s also the day of Our Lady of Sorrows. (If you know somebody named Dolores, this is her name day.) The Stabat Mater sequence (the one about Mary standing at the foot of the Cross) may be sung, between the Psalm and the Alleluia/Gospel.

      This has not been a fun week.

      Liked by 4 people

        1. I’d argue I’ve seen better months. (Though our personal situation, aside from the colds,,has been pretty good and we were blessed to be in a beautiful area).

          Liked by 2 people

        2. 27 th for me. Cosmas and Damien it was VIncent de Paul now. My mother was very put out out that we didn’t call the daughter Patricia. She was born on Patrick’s day. I pointed out that I wasn’t Cosmas and my sister wasn’t Delores and it all stopped. Sort of. Number two son would have had to be Bibiano so they sorta ended that

          Liked by 1 person

  2. Considering that most conservatives today are still to the left of America’s Founders, the chances of of today’s far-left moving to our right are slim – and if they actually did so, actually adopted the Founders’ views, we could do worse than to join them. We could use the passion.

    But in fact what (I think) we’re seeing is not a movement to the right (by public leftists, especially in government and the media) but, as you note, a movement to their prejudicial fantasy version, the Li’l Abner universe, no more real than the other fantasies xey/xem expect us to sign onto.

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  3. Our best chance may be for the real “center” to be heard, as it is, without lies, without hatred for people, and with firm but controlled outrage at the insanity, the hate-mongerers, and the deeply evil ideas that pass for popular wisdom.

    How to do that? There may be as many answers as there are good people in this country with their eyes truly open.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. There’s both hope and extreme danger in this moment. If the majority or even a or even a sizable minority of what we’re calling the center-left moves towards the right (heck, towards anything that doesn’t have them voting for Democrats), we might have a chance at a peaceful realignment. I desperately hope we can end up in a place where it’s possible for people to be peacefully wrong, because some people I’ve pledged my life to protect are oblivious enough that they’ll probably remain there, unaware of what’s changed around them.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Not so much the center moving Right.

        The loonLeftLemmings scrambling madly further Left, leaving the unmoving “centrists” closer to the “right” every day.

        Go, Lemmings Go!

        Liked by 1 person

  4. What has surprised me the most is the people (leftists) who earnestly tell you that Kirk was shot by a right winger, or he was calling for gays to be killed. We live in two separate realities and never the twain shall meet. Not sure how we fix that….

    Liked by 1 person

  5. What has surprised me the most is the people (leftists) who earnestly tell you that Kirk was shot by a right winger, or he was calling for gays to be killed. We live in two separate realities and never the twain shall meet. Not sure how we fix that….

    Liked by 1 person

    2. They say it was an act of fascist right-wing violence and that it’s simultaneously very wrong for antifa types to lose their jobs for praising it. Also, antifa and groypers use the same tactics, slogans and target the same people.

      This is their defense.

      Liked by 4 people

  7. You’re talking about the difference between John Brown and Abraham Lincoln. Both ended up dead for their cause, but one saved our country first. Lincoln was hardly reticent about his views on slavery, but he advocated and preached restraint as long as he could.

    The communist cancer in our society is far advanced, and chemotherapy is going to be painful, but, I hope, not fatal. There is no quick happy ending, but there may be a righteous one. Just continue to pray.

    Liked by 2 people

  8. Let me tell you a story about my college days (I posted it on livejournal a few days ago, but that’s not a highly visible site): When I was attending the University of California at San Diego, I wrote occasional opinion pieces for the campus papers—not only the conservative paper, but the official student paper and even occasionally the leftist paper. One of the opinions I expressed was criticism of Third College (as it was called then), a college devoted to education of nonwhite students and to the idea of collective racial identity. This led to one of the students there, a black man, threatening to “beat the shit out of [me].” At one point, he and I confronted each other, and he told me that if I said anything negative about Third College, that might inspire some white racist to attack a black woman, and it would be my fault—so I had to be silenced. There is the exact precursor to the rationales for murdering people on the right (that loosely defined category) that we see now. I suppose I would have survived being beaten up, but the threat of violence was none the less real.

    Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that one of UCSD’s senior faculty was Herbert Marcuse, creator of the concept of “repressive tolerance,” which said that allowing people to criticize the welfare state (for example) was by itself an act of repression, and by implication that censoring any such incorrect views was liberatory.

    I wrote about being threatened, and submitted it as an opinion piece to the Triton Times, and they actually ran it in the place of their official editorials, under the fitting title “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” I’m sorry that it didn’t influence more people. A lot of people seem to be eager to get fooled again.

    — That was around 1970, so more than half a century ago. “Your speech is violence” goes back a long way.

    Liked by 5 people

    1. ALL of these pathologies go back to when I became aware of the left — in Portugal! they really are international — around 75/76. (Look, I was born very late 62. I wasn’t that precocious.)
      I think it’s baked into the Marxist rotten cake.

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      1. I went to Uni in Dublin back in ’78 (shortly after my 17th birthday), and got a very good introduction into what the Lefties wanted.

        Someplace recently (here? instapundit?) I mentioned that I remembered listening to the Student Union president spewing Communist BS and was extremely unimpressed. Student Union officers had been arrested less than a decade earlier for making Molotov cocktails in the SU offices on campus. As I heard the story they got away with it because at least at the time the Guardai couldn’t come on campus to arrest people without a warrant, and they’d forgotten to get one.

        I had to walk by Bernadette Devlin ranting on the Dining Hall steps at some rally or other, and was within 20 yards of so of her. That woman is/was IRA/Marxist (she now claims she is an “international socialist republican”; I assume republican in the Ireland should be one united country sense) and one of the first truly evil people I have ever had the misfortune of being in the same vicinity as. I found my visceral reaction to evil is hackles raising, teeth baring, and fingers curving into claws.

        I’ve learned to listen when I feel that way, and based on how people around me reacted the second time it happened, I look pretty scary. I can also say that the only people I’ve had that reaction to are on the political left.

        They are also psychopaths, at least in the popular definition of the term. When I remember the second one, all I can see of his face is an emotionless tragedy/comedy style mask with something the colors of a dirty oil slick roiling in the eye sockets.

        Not everyone on the Left is like that, but pretty much everyone like that is on the left.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Drill Sergeant from another platoon in my Basic Training company had an interesting retort to such a comment from one of his boys when challenged: “I guess it’s remotely possible that you may eat my lunch, but I guaran-damn-tee you that I’ll be having a sandwich.”

