Take a close look at the M-14 rifles the Marines where carrying at Obama’s second inauguration. The bolts have been removed from the rifles rendering them unable to fire a round.
Apparently Obama’s Secret Service doesn’t trust the USMC. Simply searching each guy to make sure he didn’t have a live round hidden on him wasn’t enough, they had to make sure the guns were inoperable. Remember all those times George Bush (miss him yet?) traveled to Iraq to meet the troops? Troops who had working rifles slung on their shoulders, with loaded magazines in pouches on their belt. I can’t recall ever seeing the troops with weapons in hand when Obama paid them a visit and after seeing this, if anyone can find such a photo, I’d have to bet that the bolt carriers had been removed prior to Obama’s arrival.
It’s painfully obvious how much contempt Obama has toward the military and the feeling is mutual…and the Secret Service knows it too.
From a purely symbolic perspective, this strikes me as a very last days of Rome motif. What sort of Commander-in-Chief doesn’t trust the men he is commanding? And why doesn’t he trust them?
Roissy foresees karma taking its course in what we are informed is an SWPL fad for rescuing pit bulls:
To understand this sudden and perplexing SWPL adoration for pitbulls, you must know the SWPL psyche. The SWPL’s greatest fear is confronting the demands of her ego and discovering that everything she believes is a pile of horse shit. Oh no, can’t have that, no way no how. Equalism is the gargantuan hamster pellet that feeds her head, and the pitbull is a fortuitous animal proxy for the underprivileged humans that the SWPL happily (and relievedly) carries on believing are equally capable, equally worthwhile, and equally oppressed (except for that one group, yuk they’re soooo creepy).
Dog “breeds” are a social construct. The pitbull is just like any other dog! The pitbull is misunderstood! The pitbull is a victim of the caninarchy! The pitbull just needs the right training. You’re a pitbullist! Gross, pitbullist! Look at the pitbullist! Point at him! Isn’t he evil? Evil evil EVIL PITBULLIST! Now watch, gross evil pitbullist, how tolerant I am. See how I benevolently guide the pitbull through medical school, out from under your pitbullist oppressive bigotryprejudicefearinsecuritynarcissism…
CHOMP!
ooow, my face… it’s missing.
I will smile every time I read of a stupid white SWPL getting her face chewed off by one of her pitbull redemptions. Does she deserve it?
Yes. Yes she does.
I had no idea that this was a fad, but then, I am happily very far out of the zone of effect of the American SWPL. Now, I love dogs and live with one that could eat a pit bull for lunch without making much of an effort, but it seems to me to be a very bad idea to have young, inexperienced, and small dog owners rescuing dogs that have the potential to do reasonably serious damage. I’m not concerned about the fate of the SWPL, but the problem is that it won’t take too many daughters of liberals getting eaten by their poor rescue pets before there will be renewed calls for banning the breed.
Which simply underlines the hazards of the equality myth. Not everyone can safely handle a Doberman, a Rottweiler, a Ridgeback, or an American Staffordshire. But the fact that not everyone can doesn’t mean everyone can’t, much less that no one should.
America these days is an immoderate land of fixed opinions and outsize fixations. More and more we wallow: in our established political philosophy; in our preferred interest group; in our pastime of choice; in whichever health routine we’ve turned into a health religion.
I BLAME the Internet. Well, that and social media and cable television, with its infinity of channels. In theory our hyperconnectivity and surfeit of possibilities have broadened our universes, speeding us to distant galaxies, fresh discoveries and new information. But in reality they’ve just as often had a narrowing effect, enabling us to dwell longer on, and burrow deeper into, one way of being, one mode of thinking.
Whether you’re predisposed to a conservative or liberal view, you can set your bookmarks to Web sites that reinforce what you already believe, take a similar tack with your Facebook and Twitter feeds, and turn for news to Fox News or MSNBC, each an echo chamber for like minds.
And many Americans do just that. The prime-time audiences for Fox News and MSNBC increased significantly between 2011 and 2012, while CNN’s prime-time audience dropped. The percentage of swing voters seemed to shrink, and over the last two decades, the percentage of voters who label themselves “moderate” has similarly declined.
Bruni is whining about essentially the same “problem” that McRapey lamented in his recent interview. The Left is deeply and bitterly upset about their inability to control the narrative in the way they were once able to. Bruni is complaining that although ABCNNBCBS, NPR, the AP, and the New York Times are all still around and putting out news and opinion, Americans don’t have to pay attention to them anymore, and increasingly, they don’t. Bruni resents the fact that, as McRapey said in the CBC-Q interview, “the internet is a great big world and you can’t mallet everybody.”
