Quotulatiousness

August 8, 2020

“The show exploits the most extreme disaster LARPers, but their visions of the apocalypse are typical”

Filed under: Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Jen Gerson does a bit of disaster-watching, or rather not so much watching disasters as watching people prepping for disasters:

If you spend a few hours devoted to consuming episodes of the reality TV show Doomsday Preppers, it becomes impossible to avoid this obvious conclusion: doomsday preppers are probably the least prepared of any of us to survive the apocalypse.

Take Season 2, Episode 14, for example, in which a 44-year-old man in Hawaii believes that he will use his intuition and limited backcountry skills to survive a tsunami — his first such intuition is to get into a boat.

More typically, the television show documents Middle American families who believe they can buy their way out of society’s collapse by burying bunkers and stockpiling food, weapons and tactical gear.

Most of them seem paranoid. A few come off as genuinely disturbed. All of them seem sad.

Ask them what they’re so afraid of and they will list their apocalypse of choice: electromagnetic pulse, financial collapse, famine, drought, coup, a population-devastating plague.

The show exploits the most extreme disaster LARPers, but their visions of the apocalypse are typical. We were all prepared for zombies, and aliens — the surround-sound end-of-the world in which we would take up arms against invading forces and ferry our children to the bug-out Eden in the mountains.

Nobody pictured the apocalypse would like this; stuck at home for months at a time, pounding Oreos and beer at 11 a.m. and watching Doomsday Preppers on Netflix while faking a work day on the couch. For most, heroism has been an act of idleness.

May 21, 2020

QotD: Gullibility and belief in conspiracy theories

Filed under: Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

There are several cognitive processes going on here:

Anecdotal thinking vs. statistical thinking. We evolved to do the former so it is natural; science teaches us to do the latter, and it is unnatural. What is natural is to connect two temporally-close events as causally connected. A happens and then B happens. So they must be causally connected, right? I vaccinated my child and shortly after he was diagnosed with autism. They must be connected, right? Not necessarily (and in this case definitely not).

Patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise. If you already believe in UFOs or Bigfoot, strange lights in the sky or shadowy figures in the trees are interpreted as a meaningful pattern that supports the belief. Often such patterns carry an additional component that I call …

Agenticity: the tendency to infuse those patterns with intentional agents who act in the world. From conspiracies to ghosts, angels, demons, and gods, we tend to impute agency to the goings on around us, as if there’s someone/something out there pulling the strings.

Confirmation Bias: we look for and find confirming evidence for what we already believe and ignore or rationalize away disconfirming evidence. Once you believe that, say, “the Jews” are running the world, or that the U.S. government (or the Bush administration in the case of the 9/11 truthers) is involved in vast global cabals to control oil, it is easy to interpret daily news stories about the goings on of governments in the light of the conspiracy theory in question. Every bit of minutia becomes pregnant with meaning. It’s not chance or contingency, it’s a Vast Right Wing (or Left Wing) Conspiracy!

Michael Shermer, interviewed by Claire Lehmann, “The Skeptical Optimist: Interview with Michael Shermer”, Quillette, 2018-02-24.

March 19, 2020

Stalin’s Paranoid Military Purges – The Great Terror | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1938 Part 4 of 4

Filed under: History, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 18 Mar 2020

In 1938, Stalin has his military leadership purged, and has thousands of his comrades killed or locked up. The reasons as to why he did it are still open for debate.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Joram Appel
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations by:
– Daniel Weiss

Sources:
From the Noun Project:
– Saluting Veteran by Eric Lamar Pearine
– Russian_soldier_1553396 (Edited) by Wonmo Kang
– Prison by FORMGUT
– Law_585610 by Delwar Hossain
Photos from Color by Klimbim

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
– “Split Decision” – Rannar Sillard
– “Last Point of Safe Return” – Fabien Tell
– “Watchman” – Yi Nantiro
– “Disciples of Sun Tzu” – Christian Andersen
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar Johnsen
– “Death And Glory 1” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Dark Beginning” – Johan Hynynen
– “First Responders” – Skrya
– “The Charleston 3” – Håkan Eriksson

