Category Archives: Politics

Demanding Discrimination

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Quote of the Day

If we treat them equally, the result must be inequality… the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently.

F.A. Hayek
1960
The Constitution of Liberty( The Definitive Edition)[CONSTITUTION OF LIBERTY][Paperback]: F.a.Hayek: Amazon.com: Books

On X, this quote has morphed into:

In order to make people equal, you have to treat them differently. If you treat people alike, the result is necessarily inequality.

More quotable and easier to understand, but not quite accurate.

Useful ammo when dealing with people demanding reparations, affirmative action, DEI, etc. The point being is that if they insist upon equality, they are demanding discrimination.

The NRA is Back

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After my blog post about the recently filed court cases I received an email from NRA board member Jonathan Goldstein. This is most of that email:

I’m a member of the NRA Board and the chair of NRA’s Finance Committee. 

I see that you are supporting SAF and FPC in their litigation efforts. 

NRA has made great strides in righting the ship over the last year.  I did an interview at the NRA convention talking about the changes we’ve made:

I hope that in addition to the support you’re rendering to SAF and FPC, you’ll consider supporting NRA CRDF or NRA-ILA as well.

I watched the video. He enumerates a lot of the changes made and changes yet to be made. He emphatically asserts the NRA is back as the 800-pound gorilla as we knew them decades ago.

I have not verified everything said in the interview. However, it was very encouraging about the future of the NRA and its current ability to be an effective and efficient fighter for our right to keep and bear arms. Please watch it for yourself and make your own decisions.

Running Out of Other People’s Money

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I have zero sympathy:

Mamdani issues shock admission: NYC faces budget crisis of ‘historic magnitude’ — and begs for cash after promising freebies. Is the Big Apple cooked?

New York City is staring down a budget crisis of “historic magnitude,” one Mayor Zohran Mamdani says rivals the fallout from the Great Recession and can’t be solved with cuts alone (1).

“We are extending the executive budget deadline from this coming Friday until May 12th because a crisis of this scale cannot be solved without state action,” Mamdani said at a press conference on April 28, citing a deficit so large that it requires action beyond city hall.

Mayor Mamdani campaigned on a communist platform. The people of New York City voted for him. Now they are in the process of realizing what people have been saying in various ways for 100 years or more. Communism and socialism work fine… until you run out of other people’s money.

And, true to form, if you read the article, you will find the mayor wants help from New York state and it is not the mayor’s fault that they are billions of dollars short of having a balanced budget.

Attack! Attack! Attack!

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These are all within the last 40 days:

It is so nice to be on the attack after decades of being strictly on the defensive.

And notice that one of those is the U.S. DOJ fighting on our side. 30 years ago, we were fighting the DOJ and losing.

We are not winning all the battles, but we are doing well with the really important battles that SCOTUS accepts.

Please consider donating to your favorite 2nd Amendment organization to add resources to our troops fighting this war. I, with matching donations from my employer, donate thousands each year to SAF and FPC.

We live in interesting times.

Do you want to move back to America?

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Quote of the Day

The Democrat governor of Colorado signed into law one of the most restrictive gun bans ever adopted in the United States. The law bans the manufacturing and selling of semiautomatic firearms. This is on top of the liberal state’s existing ban on high-capacity magazines. That’s just crazy.

…

So, to all gun manufacturers in Colorado, my question to you is simple. Do you want to move back to America?

Governor Greg Gianforte @GovGianforte
Governor of Montana
Posted on X April 23, 2026

Good question. It is not just the gun industries either. Look at the “wealth taxes” and “millionaire taxes” and high regulations being implemented in the Democrat socialist run states. Business and people are leaving because the further you can distance yourself from such toxins the better your life, community, and future.

See also:

They are Their Own Enemy

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Is Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) a mole for the National Rifle Association (NRA)? After the recent scandal involving the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), some may wonder given a curious turn of events in Virginia. Gun sales have surged after Spanberger and the Democrats passed sweeping gun bans. Spanberger also issued a public statement that could help tank the legislation in court — resulting in the striking down of the law (or parts of the law) after spurring record gun sales.

