Vandy leads the all time series 14-3, winning the first 12 between 1915 and 1956. MTSU followed with a 3 game win streak from 2001 to 2005 before the Commodores won the last 2 years. This will only be Vanderbilt’s 3rd trip out to the suburbs, as most of the series has been played in Nashville.
Tailgate of the Week
LSU vs BYU, Houston, TX New Orleans, LA
This game has been moved due to sloopy spilling a Big Gulp outside his home, or something like that. Speaking of sloopy, here is my required link: [insert atrocity here]
Never bet against LSU on the tailgate. They know what they are doing. And now they are doing it on relatively home turf. On the other side, a BYU tailgate sounds awful. So hang out with the LSU guys.
Beer: Dixie got wiped out by Katrina and has been struggling along contract brewing since. The Saints owner has recently bought them and is rebuilding in New Orleans. Drink a Blackened Voodoo to celebrate.
Booze: Hurricane
2 oz light rum
2 oz dark rum
2 oz passion fruit juice
1 oz orange juice
Juice of ½ lime
1 tbsp simple syrup
1 tbsp grenadine
Shake over ice, strain into Hurricane glass. Garnish with fruity bits.
Game of the Century of the Week
West Virginia vs Virginia Tech, Landover, MD (Sunday)
What, you were expecting something else? This game will decide once and for all which is worse: West Virginia or Western Virginia. Let the redneckery begin!
Homer section, with bonus history
Georgia Tech vs Tennessee, Atlanta, GA (Monday)
This is a neutral site game, no really, stop laughing. It will be the first real game in the new Mercedes Benz Stadium downtown. The Falcons have played an exhibition and there has been soccer and I understand some lower division teams are playing there on Saturday, but those don’t count.
Bobby Dodd was a QB great at UT under coach General Neyland, for whom their stadium is named. Bobby Dodd coached at GT from 1945 to 1966 and continued as AD after that. And our stadium is named for him. His long running feud with Bear Bryant led directly to GT leaving the SEC and foreshadowed oversigning arguments of today. As AD he nearly destroyed GT athletics, but in retirement he made one final great decision. In 1986, Coach Bill Curry was offered the Alabama job and asked Dodd (who he had played for) for advice. Dodd told him to take the job. This led directly to Tech winning the national title in 1990 and Alabama sliding into a tailspin. One last dagger into the Bear!
Nothing really changed with the Top 25 with so few games, will update it next week. Plus, I think I found a bug in it.
In the first installment I went on and on about how Charlottesville was a perfect test to preserve and protect the sanctity of freedom of speech, expression and assembly.
I’ll let you all determine if Americans get a passing grade.
In this post, I want to touch on a specific example of how the left is not seeing things properly when it comes to freedom of opinion.
A recent development in left-wing dogma is the notion that if you disagree with speech you deem ‘hateful’, it doesn’t deserve First Amendment protection. In Canada, we didn’t even bother to have a debate about it and just scribbled in ‘hate speech’ laws into our Charter. Government balances free speech. It is known.
A charter that isn’t worth shit (I can’t even bring myself to capitalize it) because when taken to its logical end, the government has final say on individual sovereignty and our rights to freedom of expression.
In other words, you’re kinda free until you’re not in Canada.
Sha-wing!
Just ask Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant learned when they got their asses hauled in before the court, and unelected monstrosities like the Human Rights Commission for the crime of wrongthink.
List of punchables please.
HRC talking bacterial virus: “Please explain to us, dear friend, why you hate the environment, Mark? Why won’t you be a good boy and side with science? We fucking love science, so be sciencey with us! Prove to us why we shouldn’t send you to Camp Krusty.”
The idea, if you can call it that, is grotesque for where it can all lead. One of those intellectual cul-de-sacs is thought control. For example, Smugpipi Longnanny commands, “You have white privilege ergo you’re racist but you don’t know it. You just need to accept it and this is why we’re controlling speech or else…”
A variation of this is if you don’t denounce something they deem offensive enough, they will take the moral decision to claim you ‘tacitly accept’ insert bad thing here.
By their admitted logic, because the left refuses to ‘tacitly denounce Islamic terrorism to the degree some may demand’, they’re terrorists. See? Fun.
So if you dare to defend – in the context of Charlottesville – that racists have a right to free speech means you support them.