But the Left would like to. Oh, how they would dearly love to be able to shut out every critical voice, to see and hear no evil, to prevent the innocent ignorant from being able to learn that the Officially Sanctioned Story is not necessarily true and its case is riddled with holes. This is why the Left so religiously shuns debate, erases its opponents from the history books, and often tries to pretend that the other side doesn’t even exist. They have to rewrite history, and in some cases jettison it entirely, because the facts and lessons of history simply do not work in their favor.
It’s not the Right that is burrowing deeper into its own way of thinking. We of the Right have been steeped in leftist propaganda and ideology for our entire lives. We understand the Left’s thinking, and we reject it due to that very understanding, whereas leftists, when caught off-guard, will readily admit that they are both frightened and confused by what those on the Right are thinking. This is usually because they are totally unfamiliar with it; in some cases they literally haven’t ever heard anything like it before. And because their thinking is wholly based on rhetoric and rote-learning, they are almost uniformly incapable of operating on a genuinely dialectical level; what looks like leftist dialectic is almost always, when you examine it, nothing more than rhetoric.
Consider the poor leftist who believes avidly that a) racism is evil and b) evolution is true. What is he to do when confronted by someone who points out, on the basis of genetic science, that humans are not even all equally homo sapiens sapiens? If he is to cling to his beliefs, he must either accept a continual state of cognitive dissonance or bury his head in the intellectual sand. This is why “burrowing” is an apt term for the Left’s response to the changes brought about by the Internet, though not necessarily the Right’s.
Expect more public lamentations from the likes of Bruni as the power of the media gatekeepers continues to fade and more and more independent alternatives whose only credibility is based on their substance, not their credentials or their historical position. As was once said of liberty, extremism in the pursuit of truth is no vice. It is, rather, the cardinal virtue.
I don’t think many people are actually condoning the fact that this guy killed innocent people.
They’re just glad that somebody is taking a violent stand against the police/government and are living vicariously through him.
Our government is so fucked up and out of control, and everyone knows it, that something like this has a bit of a Robin Hood element to it. People generally feel powerless to do anything about government overreach, so when a guy like this stands up and says, “Enough! Fuck you. I’m not taking anymore!” that resonates with the frustrations of a lot of people.
That people are willing to overlook the fact that this guy has killed innocent people is a stinging indictment of how low the police and the government stand in the eyes of citizens. A large percentage of public opinion is sympathetic to a (seemingly) crazed murderer over the government. That’s pretty goddamned pathetic and makes our government and the LAPD look like shit, but deservedly so, because they’ve earned that contempt through years of corruption, abuse of power and trampling on the rights of citizens.
This is true. I noticed how much things had changed when I started hearing conservative white business executives in their sixties talking about the police in a manner all but indistinguishable from NWA. Something is wrong, something is deeply and structurally wrong, when the mere fact of being involved in the law enforcement system at any level is enough to engender contempt in the eyes of those who are upstanding, law-abiding citizens.
Forget the cops for the moment. When you think of a judge or a district attorney, what is your first thought? Pillar of the community or corrupt tool of an evil and unjust system?
Another thing that strikes me. It seems as if every drama on television about either doctors or police. I wonder if the constant repetition of the heroic portrayal of the police saving the day and blowing away the perp, who is usually a white men, has not only programmed the target audiences to believe that white men are evil, but has also helped convince older white men to see police as the enemy.
Phoenician is pleased with his work that inspired an earlier post:
Well, that’s VD huffing and puffing followed by 160 comments – due to a few off-the-cuff sentences. Best ROI ever. Keep dancing, fools.
So close, and yet so far. This is an fascinating statement from a guy who asserts that the Gamma Rabbit is !WINNING! by raising $60,000 due to a few contemptuous references to “Rapey McRaperson”. Now, it seems to me that $60,000 in wasted cash and multiple mainstream media reports would trump 160 whole comments, but then, one can hardly blame the little rabbit for getting excited and concluding that fiver must mean win.
This is how the nation descends into a “dirty, unconventional civil war” folks. It happens when the so-called “law enforcement” people do what a handful of NOLA cops did after Katrina, where they shot an unarmed man and then planted a gun on him.
But those cops were (eventually) brought up on charges and tried for their felonies.
There is utterly no indication that the LAPD officers involved in this will face any sanction whatsoever.
It is exactly this rabbit hole that I have repeatedly warned of — when the so-called “law enforcers” are free to break the law without punishment, whether it be through “gun-walking”, money laundering or blatantly assaulting and killing innocent people (as, you remember, occurred in Detroit) there comes a point where the people will not only refuse to assist but will turn on the government and its visible agents and edifices along with the infrastructure that it, and we all, depend.
Heads up folks — one guy provoked this “response” among the so-called “public servants” that believe they’re entitled not only to fraudulently-promised and extorted pensions but that they’re also entitled to shoot citizens without consequence.
This is a loud, clear warning that exactly the nightmare scenario that I have repeatedly cautioned against and urged the people and our government to stand up and put a stop to has become uncomfortably close to realization.