After July 1st, it will be a misdemeanor to buy, sell, transfer, or make an “assault firearm.”

With a July 1 deadline looming, background checks and sales are surging in Virginia. Stores are reporting that they cannot keep weapons on the shelves as Virginians flood stores to beat the deadline.

State Sen. Saddam Salim, D-Dunn Loring, a Spanberger ally who introduced the bill, further fueled the panic by declaring that the legislation will “gradually” take these guns because these firearms “do not belong on our streets.”

Jonathan Turley
June 7, 2026
The Spanberger Surge: Virginia Governor May Prove the Greatest Gun Influencer Since Charlton Heston

Don’t every let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.

Also, I have to wonder… It was a long time ago, but my impression is that Obama and Hillary Clinton both were bigger sales boosters than Heston.

Still, even if it is an exaggeration, the point is valid, anti-gun politicians are a huge boost to gun sales and hence a boost to political organization and pro-gun organization memberships and financials. And what I don’t think the politicians realize is that the more extreme the gun laws the easier target they are. It creates low hanging fruit to create precedents which can be leveraged to eliminate a wider range of gun restrictions.

They create the conditions for their own downfall and the policies they advocate.

The Last Trillionaire Must Die

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At 10:01 a.m. on June 12, 2026, Graham Platner, the freshly minted Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, posted the following on X:

“Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire.

Let’s make sure he’s also the last.”

No policy proposal. No discussion of tax brackets, carried-interest loopholes, or regulatory reform. Just a flat, public declaration that the existence of a single individual who has accumulated more wealth than any human in history is an intolerable moral emergency that must be prevented from ever happening again.

The sentence is not a critique of monopoly power, regulatory capture, or government favoritism. It is a death sentence pronounced on the category of human being who creates at scale.

It is the purest distillation of socialist psychology yet uttered by a major-party Senate candidate in the United States: Excellence has occurred. Make sure it never occurs again.

This is not an aberration. It is the logical endpoint of everything Platner has signaled since he entered the race.

…

The correct response to “Let’s make sure he’s also the last” is not a technocratic defense of marginal tax rates.

It is a full-throated defense of the right of human beings to achieve without limit and without apology. It is the recognition that the alternative to Musk-scale creation is not a more equitable distribution of existing goods.

It is a slower, poorer, grayer world in which the best anyone can hope for is to be slightly less mediocre than their neighbors.

Maine does not need another politician who resents the existence of greatness.

It needs a political culture that treats the creation of a trillion dollars of value as evidence of national vitality rather than moral emergency.

The man who can make reusable rockets routine, who can force the automotive industry to electrify faster than it wanted to, who can put global communications infrastructure in orbit while governments dither…this man is not the problem. He is the proof that the problem is elsewhere.

Graham Platner’s tweet is a window into the soul of a politics that has given up on creation and now contents itself with the management of decline.

The only question left is whether the voters of Maine…and eventually the country…will ratify that surrender or reject it with the same ferocity that built the civilization now under attack.

The first trillionaire exists.

The question is not whether we can prevent another. The question is whether we still have the will to produce one.

LHGrey
June 12, 2026
The Last Trillionaire Must Die: Graham Platner’s Envious Death Wish and the Socialist Pathology of Resentment

See also the post on X.

I wish I could write like her. I am left nearly speechless after I read anything she writes.

Paper Versus Gun

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Quote of the Day

DAY 9 of National Gun Violence Awareness Month. And today I want to talk to every person who has ever told a woman she does not need a gun.

It is a Friday night in December. Waco, Texas. You are alone. The neighborhood is quiet. And then your back door explodes.

Not a knock. A KICK. Two men. Masks. Already inside before your brain finishes processing what just happened.

December 12, 2025. Speight Avenue. We do not know her name — she did not ask for coverage. What we know comes from the police report and the emergency room records. Because that last part matters.

She fired approximately eleven rounds. The two men fled.

