The Brady Campaign has asked us to believe the impossible… yet again.

Every January, the gun control group issues a state report card, giving each state a grade on the basis of their gun laws.

But one look at their report card reveals that the grades have nothing to do with how safe people are in the state.

Their report card is somewhat reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice in Wonderland. When Alice doesn’t believe the White Queen is 101 years old, she is encouraged by the Queen to spend more time trying to believe the impossible.

“When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day,” the Queen smiled. “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Well, the Brady Bunch would have us believe many impossible things. But here are six for starters.

First, the group gives Vermont a grade of D- because, supposedly, the “state’s weak laws make it too easy for criminals, the mentally ill and juveniles to get guns.”

But this statement is laughable, for crime in Vermont is virtually non- existent. Just last year (2003), Vermont earned the Safest State in the nation award from the Morgan Quitno Press — a group of statisticians who rank each state according to its safety record.

The Green Mountain State has consistently had one of the lowest crime rates in the nation, as they have earned this “Safest State” award three times in the last ten years.

Erich Pratt
Director of Communications for Gun Owners of America
January 16, 2004
THE BRADY BUNCH VISITS WONDERLAND ONCE AGAIN
[Via Women Against Gun Control, Ladies of High Caliber.

It’s not about reducing crime. It’s about disarming and controlling people.—Joe]

For good reason, there’s no parent anywhere who believes that any “expert” knows what’s better for their kids than they do. Parents of course will rush to seek out a medical expert when a child is sick, or has a learning disability, or is depressed, or mired in a hundred other dilemmas. Even through these inevitable terrifying crises of child rearing, however, all parents are alike in being animated by the absolute certainty — and they’re virtually always right in this — that no one loves their children more than they do, or worries about them more, or agonizes even a fraction as much over how best to shepherd them to adulthood happy and in one piece.

Implying the opposite is a political error of almost mathematically inexpressible enormity. This is being done as part of a poisonous rhetorical two-step. First, Democrats across the country have instituted radical policy changes, mainly in an effort to address socioeconomic and racial disparities. These included eliminating standardized testing to the University of California system, doing away with gifted programs (and rejecting the concept of gifted children in general), replacing courses like calculus with data science or statistics to make advancement easier, and pushing a series of near-parodical ideas with the aid of hundreds of millions of dollars from groups like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that include things like denouncing emphasis on “getting the right answer” or “independent practice over teamwork” as white supremacy.

Matt Taibbi
December 28, 2021
The Democrats’ Education Lunacies Will Bring Back Trump
[Via email from John S.

Taibbi has a point. Politicians can falsely claim to be a climate, crime, or economics expert and the average voter isn’t going to offer stiff resistance to that claim. But if a politician claims high school graduation shouldn’t depend upon proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic you are going to get their attention. It’s something everyone capable of reading is going to have a fair amount of expertise in. And the ruination of our education system has reached the point where it’s impossible to ignore.

The remarkable thing is that when called out on this the politicians don’t admit they were wrong. They double down. From the same Taibbbi article:

When criticism ensued, pundits first denied as myth all rumors of radical change, then denounced complaining parents as belligerent racists unfit to decide what should be taught to their children, all while reaffirming the justice of leaving such matters to the education “experts” who’d spent the last decade-plus doing things like legislating grades out of existence. This “parents should leave ruining education to us” approach cost McAuliffe Virginia, because it dovetailed with what parents had long been seeing and hearing on the ground.

Similar examples could be presented from Democrat attitudes regarding defunding the police, gun control, and failure to secure the border.

This hubris will be their undoing. But will it occur soon enough?—Joe]

Like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, they reside in a land of make-believe, and if you don’t play along with them they’ll hate you for challenging their fantasy. It’s hard enough to maintain character in a land of make-believe without people trying to ruin your entire imaginary world by rudely inserting images of reality. You’re a bully, even a destroyer of worlds (of Neverland), in their minds.

They know perfectly well that their world is imaginary but, like normal children playing, they enjoy living in that imaginary world. It’s a beautiful and wonderful place in which they are the heroes. Therefore they consider it cruel of anyone to ruin their game.

The signal, the proof, that they know their world is imaginary is that they get very emotional when you challenge the game. Because they’re putting creative effort into playing make-believe it hurts them to be reminded of reality. The emotion comes from your breaking down that which they’ve carefully and delicately built up in their imaginations. It’s as though they’ve painted a nice picture and they’re standing there enjoying it, and then you come along and mess it all up and kick over the easel. That makes you an ogre. They have to get rid of you or else the game, all of wonderful Neverland, and their place in it, is ruined altogether.

Lyle
Comment to Quote of the day—Rachel Sillcocks
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]