If you haven’t figured out that these so-called “law enforcement officers” will herd you into a gas chamber or just shoot you on the spot given this incident you’re not very bright.
And if you are a law enforcement officer and you do not stand with these thugs in LA and their acts you had damned well better stand up and differentiate yourself in a loud, clear and unwavering voice, lest you get lumped in with them whether you deserve it or not.
Today, I fear not our so-called “law enforcement” agencies but rather our nation’s future and the dark abyss we stand on the edge of, peering downward, without apparent recognition of exactly how close we are to an irretrievable descent into the dark.
The fact that Karl’s rhetorical approach is impassioned doesn’t mean he isn’t correct. The time is approaching when everyone, in and out of uniform, is going to have to take a stand. If you’re not Team Blue, are you going to give aid and comfort to the police when they are lashing out blindly at “civilians” like wounded animals? If you are a member of Team Blue, are you going to turn a blind eye to the criminal acts of your fellow officers?
The discussion for most of us has been completely hypothetical to date. But barring an unexpected economic recovery, the issue is likely to become less and less hypothetical as time goes on. We in the West have been hugely fortunate to be spared, for our entire lives to date, the historical state which most of humanity has endured. But our good fortune increasingly appears to be running out and each of us is eventually going to have to decide who we are and with whom we stand.
I’ve been pleased to see that most of those who have taken on the task of slogging all the way through A THRONE OF BONES appear to think rather well of it. And while my publisher suffered an understandable amount of angst prior to publication, I’m not terribly surprised that there haven’t been too many serious objections to the presence of vulgar language, graphic violence, and sexual scenes in the novel. I think this is because most of the individuals prone to thoughtless knee-jerk reactions aren’t going to go to the trouble of wading through an 850-page book in order to go through their fainting couch routine. Not when there are so many shorter books available about which they can more easily complain.
Those who take the requisite time to read through the book tend to see that the inclusion of these less-family friendly elements adds to the verisimilitude of the reader’s experience. None of us may have experienced an arrow grazing our cheek or piercing our arm, but we have all had that moment when we misapply the hammer or slip with the knife, and we all know what tends to come out of our mouths at such moments. It is seldom hosannas of praise to our Maker or calm and reasoned discourses on the manifold wonders of Science.
In like manner, many of us have been away from our wives for a month or more, and we all know the intense combination of desire and hunger that we feel upon seeing them, smelling them, and touching them. To omit such aspects of the human experience is to deny reality, it is to deny a vital element of God’s Creation, and it is to make the fiction even more of a lie than it already is. I don’t criticize those authors who choose to omit these more mature elements, as I am sure they have their reasons for making such compromises, but I am staunchly opposed to those readers and publishers who would deny authors the ability to make such decisions for themselves.
What the SFWA writers who have mocked me for preferring, (and know that it is a choice on my part), to be published by a small and independent press fail to understand is that freedom is now more important than advances, marketing muscle and retail distribution. The beauty of Hinterlands is that I can not only write exactly what I want to write, but I also have the freedom to use my books however I see fit. By the end of this year, the significance of that should become obvious in a way that has implications that go far beyond with whom I happen to publish.
The cartoon makes a valid point. Many of those who question or condemn the vulgar legionaries in A THRONE OF BONES don’t hesitate to watch NCIS or read A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. I’m entirely willing to accept criticism from those who limit their media consumption to 50-year old Disney movies and Christian bonnet fiction, but not from anyone who betrays even the slightest familiarity with secular entertainment.
I know I’m not the ideal standard bearer for the cause of historical and intellectual verisimilitude in science fiction and fantasy, much less the cause of behavioral realism in Christian fiction. I’m too outlandish, too controversial, too vulgar, and too intellectual. I’m also insufficiently talented as a wordsmith; the primary role of my prose is to simply stay out of the way of the story and the reader’s experience of the world and the characters. The problem is that there doesn’t appear to be anyone else who is willing and able to point out the observable problems, provide the counterexamples, and then face the inevitable criticism.
So we’re left with a literary movement that consists of one writer, of limited literary abilities, who is published by a small press that doesn’t sell to the retail chains. It shouldn’t have a chance in Hell of making any difference whatsoever, and yet, it has one key thing going for it. It is aligned with the truth, and the truth always wins out in the end.
The police appear to have a very self-serving definition of “cowardice”:
The fired LAPD officer suspected of terrorizing Southern California in a bloody rampage opened fire on two Riverside police officers with a rifle in a “cowardly ambush” early Thursday morning, Riverside police Chief Sergio Diaz told reporters at a morning news conference.