Oh, the lazy stupidity of it all!
Let’s keep going. I’ve read quite a few of these self-righteous zealots argue that it’s okay to punch a Nazi. Emotionally, sure. The urge to hit something you loathe is great. I loathe Marxist thinking, communist ideology and socialism because they’re illiberal ideologies with a documented track record of murder and mayhem that robs and steals humans of their soul handing it over to a bureaucracy of superiors who control your life. Nothing can be more anti-humanist than these ideologies. I also can’t handle clowns. Clowns are scary.
It was my understanding there’d be no retaliation to the initiation of force.
Am I justified in going to punch out such people in the street?
Or. Let us take this accurate statement of ‘Not all Muslim are terrorists but the majority of political terrorism are committed by Islamic terrorists”. Does this accord me the right to go punch out my Muslim neighbour? No, seriously, a Muslim family live three houses me.
And what happens if the Nazi, Muslim or any body else punches back? Have you considered those inevitable consequences?
Moving goal posts is God’s work.
Are they not in their right to defend themselves since you admitted throwing the first punch is a duty?
I don’t think these people have thought things through. They just want to project and emote arrogantly setting the rules. Like a good game of Calvin Ball.
Let me expand.
If they’re in the moral and intellectual right, as they claim, why do they need violence then? Because history of the Nazis show this is what needs to be done? Again, can’t this be applied to Muslim terrorism? I reckon they won’t want to extend this rope to that end, right?
Progressive visions.
As is always the case with them, they get to determine the parameters of free speech (as we see on campuses and safe spaces). And just like they get to arbitrarily set the rules, the idea violence starts when the other side retaliates gives them one long leash to lash out with impunity.
By not ‘tacitly’ denouncing Antifa’s own antics in Charlottesville, do I get to go punch those people out?
How barbaric, no?
But, Rufus, I fear your monocle is on too tight and squeezing your brain. Antifa is love and peace! They just want to spread their love!
Pish-posh. You have not seen love until you witness the love libertarians have of their orphans.
At best, I see ‘two wrongs make a right’ or ‘might makes right’.
Antifa is a violent, illiterate, and problematic hate group in of itself. That they *claim* to speak for righteousness is hollow and tenuous. Witch-hunters thought they were doing good too. So do villains who feel they’ve been wronged and seek to ‘right’ a perceived injustice.
Speaking of which, I do question the judgment of someone who claims Antifa is good. An identity group that doxxes people resulting in major consequences for the people impacted is a misguided and misplaced act of justice.
For a group that claims to be compassionate and humanist, how can they not see this action destroys (often) innocent lives needlessly? They may see themselves as righteous vigilantes but in effect they’re just lawless renegades with a confused moral and intellectual compass.
How would you feel if that was your son or daughter or friend or cousin who lost their jobs to a wrongful doxxing? Humanize your actions.
People who claim Antifa are not violent are out to lunch. Either they’re ignoring their behaviour or are just plain uninformed. Or they don’t care and aren’t admitting it. Regardless, none of it is good and not supported by documented reports of what we know about them.
Not provoking a bear is a universal principle applied pretty much across the West. It’s basic kindergarten stuff. If you punch first, you were reprimanded. Conversely, if the person struck back, they too would be held to account for their actions.
Even the NHL understands this basic law of nature. It’s called the ‘Instigator rule’. Don’t provoke or else you’ll get the penalty; usefulness of the rule notwithstanding. It’s believed it’s better to let the two parties have a go with the thinking it will police and sort itself out. Maybe this is what needs to be done here. Let these faux-resisters and racists keep banging each other over the heads. Eventually they’ll get the message that their actions are futile and not furthering their respective agendas. No one in the end can tolerate endless, mindless violence. Not even that degenerate, left-wing Berkeley professor who smashed that kid with a bike lock.
Beats the Outer Banks.
He’s a prime example of a coward who would take advantage of the instigator rule in hockey. He’d hit and run away without facing justice. Of course, if someone did hit him back, coward that he is, he’d scream like a little baby about how he faced violence and injustice. After all, this gutless coward has the moral obligation to smash people up, correct?