Twenty minutes later, a 32-year-old named Antonio Chavez was dropped off at Baylor Scott and White with a bullet in his forearm. He was already on the books for two violations of a protective order and continuous violence against family. The system had already met Antonio Chavez. The system had already given someone a piece of paper to keep him away. He violated it twice. Then he put on a mask and kicked in a woman’s back door.

His bond was set at $276,000. The woman was never charged. Because Texas law is perfectly clear about what you are allowed to do when two masked men kick in your door.

She had a gun. She is alive. Full stop.

Now the numbers. Because this is still a science classroom.

Women are seven to eleven times more likely to use a gun for self-defense than to be murdered. Not safer with a gun — DRAMATICALLY safer. The University of Chicago — not exactly a right-wing institution — calculated that more relaxed carry laws between 1977 and 1992 would have prevented 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, and 60,000 aggravated assaults every single year. John Lott found that when concealed carry laws were adopted, rape rates fell measurably, county by county, because predators respond to the possibility of an armed victim the same way every living thing responds to mortal risk — they avoid it.

The Supreme Court already told you in DeShaney v. Winnebago County (1989) and Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005) that the government has no legal obligation to protect you. The protective order Chavez violated twice was a piece of paper. The court issued it. The system recorded his violations. And on a cold December Friday in Waco, the piece of paper was nowhere in that room when the door came in.

The gun was.

The gun control crowd says they want women to be safe. Then they spend June trying to disarm the tool that makes women seven to eleven times more likely to survive an attack. Those two positions cannot coexist in good faith.

She did not ask to be a symbol. She just wanted her door to stay closed. When it did not, she handled it.

But what do I know — I am only a combat medic, a science teacher, and the father of daughters who will know how to handle it too.

…

Two protective orders. The paper did not stop him. What did? Tell me.

mike bski @BskiMike22802
Posted on X June 9, 2026

While a piece of paper will not someone from kicking in your door and doing violent things to you, it is not entirely useless. I would be willing to make a sizable bet that when the police and prosecutor were evaluating the situation for people to put in jail a piece of paper rapidly moved the woman to the, “You did good, but you might want to get some training so you can get better hits next time” category.'” The gun moved her to the “alive but seriously shaken” category when she was hovering over the “hospital or morgue” categories.

Do not ever forget that women safety numbers do not matter to the “gun violence prevention” advocates. Even worse is that they will use the shooting of Chavez in their statistics of “gun violence” which needs to be prevented. In their bookkeeping Chavez is the victim.

For those who doubt this notice that they never mention violence crime rates. They only talk about “gun deaths”, “gun crimes”, and sometimes “gun injuries.” There is a reason for this. They have to be deceptive in order to make the narrative work. Deception is part of the culture. Their culture cannot survive without it. Do not let yourself be fooled. Do not be a part of it. And remember Just One Question.

They Hate Numbers and Resort to Violence

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Quote of the Day

At one point I thought being on the left was a mental problem. The empirical evidence is so overwhelming. It never worked anywhere, and they refused to accept it.

Therefore, I thought it was a mental problem. I mean some kind of block that doesn’t even let them see the numbers.

They are enemies of numbers. They hate numbers. I don’t know if lefties hate water or number more. I mean I don’t know if they hate bathing more than numbers.

But what I discovered is that being on the left is a disease of the soul. The left is built on envy, hatred, resentment, unequal treatment before the law. They are very violent, and since they have no way or arguments to answer, they go for physical violence.

Lefties always, let’s say resort to physical violence and all kinds of violent manifestations because they are unable to refute the arguments.

Javier Milei
March 23, 2026

Via:

See also: “Leftism Is a Mental Problem,” Says Argentina’s Conservative President Javier Milei – Muted News.

I have often said anti-gun people have problems understanding numbers, arithmetic is beyond them and math is totally alien. And, as I have also pointed out, lefties are inherently violent. It is nice to see that Milei has independently reached the same conclusions.

With this sort of thinking getting more traction we may be able to snatch victory from what just a few years ago looked like certain defeat. But the violence component almost for certain will increase and I don’t know if that will be successfully countered.