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
1 day ago
This episode was hard to write, mainly because of the ambiguity that this topic is still clouded in today. There are no conclusive answers as to why Stalin did what he did, and why he stopped doing what he was doing in 1938. This episode features some of the explanations of the purges and the Great Terror. This certainly is a remarkable piece of Soviet History, and one that would dramatically influence the performance of the Red Army in 1939 and beyond. Those who followed our World War Two series know that already in December ’39, the direct consequences of the purges in ’37 and ’38 are gigantic. I would also like to note here that we would like the comment section to stick to factual debate.
cheers, Joram

February 17, 2019

Lyndon LaRouche, RIP

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

When I was first active in the Ontario and federal Libertarian parties in the mid-1970s, I’d sometimes get accused of being a follower of Lyndon LaRouche. Not by fellow Libertarians, I hasten to add, but by random members of the public. At that time I’d never heard of LaRouche, and I have no idea why some Canadians thought he had anything at all to do with libertarian philosophy or politics. He was, as Jesse Walker points out, pretty much the definition of an ANTI-libertarian in US politics:

Ordinarily I’m fond of cranks, maybe excessively so. You say extremist; I say charmingly kooky freethinker. You say cult; I say fascinating young religion. You say lunatic conspiracy theory; I say spooky new addition to America’s homegrown mythology. But even my tolerance has its limits, and one of those limits is Lyndon LaRouche.

LaRouche, who died Tuesday at age 96, was a despicable old fraud, and the warmest feeling I’ve ever been able to conjure for his devotees is pity. Fiercely authoritarian in both his political ideals and his personal life, LaRouche fed his followers a stream of lies, psychological abuse, and paranoid fantasies. Those fantasies featured a big cast of villains, from the queen of England to Aristotle to “Dope, Inc.” to gay people, not to mention whichever follower or ex-follower was the designated scapegoat of the moment. One such scapegoat, Ken Kronberg, committed suicide after the denunciations turned his way.

LaRouche didn’t limit his abuse to the people who chose to cast their lot with him. He aimed it outwards too — most infamously during “Operation Mop-Up,” when his followers in several cities used fists, bats, chains, and nunchuks to attack members of the Communist Party and other leftist groups. When those assaults began in 1973, LaRouche considered himself a part of the radical left; Operation Mop-Up, he hoped, would establish his “hegemony” over the competition. But a few years later he was aligning himself with Klansmen and the far-right Liberty Lobby. He had a habit of flipping positions like that.

He also had a habit of running for president — first as the 1976 nominee of the U.S. Labor Party, then as a recurring contender for the Democratic nomination. His biggest successes came in the North Dakota primary of 1992 and the Michigan primary of 2000, when he managed to outpoll everyone else on the ballot. This sounds less impressive when you learn that (a) in both cases, for quirky reasons, none of the major candidates were actually on the ballot, and (b) LaRouche still managed to lose both primaries. In North Dakota he was beaten handily by some write-in votes for Ross Perot, and in Michigan he was outvoted by “uncommitted.”

Most people’s direct encounters with LaRouchism came in one of two ways. The first was to stumble on one of the candidate’s prime-time infomercials, in which he’d inform viewers that Walter Mondale is a Soviet agent, that the government should “quarantine” people with AIDS, or whatever other idea had caught his fancy at the moment. (LaRouche pushed his AIDS idea with a front group called — I swear I am not making this up — PANIC, for the Prevent AIDS Now Initiative Committee.) The second was to run into his followers as they handed out literature in public places. My most memorable encounter with LaRouchie leafletters was in Ann Arbor in the early ’90s, where they had made a big sign that said “EATING ARAB BABIES ISN’T KOSHER.” (I’ve heard people call LaRouche a “coded” anti-Semite. In that case you didn’t have to work hard to crack the code.)

So, LaRouche’s ideas were all over the authoritarian map, but he must have been a really dynamic, engaging speaker to fascinate so many different people for so many years, right? One of those orators that just grabs the attention and plays on it like a fine musical instrument?

There are LaRouche TV specials that consist of nothing but LaRouche himself talking, but I didn’t want to inflict one of those on you. You know why? Because when he’s not saying something utterly crazy, the man is boring. Lyndon LaRouche was a child of the American Weird, but he was too dull to excel even at raving like a lunatic.

