Takeaways

First these fuckers wanted to take away our guns.

Now they’re after our trucks.

“As that chrome grille closed on me like a man-eating Norelco shaver, time slowed. It seemed I was watching myself from afar, being nimble for a man my age, darting from the path of a towering, limousine-black pickup with temporary plates, whose driver barely checked his pace.”

LOL.  And some people take this shit seriously.

And then the best part:

Now we have a grown man who saw a scary truck and thus wants to impose European neutering standards in order for him to feel protected.

Yeah, let’s have the Euroweenies tell us how to build pickup trucks:

You know, I’ve only ever owned one full-size pickup, a 2002 Ford F-150:

…and the only reason I sold it was because when I did the weekly fill-up of the F-150 and the Suburban, I could move the share price of Texaco a full point.

Now I don’t need a pickup truck anymore, but when I read bullshit like the above, I get a “Beto” reaction (when some asshole tells me I can’t have something, I want to go straight out and get one.)  I bet that truck sales are going to increase, just like the sales of AR-15s exploded after O’Rourke’s pronouncement.

After all, nobody needs one of these assault trucks, do they?

Liberals never learn.  Fucking morons.

Blacklists Matter

Over the past weekend I watched Trumbo, the story of the Marxist screenwriter blacklisted by Hollywood during the Red Scare back in the 1950s.  To say that I watched it with a jaundiced eye would be a very big understatement, because I suspected (just from the trailer) that the movie would just be one big blowjob for both Dalton Trumbo and his merry little band of Commiesymps who infested Hollywood back then.

And it was.  Needless to say, the movie made villains of the conservatives who opposed the Marxist infiltration:  people like John Wayne and Hedda Hopper in particular, Wayne because Wayne, and Hopper because she had a son serving in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War.  Of course Wayne was made out to be a bully and Hopper a vindictive bitch — and the Senators and Congressmen who haled the Commies in front of the Senate and House Un-American Committee (HUAC) were depicted as ideological purists who saw Communists behind every bush — even though, in the case of Hollywood, there were Commies behind every bush at the time.

Of course, much was made of the fact that being a Communist wasn’t actually illegal (then, and now), and Trumbo made a great show of this being a First Amendment issue — which it was — and how these Commies all wanted to improve America, but of course there were evil right-wingers like Wayne, Joe McCarthy and HUAC harassing them at every turn.

The execution of the traitors Julius and Ethel Rosenberg got a little puff piece in the movie, which didn’t — couldn’t — actually say they weren’t not guilty of treason espionage, so it was brushed over with the throwaway that it was the first execution for esionage in peace time, as though peace time should give espionage a pass.  And if that wasn’t enough, the Rosenberg children were paraded around as sympathy magnets — as they still are — because Communists have no problem using children to serve their own purposes.

Anyway, it all ended well because a few courageous moviemakers flouted the blacklist and finally posted Trumbo’s name in the screenwriting credits for Exodus and Spartacus.

Which brings me to my main point.  I think we can all agree that blacklists are iniquitous — essentially, blacklists mandate the suppression of people’s livelihoods just for holding unpopular opinions or beliefs.  It’s a good thing that Trumbo never wrote the word “nigger”, “queer” or “lesbo” in any of his screenplays, or else his work would be on another blacklist, this time drawn up by the humorless and wokey censors that are everywhere prevalent in show business, academia, government and corporations.  (That these sensitive, censorious souls are proud to call themselves Communists — I’m sorry, democratic socialists or anti-fascists — is an occasion for mirth, irony and satire, but of course ideologues, Marxists most of all, are characterized by a singular lack of a sense of humor.)

So here we are, in a full circle:  people are denied consideration for employment for their political beliefs;  employers get rid of people with contrary political beliefs;  and institutions are being forced to implement policies that parrot the “party line” or The Narrative (take your pick).

