Fred;
“That amount of beauty necessary to launch one ship”
Translation; Check (stop or reduce) your objectivity
The more objective person has great advantages over the less objective person, and those advantages will be seen by the less objective person as threatening, unfair and oppressive. The less objective person thus sees the more objective as aggressors, imposing all manner of suffering upon the less objective.
It has two great benefits to the ego of the less objective. It reduces the comparative advantage of being objective (thus providing “Social Justice”), and it absolves the less objective of responsibility for their foolishness.
Since it requires a great deal more objectivity (which the less objective hate with a burning passion, much as a vampire would hate the sunlight) to convince the less objective to become more objective, the situation is a sort of Catch-22.
The classic definition of such is paranoia, but I see it more as a convenient method of control, by the less objective, of the more objective. A form of bullying from below, if you will.
So long as we entertain the foolishness of the less objective in any way whatsoever, we are being controlled by, and we are thus encouraging and empowering, the foolish. Our entertaining the foolish comes from our unwillingness to become the targets of their naked outrage. It is cowardice. When we know better, and do it anyway, we deserve everything that results (which will of course be horrible).
Hoplophobia continues to take a huge toll on the nation, distorts the political climate, and costs lives as innocent people are disarmed or subarmed (inadequately armed due to infringing laws) to help salve the irrational fears of its sufferers. The White House had no comment.
Alan Korwin
May 31, 2015
Medical Hope for Hoplophobia Sufferers
[Of course they had no comment. As with all people with personality disorders they don’t think there is anything wrong with them. And if something goes wrong they cannot see that they made any contribution to the problem.
In addition to consideration of a test for voters I think consideration should be giving to tests for public servants. Hoplophobia sufferers would be immediately disqualified.—Joe]
It seems to me that the process of reading pressure signs in your brass and primers, as they tell us in the loading manuals, can be a bit ambiguous. In this instance however it was rather obvious.
Too much pressure?
You know, I felt better about the 19th Amendment before I knew that women, given a choice, would let Hitler live.
Glenn Reynolds
April 9, 2015
THAT’S BECAUSE WE’RE GIVERS
[This arose out of a hypothetical situation where you could go back in time and kill Hitler, if you wanted to. Men were more likely than women to choose that option as opposed to letting him live.
This is very interesting to me. One could claim that men are more rational and see the benefit of killing one tyrant so that, perhaps, millions may survive. And furthermore claim women tend to see the murder of Hitler as morally wrong and are unable to see there are exceptions to the morality code against killing.
But there are lots of other ways to look at the results of the study:
This study would seem to have implications for self-defense as well.
Other thoughts?—Joe]
Take your statements about “ultraconservative,” “right wing,” “Read less white males” and “privilege,” and shove them up your ass.
Then write the story where that was a pleasurable and positive learning experience for you.
Michael Z. Williamson
April 21, 2015
Challenge Delivered
[Williamson’s post is worth reading for the facts presented but the last sentence, above, is what gives it the punch of humor.
I’ve read a couple of his books and enjoyed them immensely. The points he makes are indicative of something I’ve written about before. Although these type of people will seldom directly admit it, it is very clear they believe they know what you are thinking without regard to your words or actions. In this case they believe they know the contents of his book without reading them.
What more evidence do you need to conclude these people have mental problems?
No matter. There will be a lot more evidence provided. I directly experienced it for decades and no matter how much I coached them they could not change. The problem, as they saw it, was always me.—Joe]
Western civilization is experiencing a post-Enlightenment crisis.
For hundreds of years we fought the chains of doctrinaire thinking — as told to us by superstition, folklore, and the churches. In the 20th century the trappings of the churches were almost entirely cast off, and for a few decades we (the West) thought we’d finally done it. We’d liberated our collective intellect from the machinery of dispensed truth. All souls would be free to find their own truths and their own meanings, and none could gainsay another man’s or woman’s path of self-discovery. The 21st century was going to be a wonderland of abundance economics, and the melting away of nationalism, tribalism, territorialism, and all the rotten isms of history. A global village, joined by the techno-wizardry of the internet, would rise.
Brad R. Torgersen
April 12, 2015
Flaming rage nozzles of tolerance
[As Rolf said it’s, “Well worth the read.”