January 26, 2019

QotD: Racism, paranoia, and Presidential Derangement Syndrome

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Political prejudice is not the moral equivalent of racial prejudice, but they operate in very similar ways, as anybody who ever has spent much time around a genuine racist or anti-Semite knows. Taxes too high? Blame the blacks. Not making enough money? Blame the Mexicans. Foreign policy seem overwhelmingly complex? Blame the Jews. Whataburger gave you a full-on corn-syrup Coke instead of a Diet Coke? Blame the blacks, Mexicans, Jews, subcontinental immigrants … somebody. Racism and anti-Semitism are metaphysical creeds, and those who adhere to these creeds see the work of the agents of evil everywhere. For them, there is no world outside race and racism.

In this, they are very similar to the Hillary Clinton–voting Manhattan balletomanes who seethe that they must endure being seated in the David Koch theater. David Koch’s brand of libertarianism is mild and constructive, and it has about as much to do with ballet as Keith Olbermann has to do with astrophysics. But for the fanatic, even to hear the name spoken is unbearable.

The people who believe that there can be no art, literature, culture, or life apart from politics are people who do not understand art, literature, culture, or politics.

Imagine being so mentally poisoned and so spiritually sick that you feel the need to organize a protest at New York–Presbyterian Hospital because the institution accepted $100 million — the largest gift in its history, being put to purely philanthropic health-care purposes — from someone whose political views are at odds with your own. Imagine what it must be like to feel that doing that is a moral imperative. Imagine sitting down to listen to a Beethoven string quartet and being filled with paralyzing anxiety that the cellist might not share your views on the Arab–Israeli conflict.

Kevin D. Williamson, “No Republicans Need Apply”, National Review, 2017-02-12.

September 5, 2018

The continuing paranoid style in American politics

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

John Gray discusses the mass psychosis that gripped the left in November 2016 and still has not slackened that grip:

Visiting New York a few weeks after Trump’s victory in the presidential election, I found myself immersed in a mass psychosis. The city’s intelligentsia was possessed by visions of conspiracy. No one showed any interest in the reasons Trump supporters may have had for voting as they did. Quite a few cited the low intelligence, poor education and retrograde values of the nearly 63 million Americans who voted for him. What was most striking was how many of those with whom I talked flatly rejected the result. The election, they were convinced, had been engineered by a hostile power. It was this malignant influence, not any default of American society, that had upended the political order.

Conspiracy theory has long been associated with the irrational extremes of politics. The notion that political events can be explained by the workings of hidden forces has always been seen by liberals as a sign of delusional thinking. A celebrated study by the political scientist Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964), linked the idea with the far Right. Yet in New York in December 2016, many of the brightest liberal minds exhibited the same derangement. Nearly two years later, they continue to reach to conspiracy theory as an explanation for their defeat.

The former lead book reviewer at the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani, devotes several pages to Hofsfadter’s work in her short polemic, The Death of Truth. Citing him approvingly, she notes that “the modern right wing” has “tended to be mobilised by a sense of grievance and dispossession”. As Hofstadter put it, they feel that “America has been largely taken away from them.” The charm of this citation is the lack of self-awareness it reveals. It would be difficult to find a better description of the anguish of liberals such as Kakutani, who feel they have been robbed of their historically appointed role as the moral and intellectual leaders of society.

For those who embrace it, a paranoid style of liberalism has some advantages. Relieved from any responsibility for the debacles they have presided over, the liberal elites that have been in power in many western countries for much of the past 30 years can enjoy the sensation of being victims of forces beyond their control. Conspiracy theory implies there is nothing fundamentally wrong with liberal societies, and places the causes of their disorder outside them. No one can reasonably doubt that the Russian state has been intervening in western politics. Yet only minds unhinged from reality can imagine that the decline of liberalism is being masterminded by Vladimir Putin. The principal causes of disorder in liberal societies are in those societies themselves.

September 4, 2018

Grad school mafia

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Andrea Long Chu recounts her experience as a teaching assistant to Professor Avital Ronell, and the disturbing psychological world inhabited by grad students at New York University:

Structural problems are problems because real people hurt real people. You cannot have a cycle of abuse without actually existing abusers. That sounds simple, which is why so many academics hate it. When scholars defend Avital — or “complicate the narrative,” as we like to say — in part this is because we cannot stand believing what most people believe. The need to feel smarter is deep. Intelligence is a hungry god.