Let me get this straight. We’re supposed to believe that a one-man war against the entire LAPD is cowardly, whereas those armed and armored SWAT teams that break in without warning and not infrequently shoot pets and unarmed people are courageous? Christopher Dorner may be foolish. He may be evil. He may be in the wrong. But the one thing he quite clearly is not is “cowardly”. What on Earth is such a stupid and obviously false declaration supposed to do, dissuade anyone tempted to follow Dorner’s example?
These are indeed Orwellian times. It’s rather like reading Robin Hood and being expected to cheer for the Sheriff of Nottingham. Here is a hint for the police: if you’re wearing black armor, killing innocent animals, lying about your actions, and on top of it all, you outnumber the other guy several thousand to one, you’re the bad guy.
“The thesis of The World Until Yesterday is that we in industrialized societies have much to learn from people who make (or recently made) their living by hunting-and-gathering or small-scale farming.” – National Public Radio on Jared Diamond’s latest ode to the primitive life in Papua New Guinea
“A young mother was tossed screaming on to a pyre of tyres and burned alive after being accused of killing a neighbour’s six-year-old son with sorcery. Kepari Leniata, 20, ‘confessed’ after she was dragged from her hut, stripped naked and tortured with white-hot iron rods. She was then dragged to a local rubbish dump, doused in petrol and, with hands and feet bound, thrown on a fire of burning tyres. As the mother-of-two screamed in agony, more petrol-soaked tyres were thrown on top of her…. The tragedy unfolded after Miss Leniata’s young neighbour fell sick on Tuesday morning. He complained of pains in the stomach and chest and was taken to Mt Hagen hospital where he died a few hours later. Relatives of the boy were suspicious that witchcraft was involved in the death and learned that two women had gone into hiding in the jungle. After they were tracked down, the pair admitted they practised sorcery but had nothing to do with the boy’s death. Miss Leniata, they said, was the person responsible.” – Mail Online
Clearly we have a lot to learn from such a simple and noble way of life. I don’t know about you, but I find it more than a little amusing that the poster boy for modern pop science is advocating a Rousseauean idealization of a state of nature that happens to include the great historical secular bugaboo, witch-burnings. As I have repeatedly pointed out, far from being progressive, secular post-Christianity is more regressive than 7th century Islam. It’s ultimately a return to the mores of precivilized paganism.
Phoenician presents a fascinatingly ironic defense of McRapey:
Your attempt to smear him is a joke, and you’re a joke, you twerp – and what you don’t get is now you’re an even bigger joke known to many, many people who had no clue you existed. Scalzi has pwned you. You might as well drop your pants, paint your ass red, and bend over.
So he can do what, gently massage my gluteal muscles? Surely Phoenician doesn’t mean to suggest McRapey would, you know, sexually assault someone! It appears that Mr. Scalzi’s fans share his public fascination with “cranial-rectal insertions”, “assbags”, and rape. Now, perhaps I am a joke, an even bigger joke than before, and yet I can’t help but notice that the Dread Ilk appear to be the only ones laughing. Phoenician, for one, appears to be a good deal more angry than amused.
Here is the question: If l’affaire McRapey is going so fabulously well for the Gamma Rabbit, why is it only his fans who are urging me to stop? My readers don’t appear to mind a daily update on the latest gamma antics and one would certainly hate to see the poor little gay black children shortchanged. Does Phoenician simply hate little gay black girls? I am absolutely committed to ensuring that they get every last penny of the $50,000$60,000 now pledged to them; I do wish there was an official counter or something to which I could link just to keep track. In additional to the charitable imperative, I note that not only has Mr. Scalzi never once asked me to stop referring to him as McRapey, but has repeatedly professed his delight at all the attention he is receiving.
I, for one, would be devastated to see the anticipated recipients of such charitable largesse deprived of 95% of what they are expecting. I expect that even if Mr. Scalzi no longer enjoys the attention, he would be loathe to make any request that would cause them to lose out on $57,000 in donations. If he genuinely wished me to stop, then surely it would behoove him to simply ask me to do so rather than engage in all of these theatrics.
But what if Phoenician is correct and it is the Gamma Rabbit’s approach that is proving to be the more effective? In that case, then logic clearly dictates we must follow the man’s charitable example. Here’s what I’m going to do: From now until the end of 2013 (and backdating to January 1st), each time John “I am a rapist” Scalzi forces himself on a woman “without their consent or desire and then batter(s) them sexually”, I’m going to put $5 into a pot. At the end of the year, I’m going to tally it up. All the money, up to $1,000, will be donated to Victoria’s Secret, a stripper named Sunshine, a restaurant called The Black Cat, and the Sexual Assault Response Network of Central Ohio.
Nothing is going to stop Gamma Rabbit from doing what rabbits do. But at least the thought of all that money going to causes the Chief Rabbit of the Whatever warren hates will enrage him to much the same extent that the idea of FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS pledged to Emily, rain, Rainbow Pride, and the Colored People infuriates me.