We live in interesting times.

Cage Fights for Diplomacy

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Quote of the Day

One of the things I love about this administration’s politics is that I can absolutely never tell when they are trolling, when somebody just made up some nonsense and attributed it to them, or when they are being deadly serious.

Maximum entertainment value unlocked!

Kathy Jackson @Cornered_Cat
Posted on X June 8, 2026

The case in point Ms. Jackson was referring to:

Rubio and UFC will sign deal to use cage fights for diplomacy

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and UFC CEO Dana White have reached an agreement to use cage fights for diplomacy, the State Department said Monday — as Iran peace talks remain in flux.

While I can certainly see the humor and respect her opinion, I’m of the opinion it does contribute to more than a little political friction that isn’t really necessary. But a case can be made that it serves a useful purpose which outweighs the frictional costs.

No Accident

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Following the Freedom 250 team’s installation of temporary lighting on the National Mall, our equipment has been repeatedly targeted by vandals. The recent fuel leak was the direct result of that tampering.

Upon discovering damage to a generator fuel line, Freedom 250 and our vendors mobilized within minutes, coordinated an immediate cleanup response, and fully remediated the site in close partnership with the National Park Service. We take our responsibility as stewards of the National Mall seriously and are working closely with the appropriate law enforcement authorities regarding these acts of vandalism.

Rachel Reisner
June 1, 2026
30,000 gallons of fuel spilled on National Mall after event for America’s 250th birthday
And: 30 gallons of fuel spilled on National Mall after event for America’s 250th birthday

The first article links to and credits the second article as the source.

Please notice the first article title says 30,000 gallons and the second says 30 gallons. The body of both articles state it was 30 gallons. The second article also includes the subtitle of:

Cleanup efforts are underway as Freedom 250, a group created by the Trump administration that organized the event, blames “vandalism.”

Later in the first article it says:

One of the people familiar with the matter said the National Park Service would typically hold the permit holder liable for the environmental mitigation required after a spill of this magnitude, but it is unclear if Freedom 250 and Event Strategies Inc., which helped organize the events, are on the hook for the clean-up costs incurred by this accident.

The corresponding paragraph in the second, referenced, article says:

One of the people familiar with the matter said the National Park Service would typically hold the permit holder liable for the environmental mitigation after a spill of such magnitude, but it is unclear whether Freedom 250 and Event Strategies Inc., which helped organize the events, are on the hook for the cleanup costs.

My hypothesis is that the creators of the first article deliberately changed the title and added the word “accident” to the body because of their bias against the Trump administration. They know, or at least strongly suspect the vandals were Democrats and want to make the Trump administration to blame for a much worse situation than is actually the case. This was not an accident.

You can’t hate the legacy media liars enough.

More Bodies than Movies

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While there was occasional non-democrat leadership the Democrats have dominated Seattle politics since at least 1969 with the election of Wesley C. Uhlman as Mayor.

This is what you get:

This area of town was bad in the late 1970’s. I remember it was said that almost all the motels in the area rented rooms by the hour. If you drove up the street you could sense the decay without necessarily being able to articulate the reasons why.

A former manager of mine was a Seattle cop for many years. He lived not too far from this area. He told me a couple of decades ago a movie theater was built there. Over the years after that he visited the parking lot of the theater as a cop to deal with a body more frequently than to see a movie.

This is a political problem. These politicians are either not connected to reality and/or deliberately want to destroy our country.

Prepare and response appropriately.

My response is to build an underground bunker in Idaho.

What Part of Permanent Don’t They Understand?

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A Virginia judge reaffirmed an injunction blocking the state’s “universal background check” law Wednesday, days after pro-Second Amendment groups sought to hold state officials in contempt when they started enforcing the measure.

Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed HB 1525 into law on April 22 after the General Assembly concurred with her amendments that added an emergency provision directing the Virginia State Police to enforce the law blocked by a permanent injunction issued in October 2025. 

Harold Hutchison
June 4, 2026
Second Amendment groups score huge federal court win over Virginia governor

See also Virginia judge keeps gun-check injunction in place.