In this way, Avital’s case has become a strange referendum on literary study. Generations of scholars have been suckled at the teat of interpretation: We spend our days parsing commas and decoding metaphors. We get high on finding meaning others can’t. We hoard it, like dragons. We would be intellectually humiliated to learn that the truth was plain: that Avital quite simply sexually harassed her student, just as described. Sometimes analysis is simply denial with more words. Sometimes, as a frustrated student in a first-year literature course always mutters, the text just means what it says it means.

My department has been largely silent since the news broke. Faculty members have said nothing to us. Upset and ashamed, my fellow graduate students and I speak with one another cautiously. We heal, or don’t, alone. People I know are afraid to make any public comment, even on Facebook, where they are friends with older, richer scholars who might one day control their fates. Even I, who have by extraordinary luck options outside of academia, fear what being vocal will bring.

A culture of critics in name only, where genuine criticism is undertaken at the risk of ostracism, marginalization, retribution — this is where abuses like Avital’s grow like moss, or mold. Graduate students know this intuitively; it is written on their bones. They’ve watched as their professors play favorites, as their colleagues get punished for citing an adviser’s rival, as funding, jobs, and prestige are doled out to the most obedient and obsequious. The American university knows only the language of extortion. “Tell,” it purrs, curling its fingers around your IV drip, “and we’ll eat you alive.”

Avital conducts herself as if someone somewhere is always persecuting her. She learned this, I imagine, in graduate school. No woman escapes the relentless misogyny of the academy. The humanities are sadistic for most people, especially when you aren’t a white man. This is understood to be normal. When students in my department asked for more advising, we were told we were being needy. “Graduate school should destroy you,” one professor laughed.

The irony is that those who survive this destruction often do so at the cost of inflicting the same trauma on their own students. Avital, now a grande dame of literary studies, who Reitman alleges bragged to him of a “mafia”-like ability to make or break the careers of others, still feels persecuted. She makes it the job of those around her to protect her from that persecution: to fawn, appease, coddle. The lawsuit against her reads as a portrait, not of a macho predator type, but of a desperately lonely person with the power to coerce others, on pain of professional and psychic obliteration, into being her friends, or worse.

December 24, 2017

The Dangerous Toys of Christmas: Debunked!

Filed under: Media, Randomness, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

ReasonTV
Published on 22 Dec 2017

Author Lenore Skenazy says today’s holiday toys are so risk averse that there’s almost nothing left to warn about. But still, the warnings come every year from consumer groups.

——–

Are you sick of being warned about anything and everything when it comes to the holiday season?

Me too. That’s why I’m ready to throw an icicle at a group called World Against Toys Causing Harm (WATCH). Every year since 1973, they’ve published a paranoid list of the “10 Worst Toys” at Christmastime.

These warnings may have been necessary back in 1973 when companies were still selling toy ovens that could smelt ore and chemistry sets that could actually blow things up.

In fact, the toy world was littered with bad ideas — from the Cabbage Patch Kid dolls with mechanical jaws that chewed everything — including chunks of hair from kids’ heads — to lawn darts — sharp metal things you’d toss at your friends’ toes that caused over six thousand injuries.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission eventually banned those items — and it’s hard to disagree with them — but today’s toys are so risk averse, so super safe, that there’s almost nothing left to warn about. But still the warnings fall like cookie crumbs onto Santa’s beard.

It is this zero tolerance for “risk” that WATCH and other consumer groups exploit every Christmas. Among its top 10 dangers this year are the popular fidget spinners.

Also on this year’s list is the Wonder Woman Battle Action Sword, which, the WATCH team says, encourages young children “to bear arms” — as if you get a Wonder Woman toy and immediately deploy to Yemen. They also say that the “rigid plastic sword blade has the potential to cause facial or other impact injuries.” Yeah … and so does a fork. In fact, so does a candy cane, if you suck it to a sharp point.

Even an innocent looking Disney-themed plush toy did not escape WATCH’s nannying notice. The group warns that the toy could be dangerous due to “fabric hats and bows that can detach, posing a choking hazard.”

That’s a lot of coulds, especially considering the Consumer Product Safety Commission notes on its website that it has had ZERO reports of injuries.

The Toy Association, which is an industry trade group, says WATCH’s dangerous toys list is “full of false claims that needlessly frighten parents and caregivers.”

