A different culture

I visit family in Idaho about once month. Something that I frequently notice is the huge difference between being on the farm in Idaho and working in a high rise office building in Seattle. I am sometimes driving truck, combine, or a bulldozer in Idaho one day and looking out over the Puget Sound from behind my computer in a skyscraper the next.

There are other profound differences as well.

Here are my daughter Kim and Jacob at their home in Idaho. I took this picture on Saturday:

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The sign isn’t anything particularly special. It is sold at Michaels, a national chain store for arts and crafts, where Kim works as she finishes her accounting degree at the University of Idaho. Yet the odds of seeing a sign like that in the Seattle area are asymptotically close to zero.

I imagine this sign would put people of the anti-gun crowd into an apoplectic state. It appears to me that the concept of property rights and being able and willing to defend those property rights is alien to them. They might give lip service to the concept of diversity and tolerance of other cultures but they make it very clear by their actions they are actively attempting to destroy certain cultures. They want to destroy one of my cultures.

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17 thoughts on “A different culture

  1. They only want to protect those who agree with them. For example, being a member of a “protected class” is no help if you have the “wrong” opinions. Ask Justice Thomas, for example.

    • Just remember, activist group (x) is never primarily about cause (x). It’s always agenda first. Black, gay, feminist, whatever. Feminists were fine with abuse by a superior with Clinton, are fine with muslims slicing girl’s genitalia…gays are pro muslim, where their necks will get stretched, yet hate Israel, where they have full rights. Black people are fine with their progeny being destroyed in utero and jobs being destroyed, so long as the ‘social justice’ idea is pursued. And people like Justice Thomas or Condi Rice are hated particularly, because they go against the agenda.

  2. What do you think of the concept of personal space?

    I sometimes shop at a grocery store named Super King. ( Memorialized in a cartoon on this page: http://eatingla.blogspot.com/2008/08/la-staycation-super-king-market-in-la.html) The cartoon is a little hard to read, but one box reads “Have your concept of personal space challenged!”

    The store is so crowded that, beyond the normal clash of carts, people put their hands on you (your arm, your waist, your back) to guide you so they can get what they want or just to get around you. This is the only grocery store I have ever been in that has store personnel managing cart traffic in certain sections of the store — otherwise everything just grinds to a halt.

    So, if you can’t handle trespassing, how would you ever handle people in crowds touching you? How does the concept of defending private property mesh with the concept of very limited personal space?

    • I wouldn’t shop there — there are places I can get groceries without being assaulted.

      • Other stores don’t have 20 types of feta cheese or 10 brands of sour cherry juice. Having the opportunity to shop in stores like this one are part of the advantages of living in a big city.

        Actually, I go to more places that are super-crowded like this one. Popular places get really really crowded when you have 20 million people living within driving distance.

        • Being in a mob is dangerous. Going there for luxuries makes me realize you don’t value your life very highly.

          You can order any of that online these day, anyway. And have it delivered to the farthest boondocks. There are no longer advantages to living in a city.

          • Being in a mob can be dangerous for those who would seek to do harm too. The crowd can easily turn on them.

            Did you ever see photos of the Night Stalker (Richard Ramirez) after the crowd caught up with him?

          • Ubu — you really ought to actually study the case, before offering it as an example of “safety in numbers”.

            Ramirez *never* risked confronting *anyone* who had a reasonable chance of winning against him, and in *all* of his attacks ensured he had the froce advantage by a large margin. He was inherently a coward.

            When he was captured, HE wasn’t the hunter, bent to do harm — he was the HUNTED, and he was captured and subdued by a crowd who weren’t cowards (remember, they thought they were confronting an armed serial killer who used knives, machetes, and firearms), who subdued him by beating him with metal bars when he moved.

            If the person seeking to do harm to large persons targets a spot, it is exactly the OPPOSITE of who Ramirez was captured. Which is why terrorists looking to kill civilians INTENTIONALLY target crowded shopping areas, mass transit points, etc.

            Luckily, such monsters are (currently) almost unknown here, as opposed to overseas.

            The only safety your large crowd will give you from one of those people is by everyone between you and the bomb (or gunfire) acting as an ablative meat shield. Won’t help you a bit against a gas attack (like the falied Tokyo attack). . .

            The illusion that you are “safer” in the city overlooks the actual homicide rates, even if the majority of homicides in the “nicer” parts of town that exceed the general noise level tend to be “spillover” violence from the high crime areas.