I particularly liked the references to Original Sin which, in essence, hypothesizes the concept of Original Sin is semi-hardwired into us. If this hypothesis is true then one might be able to rigorously show that as traditional religion fell from popularity it has been replaced with something else which has the same mindset including an updated version of the Inquisition for suppression of modern day heresy.—Joe]
Well no duh! I can hear you say. Every different community has its issues, events, and disputes. Being somewhat more than a mere spectator but less than a main combatant is an odd and interesting place to be.
The recent and ongoing kerfuffle in the sci-fi community between the SJW’s and and the Ilk of the Evil Legion of Evil has been educational, and many fascinating words are being spilled. Take, for example, Brad Torgerson, one of the principals in the whole Sad Puppies affair. His recent post titled Flaming rage nozzles of tolerance is great. Kind of long, but he does a good job of breaking down the current “we must blame ourselves for everything” SJW narrative-driven mindset as a modern secular take on Original Sin, and the competing with the free minds of people responsible for their own actions and nothing more. Well worth the read.
Glamour is undermined by mockery. People steeped in multicultural respect will find that mockery difficult. The other thing that undermines glamour is crushing defeat. The Axis had glamour of its own, until Dresden and Hiroshima.
Glenn Reynolds
January 6, 2015
LIKE MOST SUCCESSFUL CULTS, IT LETS PEOPLE ACT LIKE DEMONS WHILE FEELING LIKE ANGELS
[The context above is the Islamic State but the concept also applies to the anti-gun people.—Joe]
I’m writing this after just getting off the phone with Great Big Gun Accessory Company That Everyone Knows. I’m not pissed, just a little disgusted. I got a 130 dollar tool made by that company, from an Idaho retailer, and the tool is defective.
I called the retailer about it immediately. After some vacillation (first fail) and some obvious back-and-forth amongst the person who took my call and someone else (second fail) they referred me to the manufacturer (third fail).
I then called Great Big Gun Accessory Company That Everyone Knows and got put on hold by a robot. OK; that’s sort of tolerable, as it’s a busy time of day for a busy company in a very busy industry. After only two or three minutes I got a person. I got directly to the point; I had ordered this tool and it has some bad threads.
She actually muttered under her breath at me, as though she’d been robbed few minutes ago and I had just threatened her for her wallet; “Oh, good God…” (fourth fail). She then had to put me on hold (fifth fail) to talk to someone else (sixth fail) after which she went on and on in her Eeyore/Marvin the Paranoid Android tone, (seventh fail) about oh, woe is us; we’re juuust swamped with customer service… (eighth fail) and that she’d take my name and number and someone would call me back, maybe today but probably tomorrow (ninth fail).
There’s a point to all of this, mind you. This isn’t so I can vent my frustration– I’m not frustrated. I got this tool on a lark, because I thought it would be something fun to try. Well, all the fun has been drained right out, but it’s not frustrating in any way because I really have no “need” for this item than can’t be served with tools I already have.
The point is; if you’re in business and you have a customer who has a problem, AND you’re capable of solving said problem, then DO IT, RIGHT NOW. Your customers will absolutely love you for it, and your service will have been so unusually simple and easy that they’ll tell everyone they know about you. That two or three dollars, to fifty or 60 dollars it actually cost you to SOLE THE CUSTOMER’S PROBLEM STRAIGHT AWAY will have been your cheapest and most effective advertizing ever!
The retailer could have solved my problem immediately, without even thinking about it, if they’d simply send me a new part. “No problem, Mister Keeney; we’ll get you another part out to you right now, and you’ll have it tomorrow. Sorry about the inconvenience.”
That is our goal, but we don’t always reach it (for one thing, there is internal disagreement on its merits, if you can believe that). It is an ideal, which will rarely be met in all cases, but it is none the less THE ideal.
This is so very simple, and so very obvious, that practically all businesses fail to consider it. The few who do will rule the retail world. All the rest will have every excuse in the book why they don’t do it, and they’ll all be very reasonable and thoroughly justifiable excuses.
If you HAVE THE ABILITY to solve the customer’s problem RIGHT NOW, that is an OPPORTUNUTY for you and your company. Don’t miss the opportunity.