If a fellow gang member comes up to you and says we need to go take care of the Ducky Boys, the gang is going to carefully consider the possible outcomes and consequences of the provocation. You all understand if you go and provoke them, they will fight back. So someone among you may say, ‘hey man, don’t go and do that. They outnumber us’. Or they’ll conclude, ‘it’s not worth it.’
But none of the considerations are “they will just take what they have coming’.
Only The Wanders can take on the Ducky Boys.
It’s illogical and naive for people who think violence wasn’t inevitable in the context of Charlottesville.
No matter how you dice this thing up, Antifa doesn’t come out looking any better.
Worse even if you ask me.
No, you don’t have a right to punch a Nazi because, by all accounts, you’re are not nice people and don’t hold the higher moral ground.
Do us all a favour and stop pretending you represent the conscience of people, quit pretending you care about civil liberties and put on your blue caps. Here are some ideas you’d wear well.
Julien Thomas Schuessler, 20, was charged with a hit and run, reckless driving, failing to maintain lane control and was released.
Schuessler, posted a video at 2:24 p.m. the day of the primary election, and shows him intentionally pulling off of the road and slamming through a Trump sign. When asked why he would intentionally pull off the road to hit a Trump campaign sign in such a dangerous maneuver, the driver said:
“I did what I felt was morally right. Spread love, not hate.”
One of the questions I often ask myself (other ‘can I afford a new gun?’ and ‘Is she over 18?’) is: Why do statists hate poor people? Time and again we see how their policies disproportionately affect poor people in increasingly negative ways. Case in point: I have an internet buddy from Australia. Being Australian, he is predictably progressive, but he is the rare breed of progressive that agrees to disagree on certain political issues, so even though he hates guns and knows that I love them, we can still get along without him calling me a baby killer. I was talking to him once about various aspects of shooting, and I mentioned offhand how expensive guns and ammo have become. He responded that he would hope that guns and ammo are expensive. I asked him point blank: Should poor people not be allowed have guns? His response was a rather terse and unapologetic ‘no they should not’. And just like that, we get to one of the hidden pillars of gun control: Elitism.
While the racist roots of modern gun control stemming from post reconstruction Jim Crow laws are fairly well documented, the class warfare elements are usually glossed over or hand waved away. This is true for the ‘may issue’ concealed carry permits in places like New York and Maryland which are only accessible to the rich and powerful, but it is even more stark when you look at the case of ‘Saturday night special’ laws. For those unaware, ‘Saturday night special’ is a slang term for inexpensive mass produced and usually low caliber handguns. Such guns were very popular among the poor, especially among working class black families in high crime neighborhoods. Obviously, we can’t have affordable firearms for black poor people, lest they wander off the plantation and find a sense of agency along the way. Thus, the anti-gun politicians went after these guns under the dubious claim that criminals were using them as burner guns at a disproportionately high rate. In point of fact there is no actual basis to this claim, but why let facts stand in the way of good old fashioned civil rights infringement. The gun control act of 1968 (back when people named their bills honestly) specifically banned these cheap imports by implementing a points system requirement for imported handguns based on size, caliber, and a host of other useless and outdated features. Fun fact: imported Glocks cannot pass the import system in their factory configuration. The ones built in Austria for import to the US (which I assume is all of them) are equipped from the factory with expensive target sights, which are removed and replaced with the standard combat sights after they make it stateside. This is also why many smaller imported pistols have ridges on their triggers. Apparently the ridges make them ‘target triggers’ which give them enough points to pass importation. Same goes for those beloved finger grooves on the smaller Glocks. They are ‘target grips’ required for importation. No, I am not making a word of this up, in case you somehow think that gun control laws could not actually be this arbitrary. Oh, and government agencies are exempt from these restrictions, of course, because no real gun control law is complete without a hefty side order of cop carve outs.
What? Criminals don’t obey the law? Not even gun control laws?
The effects of these laws on the underprivileged cannot be understated. A criminal does not care about the price of a gun. He can barter for one using drugs or other contraband. He can obtain them from criminal associates. He can simply steal one from an empty house or unattended vehicle. A poor law abiding person cannot, or more precisely will not, engage in these sorts of activities, and therefore is simply artificially priced out of the market. There was even a study done that shows that mid and high priced guns are more common as crime guns than cheap burners. Apparently criminals shop for quality and caliber over price. The purpose of these laws are simple: keep the proles disarmed and unable to fight back against their betters. The ruling class would rather have the poor defenseless in the street against criminals and their own corrupt police than allow them to defend themselves and risk a riot or power struggle.