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  11. I suppose it’s technically possible that Matthew Dowd gets his information from Snuffy Smith.

    However, I prefer to apply Occam’s Razor and conclude that he was lying.

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      1. The one that got me this morning was a woman just fired from the Washington Post, for faking a very racist quote and assigning it to Kirk. Of course it’s now official gospel, but the Post actually did the right thing.

        What gets me is, aside from her doubling down, is an image she apparently posted, of herself in a blue dress, holding a (fake) torch with a rose in her mouth. Does she really see herself as the black goddess of liberty? If so, she has some serious quirks in her gallop.

        (I’m hoping this was someone else reacting to her with sarcasm, but I don’t know).

        Liked by 2 people

          1. It’s very bad for your mental health to identify with an archetype, per Jung.

            Example: Michael Jackson. Identified as a Trickster and never outgrew it.

            Liked by 2 people

        2. If you look closely at the torch, it’s a copy of the Washington Post newspaper. Which made me take it as “I’m burning my bridges behind me as I leave”: publicly torching (literally) the primary product your former employer sells is not a good way to ever ever get that job back.

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          1. Milo likes to think he is extreme in a LARPing way.

            Extreme gives me shivers, sweats, and nightmares.

            We do NOT want extreme unleashed on either side.

            Liked by 2 people

        1. Milo Yannoupolis.

          Initially, he was a gay guy who basically trolled in favor of free speech around the same time as the first Gamergate. He gave an interview that was chopped up by some to make it look like he was in favor of pederasty. After a while he dropped from the public eye. Eventually he turned up again and announced he was no longer gay. Then he was one of the two guys who accompanied “Ye” (formerly known as “Kanye”) when the latter had dinner with Trump. I think he’s since claimed that he wasn’t aware beforehand that Kanye had gone so anti-semitic. And ever since, he pops up now and again.

          It’s possible that he’s legitimately trying to do good, but there’s ample reason to think that he’s more interested in a spotlight than anything else.

          Liked by 3 people

  14. Mrs Hoyt, you must remember that Dowd -knows -he is lying, to cover a comrade. He doesn’t believe that “happy gunfire” crap for a minute. It is the sloppy alibi of three year olds caught eating cookies saying “not us”. It is his A game, and it is -so- lame.

    Don’t get overly worried by such crap. They ignore reality believing they can bend it to their will, if only by saying “Nuh uh” long enough. Ultimately, its an exploitable flaw which foretells their defeat. To truly change reality, one must understand it and embrace it. because only then do you find where things indeed -can- change, and actually make it so.

    Also, when they get wall-smacked by their own crap-view, it can shock a few into sensible. Another win for our side.

    Let not your heart be troubled. We will win this. And it wont be nearly as bad as they imagine they can make it. Not hardly.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. Yeah, well, you might want to re-think the size of the potential pool of crazy when people like this one start surfacing……

      https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/09/16/theres-more-to-the-old-white-guy-they-thought-was-the-original-shooter-n2419050

      Moments after the world witnessed Charlie Kirk being assassinated in broad daylight, many believed an old bald white dude was the gunman because HE SAID HE WAS. Of course, now we know that was a lie.

      But why lie about it?

      Because he wanted to give the real gunman time to escape. 

      No, really.

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  16. Maybe this past week will wake up some more of the normally apathetic citizens. And maybe some of the RINOs. Hopefully the Adminstration is serious about RICOing the NGOs and dealing with election fraud.

    I’m not making many personal changes. Still going out to a city planning event to talk to the city and fellow citizens. Give some feedback, make some connections. Also going to the school board meeting with a neighbor to discuss the idiot in charge of the local middle school. Maybe a local meetup to discuss the issues with the local Trantifa. (Nothing like a nearby college to attract and breed batpoop crazies…)

    I will be migrating some of my Linux systems to distributions run by sane moral competent leaders. It’s a pain, but there’s a HUGE number of hyper vocal crazies in free and commercial software. Communists should not be in charge of anything, especially infrastructure.

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    1. For what it’s worth, I’ve been using Slackware for over a dozen years. I have zero idea of the political stance of Patrick Volkerding and other support people, and this encourages me. OTOH, it’s rather different, and a solid background in *nixes is essential (at least a damned good idea) for getting good use out of it.

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      1. Maybe a month ago, I was reading a rather excessive amount about distros on wikipedia.

        At least one of the distros in the space I was examining looked like it was run by someone going out of their way to identify as a communist lunatic.

        From what I can tell, there are between half a dozen and a dozen desktop environments, and a fair number of relatively recent start up distros. Some of the ones started this past five to ten years may have an excessive communist lunatic factor.

        From what I can tell, on a 0 to 10 of ‘really needs linux know how to install or use’, Linux From Scratch might be a 9, and maybe Slackware is an 8.

        I was not trying to work with those.

        There are a lot of non-systemd distros, and the package managers may be one of the pain points for changing.

        Some of the slackware derivatives seem to include one or two by nutbars. I was looking all over the place, and have forgotten almost everything.

        (I actually probably could have finished installing oracle linux fine, but for some reason I was sure that such was not gonna work for me. Instead I tried a bunch of other things until I found something that booted on my test hardware, and did the install stuff that I could not figure out how to do or get done. (Devuan worked, which was recommend to me when I was much more confident in my willingness and desire to try the more challenging sorts of installs.))

        (OTOH, I finally have access to sagemath now.)

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        1. Ayup. I started with HPUX, then the last couple years of my employment, was using Sun’s version. I was using RedHat at home, and after we moved, was off ‘nix for a while. Restarted with Slackware 12.0, then once I got better bandwidth, switched to 14.0. I’m now on 15.0 (Kernel 5.15.xxx)) on the production machine, and am playing with Slackware-Current (Kernel 6.12 right now–not eager to use the 6.14 testing versions) on the Crash Test Dummy machine.

          RedHat turned into Fedora. I’ll use packages from there or from Debian (lots of stuff in Ubunto than can be converted with the deb2txz utility (rpm2txz also exists, though I find myself using Debian if it’s that or RPM.)). SW is a SysVinit system; haven’t mucked with systemd.

          FWIW, Linux Questions (linuxquestions dot org) is a great resource for the distros. Looks like a lot of the distributions have fora there.

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        2. If Linux from Scratch is a 9, what’s a 10 on your scale??!? Installing Linux From Scratch (hereafter LFS) without looking at the LFS guide, maybe?