The legislature and the governor claim their newly passed law, essentially the same as the previous law, supersedes the court ruling. Does that mean the slaveowner of the 1860s could have gotten their “property” back by repeatedly passing a law that said the 13th Amendment was null and void?

Or how about repeatedly passing a law that said women were not allowed to vote after courts said the 19th amendment prohibited such a law?

These people are not rational. They are like someone who, after I asked, “How do you determine truth from falsity, they responded in complete seriousness with, “It depends on how I feel.”

Liberalism is a mental disorder.

Cry Me a River

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Quote of the Day

We think it is going to be the worst delivery of regression in the history of the country in terms of gun violence prevention.

Kris Brown
President of Brady: United Against Gun Violence
June 5, 2026
What’s in the Trump administration’s ‘tsunami’ of gun deregulation

Ms. Brown, cry me a river. And be sure and save some tears for when we start having high school sporting events with machine guns.

What she doesn’t say is that all those gun regulations did not make anyone but criminals and tyrants safer.

Concealed Carry Statistics

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Quote of the Day

Twenty percent of likely voters hold a concealed handgun permit (20.2%), over double the rate for adults overall (8%). Constitutional Carry states have only a slightly higher permit rate than pure Right-to-Carry states (21.38% versus 19.81%). However, our research suggests this gap will narrow over time because the share of adults with permits is declining in Constitutional Carry states while rising in pure Right-to-Carry states.

Interestingly, people in Constitutional Carry states carry handguns at much higher rates than those in pure Right-to-Carry states (34.19% versus 25.98%). In Constitutional Carry states, the share of likely voters who carry exceeds the share with permits by about 13 percentage points. In the other pure Right-to-Carry states, the share who carry exceeds the share with permits by about six percentage points. So Constitutional Carry laws result in about seven percentage points more people carrying than have a permit.

johnrlott
May 21, 2026
UPDATED: New Survey on the Rate that People Carry Concealed Handguns: Percent of Americans Carrying Increased from 24.3% in December 2024 to 29.8% in May 2026 – Crime Prevention Research Center

I was surprised at the carry rate.

There is lots of other interesting information in this post. For example, did you know that:

Very liberal and very conservative likely voters carry frequently at disproportionately high rates relative to their shares of the population. Very liberal voters account for 24.6% of frequent carriers even though they make up only 12.9% of likely voters. Similarly, very conservative voters account for 23.0% of frequent carriers while making up 18.0% of likely voters.

That high a carry rate among voters has to be making a difference in the future of gun ower rights.

See also Dave Workman’s comment on the post.

They are Compelled to Lie

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California has been a long time leader in the movement to prevent gun violence. The passage of these two bills is just another way the state has stepped up to proactively prevent gun violence before it happens. Education, training, and informed research are essential in our fight to stop gun violence at its source and improve public safety in our communities.

Kris Brown
Brady United President
May 28, 2026
Brady Celebrates Initial Passage of Two Gun Violence… | Brady United

If gun control reduced violent crime, California and Washington D.C. would be some of the safest places in the U.S. But they are not::

They would also have a response to Just One Question, but they don’t. As is usual, these gun control freaks are lying. They are compelled to lie. It is part of their culture.

My Mental Marker for “Game Over, We Won”

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Next up, two pieces of GOA-backed legislation on machineguns were introduced to the House.

First, Rep. Jimmy Patronis’ bill; the “Firearm Freedom Act” is the first-ever bill introduced in Congress that would totally repeal the Hughes Amendment.

For those unfamiliar, the Hughes Amendment is part of the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act, added via voice vote, which made machineguns after 1986 illegal to sell to anyone other than the federal government.

Rep. Patronis’ bill rights the wrong that was perpetrated on gun owners 40 years ago.

And, Rep. Lauren Boebert introduced the “Freedom From Taxes Act,” which removes the taxes from machineguns and destructive devices, which are currently subject to $200 tax stamps under the National Firearms Act.