Good thing such a blatant and obvious infringement would surely attract the attention of the various professional victims minority empowerment organizations who would immediately oppose and dismantle such a racist, elitist law, wouldn’t it? You bet it would! In 2003, the NAACP filed a federal lawsuit over the availability of handguns to minority communities. Oh wait, silly me! They filed suit against a number of firearms manufacturers for making and selling so called ‘Saturday night specials’ to minority communities. Huh… kinda went the other way with that one. Surely the NAACP values the self defense rights of minorities over oppressive disarmament schemes? I mean, it’s not like the NAACP is completelymorallybankrupt or anything, right?
It isn’t the real start of the season, that is next weekend. But there are five games being played this weekend in FBS, so might as well get started. Like the short week itself with a lack of interesting games, this preview is mostly dull, too. It will get better next week, honest.
Rivalry of the Week
Hawaii @ UMass, Amherst, MA
These border states (I am standing by it. If you go the correct Northwestish angle from Hawaii, the next state you hit is MA) have played a total of **ONE** time previously, with Hawaii winning 46-40 in 2016. Stubhub has seats starting at $15, so you better get on it.
Tailgate of the Week
Stanford vs Rice, Sydney, AU
Kangaroos, Koalas, Drop Bears, and college football. This location has everything you would expect from an opening weekend. Stanford and Rice kick off their seasons in the land of poisonous beasts and plants. My understanding is that normal college football rules will be used in the 1st and 4th quarters, but Aussie rules will be used in quarter 2 and Rugby League rules in quarter 3.
Rice leads the all-time series 3-2, but Stanford has won the last two, dating back to 1964.
Brewpub: Redoak Boutique Beer Café looks like a good spot to hit before or after the game, but I will let our locals throw in their two cents? pence? pesos? worth.
Booze: The 1778
50ml Gin
10ml Apple Schnapps
30ml Wild Hibiscus and Rosella Syrup
10ml Lime Juice
1 Finger Lime, Muddled
Wattle
Chill a martini glass with ice.
In a mixing glass, muddle finger lime. Fill with ice then add all ingredients and stir until chilled. Discard ice from martini glass. Fine strain the mixture into Martini glass. Garnish with wattle. What the hell is a wattle? The chicken neck thing?
Wattle?
Game of the Week
Oregon St @ Colorado St, Ft Collins, CO
There are only five FBS games this weekend, so this is the best I can do.
Not that anyone cares, but the series is tied at 1-1, with the last game played in 1975.
Methodology: The rating is calculated assuming that the team in question (let’s say, LSU, for this example) wins the rest of their games. Which, at this point, means they go undefeated, but the rest of the games go according to projections (the projections are just based on end of 2016 rankings). The rating numbers of these hypothetical undefeated teams are then used to compute the rankings. So, at this point, it is basically a ranking of Strength of Schedule. As the season goes on, future schedules will become less important and results of games actually played will become more important.
“The important thing is to concentrate upon what you can do – by yourself, upon your own initiative.”
-Harry Browne
This post is a condensed version of Harry Browne’s book How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. Harry Browne was an author and businessman who was the Libertarian Party’s nominee for president in 1996 and 2000.
Not Harry Browne
Freedom means being able to live your life the way you want to. The more free you are, the more time you spend on what you want to do, instead what you are forced to do or feel obligated to do. The best way to become free is through direct alternatives, actions that do not require the permission or cooperation of someone else.
There are various obstacles to using direct alternatives. Browne calls them “traps” and the most common one is the selfishness trap. Most people are raised to believe that being selfish is bad, and that instead people ought to focus on making each other happy.
Browne has an interesting way of debunking this idea. Suppose happiness is symbolized by a big, red rubber ball. The person who has the ball is happy, but he doesn’t want to be selfish, so he passes it someone else and so on. No one gets to be happy because they just pass the ball to someone else. What is the point of everyone sacrificing their happiness for other people who are also supposed to sacrifice their happiness? There is nothing wrong with wanting to be happy and everyone is selfish (focused on their own happiness) to a greater or lesser degree.