          I did LFS back in the late 2000’s or early 2010’s. It was a good learning experience, but I wouldn’t want to do it again. Too complicated to maintain; I prefer a package manager where I can just “pacman -Syu” or “apt update ; apt upgrade”.

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          1. I like the Slackware package tools. Slackpkg will look for updates on existing packages, with upgrades selectable either one by one, or batch. Same setup for the occasional new package. There’s a variant of Slackpkg that handles updates from semi-official sources, particularly one from a support guy (alienbob) in the Netherlands.

            For simple package control, pkgtool will let me mass delete old packages. I don’t let the automated tools handle kernel updates; I built scripts to handle downloads and installs, though the setup in the -current is better at doing this automatically. (Oh yeah, -current is part of the development process to do the next revision of Slackware. Since it’s a small outfit, it can take a couple-three years for new versions to get released. Whether this is good or bad is up to you.)

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        3. It was a very long time ago, but I learned to use Linux on Slackware in the late 90’s, I switched to RedHat because of commercial support that my customers demanded. I don’t remember it being that bad (now days I run OpenBSD and FreeBSD as my *nix’s of choice for home hardware, I like stuff that just works).

          The installs look hard, but if you are willing to read an article the installation instructions work and they all will boot to a usable GUI once you are done…

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  17. The response to this terrible provocation has been better than you imagined it could be precisely because of the nature of its target. From all I have learned over the last several days, Kirk was dedicated to coming to grips with the disagreements and divisions in this country peacefully. It was a key component of his overall message. The people hit hardest by this assassination are the ones who listened most closely to Kirk, who got the fullest measure of that message. They are acting with peace and restraint because — to use a groan-worthy cliche that this time is appropriate — Charlie Kirk would have wanted it that way.

    I think we’re going to get through this phase without the powderkeg blowing up. I was worried about some pile-on provocation tipping us over, but it seems less likely now. I was most worried that somebody would do the arithmetic of “Charlie Kirk funeral = target-rich environment.” With the funeral happening on the 21st at a huge indoor venue with the President in attendance, I don’t think we need to worry about weak security inviting follow-up violence.

    But that’s “I think,” not “I know.” And it doesn’t apply past, oh, a couple of weeks.

    I do worry that the lesson the left is drawing right now is not “I feel morally shamed at how forbearing they’re being under dire provocation” but “they’re too weak to fight back. Open season.” Whatever lesson they’re drawing, it definitely isn’t “we were wrong and we need to rethink things.” That might have helped.

    Republica restituendae

    et

    Je suis Charlie.

    Liked by 6 people

    1. Considering how the insane Left (I know, redundant) have been trashing Charlie Kirk memorials and vigils right and left across the country, not to mention the massive amount of trash talk and outright threats of violence against conservatives, I would not be at all surprised if one of them tried to shoot up or bomb his funeral. Or worse, someone do that as a false flag to try to spark the AW2 we all wish to avoid.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. The left absolutely needs a violent right to recruit for them enough violent people to have a chance to overthrow the current system, plus give them an undeserved “insurgency” status to draw Foreign aid.

        If the Right continues to use law and order, and judicial processes (however imperfect), and only immediate self defense violence, it is almost impossible to gin up the “so oppressed!” and “the system has failed!” mindset in the masses that willingly faces bayonets and bullets. They need -mass-, or at least its appearance.

        Yes, that does mean the Left are going to kill the occasional Right figure. No, that does not mean the Right should respond -in kind-. Better we use the Justice System, however imperfect, to say “The sane are in control. The crazies are the ones shooting up the place”. Without a Sea of at least neutral normies, the LeftFish have nowhere useful to swim. To -hide-.

        And when you do find their occasional pond, and they have made themselves Anathema to enough Normies, the LEOs can fish with dynamite and the Normies shrug. maybe even cheer a bit.

        Meanwhile, -arresting- them, trying them, and convicting them as common criminals, versus round them up via Military and Court Martialing them, denies them that “warrior”/”insurgency” status they crave. Because if they -are- just common thugs…. well…. meh.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. And we pause to thank God that we do not have a Harris administration in charge of the FBI now- normalcy cuts both ways, and it’s nice to have the Year Zero folks pushing revolution from outside, rather than within the machinery of state.

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  19. I spent several hours listening the Charlie Kirk videos, and reading various reports on him, mostly to get a base to reply to a trash meme posted by one of the slimiest Democrats in my town.

    I found this meme over on MTBrains’s FB page. M is not my favorite person, and I usually have to scrub my brain with bleach after reading anything he posts. But at least I have some answer to this ridiculous troll bait.

    Charlie Kirk was:

    – Pro-1st Amendment

    – Pro-2nd Amendment

    – Opposed to the LGBTQ+ Agenda

    – Claimed the 2020 Election was stolen

    – Thinks the Civil Rights Act was a bad idea

    – Anti-Abortion

    – Very Restrictive on Immigration

    – Anti-Islam

    – Condemns the COVID misinformation

    – Doesn’t believe in climate change

    – Jan 6 was not an insurrection

    Frankly, I don’t see anything wrong with any of his positions. But those 11 topics can’t be defended in a single FB post. I’d need a week per topic to write decent essays defending each of them.

    Whether I take the time to do so remains to be seen, since my take on these is they are all self-evident at this point, and those who don’t believe in them are unlikely to accept reasoned argument in their support.

    Here’s the meme. Try not to let it piss you off as much as it did me.

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    2. The only way to “make it awkward” when someone says that he’s known for debating people in a respectful manner, for going onto college campuses and saying that we need to talk to each other, for being unabashedly pro-family and a person of faith without being preachy is to lie about what he said, to promote tyranny and ignorance as truth. So, yeah, make it awkward indeed.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. > I’d need a week per topic to write decent essays defending each of them.

      —

      It would be a waste of time; they’d just skip right past anything that didn’t fit their current programming.

      Liked by 1 person

    4. I initially misconstrued it. I was thinking this was a suggestion as to what to do if some LibTurd asked about it in a snide manner. Asking THEM to explain it and countering with facts would make it awkward for THEM. But, yeah, if one of them asked a reasonable person who was mentioning being in mourning for CK and the country, I don’t see how us answering would be awkward for US at all. Having to explain the real world to some lunatic would be ANNOYING, but not awkward!!