It’s obvious that toys that explode and toys that are just plain dumb — a boomerang made out of razor blades — are bad. But if they only worked a little harder, I’ll bet WATCH could stop kids from playing with toys. Any toys. Ever.

You want a really great gift for the kids? How about they wake up Christmas morning, unwrap the giant package under the tree to find their very own product liability lawyer? Wind him up and watch him sue all the other toys. Hours of fun!

And when the kids get bored, they lock him in the toy chest, and go play with a great toy. A stick.

Written by Lenore Skenazy. Produced by Alexis Garcia and Paul Detrick. Camera by Jim Epstein, Alex Manning, and Paul Detrick.

March 8, 2017

QotD: Canadian attitudes to America

Filed under: Cancon, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Canadians’ views on American politics are generally fairly predictable. Being Canadian means a degree of smugness blended with a drop or two of envy and a fairly constant need to assert moral superiority. In a very polite, but persistent way.

The candidacy, nomination and election of Donald Trump gave the better class of Canadian plenty of opportunity to show each other just how intelligent and enlighted they were. The Coynes and Kinsellas competed with each other in the political snobbery sweepstakes. Trump was Hitler, the Republicans the Nazi Party, Steve Bannon was a badly dressed Göring or, more likely, Satan himself. Breitbart News was Der Stürmer, the alt-right was universally the SS, the Trump regime overnight transformed America – save for the brave “Resistance” – into an anti-semitic, racist, fascist, misogynistic state in which freedom of the press and human rights in general were crushed under the jackbooted heels of Trump’s evil to a man (and pretend woman) Cabinet.

It has been tons of fun to watch ostensibly rational, intelligent, people reach immediately for the white supremacist smear tool kit in the face of the unthinkable occurring in our neighbour to the South. The fact that, one month into the Trump Presidency, the worst he seems to have done is be rude to CNN and the New York Times doesn’t deter our good and decent Canadians one bit. They just know that Trump is an evilton and, at any moment, will open the concentration camps and start rounding up Mexicans, Jews, Blacks, Muslims, Women, Queers, NYT reporters and anyone else the human Cheeto and his henchmen find objectionable.

And, to make the entire thing even more ominous, there seems to be a belief that Trump was put into position by none other than Prince of Darkness, Vladimir Putin and that Trump is simply following orders. Or something.

Jay Currie, “Trump and the Canadians”, Jay Currie, 2017-02-25.

March 2, 2017

QotD: Presidential derangement syndromes

Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

In the 1990s, a serious malady appeared on the American public square in which citizens were driven over the edge by their antipathy for incumbent presidents. It came to be known as the “presidential-derangement syndrome” and over the course of the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama administrations its victims grew in number. But while it was a given that whoever won last November’s election would have one named after them, we really had no idea what we were in for once Donald Trump moved into the White House. As we’ve seen this past week, presidential paranoia has not only gone mainstream in terms of the public, it’s now found a home in the mainstream media.

Though it was limited at first to the fever swamps of American politics where some on the right first imagined that black helicopters were about to swoop in and steal their freedom or that the Clintons were operating a drug cartel, the derangement virus adapted to the changing political environment in the years that followed. Those deranged by Bush were less marginal than the Clinton victims but shared the belief that the 43rd president was somehow a front for a vast conspiracy and not only blamed him for “lying” the country into war but viewed the entire national-security response to 9/11 as a put-up job intended to mask the theft of liberty.

As awful as the Bush version was, the Obama-derangement syndrome was in many ways even worse as the 44th president’s citizenship was questioned along with his religious faith and anything else about him that anyone could think of. Though Obama’s liberal policies and power grabs were bad enough from a conservative point of view, some on the right preferred to instead spend their energy pondering the authenticity of his birth certificate (see Trump, Donald) or whether or not he was an Islamist mole. We can blame the Internet and the rise of social media for the more pervasive nature of Obama conspiracy theories but even that dispiriting spectacle may turn out to be insignificant when compared to the psychological torment Trump has inspired among not merely the far Left but also mainstream liberals.

Jonathan S. Tobin, “The Paranoid Style of Anti-Trump Politics”, National Review, 2017-02-12.