And then there are laws and informal social obligations. How should we handle them? Browne says everyone must decide how much they will comply with the wishes of others. You couldn’t please everybody even if you wanted to. Most people are reluctant to break laws and say no to requests, but you must learn to do these things if you want to be happy. Browne says as long as you break the rules carefully and discreetly, you have little to fear.
In relating with others, Browne says the key is keep the relationship limited to mutual benefit. You don’t have to like all the same things your spouse or lover or friend does. Remember that other people are pursuing their happiness too, and if you block them, they will resent it just as much as you would. For example, it may not be a good a idea to start a business with a friend because the business could change the relationship for the worse.
The long and the short of it is nobody has an obligation to make you happy nor do you have an obligation to make anybody else happy. Realizing this is an exciting feeling. You are not helpless in the face of external forces. You can choose. And even in the worst circumstances, you have control of your own thoughts. You always have some freedom.
There is no escaping the need to use your own judgement. Even when you decide to follow a religious, legal, or moral code, you used your own judgement to select it and you must use your judgement on when to disregard the code.
So be free. There will always be people who will try to tie you up for no good reason. The key is to ignore them.
“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
“I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” -Frederick Douglass
“Freedom comes only from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue.”
-David Seabury
“Live free or die.”
-NH state motto
“And when someone accuses you of being selfish, just remember that he’s upset only because you aren’t doing what he selfishly wants you to do.”
-Harry Browne
“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.”
-Mae West
“Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.”
-Oscar Wilde
“To be nobody but yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you somebody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
-e.e. cummings
‘…it is not always important that individuals reason well, it is sufficient that they reason; from their individual thought, freedom is born.’’ Montesquieu
Once again, the irrational jackals looking for their pound of blood and flesh have pounced and pummelled into oblivion any remaining shred of rational thought they possessed.
This time they’re outraged! Really, really, outraged! 25%, no, 33.33% more outrage. So salty they are with Trump – ooo, that son of a bitch – Campbell’s is jealous with all the salt they use.
I’m not going to rehash what we already know and what led to this. The transcripts of what he said are available on the Internet.
Suffice to say, for me, there are no winners here as all sides have some culpability (white supremacists, Antifa, the media and the town); though, unpopular as it is it say, I do think the police stand down order, Antifa’s provocation and the media’s deliberate distortion of the facts on the ground hold the bigger slice of blame here. I worry less about a bunch of idiots congregating to spew venomous rhetoric (hey, sounds like SJW) and more about the principles of freedom of speech and expression and the right to assemble.
This is a cornerstone of our Western values that can’t be compromised and must be protected.
And like these events sometimes show, the issue becomes what possible negative outcomes are there for free speech, expression and assembly.
Here, there’s no question it is the progressive left who are a bigger threat and danger.
There have been logical fallacies a plenty. From it’s ‘okay to punch a Nazi’ to ‘if you defend their right to free speech that makes you a Nazi’ to ‘Antifa is justified in provoking’ and so on. It’s been said, I am told, Antifa are the new liberators.
If so, we’re doomed.
I think noted pillar of reading comprehension Kevin Durant spoke on behalf of all illiterates everywhere when he said, ‘…I don’t agree with what he (Trump) agrees with.’
You’re not helping.
Do we really know what Trump ‘agrees with’? Based on the full transcript of what I read I’m still not sure.
Though one must wonder if people like Durant get flustered at the abnormal amount of times prominent Democrats and progressives call for the assassination of Trump. It kinda unnerves me because murder, you know? I mean, we all know the left embrace violence, but come on, dudes! I musta missed all those times Republicans suggested Obama be killed. Alas, until Trump invites the KKK to the White House in the same manner Obama invited BLM soon after the murder of five officers, I’m gonna keep this one on ice for now.
Nonetheless, no need to keep perspective.
Let the virtue signalling commence!
Hoo-boy.
Off the charts!
It’s like watching teenagers with lobotomies interpret Thomas Paine’s argument with Edmund Burke.
I just read the CFL in Canada began a ‘Diversity is strength’ campaign in response to Trump’s alleged hate for diversity. What is it with these vapid slogans? Are they some sort of Linus security blanket for people? All that was missing was Justin Trudeau as a spokesperson (heaven forbid you call Justin a spokesman) dressed in drag for an exclamation point.