      I have seen several instances of someone confronting some offensive sheeple about their hate/abhorrence for Charlie Kirk, and then asking them to give examples of the things he said that illustrated these dread characteristics being attributed to him. Generally the best they can do (that approaches factual) is claiming his ‘blanket’ anti-abortion stance is too reactionary, and denying care for gender confused people. If asked about the fact that he only ‘demonizes’ doing surgeries and chemical castrations on MINORS, backpedaling generally occurs. Otherwise, it is usually just yelling about ‘lying’ or ‘ignoring the hate!!!!’, similar to a standard “Bet Me!!!” rant.

      Liked by 2 people

  20. My daughter was commenting on all of the “We are Charlie/Je Suis Charlie” posts she was seeing. She is too young to remember the Charlie Hebdo attack that inspired Je Suis Charlie (she was alive, but not as aware into the world as she is now). But she does understand “I am Spartacus”, and she agrees with the sentiment.

    In the immediate aftermath, Charlie’s message is spreading farther and faster than anyone expected (they held a vigil in South Korea for him!) and if it keeps up, it may be the salvation our country needs.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. And that is why all the -isms hate us so much: We are the world’s culture. American cultural influence reaches everywhere there are humans.

        And that just deeply pisses them off.

        Liked by 2 people

  22. Just found this Yoo-Toob video of Charlie Kirk debating one of those “I support gun rights BUT..” assholes:

    At the end, Re: the old “But, but, you have to get a license and registration to drive a car!” BS, I have 2 questions:

    1. Show me where in the Constitution you are guaranteed the right to own and drive a car
    2. Are you really arguing for a government DGS (Department Of Gun Safety) that’s just like the DMV?

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  23. And this morning the FBI announced it’s investigating number of trans or trans-friendly accounts that posted variations on, “Something big is going to happen on th 10th.” Tie that with the testimony/message provided by his trans roommate about the rifle being left in the woods for him to pick up and it gets scary.

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      1. Not all individuals or groups are directly funded or advised by TLAs. Gun ownership among all groups has gone up over the last decade. The local Trantifa group appears to be well armed and has done “security” for drag queen and protest events.

        And funding for these folks can come from more sources than you would believe. Many people with disposable income or wealth on the left.

        And the rifle used wasn’t the usual “black rifle” aka AR-15 that many of the toons have been using to kill kids.

        My BIL uses a similar bolt action for deer hunting and most of the family can hit a target at 100 yards, some us can hit bullseye while standing even though the recoil isn’t as forgiving as a .223 round. Especially with a scope.

        And I know folks on the left that can do as well or better. And have gun collections.

        Their “party” rails against the 2nd because they don’t want us armed. They have no problem with their own ilk having guns.

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    2. Not really.

      A -nationwide- Left movement produced….

      -One- active dipstick, and a swarm of poo flinging howler monkeys.

      One.

      Nationwide.

      “Something Big”.

      Random Chicago thugs kill far more folks on the average weekend. Every weekend.

      And these geeenioussses come up with -one- a-hole who can and will shoot? While the rest do exactly… what? No one scooped up the weapon. No one did jack Squat that meant anything. The Feddies bagged the schmuck in under 35 hours, which means

      a) it left the trail of a club-footed cow, and

      b) multiple folks gave it up. Including friends/associates/family

      These Leftroid folks are -lame-. Losers. (Makes L hand sign on forehead.) Their efforts do -nothing- much to advance their own cause, and very much to advance -ours-. We should be thanking the Almighty daily that our supposed “foes” are such pointless pathetic powerless -dweebs-.

      I spend most weekends on a gun range. I know scores of veterans. I can think of any number of folks that could sneak in unobserved, get a round off unobserved, and sneak out unobserved. or quintuple Rittenhouse’s bodycount.

      Any day ending in Y.

      Folks have -no- idea…..

      And -I- was an 11B tasked as a freaking -clerk-, thirty five years ago. And I am -not- terribly good at this stuff, compared to what I see any given weekend.

      Want to see -riflemen-? Go to any NRA “Highpower Rifle” match, and watch men (and women!) blasting a 12 inch 10 ring at 600 yards, with -iron sights-. (no scope) The tie-breaking X-ring is 6 inches, at 600 yards. That is a cantaloupe, or another sort of “melon”.

      Want to see pistol-fu? Attend a big IDPA match. Watch the top talent at a State championship. or heck, Cowboy Action Shooting with 19th century toys.

      Sure some of the Left play those games. Not many. Not nearly -enough-, and for some reason those actual skilled Left folks seem to be… self restrained for some reason.

      becasue they can count maybe?

      Yeah. The ordinary chump Lefties are real bad. Uh huh. Be sure to teach them what to say when the Revolution comes.

      Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

      (Spit)

      Now Let Not Your Hearts be Troubled. Carry on.

      Liked by 1 person

  24. Somebody posted after this wonderful but depressing blog that they , the big they will find out Charlie was a moderate. Yes he was. That’s one of the horrors. He was a moderate. I watched his clips and loved how he would try to reason with and talk to people. Again thats one of the horrors.

    Liked by 2 people

  25. I prayerfully hope that we do not see another hot civil war.

    I do know my history, though – before the first one, there was also a long cold civil war, fought in the halls of Congress, the Courts, and the media of the time, before the first shot that started the official hot war was ever fired.

    The cold civil war of that time also saw hot spots, just like today – John Brown, the Kansas-Missouri raids, etc.

    I do try to keep up my optimism, but some days it is quite difficult.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. The Reader posted this on X in response to an ESR post stating the ‘center – left’ was the only force left to avoid a civil war. https://x.com/esrtweet/status/1966873550918124014

      ‘The ‘moderate’ left has already been cancelled and / or threatened into silence. Your only hope is that the cancel campaign the right has mounted claims enough victims fired / censured for their atrocious words that the moderate right keeps its hand off the switch.’

      Liked by 3 people

        1. The Reader is open to calling out the vile comments of leftists in positions of public trust (politicians, educators, health care professionals, etc.) with the aim of getting them removed from those positions something other than cancellation. Suggestions welcome.

          Like

          2. Firing for cause. I have been the man in the position to do the hiring and firing (everything but signing my own paycheck) a few times before. Calling for the death of anyone for any reason is something worth paying attention to. As a representative of that company (and even off the clock, if it’s public it has links to the company) causes damage to the brand.

            The sane position is to keep politics out of the workplace. Campaigning and whatever is fine- outside of the shop. But celebrating the death of a political opponent is not cool. There are rules in nigh every employer to nip this sort of thing in the bud.