February 9, 2017

QotD: The president has a persecution complex

Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our president has a persecution complex. He thinks any inconvenient but truthful coverage of him is an unfair criticism and any unfair criticism is a lie. What makes this complicated is that sometimes Trump is right. Some of the coverage has been ridiculous and desperate nonsense, as Mollie Hemingway ably chronicles. And some of the coverage has been merely accurate-but-hypocritical. Howard Kurtz ran through a list last night on Special Report. When Bill Clinton lied, it was called “misleading” or “less than candid” but when Trump lies, it’s a “Lie!” in the headline. (One can make the argument — as I have — that many of Trump’s lies are less offensive because he just glandularly blurts them out, while Bill Clinton lied like an artisan whittling a ballerina out of a block of wood, with loving, expert attention to every detail.)

But you know what? When I say Trump is lying about something, I’m not guilty of any double standard. I called Bill Clinton and Barack Obama liars all the time. You know why? Because they lied all the time. And yet every day, if I criticize Trump about anything, the cultists scream at me some version of “Oh yeah! Why weren’t you this critical of Obama?” or “What about Bill Clinton!?” It’s like they don’t know who they’re talking to. If Trump plays Baron-and-the-Milkmaid with an intern, I will make a big deal out of it and so will the New York Times. Their hypocrisy will not apply to me.

When conservatives — I’m not referring to Republican political hacks, that’s their job; I’m referring to actual conservative writers — go out and respond to the negative coverage solely by attacking the MSM messengers, they are in effect condoning — or at least providing cover for — Trump’s behavior and feeding the idea that he’s a victim whenever anyone does anything other than applaud. Steve Bannon wants to demonize and delegitimize the mainstream media. Given his record at Breitbart, that’s some odd casting for Champion of Journalistic Integrity, but whatever. That’s his fight, and shame on the mainstream media for making his job so easy.

Jonah Goldberg, “Week One”, National Review, 2017-01-27.

February 4, 2017

Chris Kluwe apparently believes that when the revolution comes, citizens can simply seize “captured armories or gun shops”

Filed under: Football, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:33

Since leaving the Vikings, former NFL punter Chris Kluwe has apparently developed quite the streak of paranoia about Il Donalduce and is advising fellow progressives to plan for the revolution:

In meltdown mode over the Trump administration, former NFL player Chris Kluwe is conjuring up ways to mount an armed resistance against the government—based on his knowledge of video games.

Known more for his loud opinions than for his athletic prowess, Kluwe is infamous for writing long, profanity-filled rants about gamers and their unwillingness to accept feminism into their hearts.

Since leaving the Minnesota Vikings, where he was a punter, Kluwe has established himself as a writer, penning a science fiction novel and an autobiography. He contributed posts to Deadspin and launched a crowdfund for a card game he designed.

During the election, Kluwe was outspoken in his opposition to Trump, posting innumerable tweets about it. Several of his slams went viral.

[…]

“They do not care about you. They do not care about me. They do not care about anything other than themselves,” he wrote of the government. “History is replete with examples of what happens when people like [Trump] hold the levers of a nation/state/city/village.”

After insisting that a civil war is inevitable, Kluwe offers some survival tips.

He suggests learning how to use a common service firearm, but adds that it won’t bet necessary to own a gun because when the revolution comes, citizens can simply seize “captured armories or gun shops.” Kluwe also offers useless advice on how to survive a combat situation.

On Facebook, John Ringo offers some helpful suggestions:

(Not sure who ‘Coop’ is. Took this from Chuck Bogardus’ page.)

From Coop:
Attention idiots, former linebackers, antifa(g)s, Sarah Silverman, Judd Apatow, and any other completely retarded “revolutionaries”:
1. The military is not on your side
2. You can’t “loot” a gun store or Military/National Guard armory. They’re kind of designed to be hard to loot, especially if you don’t have a couple of guns prior to attempting such.
3. The Trump supporters have most of the guns already. Better guns than the cops.
4. The Libertarian-leaning non-Trump supporters who own the rest of the guns are leaning closer and closer to Trump with every tantrum you throw and media hit job you make.
5. Your mother’s a whore
6. You have no combat experience.
7. The celebrities who are calling to arms these violent, insurgent actions have absolutely no skin in the game. They risk no arrest, they aren’t there being violent with you, they don’t even leave their gated communities, and when they do, they have an armed security detail. But they’re not going to pay your bail when you get arrested. They’re not going to pay your medical bills when someone reacts to you with superior force in self defense. You are their useful idiots.
8. You are either effeminately weak or cripplingly fat. Your enemies are in much better shape than you.