Rep. Boebert’s bill removes the remaining taxes on items regulated by the NFA after the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” last summer, where taxes on short barreled firearms and suppressors were reduced to $0.

Erich Pratt
May 29, 2026
Machineguns Are In, RINOs Are Out! | GOA

My guess is that these are all posturing with zero chance of becoming law (or repealing law as the case may be). But still, it is fun to think about.

While I’m not a fan of machine guns*, I really want the restrictions on them removed. When machine guns are available without paperwork, cash and carry, family pack of four at Costco, is sort of my mental marker for “game over, we won.”

* Sure, if someone is paying for the ammo, there are ways to have fun with one. I just don’t see an occasion where I would have a real use for one. Sure, they would be useful in defending against fire breathing dragons. So, if there is some serious intel Daenerys Targaryen is on the prowl in my area of operations I will reconsider.

Do You Really Want to go There?

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I think one of the things we really do need to take seriously is if these constitutional officers are not willing to enforce the law, what type of legislation can we introduce to hold them accountable for not doing their job

Del. Joshua Cole (D-Fredericksburg),
May 27, 2026
Virginia prosecutors refuse to enforce new assault weapons ban

There is also this:

I know these Republican prosecutors see this as an opportunity for tough guy posturing and amateur constitutional lawyering, but ending the sale of assault weapons in Virginia isn’t something an individual prosecutor can do anything about.

Local prosecutors don’t enforce, they prosecute – and my message to anyone thinking about breaking Virginia law is, don’t bet on Virginia law enforcement ignoring it.

Senator Saddam Azlan Salim @SalimForVA
Posted on X May 29, 2026

“Amateur constitutional lawyering”? Mark Smith, member of the United States Supreme Court bar, explains why prosecutors refusing to enforce these unconstitutional laws is entirely legal.

I would also like to remind Mr. Cole that if he wants to play that game there are already laws the DOJ could start enforcing.

I hope he gets a chance to enjoy his trial.

They Never Gave Up Their Dream

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The antigunners never gave up on their dream to ban handguns, they just realized that dream was deeply unpopular and decided to focus on “assault weapons” and ancillary restrictions like fees, wait times, etc.

The Glock Switch moral panic gave Everytown and the other groups cover to demand that their allies in California and other blue states sue Glock. Now, they are getting them to ban Glock.

By banning Glock and its clones, they ban the most popular handgun platform in the country. And they won’t stop there; they will find some pretext to declare other popular handgun models “too dangerous” and ban those too. Death by a thousand cuts.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has done nothing so far to stop about a dozen states from banning the most popular rifles in the country. Bruen is working out great….if you are in a pro-gun circuit. Antigun circuits like the Ninth, Second, First, etc. are treating it like a joke and have effectively re-imposed interest balancing, and are upholding pretty much all draconian gun control.

So of course antigun states are emboldened to put their toes into the handgun ban waters once again.

If the Court has any self-respect, if John Roberts cares about the legitimacy of his institution at all, they must take on a hardware case soon and make clear that bans on common firearms are unconstitutional.

And then, they must follow that up with frequent summary reversals of the inevitable antigun circuit court defiance of that ruling.

Kostas Moros @MorosKostas
Posted on X May 29, 2026

It is long past time to give the anti-gunners and the disobedient lower courts never-ending nightmares. I’d like to see it in the form of prosecutions, convictions, heavy fines, and long sentences. But that may be beyond our reach for a while. I would settle for the humiliation of being repeatedly slapped down by SCOTUS and my dream of high school machine gun sporting events.

One Side Will Win. Choose

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Gonna try to explain this to tech CEOs again: Young Americans are pissed. They feel betrayed. Half have embraced the far right & want to cut off your access to cheap foreign labor. The other half have embraced the far left & want to cut off your head. One side will win. Choose.

Roman Helmet Guy @romanhelmetguy
Posted on X May 24, 2016

There is some truth to this.

But even if you completely accept the basic assertions, I’m not sure a win by either side is guaranteed. It’s plausible that the outcome could be closer to everyone loses.

In any case, prepare appropriately.