            Cancel culture is politically motivated. You can call it that if you want, but it taints the picture. Take Dylan Mulvaney for example. Cancel culture? The brand lost a massive chunk of market share that they have yet to recover. Millions or billions lost. Calling that just cancel culture doesn’t give the full picture.

            Now, that said I am morally certain that some of those firings very would could be cancel culture. But as an employer, when an employee is throwing shade and getting negative press for the company in the process, it is on the employer to address the issue. I never fired anyone for their politics or hired them for same. Only competence matters.

            Part of being competent is being professional and having some common sense in public. If your customers cannot trust you to be professional and impartial on the job, you are going to lose customers. Would you trust an ER nurse that cheered for a murderer? I would not.

            To a lesser degree, I wouldn’t quite trust a salesman to give me a fair deal if I knew he knew my politics and was on record as being violently opposed to them and cheering for the death of one on my side.

            To add to that, sometimes you need to set an example. Firing the worst offender can cool off a few other hotheads. As an employer, most of us aren’t in the business of political agitation. We sell things, make things to sell, provide a service or whathaveyou. That’s the job. Getting involved in current issue politics is a bad idea.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. Regarding the penultimate paragraph of your post, there are quite a few medical personnel who are participating in the dancing on CK’s grave, many of which have been shown the door by their employer for it out of self-defense if nothing else.

              If the person doing a procedure or service has been publicly gleeful about CK’s death, should any procedure/service they perform not succeed any medical facility that knowingly kept on that particular grave dancer may have to talk with lawyers to prove that the person’s opinions didn’t negatively affect the outcome of the procedure/service because the patient was (or was believed to be) “right-wing”.

              Unpleasant corollary: There are those who agree with the grave dancers, but have enough self control to not say anything about it where the public might come across it.

              Liked by 2 people

        2. Well, that’s literally what it is–but a righteous one. It’s unfortunate that the term is tarred by the left’s vile behavior…after all, that was its origin…but it’s what we’ve got. (If I could think of a better thing to call it, I would, but so far I haven’t managed)

          Like

      2. I am hoping that the ranks of the Dissident Left (Rowling, etc) will swell in the weeks to come. Heck, I’m hearing now that Will Stancil, who not long ago was spouting inflammatory rhetoric with the worst of them, is starting to realize the current push to whitewash Robinson is absurd.

        Liked by 2 people

      3. The “center” Left only kills those who, like Charlie, actively oppose them. The far Left kills anyone that stops applauding them.

        People like Bill Maher will wake up some day and realize that they are actually on the “right” side. (Hopefully – I’m sure that some far Leftists are dreaming right now about how they are going to silence him permanently.)

        Liked by 2 people

          1. It’s WordPress. Too many links, too long a post, use of the unknown badthink keywords, and we must not forget, the phase of the/a moon. Since it’s WP, it’s likely one with the gas giants. Suggestions come to mind…

            Like

  27. “occasional outbreaks of violence, always from the left. (Or some crazy people, okay?)”

    There’s a Venn diagram in this statement somewhere, I swear, but all I see is a single circle. Okay, okay, in all seriousness. Suspense and tension tend to create self-fulfilling prophecy. Let’s not bury ourselves too deep in that. Preparations are good things in general. Extra shelf stable food for emergencies. Spare clothes and blankets. Emergency planning, like gathering points if the house is on fire/flooded/etc.

    Even more, planning your route so you don’t go walking down suspicious alleyways, or miss a bus stop if you have to take pubtran. Avoiding sketchy looking people on the road, keeping a supply of essential medication (in date medication, so rotate your stock as often as you rotate the cat) and so on. Keep a decent medkit around and take some first aid courses. Get to know your neighbors and cow orkers (typo, but eh, it’ll stand). All this stuff is prep 101 more or less.

    Monitor your mental health, too. It’s not just the physical health that can hurt you. Depression lies. It gives you no agency but all of the blame. It makes you feel powerless and weak. And it highlights all sorts of things that support it while keeping the actual good things in the shadows. Depression sucks.

    Now then, are there threats out there? Most assuredly. Incitements to violence are well known as of now. They were in the 1970s, too.

    Some of us are old enough to remember the 70s. Others, students of history know it too. The RAF. If that doesn’t sound familiar, that was the brainchild of Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof that bombed a department store and a Us military barracks in Frankfurt. The Weather Underground. That one should be well known by now, too. The BLA (not BLM). Black September. The Japanese Red Army. And more.

    For a while, it seemed like not a week could go by without a bombing, an assassination, or a kidnapping if not some combination of the three. There weren’t mandatory minimum sentences, so some bad actors skated out of prison obscenely quickly as I recall.

    There was chaos and disorder happening pretty much on the daily. And the perpetrators of these acts? Many came from good homes and families. Hardly abused and poor little waifs, lashing out in ignorance. Nope. Almost to a man they were revolutionary left. Communist, Socialist, Marxist and so on.

    Left wing violence, riots, and assassinations are not new. But out of the insanity of the 1970s, we got Ronald Reagan. Because of Reagan, we got the economic boom that gave the struggling engine of the American economy a shot of Nitrous and hammered the gas to the floor. Out of that, we got the 90s and the dotcom boom.

    For every day that passes there will still be trials. We human beans are not made for a lazy life. We need to test ourselves against something to make something of ourselves. There are endless things to devote our time and purposeful effort to. Things like eradicating disease and cancer. Things like improving technology that enhances our daily lives. Things like teaching our children the things we wish we knew at that age. Even things as simple and difficult as being the most moral and upright person we can possibly be.

    Charlie Kirk made it his work to open dialogue with the left. A mighty task indeed, that one, and one he succeed well in the doing. So much so, he was hated and feared for it. He did not flinch at the difficulties and invective. Nor should we. Whatever task it is we set ourselves, let us put our efforts into it with the same courage and calm heart.

    Calm, because fear and hatred are the calling card of the left. We can only control ourselves, each and every one of us. In the heat of the moment, a calm heart and steady hand gives others around us reassurance. The fact that there are evil little goblins in human form out there should not stop us from living as we must.

    Pet the cats. Feed the kids (and the husband/wife). Clean the bathroom. Check your oil and get your car ready for winter. Do the things that make a difference. Keep your head on a swivel, sure, but know that you’re not alone. We’re all in this mess together. Which reminds me, I need to clean the bathroom myself soon. His orangeness needs a bath soon, and a brushing to keep the tangles out.