          • For that matter, imagine the guy the mob DID capture wasn’t the “Night Stalker” — say, if the cops had misidentified an innocent man and proclaimed him their suspect (it’s happened before), or if teh guy the mob ran down was some dude who just *happened* to look like the actual suspect (that, too, has happened).

            In either of those two hypothetical alterations to teh case (based on HIGHLY plausible minor changes), they would have chased down and beaten a wholly innocent man (that, too, has happened).

            Then, you’d be using the Ramirez capture as an example of why people cannot be trusted with the use of force.

    • “So, if you can’t handle trespassing, how would you ever handle people in crowds touching you? How does the concept of defending private property mesh with the concept of very limited personal space?”

      Wow… just wow.

      Well for one… the people in that grocery store are *not* tresspassing. They’re invited customers.

      And by going into such a store (or any store), guess what, it’s not your property. So defense of your property isn’t an issue.

      See, the question you are asking is more defense against assault when in a crowd of people. Which is a relevant and very complicated issue.

      It’s also a dangerous one because if a person is within your personal space, then they are easlly within grappling distance and thus you are at the risk of open hand, bladed, or other assaults.

      But again… that’s not exactly dealing with a person who is on your property without your consent.

      • Yup — and you have WILLININGLY chosen to enter such a crowded area of your own free accord.

        There’s a reason I don’t shop in meat space on Black Friday or other “hopping holidays”. I don’t like crowds, and never have.

        Doesn’t mean I’m all ready to gun down an opening in a crowd, if I chose to go there, because some things ARE worth dealing with crowds.

    • Posting a “no trespassing” sign just puts the public on notice that the property in question isn’t open for them to traverse. The property owner / sign poster can choose the extent to which he wants to enforce that.

      Personally, I wouldn’t post such a sign, for the same reason I wouldn’t put “Protected by Smith & Wesson” stickers on my truck. It could potentially be used to establish an anti-social state of mind if a situation ever ended up being adjudicated. But just because you DO post a sign like that (probably just as much for the tongue-in-cheek effect as an actual warning) doesn’t mean you’re then bound to shoot the neighbor’s kid if he hops the fence to pick up his errant Frisbee.

      As far as shopping in a store like Super King? Forget it! I wouldn’t enter a store like that if they were giving everything away. I avoid Christmas shopping crowds by shopping online – and I’m not all that hot on the crush of people at open air concerts. Etc. Would I freak out if I found myself in such a situation? No – but I don’t like being in that situation. So sue me.

      • I don’t understand your reasoning for not posting “no trespassing”. Or were you only talking about “protected by S&W”?
        In NH at least, a “no trespassing” sign is not an anti-social expression, it is a legal statement. Private property not posted is open to hikers and hunters (with some stated limitations). If you don’t want hikers on your property, or hunters to hunt on it more than a few hundred yards from your house, you have to post the signs. The absence of signs implies consent. (Well, maybe not completely; I’m not sure if you can go and tell people to keep off. But even if so, you certainly cannot charge them with trespass the first time they come onto the property.)

        • I have no issue with “No Trespassing”. It’s the part about “trespassers will be shot … again”.

        • Ah. Yes, agreed. For one thing, that suggests (though it doesn’t actually say) the notion of shooting after the threat is no longer present.

        • Something I’ve found to be kind of funny. I own some property in eastern Washington. It’s close to a big fenced-off ranch and some BLM land, and there are several other 20 acre parcels on the same township that are neither fenced off nor posted, as well as some that are. It’s a real patchwork, covered in ideal plant-life for deer.
          When it’s deer hunting season, a lot of people show up, but because of the patchwork nature, it’s easy to not have any idea whose land you are on if you are wandering around much. Some folks are pretty touchy, other live in other states and never show up, so hunters seem to be a pretty polite bunch. When out in camo hunting and bumping into others packing rifle doing the same, the reaction I get when I tell someone they are on my property covers quite a range, but so far it’s never been overtly hostile. I didn’t get one guy who claimed someone else had told him he owned it and ordered him off, but I pulled out my little plat map and showed them what was where, pointed to the corner monuments and such, and it was all cool. My normal comment is “I don’t mind if you hunt it, just don’t litter, and spend at least some time moving around the perimeter so you help push the deer around for everyone!” That seems to be a good way to keep in the good graces of locals that live in the area year-round. Posting it would likely not help anyone much.

      • I don’t post signs like that either for the same reasons. I had that talk with them but they weren’t concerned. It was just for the grins…

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