Yes, because the left love diversity of ideas. And I think the word he was gunning for was pluralism.
‘Diversity by other means’ is the very definition of discrimination. Google? What they do in the name of diversity? Discrimination. The Liberal party of Canada and their degenerate style of identity governance? Discrimination.
If one group is negatively impacted through punitive measures (however subtle), in order to prop another you have…discrimination.
Even a muppet understands this. Play Safe, CFL! You’re libel to lose an eye if you keep this up.
/TSN personality nods agreeing then realizes it’s not part of the script and the nods become contorted grimaces of disagreement.
We must diverse like we never diversed before!
To cite Orwell’s 1984, the overall point was this: A world depicted in his novel is possible if man is unaware of his assaults on personal freedoms; that if he loses his right to his own thoughts we’re doomed as a free people.
This is the lesson from Charlottesville.
Well, that and the message that it’s okay to go provoke people who are allowed to congregate regardless of what you think of them.
Lemme ask, does it look like we’re winning?
Just when ‘business leaders’ weren’t already an insufferable breed of twats, they decide to resign from some useless council because of Trump’s reaction. I hope those bum taps and smug winks were worth making them look like clowns to the rest of us.
‘I swear I meant to diverse more.’
It’s interesting limousine liberal, bourgeois CEO’s blindly play into Antifa’s hands given how much the left hates corporations, no? Once ensnared, no amount of faux-right think posturing would save them from the left’s reign of terror. It’s like they don’t know the story of Murat. For those of you not in the loop, he was done in by a Girodin who were a branch of…the Jacobins.
I hope they have bigger bath tubs.
*********
Which brings me to my first digression. Years ago I went to a notary. In the back ground, as I prepared pay the $1500 fee, I noticed pictures of Cuba and Che. I wondered if he found it odd to have pictures of left-wing sociopaths who purged and killed peasants and intellectuals who would probably shoot him too for being a ‘capitalist pig’. I wondered further if it would bother him if, say, Che Tremblay (it’s Quebec) came to power and capped what he could charge customers?
This made me think of an (depressing but revealing) end note in Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago:
31. One of our school friends was nearly arrested because of me at this time. It was an enormous relief to me to learn later that he was still free! But then, twenty-two years later, he wrote to me: “On the basis of your published works I conclude that you take a one-sided view of life…Objectively speaking, you have become the standard-bearer of Fascist reactionaries in the West, in West Germany and the United States, for example….Lenin, whom, I’m convinced, you love and honour just as much as you uses to, yes, and old Marx and Engels, too, would have condemned you in the severest fashion. Think about that!” Indeed, I do think about that: How sorry I am that you didn’t get arrested then! How much you lost!
Glibertarians hardest hit.
Moving along.
It’s….cute.
Of course, to those of us not robbed of our senses and rational bearings, Charlottesville is just another example of the collective intellectual and moral shallowness that grips hyper-partisans stalking Americans; and the West in general including my home country of Canada.
I think, as a starting point and ultimately a moot one, everyone can agree the KKK are douchebags. And that white supremacy, whatever the source of its recent little spike, is not exactly an endearing quality in a free and pluralist society.
But therein lies what’s so infuriating to the left: In a free and pluralist civilization there will be people and ideas you disagree with. I disagree with just about everything the progressive left argues. Heck, I think they’re essentially blue capped anti-humanists but this is the cross we must bear in a free world, eh?
Soon, they’ll be branding wrong think with tattoo serial numbers. What’s another tattoo for millennials? But for some of us old farts who can’t bear to ruin our skin, this is a frightening thought. I just made the jump from Irish Spring (soap for Leprechauns) to Old Spice, considering it ‘edgy’ because of the commercials.
Behind the smellful humour is a dreadful message. Modern progressive activists project their mean-spirited know-nothing drool-babblings revealing a a hideous intellectual and moral decadence very much in line with communism, socialism and fascism. There’s a rather large trail of unbecoming evidence pointing to their dark souls.
Until they admit they’re Marxist and therefore illiberal, we can never have an ‘honest conversation’ with progressives.
From holding college deans hostage to smashing people’s skulls with bike locks (so hipster-douchey, no?), to bullying random strangers in the streets, to a Berniebro shooting Republicans at a baseball game to a BLM sympathizer killing five cops (Time and again, when given the chance to truly tower above the racial divide, Obama chose to swim in with the swine), I think we can discern a pattern of behaviour here as a matter of established fact.