But here’s the essential difference between the 1950s-era blacklist and that of the 2010s.  When people fought back against Communism encroachment into the American polity and culture, it wasn’t because they were “fascists”  or “right-wingers”;  it was because the truths of life under Communism were everywhere to be seen:  gulags and the KGB in the Soviet Union, poverty, murder and corruption in socialist Third World countries, and rampant misery in all — all — the countries behind the Iron Curtain.  There was a very good reason to prevent Communism from taking hold here.

Now?  There are no examples of actual “fascism” in America, and to any Black person from the 1880s through the 1950s, the wokeist accusations of modern-day “systemic racism” would cause loud laughter and a shaking of the head.  The only ills that modern-day Communism would seek to cure are largely imaginary, a product of a mindset that demands “safe spaces”, “freedom from hate” and “Black(-only) Lives Matter”.

One thing that does interest me, purely as an intellectual exercise:  would the late Dalton Trumbo agree with what’s going on with the modern-day blacklist?  If he didn’t — assuming he could see the parallels between his predicament in the 1950s with “wrongthinkers” of today — I would hope that he’d employ the same passionate arguments and his legendary scorn against today’s blacklist as he did for his own.

If, however, Trumbo didn’t come out against today’s blacklist and even supported its aims, then I would suggest that his blacklisting in the 1950s was fully justified.

Quote Of The Day

From the Z-man:

“[E]galitarianism inevitably flips the natural order on its head, elevating the bottom over all else.  The ideological enforcers in the human resource department are no different from the ideological enforcers in communism.  These people are not selected for their skill, but their stupidity.  They are too stupid to contemplate what they are doing.  Instead, they puff out their chests and stiffen their backs for having memorized the latest party fads.”

Next time you have any  dealings with some self-important H.R. flunky, feel free to use the parts of the above which are appropriate, because it’s absolutely true.  Totalitarianism doesn’t run on evil, but on the stupidity of its apparatchiks.

Un-Summarizable

It’s not often that I can read an article without being able to summarize it with a few words or sentences, but this post by The Captain is one of the exceptions.  Here’s but an excerpt, but there’s so much more gunny goodness:

To begin with, it’s always been a myth that the police were there for protection. Regular readers, and most other educated men and women, already know about cases Warren versus D.C. and Castle Rock versus Gonzales. There are more, but these two cases demonstrate that police are not duty bound to offer anyone protection.
But at least it’s a myth that many people have believed. The riots, looting, pillaging, beatings and murders of late have convinced many uninformed folks that maybe they do need protection in lieu of police. In short, that myth has been shattered.

And it gets better, wif grafs and stuff.

Bad Choices, Lousy Consequences

It’s not often that a post falls into so many of my categories (see above), but this one certainly does:

Actions have consequences. So do inactions. Just ask Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.  Walz had asked the federal government for $500 million to help the city of Minneapolis rebuild after riots destroyed or damaged more than 1500 buildings. The government refused.

Excuse me for a moment…

Ooooh, the Schadenboner is great with this one — all the more so when we hear the sniffling and whining:

“The Governor is disappointed that the federal government declined his request for financial support,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s office said in a statement. “As we navigate one of the most difficult periods in our state’s history, we look for support from our federal government to help us through.”

…and the response:

In a statement, a FEMA rep confirmed the request had been denied, saying it was determined that “the impact to public infrastructure is within the capabilities of the local and state governments to recover from.”

Yup.  You fucking loony Lefties thought you could fuck around and play your little utopian games without consequences, and now you’re going to have to pay for the repairs yourselves.

And for those who think that this will cause Trump to lose Minnesota in November:  the people who are in the deepest shit now weren’t going to vote for Trump anyway, and the right-thinking people of Minnesota are probably just as pissed off with Walz and his cronies as everyone outside the state is.  In the cold-blooded electoral calculus, this will probably turn out to help Trump, not only in Minnesota but everywhere else.  The Left needs to have the effects of their lunacy and misgovernment rubbed in their noses good and hard, and most of all, publicly.

Wait till New York hands in its bill… if they have the nerve to do so, after this.

In the meantime, I’m going to have a couple-three quiet lunchtime cocktails of this stuff.