    Y’all keep straight out there. There’s things what need doing and each and every one of us knows what they are in our lives. Let’s get to it.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. The radicals of the 60s and 70s were -far- more effective than todays nincompoops, and we still have our republic.

      granted, we still have work to do. But we are still discussing it, and actioning it, as voters, not combatants.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. this to be honest

        it is not that we have more try hards cooking off under the influence of psych meds than we did twenty years ago

        It is the combination of left politics now, and mainstreaming the disturbed into mental health politics as identity.

        This is pretty much stupid ill people, listening to other people as to how to shape their violent fixations.

        The 1960s and 1970s explicitly political crazies had enough left of their brains to learn how to make bombs.

        Now we do have disturbed engineering students, but either they are too incompetent to make bombs, or they are sensible enough to not fall for the current crap.

        Insert historical quote on the topic of “kids these days are too soft and degenerate”

        maybe, just maybe, the kids are all right

        (okay, I am apparently mainlining the optimism, and none too rigorous in my writing this week, but still)

        Liked by 1 person

        1. KGB and related folks had a huge budget and more “True Believers” compared to current foreign hostiles.

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  28. Church was packed yesterday. Every pew was full. The priest surely knew that we were there for Charlie, for a Christian martyr, but he didn’t say a word about Charlie. He spoke of the cross, how Jesus suffered and died for us because he loved us. He was speaking not about Charlie, but what Charlie believed in.

    On X, I’ve seen post after post from people whose churches were packed on Sunday. There’s a sense of shifting, where what Larry Correia called “normies” are waking up to the reality of the evil we face. There’s more of us than them, by a lot. By hundreds of millions.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. MomRed was in church on Sunday and said it was well-attended and people were very receptive to the anthem and homily. (I was in class, in the Metromess).

      Like

      1. Means that the churches now have a responsibility to preach the Gospel without flinching or temporizing, so as to not waste the opportunity Kirk gave them.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. From comments elsewhere, it sounds like more than a few churches are failing in their duty to Him and their flocks, with sermons that either ignore the issue entirely, are fairly generic against murder, or not even hinting at CK’s murder being an issue.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. I think attendance at Mass was somewhat heavier than usual. The homily revolved about both current events and the Triumph of the Cross.

        Like

    4. I did the beans & rice dropoff for the Gospel Mission, and the kitchen workers brought up Charlie. They. Were. Not. Happy. But leaving it to God for followthrough.

      For various reasons, I’m no longer a churchgoer, but if anybody’s old enough to recall the Rick O’Shay comic strip, I’ll channel Hipshot Percussion (I know. The Names! It gets worse for other characters…) and go off a bit and have a conversation with God. Not as often as I should, but I try.

      Liked by 2 people

    5. The priest at my Saturday afternoon/evening Mass (small rural parish in downstate Illinois) said only that “we’ve all seen some terrible violent acts in the news recently, and I won’t go into detail about them,” but we need to remember that our only salvation is in Christ and His Cross. Attendance did seem to be a bit higher than usual as well, this parish takes in several rural communities in a roughly 25-30 mile radius.

      Like

  29. I have no clue how it’s even possible to imagine this.

    Dowd is a blue bubble kid, as evidenced by the fact he runs in Kennedy family circles – he is supposed to be considering popping the question to his squeeze Maria Shriver to be his third wife. That’s solidly in “everybody I know” territory of the elite blue upper-east-side/Georgetown “View of the World from 9th Avenue” bubble dwellers.

    It would be astonishing if he thought differently.

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    1. Note that his running off at the pie hole with unfiltered thoughts would seem to put his judgement in question for the realm of politics, but his thinking that is no surprise whatsoever.

      And he had more spewing forth during that broadcast that was solidly in the “he deserved it of course” thematic landscape.

      The thing for me, aside from his well deserved defenestration, is that he exposed exactly what the blue bubble kids really think.

      Like

    2. the surprising matter is that /MSNBC/ fired him

      one of my thoughts on processing it, was that meme from the crappy movie abomination of an adaptation of Heinlein’s artistic genius, “it is afraid”.

      someone somewhere with money in the media business is either a decent human being, or has done some polls and made a utilitarian calculation

      We could see some sort of market collapse for funding the leftwing agitprop and activism. But, I do really know nothing

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Many of their main sources of funding have been cut. Notable rich dudes pulled finding (too tired to look them up), their government money laundering op- one of them, anyway- was cut, and this causes snags downstream. Big companies are not being forced or heavily influenced to donate to leftist causes (note the smallest “pride” participation).

        I believe your latter supposition, the utilitarian calculation, may be the larger factor. Leftism continues to be a positional good for a certain sector of the socioeconomic and credentialed class, nonetheless. I believe there is also an element of “wait for the heat to cool down” before starting to push that envelope again.

        As well I have no evidence, but plenty of theory based on scraps I’ve heard here and there.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. My understanding is that MSNBC has been separated from NBC and is getting a new owner. One suspects the new guy doesn’t want more of the same fecal matter on TV.

        Like

        1. MSNBC has been cut off from the resources of the NBC News operation, which were used all these years to keep the inflatable pool inflated. As the sides collapse and the water leaks out, the pool gets shallower and shallower, and the remaining pool party gets smaller and smaller, until it’s Rachel splashing alone in the last puddle.

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  30. Does anyone remember that viral video, back in the day, where you were told to “watch the basketball ” so you watched the basketball? Then at the end they asked, “did you see the gorilla?” Most people didn’t. But then when they went back and watched it over, lo and behold, a guy in a gorilla suit walked across the entire court while everyone else was playing basketball. But they didn’t see him because they were watching the basketball like they were told.

    More and more people every day are seeing the gorilla. Last week he had a confirmed hit.

    This happened in milque toast Utah, where we are now discovering there is an active trans-militancy group training up fighters.

    Don’t forget to check for gorillas in your neck of the woods.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I remember it. The video had a few other tricks, like having one team in white shirts while the other team was in black shirts, and asking you to count the number of passes the team in white shirts made. So your brain automatically started filtering out anyone wearing black… and then the guy in a black gorilla costume did the moonwalk across the video while you were mentally filtering him out because he was wearing black.