As if that’s not enough, they have the nerve to compare themselves to World War II veterans who fought the Axis powers and gave their lives to it in the most destructive war in world history. The horror of humanity they saw, Antifa can’t imagine from their safe spaces.
Antifa are nothing like war heroes. They’re thugs; not liberators. They just haven’t gotten around to choosing their color is all.
We’re told to fear white supremacists, but we should worry about the left more.
No one is talking about taking Mr. Jefferson’s deluxe apartment in the sky away, but progressive reprobates are trying to remove your right to free speech and expression.
Back to Charlottesville.
I think it’s pretty obvious what happened. A group got a permit to exercise their right to assemble. Another group not liking the message went to protest them. Both came prepared to fight. And found it with a tragic result. There are no winners and there is plenty of blame to go around. But we’re led to believe there’s only one party to blame?
I don’t think so.
Now the spill over of doxxing people begins and has already claimed an innocent victim.
The last part is probably the most disturbing trend. They search out people’s backgrounds and without a shred of evidence or context will publicly shame them with the aim of destroying their lives. It’s reminiscent of The Ox-Bow Incident about how a mob driven by revenge kill innocent people without evidence.
It’s Salem 2.0 is what it is.
And they’re supposed to be the good guys? What happens when they mistakenly dox another person and this time a life is lost? What then?
Progressive calculus.
Let’s take a look at this from another angle. Had white supremacists crashed the ‘March for Women’ and violence ensued, how would people react and the media respond?
I can’t believe we have to keep repeating this: People and groups are allowed freedom to associate and assembly regardless of message or of what others think of their beliefs.
I thought the ‘March for science’ was the usual vacuous showcase in numbskullery. The speeches I heard there and at the ‘March for Women’ were offensive and useful only to the loose lint on your couch where actual advancement of philosophical discourse is concerned.
But I would never ever demand their voices be silenced. They had every right to march and be heard, however idiotic. What possible purpose could be served in shutting down speech even if I think it’s dangerous to science? I can but offer a counter argument and keep them engaged.
When speech is seen as violence by the government, we may as well abandon The Constitution (and The Charter here in Canada – however, feeble in its commitment to liberty) and wipe the crumbs from our mouths with it.
Even if you feel morally upset by such persons or groups it doesn’t accord you the right to violently suppress their rights.
Repeat after me and Grover: You don’t have the right to violently suppress people’s right to free speech, expression and assembly on any grounds because you feel offended.
That goes for anyone and any group. There is no middle ground where our right to express ourselves is concerned.
If you do not accept this, then you’re exactly what you claim to be fighting and are driven by a tribal, emotional, misguided and distorted righteousness thus making you as dangerous to liberty as the persons or groups you abhor. You’ve conceded you won’t (or can’t) sell or promote your ideas in the realm of civil discourse.
In other words, you’re mob rule. What you advocate, lazily, is to legitimize government force against your opponents.
I’m horrified by how easily people are prepared to allow the jack boot of the government on the necks of people who happen to hold a different opinion.
To repeat. You can’t keep attacking innocent people physically and verbally, shutting down streets, shouting down people debating differing points of views, changing the language of discourse to suit your narratives, accosting people through guilt by association and so on and not expect retaliation.
Either you have freedom of speech and expression or you don’t. There’s no such thing as ‘balanced’ speech. If you believe there is, then you’re half-way to censorship.
At this point, I’d like to theorize that both these groups have little to do with anything our common liberal heritage bestowed upon our wretched, undeserving souls.
As collectivist identity groups, it’s less a left versus right battle and more of a left versus left engagement I theorize. Just like we saw in the early 20th century when communists fought socialists and both fought fascists.
Each of these ideologies were under the socialist umbrella with fascism lying to the right of communism and socialism.
Euphemisms for cucks’n cults.
In other words, it was a fight among illiberals and this event in Virginia was no different. If you’re identity hinges on collectivism or notions of the ‘greater good’ via government coercion, you’re illiberal.
Or, if you prefer pop culture analogies, it’s like a SJW version of The Riddler fighting The Penguin over who is more of a victim of the patriarchy.
