Category: Politics

Trying not to start the public floggings

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.

Real Barbarians

Culture, Politics

So a whole bunch of school districts are going to drop Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn because he uses the word nigger and thus is guilty of doubleplusungood racism and that might hurt the tender sensibilities of someone. The irony, of course, is that Twain almost singlehandedly changed the way the entire United States thought about race, with this very book. But he says the dreaded word nigger so therefore he is eeeevil and must be taken out of the canon. What a bunch of crap.

I was going to write a post about censorship — the fact that the Left and their Social Justice Warrior Brownshirts want to censor everything because [deep breath] raaaaycism / feminism / hurt feewings / patriarchism / White-ism / [enter the hate-motif du jour here]. But then I read this fine article at Gates Of Vienna, which begins thus:

The barbarians are among us. They are not lurking on the right or lower edges of society, they are not among the uneducated or the educationally failed, they do not come from under-developed regions. They are sitting at the levers of influence in art and science, they write in quality publications, discuss at universities, manage art galleries, dominate the talk shows. Nonetheless, they are barbarians, for in their innermost being, they despise art.

I have to tell you, I can’t do better a better job than he has. The fact that this was written by a European (German, no less) makes me feel a little better too, even if he is a lone voice among the Euro-censors. It’s an excellent piece; read all of it.

It’s time these bastards start to realize just what it is that they’re doing to our culture — and if they acknowledge that it’s a conscious act of subversion, then we need to scourge them with pen and tongue (also with whips, but that’s a topic for another time).

Poles Apart

Culture, Funny Stuff, Politics

See, here’s the difference between Lefties and us Deplorables. On the Left, they just blab and blab:

In a tweet, Farrar joked he wanted to drown conservative students. When Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk remarked that the dark tweet was probably a joke, the leftist writer insisted, “I am not joking.”
That was all a part of his particular humor, but it’s understandable why a few did not think it was a joke. He did flat-out say “I’m not joking,” which demands everyone understand his unique sense of humor to know he’s not.

So here are the Deplorables:

Am I serious? Or is this just an example of my  “unique sense of humor”?

Oh, and I’d just like to remind everyone that there is a waiting list, so y’all just have to be patient.

Afterthought:  I’d just like to give a shout-out to the FBI, NSA or any of the Gummint alphabet agencies who might read the above: “Hey, assholes: it’s a joke.”

Maybe.

And just in case you get any ideas of coming after me…

No Surprise

Politics, Two-Minute Hate

So it turns out that a current Brit politician, the scumbag socialist Jeremy Corbyn, was once in the pay of the Communists. As a member of Parliament, the traitorous bastard is supposed to have passed on State secrets to the Commies in exchange for cash, according to the Commie spy who enlisted and paid him (as well as a couple other Labour MPs, by the way).

Needless to say, this revelation has been met with indifference and silence by his fellow-travelers in the BBC.

Both the above, of course, would be familiar to Older Readers who will recall that we had the same situation Over Here when it came to light that Sen. Ted “Swimmer & Traitor” Kennedy had actively been in contact with the Soviets, working to undermine then-President Reagan’s policies — a revelation that was largely ignored by his Commie fellow-travelers in the mainstream media as well.

Were it to be discovered that Republican Senator Bob Dole (for example) had been in similar cahoots with, oh, say ChilePres Pinochet, our ears would still be ringing from the screaming from the Left and Dole would no doubt have been imprisoned.

But selling out to the Commies? Yawn.

As always, my suggestion is simple. In the good old days, traitors were hanged, drawn and quartered. As we now live in a (supposedly) more civilized age, I’ll agree to forego the drawing and quartering, with regret, and just go with the hanging, thus:

Random Fact

Culture, Numbers & Statistics, Politics

I read somewhere recently that about a quarter of the world’s prisoners are incarcerated in America.

Non-Americans are going to draw all sorts of conclusions about this, and most of them will be wrong. Here are the facts.

All the stupid surveys apart, the United States is one of the most free countries in the world — which by the way is why so many inhabitants of shithole countries (to quote some famous guy) want to come and live here.

We take our freedoms seriously, and one of the freedoms we cherish is the freedom to fuck up. Fucking up can be the result of larceny, or failed experimentation, or any such human endeavor which falls outside the usual norms and conventions. This is why we are a leader of innovation in the world — pick an industry, and we’re in there kicking ass — and it’s also why we throw more people in jail: because we are a nation of laws. (Too many laws for my liking, but that’s a rant for another occasion.)

Here’s the best example. Want a gun? Go ahead and get one: there’s a special on S&W revolvers at Academy Surplus. Use it in any way you want: self-defense, plinking at tin cans, target competition, whatever. You’re free to do all that, and except in Euro-style shitholes like New York and California, you don’t have to be licensed or belong to a club or any of that jive. Go ahead and enjoy your gun; it’s your individual right, the second-most important right in our Constitution.

However: use your gun to commit a crime, and it’s to jail you’ll be going. And we Americans don’t issue sentences of just a few years for that kind of crime either (unlike some countries I could name). No, we slam you in a cell for decades or the rest of your life (sometimes we even shorten your life if you shortened somebody else’s).

That’s why we have so many people in jail. They were all free to choose, and they chose poorly. On the whole, it’s a better system than all the others, unless of course you’re a control freak who wants to do what’s best for people because you know what’s good for them, better than they do. (These assholes we call “Democrats”, and this is why they’re trying to turn the U.S. into Europe. But that too is a rant for another time.)

By the way: the reason that China, with its enormous population, doesn’t have as many people in jail as we do is that their people aren’t free. Another reason is that the Chinese summarily execute more people than we do, thus helping their incarceration numbers. Ditto North Korea, a shithole to beat all shitholes.