December 1, 2016

QotD: Victim mentality and “white rage”

Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The media is always fretting that ginning up “white rage” will produce “backlash” — violence — against minority communities.

Okay, let’s say I accept that’s a possibility.

Is it not also a possibility that ginning up minority rage over agrievements, both those that can be characterized as possibly real as well of those of the #FakeNews contrived paranoia variety, can spur non-whites into their own “backlash” mode?

If not, why not? Are whites singularly evil in this world? Are they alone the only race capable of being whipped up into a hateful, violent lather by racial paranoia and racial grievances?

[…]

If it’s dangerous for a strain of white identity politics to nurture a fear and hatred of “The Other” — different races — and that such a strain of grievance-mongering and paranoia may result in the murders or assaults of minorities, why is it (as the media and mediating institutions seem to believe) not dangerous at all for minority ethnic groups to gin up their own fear, paranoia, and hatred against whites or society in general?

Will the media or any government official ever address this, given the weekly assassinations of police, and the newest barbarism committed against OSU students due to one lunatic steeping in the hatreds of identity politics?

Ace, “Jim Geraghty: OSU Jihadi Proves That the Progressives’ Victim Mentality Kills”, Ace of Spades H.Q., 2016-11-30.

November 30, 2016

Swept along in the wake of Trump’s election victory

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Kathy Shaidle didn’t make any friends among the alt-Right with her most recent column:

Weeks later, Trump’s triumph still seems slightly unreal; I permitted myself to purchase Time magazine’s special commemorative issue — can you imagine how much it pained them to put that out? — to serve as cerebral smelling salts and snap me out of those sporadic “Holy shit, he’s the president!” flashes.

But that lapse aside, I put not my trust in princes.

Of course, not everyone shares my horror of personality cults, or the man never would have won. Twitter’s upstart counterpart Gab, for example, is overrun by Trump cheerleaders, for whom fun memes like that “Deplorables” Photoshop or “Donald Crossing the Delaware” aren’t just a split second’s amusement, but the bunting of a burgeoning civic religion.

[…]

Whatever the benefits of a Republican presidency, one of the unavoidable side effects is an emboldening of our side’s flakier elements, who weave two most unsavory obsessions — the occult and “pedophile rings” — into singularly elaborate and ultimately groundless conspiracy theories.

Sure enough, right on cue: Type “Pizzagate” into YouTube’s search engine and soak in the overblown paranoid hysteria.

These kooks and simpletons were harmlessly wrong about Harry Potter turning your kids into witches, and tragically mistaken about the “Satanic panic.” At the very least, they’re a colossal embarrassment, but they also undermine serious business undertaken by serious people.

A big difference this time around is that the president himself won’t be immune to the lure of such twisted, empty-calorie distractions. Trump used to be Birther-in-Chief, remember? And he’s on Twitter.

January 5, 2016

QotD: Culture War 2.0

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Paranoia is the political currency of the emotionally unstable culture warrior who is always certain that someone is looking at them the wrong way, threatening them on social media or committing some other microaggression against them.

There are people who can’t hear a “good morning” without seeing a conspiracy against them. In normal life, they’re diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenics. In political activism, they’re just sensitive to microaggressions.

The left has always valued oversensitivity because neurotics are easy to convince of their own victimhood. And career victims naturally dehumanize those they consider to be their oppressors. As neurosis has become culture, the only way to escape accusations of privilege is to find your own victimhood. And there’s nothing like being forced to develop insecurities to make you insecure.

Culture War 2.0 is culturally crazy. Its personal dysfunction so entangled with politics that there is no way to tell where one begins and the other ends. It politicizes insecurity and narcissism for campaigns that are indistinguishable from trolling. It reduces every issue to personal unhappiness and demands the abolition of traditional freedoms and rights as the answer to that unhappiness.

Its demands are unanswerable because they are personal. There is no solution to them except sanity. And in a cultural conflict where insanity is an asset, sanity is no answer. It’s an accusation.

The truly paranoid see the world as hostile and are driven to destroy it. Their crusade to find happiness by making everyone else miserable can only [succeed] halfway. They can never be happy, but they can always make others miserable.

Daniel Greenfield, “Our Insecure Culture Warriors”, Sultan Knish, 2015-11-02.

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