Author: Kim du Toit

Simple Answers

Politics, The Gun Thing

Over at The Daily Wire, Matt Walsh asks:

Why Does The Media Care More About The Parkland Shooting Than It Ever Did About Las Vegas?

Well, that’s an easy one. While the Vegas shooter killed far more people than did the adolescent mope in Parkland, the Vegas victims weren’t children, ergo no outrage could be stoked up and turned into anti-gun hysteria. (And to be brutally frank, the fact that the Vegas victims were country music fans — i.e. more likely to be Deplorables or people from Flyover Country — made them  just statistics as far as the Left was concerned. Conservatives weren’t going to be converted to the anti-gun side, but with children as victims… well, all bets were off.)

Also, the Vegas shooter’s motives were, and remain inscrutable because he’s dead: he was just a lone nutcase (and maybe a Democrat, just like Steven Scalise’s would-be assassin), and anything could have triggered him off to plan so large-scale a shooting. More to the point: every single gun he purchased and used for his mayhem was purchased quite legally, and no laws — existing or projected — could have stopped him (short of a wholesale gun ban and confiscation). And he was an adult, so none of the usual hooks was going to work. The only thing the media could get a fingernail on was “bump stocks” — something which keen gun guys knew about, but few others. Banning bump stocks was never going to ruffle anyone’s hairstyle, and even a failure to ban the stupid things couldn’t be used to tar the gun industry because it’s quite useless to rave about something used by about 0.00001% of the population.

But a screwed-up kid with an AR-15, and innocent chilluns gunned down in a school? Ooooh, small wonder the anti-gun brigades ordered a general mobilization, because there were so many hooks to hang gun control on: “underage” gun buying, “assault rifle” bogeymen — you name it, there was fodder for the anti-gun movement — which is why they were so quick to organize town meetings, parades and getting the Usual Suspects (Schumer etc.) to drone on and on about how Something Must Be Done No Matter What. And even better, the NRA could be used as a scapegoat much more easily for Parkland than for Vegas, How so? Consider these two statements:

“We should ban assault rifles!”
“No we shouldn’t.”
“Oh, so then you’re in favor of killing country music fans!”

…and:

“We should ban assault rifles!”
“No we shouldn’t.”
“Oh, so then you’re in favor of killing innocent schoolchildren!”

The first argument is risible, the second compelling.

That’s why the media and the anti-gunners have been pretty much shtum about the Vegas shooting, and hair-on-fire screaming about the Parkland tragedy. It really is that simple.

Yeah, I know it’s a cold-blooded and cynical rationale for using one and not the other to further an agenda and to use children as pawns rather than country music fans. But if there’s one thing we know about the Left — in any country — it’s that they pretty much define “cold-blooded and cynical”. The end, for them, always justifies the means.

In the meantime, let’s get the fire lit under the cauldron of oil so we can boil the little Florida fucker to death.

Me, Too

Politics

Perry de Havilland of samizdata and I have had our (slight) differences in the past, but on this topic we are in precise agreement:

The Englishman, for one, still wants to see Heath’s body disinterred, quartered and the skull stuck on a pike outside Traitor’s Gate at the Tower of London.

And if the expression “drone strikes on Brussels” doesn’t give you the Warm & Fuzzies, I don’t want to talk to you anymore.

Science To The Rescue

Men & Women

Here’s another face-palming moment in our modern Zeitgeist:

Women don’t regret a one night stand as long as they made the first move and the person they are sleeping with is good in bed, study finds

And they have even less regret if their random bed partner buys them a new house too. (Okay, that part wasn’t in the study, but it’s not an illogical corollary by any means.)

So if Madame decides to grace some bloke with access to her pudenda, AND he performs like a stud muffin, she is well-pleased. We needed a study to tell us this?

And if she allowed herself to be seduced after a few cocktails and her paramour turned out to be a lousy lover, then she’s filled with remorse and self-loathing and may decide that the whole event was rapey and she needs to call the cops. I mean, making a questionable decision is one thing, but then to have the guy not satisfy Madame? It’s a crime. (And it’s doubleplusungood if he kicks her out and makes her find her own way home…)

I am so glad that I’m past this particular stage of the Sex Wars.