      In other words, the same technique as the ninja in some Japanese stage plays. They have stagehands wearing black (including black gloves) moving props around while the colorfully-costumed actors are acting out the scenes. This is done for things like special effects: the actor gestures, and the table on the other side of the room is flipped over by the stagehand standing by the table. The audience is mentally filtering out the stagehands, voluntarily participating in the suspension of disbelief that the stagehands aren’t actually there, and the guy flipped the table over by magic and/or the power of his chi. And then one of the stagehands pulls out a prop knife and stabs one of the actors. Shock! Gasp! Where did that guy come from? He wasn’t there a moment ago! (Even though he was standing in plain sight). Those ninja and their magical invisibility powers…!!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. What’s really hilarious about the ninja stagehand comparison was that I wrote about that many years ago in response to the meme about Viking hats having helmets because a set designer for Wagnerian opera decided that the Ring Cycle needed the horns to really stand out on stage. I don’t know if other people passed the idea around or independently came up with it, but it’s now common to mention that.

        Actual ninjas dressed as the least likely person to be noticed, so ninjas would basically be walking around in t-shirts and jeans these days. Gorillas indeed.

        Like

        1. Hence why so many archetypical ninja weapons are things that look like peasants’ tools, just slightly modified. Nunchaku / nunchucks? Why, that’s just the flail for threshing my grain, Mr. Samurai. Not a weapon at all, no sir. This? That’s not a kusarigama, it’s just a sickle for harvesting the wheat. (Casually kicks the detachable chain a little further under the haystack). Blowpipe? Just a piece of bamboo, nothing to see here. And so on.

          Liked by 2 people

  31. For myself, I believe that the murder of Charlie Kirk was the absolute last straw. The murder of that poor girl on public transport, the school shooting at a Catholic school — this on top of massive and ongoing unhappiness and resentment over how the covid epidemic was handled, on top of having basically a cold civil war that has been going on since the boom and bust of the Tea Party … that murder was the straw that broke, for a lot of people, who weren’t even politically active. The pebble that started the avalanche.

    As to where everything goes after this week … uncharted territory, people. But things couldn’t continue going on as they were. Some event would have precipitated the avalanche.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. I also saw on Yoo-Toob that a woman walking her dog in a park was murdered and hacked to pieces by yet another violent criminal that’s been in and out of jail for years.

      Like

  32. Anyone looking for a professional diagnosis of how things might go, there is Tom Kratman’s Substack take on it.

    Like

      1. And maybe someday the bookstores will have “The Romanov Rising.”

        One of the points of indie publishing is that it frees us from having to care what the bookstores and their employees are willing to carry.

        As far back as the 90s, there were instances of bookstore employees bragging that they didn’t recommend books by “conservatives”, and were known to hide them out of sight until they could be sent back as “unsold”. It really took off during the W administration.

        Liked by 2 people

  34. The comment that got WPDE Purgatory’d linked to a Yoo-Toob video of Charlie Kirk debating Yet Another “I support gun rights BUT…”

    It ends with the inevitable “But, but, you need a license to drive a car!”

    I say unto those “BUTs”:

    1. Show me where in the Constitution you are guaranteed the right to drive a car.
    2. You want a DGS (Department of Gun Safety) that’s as efficient and convenient as the DMV? (Sarcasm, in case they didn’t pick up on that)
    3. All that licensing and registration turns out to be pretty F-ing useless. More people are killed by cars than by guns. Many of them by drunk drivers, which is illegal. Gee, it’s almost like criminals don’t obey laws or something.

    Like

    1. Eh, I can think of one way in which requiring a driver’s license is useful. It forces you to pass a competency test before operating heavy machinery at high speeds surrounded by hundreds of strangers also operating heavy machinery at high speeds. I’m kind of glad that teenagers aren’t (usually) getting behind the wheel of a car without having to pass a competency test first, proving they can drive it without endangering other people.

      The analogy to guns doesn’t carry over, because 99.98% of law-abiding gun owners never fire their guns “in public” (i.e. outside the training range). (I omit criminals from this discussion, because they wouldn’t follow the law anyway). If a particular gun owner can’t hit the broad side of a barn, that does not affect my safety in the slightest if he only fires his gun at the range (where the RSO can at least make sure he’s firing it in the right direction). So competency tests and licensing are irrelevant to 99.98% of situations. Whereas with cars, nearly every car owner will end up driving it in public, usually daily. I am much more likely to be endangered by a car owner than by a gun owner, even when you include criminals who own guns in that latter statistic. But that doesn’t mean the licensing is useless, because how do you know how many dangerous drivers are prevented from endangering the public by the licensing and registration? And, more relevantly, how many teenagers are forced to take a driving course, who might otherwise have said “Eh, I’m good at Mario Kart, how hard can it be?” and jumped behind the wheel and endangered people. (Teenagers not being known for their good judgement…)

      Like

      2. Prior coworker from Taiwan went to grad school in Texas, got a learners permit there, but never took the driving test. On moving to California for a job she brought said permit to the CA DMV, and they issued her a CA drivers license.

        She never took a driving test.

        Her on the road skills were as one would expect.

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      3. Based on my recent experiences, I’d be accepting of a requirement to retake the written test for every renewal, and perhaps the road test every other. There are far, far too many people out there who have no business being in control of said massive machinery.

        Like

          2. At least around here, it seemed to get much worse after Covid, as if people a) forgot how to drive after spending so much time stuck at home and b) they had lost patience with their fellow humans and expected everyone else on the road to bend to their every whim.

            Like

    2. As to #1, I believe that one is covered by the 10th Amendment. Granted it’s not specifically called out, but its in there.

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      1. It also gets a mighty assist from the “Full Faith and Credit” clause…. or should. I’ve been saying for years that if TX has to recognize CA marriage licenses, CA should have to honor TX CHLs.

        Liked by 4 people

        1. I like the way you’re thinking about that. Of course even with reciprocity, the rights to carry in various circumstances vary wildly in different states.

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          1. Agree.

            CA is so bad that one legally carrying a locked concealed weapon well out of the reach of anyone in the vehicle can be arrested with a felony and weapon confiscated which now “legally” cannot be returned because of the felony record.

            Do not think it has passed the house or senate, let alone gotten to President Trump’s desk to be signed but being worked on: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/38 H.R.38 – Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act

            Like

            1. You think that’s bad? There’s a law in Kalifornia prohibiting ammunition sales for a week before certain holidays, like the 4th of July, to prevent people from shooting in the air.

              They actually believe idiots are going to plan something that stupid in advance. “Whoops, 4th of July is coming up, gotta buy some bullets to shoot in the air!”