Meanwhile, after talking to two people, at two companies, each of whom had the ability to solve my problem right then and there, each of whom had to talk to at least one other person who also had the ability to solve my problem right then and there, I’ll be waiting for a phone call (not a replacement part, mind you, not even a promise of a replacement part, but a phone call) that may or may not come in the next 24 hours.
The time it took either one of the two people I spoke with to hum and haw and consult with peers and finally get around to telling me to call somewhere else or to take my name and number for someone else to get back to me, THEY COULD HAVE SOLVED MY PROBLEM RIGHT THEN AND THERE, and so you see, it would be far MORE EFFICIENT just for them, which would free up more customer service representatives to help more customers.
This isn’t rocket surgery.
The people fighting universal background checks are the people who deliberately want to be irresponsible. Plain and simple.
obvious-if-you-read-carefully
April 1, 2015
Comment to Gun background check hearing: Does bill close loophole or create unenforceable law?
[The type of people who say things like this have mental problems. It is common in some personality disorders for the person to believe they can read your mind. I’ve had them insist they knew what I was thinking and/or meant even with the words I used were written down and visible in front of them and I insisted they were completely, totally, wrong. They just knew in direct disregard for all the facts.
This is why I sometimes ask how someone determines truth from falsity with stunning effectiveness. I have literally been told, “It depends on how I feel.”—Joe]
Actually no; quite often I don’t, so why not just come right out and say it clearly and directly?
From Vanderboegh. I like it. It illustrates exactly the sort of ridiculous things I picture in my mind when most people speak, about anything.
I was listening to a caller on a talk show this morning, for example, who went on and on and, so far as I could gather, never said anything. The host caught on right away and after several unsuccessful attempts to prompt the guy into saying something he ended the call. A lot of words were coming out of the caller’s mouth, amounting to nothing.
That little anecdote describes much of my life. Many times I’ve sat through a whole hour of some video someone or other thought I should totally see, searching for one little bit of clear meaning (anything that didn’t require some inference or projection or other) to end up with nothing.
“I don’t see it like that. The way I figure, the various anti libertarian government entities are violating my rights three times per day, and more. Don’t tell me I’M the felon, see. That puts the attention in the wrong place.”
Seen over at Uncle’s.
If the whole focus of your life is on getting everybody else to agree with you on every detail of your politics and adopt your plans for a perfect society, then you’re setting yourself up to be at war with most of the human race most of the time.
Which means an awful lot for the Angry Left to get angry about.
Robert Tracinski
March 26, 2015
Why Is the Angry Left So Angry?
[While this is a good start I think there is more to it than this.
Having spent a lot of years dealing with someone and their family who were angry much of the time I came to realize that anger was the primary means of communication for them. If you didn’t get angry they would not pay attention to what you were saying. I remember an instance where I coolly and calmly told this person, probably a dozen times over the course of a few days, that what they were doing was hazardous. They would agree, say they wouldn’t do it again, then, frequently, within a few seconds do it again.
Eventually I lost my cool. I yelled. They apologized, said they wouldn’t do it again, and they didn’t. Within a year I found myself getting angry with them with almost no provocation. They taught me to get angry to communicate. I finally realized this and starting thinking about what was going on. I then thought back to the first time I met this persons family. I was at the front door and the living room was chaos. Various people yelling at the same time and no one appeared to be listening to anyone else. My friend, happy to see me, walked through the chaos with a big smile. They were oblivious to the yelling and anger of everyone else.
The entire family communicated via emotions. The actual words weren’t that important. There were many times I would see different people in a conversation were talking about entirely different things but didn’t realize the other party to the conversation was “on a different channel”. Other times what they said was self-contradictory. It didn’t even make sense. Pointing this out to them was interesting. They would laugh and say it didn’t matter. I became sort of a joke to them because I couldn’t understand them. They made no sense to me but they were entirely happy with their babbling to each other and didn’t see what why I had a problem with it. “Oh, Joe, we’re just talking.” is an actual quote which came in response to my confusion about something not making sense.
When the topic of discussion was something of significant importance and it involved me I would sometimes insist they pay attention to reality and make sense. This would result in a fight. The claim was that “I had to get my own way.” But it wasn’t my way. It was forcing them to be congruent with reality and the laws of physics.