Good Timing

Bad News, Travels

Looks like I picked the right time to stay at The Englishman’s cottage in Boscastle (i.e. in December last year):

Fifteen flood warnings have been issued by the Environment Agency, most of which are concentrated in Cornwall and the south west of England.

And lest anyone think I’m being facetious:

The Boscastle flood of 2004 occurred on Monday, 16 August 2004 in the two villages of Boscastle and Crackington Haven in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The villages suffered extensive damage after flash floods caused by an exceptional amount of rain that fell over eight hours that afternoon. The floods were the worst in local memory. A study commissioned by the Environment Agency… concluded that it was among the most extreme ever experienced in Britain. The peak flow was about 140 m³/s, between 5:00pm and 6:00pm BST.

Granted, the British government has built all sorts of anti-flooding drains and such in Boscastle since then, but I’m still nervous. Government works are not always infallible, as a certain city in the Mississippi delta found out a few years back.

Ripples

Men & Women, Two-Minute Hate

As Loyal Readers know, I have little truck with the doings of the Kardashian coven and their assorted sperm providers, and just ignore stories of their immoral and foul doings.

But every so often a headline will catch my attention en passant, just as a door handle will occasionally catch your sleeve as you’re walking through a doorway (with much the similar degree of irritation, I should add), and one such thing happened to me over the weekend. Here’s the headline:

Kylie Jenner, 20, proudly poses in a thong just one month after giving birth to Stormi

…Kylie being the daughter of matriarch Kris Kardashian Jenner and one-time Olympic hero Bruce (now “Caitlyn”) Jenner, and “Stormi”, of course, being the illiterate invented name the twenty-year-old single mother chose to inflict on her illegitimate daughter. (Just think of all the questionable behaviors contained in that single sentence, and you have an idea of why I think the entire Kardashian-Jenner clan members are such a pox on society.)

And that’s what caught my attention. Regardless of all that immoral foolishness, at some point in time, Caitlyn Jenner is going to be introduced to this baby girl as “Grandpa”. The implications of this event on a young girl’s mind are unfathomable — although no doubt the introduction will be screened on the Kardashian attention-whores’ TV show so we’ll all be witness to the occasion.

Another little burr on my attention noted that Bruce / Caitlyn is all butt-hurt that “she” hasn’t been allowed to meet his / her grandchild yet. Quelle surprise.

And yes, folks: that is the sound of loud hoofbeats thundering in your ears at this moment.

Incomprehensible

Culture

When I were a young lad, I took a course in Art Appreciation, and I have to say it opened up my eyes to art, big time. For the first time I was able to appreciate, truly appreciate, the skill of the old masters — the golden triangle, the use of light and color, how different brushes and brushstrokes worked to create mood, its effect on the history of its time, and all that. My life was changed and enriched, and I look back on the class and its teacher with complete fondness because it opened a door for me, and I walked right on in.

I never got Picasso.

Now granted, I was similarly at a loss when looking at the Blue School, the Modernists (like Klee and Pollock) and what have you; but I always thought that Picasso’s art was wrong: it transformed the human form — and especially that of women — into a caricature, and I’m sorry, but caricature isn’t art, or at least not Fine Art.

And yet Picasso is regarded as one of the Masters by almost everyone. Even his lesser paintings fetch astonishing amounts of money, his life and works are commemorated in terms that border on idolatry, and his style is seen as the end-point, the very denouement of Impressionism; but as hard as I try, I just don’t see it. Here’s one of his most famous works, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon:

…and I know what it is: a depiction of a group of prostitutes in a brothel. And Picasso is looking at them… how? As objects of desire, as depraved women, or as tired working girls? Or is it all three?

Here’s my problem with the piece: it could be any one of those, but his grotesque style makes no statement — it’s left completely up to the audience as to which they see in it.

Now maybe that was his intention, but I have a problem with art that has no artist’s viewpoint, but leaves everything open to interpretation. It’s a cop-out to say, “Well, it’s whatever you want it to be.” My response to that airy nonsense is usually, “I want it to be gone.”

And while I can see why the art world would be immeasurably poorer without the Impressionism of Monet, Gauguin, Renoir, Degas and Van Gogh (to name just some), I just can’t say I feel the same about Picasso.

Feel free to add your thoughts in Comments.