              No, dumbasses, any shooting in the air is done with ammo they’ve had for years.

              “But we Passed A Law! to Make People Safer!”

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Matthew Dowd was suggesting Kirk was killed by a stray bullet fired in the air by a Republican supporter….

                Like

                  2. Thinkers of party truth do not think like regular people, for Bob definitions (1) of regular people.

                    Bob definition regular thinkers try to integrate, build connection, and test ideas against each other.

                    A naive rote party truther might memorize ideas like they were written on scraps of paper, and spaced on a checkers board.

                    Anyway, he may have needed a very structured environment to pass for functioning in.

                    alternatively, he may have smoked too much ecstasy and Coca-Cola. (3)

                    (1) I don’t know what regular people would be, but I would guess a population where, say, Mike Houst and Ian Bruene are within a standard deviation of the mean. (2)

                    (2) IE, my calibration is almost certainly wildly off, and I only have a vague idea of where I would begin to correct.

                    (3) Yes, I know that I have the usage and effects of these completely wrong. I was bored by the idea of picking a common and real recreational substance that jellies brains.

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              2. They want to pass a law, how about making a law removing any shred of “accidental” from something resulting from that.

                Call it the “Ignorance of the Law of Gravity Is No Excuse” ACT.,

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                1. I strongly approve of the term ‘negligent discharge’ because if you simply follow the 4 Rules, you won’t have any ‘accidents’.

                  Anybody smart enough to tie their own shoes can learn and understand the 4 Rules.

                  Liked by 1 person

                2. Some states already have such a law on the books, e.g. https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-39/chapter-13/part-1/section-39-13-103/

                  Reckless endangerment is “recklessly engag[ing] in conduct that places or may place another person in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury.” Rest of this comment is a quote from the rest of the law:

                  (1) Reckless endangerment is a Class A misdemeanor.

                  (2) Reckless endangerment committed with a deadly weapon is a Class E felony.

                  (3) Reckless endangerment by discharging a firearm or antique firearm into a habitation, as defined under § 39-14-401, is a Class C felony, unless the habitation was unoccupied at the time of the offense, in which event it is a Class D felony.

                  (4) Reckless endangerment by discharging a firearm from within a motor vehicle, as defined by § 55-1-103, is a Class C felony.

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                3. Left a comment that was slapped into moderation, probably because it had terms like w*ap*n and f*re*rm in it. Short version is: Tennessee already has such a law on the books. Shoot into the air and you’ll be charged with reckless endangerment with a d*adly w*ap*n, a class E felony. (Reckless endangerment is a Class A misdemeanor normally, but graduates to a class E felony if a g*n is involved). And if you’re shooting at a house, it jumps to class C unless it was empty at the time in which case it’s “only” a class D.

                  Liked by 1 person

              3. Rolls eyes. What’s to stop anyone from self loading just before said holidays? 😁🤷

                Also just proves that current laws don’t stop any idiot from buying a gun. Discharging a firearm on certain holidays I can understand. That isn’t the problem. Discharging a firearm aimlessly into the air? Is flat out against safe firearm handling. Whomever pulls this deserves to lose firearm privileges. Moronic Idiots. (I know redundant.)

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                1. It seems to be a popular way to clean out the gene pool on the male side of Bedouin wedding parties, among other places. (And I giggled so hard in the movie Independence Day when the media in LA pleaded with Angelinos not to shoot into the air in welcome.)

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    3. Copied and stored, with credit. Not sure where I’ll use it, yet. But sure that chance will come up. Great comeback. Only thing I would add is the constitutional right to travel is not a counter argument to requiring a drivers license. After all if do not have a drivers license you can take the airplane, train, bus, bicycle, ride a horse, and even walk/run. Countered with ID for planes and trains. No tests for those. (I know. The “but -isms” won’t stop.)

      Like

    4. Ask them if they want a DMV that’s as easy and convenient as getting a CCW in any Dem run state. Here in CT, the DMV went to an appointment only model, and in general I’ve found it’s quicker and more responsive than the old show-up-and-wait model. But trying to get a CCW is hell. My husband tried after he retired from the Navy, if only so he would have security companies as an employment option, and the town lost his application (although they cashed the check). After getting approval at the town level, then you have to apply to the state police (with another payment).

      And right now, you have to pass the pistol permit classes in order to own and carry a contact-only stun gun. Since I’m as (if not more) worried about four legged critters as two (we’ve seen bobcats on our street, coyotes in front of our house and they will come up to people – idiots probably feed them, bears within a few hundred yards on reservoir property, and mountain lions within just a few miles), I might as well get the pistol if I have to go through the same hoops.

      Like

  35. So I’ve been pondering very long on why the revolutionary war ended so well compared to most of the world, and I’ve concluded that a key element (besides having VERY intelligent, moral leaders plotting it) was that government remained. The local and state governments provided stability as much as possible in the communities.

    Eventually a new national government was formed that replaced England as the supreme governing body, with very specific powers and remainder retained by the states.

    ACW was similar in that most, not all, areas remained somewhat under local government control unless there was an active front.

    Since now it seems the leftists flock to the cities the map looks like the measles and I fear if we go live it will be more like the wars of the roses with every city and county embattled. Not a pretty picture.

    On a side thought, being a Utahn, my neighbors used to claim Utah wouldn’t be involved because we are nice to each other. But I believe the assassination shows that a culture of niceness doesn’t protect people from crazies going off the reservation, it might even encourage it.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. The leftist underbelly of Utah is UGLY. More vile and twisted than most, I think, because it’s relatively small and cultivates itself in opposition to a healthier, more conservative overculture than in any state that’s known for its leftist loons. It’s actually not much of a surprise to me that Utah produced the guy that assassinated Charlie Kirk.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. I left Utah on 2022.

      I got tired of being told I HAD to vote for xyz because “tolerance,” and then those same people were shocked when xyz candidate did exactly what they said they would do. Lethal kindness, maybe. Toxic acceptance.

      Not much better here, but at least I’m not stuck in a city where I have to put up with the nonsense.

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  36. Once the mobbing and mob violence get started, people get killed because someone else envies them and riles up a crowd against them as much as for anything else.

    Or re Shakespeare:

    “I am Cinna the poet! Cinna the poet!”

    “Slay him for his bad verses!”

    (from Julius Caesar)

    Well-put, ma’am. Now into the comments gallery! 😁

    Liked by 1 person

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