We see similar things with the left/progressives. They think they have accomplished something by holding a candlelight vigil. They demand a higher minimum wage and higher employment rate no matter how many time it is demonstrated you can’t have both for very long. They demand enhanced background checks because President Regan, Jim Brady, and a bunch of kids were shot—even though the shooters did, or would have, passed the proposed background check.
They use “hash tag diplomacy” and declare victory when bullets are the only viable option to effect change. They throw “reasons” like, “stand your ground”, and “war on women” around because they know our society requires at least some lip service be given to “reasons” even if the facts don’t support their claims. They don’t understand reason and resort to making reasoning noises. They cannot even tell you how to determine truth from falsity.
Emotion is their currency and their reality. If they feel something is true then, for them, it is true. This was driven home to me when I extreme frustration I once demanded, “How do you determine truth from falsity?” They calmly told me, “It depends on how I feel.”
I have been repeatedly told and after many decades of trying everything else I’m beginning to believe the proper approach to these people is to not get emotional. That is their “battle space”. When you get emotional it makes them happy because you become one of them. Then any emotion they care to use is justified because you are already emotional. Insist they be rational. They can’t. They only have emotions. Point out their logical and factual errors and refuse to accept their emotions as currency.
We do not share a common basis for communication or for determining reality. We share the same planet but they are in a different world. So of course they get angry with us. In their minds we are aliens in a turf war with them.—Joe]
The Democrats are totally ill-equipped to defeat him. He simply doesn’t fall for their game, and so it will require the combined efforts of Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, the American Communist Party, et al, plus Jihadists and other foreign interests, to defeat him. This will be interesting.
The predictable, or rather a common, outcome would be that someone would get to him and convince him (threaten, bribe, cajole, lie, intimidate, mesmerize, etc.) that “For the Greater Good of the Party” he should quit before he does too much damage to the 2016 prospects. That or they primary him right out.
Who in their right mind thinks of owning guns as a human right?!
Scott Peterson
March 11, 2015
Comment to The NRA Wins Again on Armor-piercing Bullets, But Common Sense Was Already Lost
[One might conclude that Peterson is of the opinion that the entire U.S. Supreme Court and the majority of the U.S. population should be sent to the psych ward.
If this is true then I would like to suggest Peterson take point on that endeavor and see just who it is that ends up occupying the psych ward.—Joe]
Who are the sick women who are having children with these gun nazis? It makes me physically ill. There is something mentally disturbed about people who own more than one gun.
Melissa Challenger
March 9, 2015
Facebook comment on the CSGV page in response to this photo found on Shyanne Roberts Facebook page:
Shyanne, a ten year old competitive shooter, posted the picture with the following comment:
Teee Heee the first shipment of ammo from my sponsor Steel Ridge Ammunition showed up today !! So I decided to forget about snow angels and make an ammo angel instead !
VERY, VERY happy and cant wait to hit the range, thanks so much to the entire team at Steel Ridge Ammunition!
[Apparently Challenger is oblivious to the irony of calling someone a Nazi and advocates for forcing them to give up enjoying their sport and the exercise of their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
Challenger not only wants to take away your guns. She thinks people who own guns are mentally disturbed and doesn’t think gun owners should have have a spouse or children.—Joe]
The cartoonist is not only prejudiced and has a negative stereotyped view of gun owners but is delusional. Gun ownership rates are difficult to measure but there are a lot of indicators that ownership rates are going up. The belief that gun ownership is going down is comforting to the anti-gun person. Being part of the “herd” is important to them and their “herd” getting larger provides more comfort. As Heinlein said, “Delusions are often functional.”
I am of the opinion that it is to our advantage to let the anti-gun people keep this particular delusion. For now.
And hardly anyone is noticing, apparently. This is one of the biggest power grabs regarding free speech in the history of history, and it seems to be going through without much discussion, or even much notice.
I’ve been saying for years that the left really, really MUST gain control over the internet, and right now it seems they’re just a day or two from initiating their Solution; FCC control. Goodbye Wild West. Hello Federal Department of the Internet. I hope you like your new overlords.
How much more clear can it be?
University of Michigan Activism class.
Just heard about it on Rush.
The university goes on to say that they’re not exhibiting any political bias. In Left-Speak that would be true of course, because “Bias” means any opposition to the Progressive authoritarian system.