Other than that, they’re also a bunch of illiterates deliberately mangling the facts of history through circular logic to fit their half-assed narratives and theories rooted in false premises and unhinged logical fallacies. No, that you defend the KKK’s right to free speech doesn’t mean you ‘tacitly’ condone them. If this passes as an argument, all I can say is go buy yourself a helmet because you’re in danger of getting a concussion.
Moreover, if they want to be taken seriously they should probably stop depicting Trump as both a Nazi and a fascist. Pick one and stick to it.
No, indeed, it’s not about the principle or the morality.
Standing for principles are the ones where you accept under all circumstances the right to free speech, expression and assembly when it’s in distress and under assault while not advocating for violence yourself.
Now, at this point, some may wonder why should a Canadian care? Oh, care we must. The United States is not alone in dealing with this and their bad ideas tend to find its way up here. They’re just the biggest black head on the face of Western civilization that everyone sees. America serves as the perfect distraction for the rest of the world.
Lucky them. Or us. Whatever.
There’s an uncomfortable adherence to a left-wing ideology which is a beautiful martini on the surface, but it’s a poisonous virus deep below and transcends national borders. So where principals over principles prevail, a loss of perspective easily pulls people in.
We all lose if liberty is lost. What’s the point of existing if you have no freedom to express your opinion? Note, I am not suggesting if you’re opinion is bad there can’t be consequences but that’s best for a free society to determine and not through the coercive action of the state. If the state regulates speech, you’re not free.
Simple.
One of the valuable lessons in Solzhenitsyn’s writings is to describe in detail how destructively slow this process really is. It’s almost impossible to criticize it without being told you have a ‘one-sided view of life’. The left always claim to have a nuanced view on life but when you examine and explore their views and arguments further, you realize it’s anything but. It’s just cold, naked, anti-humanism and always somehow ends up in death.
It’s communism by other means. Antifa and its ilk doesn’t care for principles of liberty. Their movement is not predicated on the philosophy of advancing liberty in the context of classical Western value. Far from it in fact. Indeed, they are hostile to it.
Antifa is where one finds notions of ‘white privilege’ and the West being a racist and murderous civilization.
Nothing more dangerous than a group of people thinking they can right the wrongs of the past and present in an effort to control the future.
Their entire outlook sits on a bedrock of illiberalism. If they were to ever achieve power they’d behave exactly like the Taliban, Jacobins or Bolsheviks slowly purging wrong think.
I’d be lined up against the wall. So would all of you here. And those useful idiots in the CEO ranks.
This is true.
Who will take to the streets in defence of freedom of speech, expression and assembly? Who will speak for it? This is the question.
I do see a boatload of petty opportunistic buffoons willing to squish and squash speech in a misguided attempt to stupidly ‘civilize’ discourse though. Nothing could be more barbaric I say!
Don’t let Trump or any other politician allow us to forget this cherished principle.
Boy, did it really take me this long to say the left are not nice people who project their rage and anger and live a miserable, empty existence void of any principles?
You wanna piece of me racist?
Moving forward, expect no ‘peak derp’ while the creepy and cowardly molluscum cult (led by intellectually deficient celebrities and fake journalists toeing a splendidly regressive narrative wallowing in their cheap, unreasonable, unhelpful, smug didactics) will continue to get their cues from a vapid Obamabot tweet.
The left are living in a post-retard bizarro world and we get to watch them burn down any shred of moral decency and intellectual currency they had left; a world where they get to be Super-Man while acting like Lex Luthor. Where they simultaneously get to co-opt bravery with veterans while denigrating Western civilization and its values.
If you ask this uncucked Canuck, it seems to me this petty band of illiberal, dilapidated delusional clowns are a direct danger to liberal values because they hold more influence over policy at the moment.
I don’t know what will come of this and if there will be a tipping point. I do know one thing though. Glibertarians will never be able to solve the deep-dish divide and we’re definitely on someone’s blackball list somewhere in Leftopia.
Update: Currently, as I began this post (forcing me to revise it a couple of times), there’s a right-wing rally along with a counter-protest in Boston. By all accounts it’s peaceful so far.
In May, I wrote an article about the unlikely chance of Antifa and the Alt-Right coming to blows and kicking off a civil war. The Antifa Brownshirts were agitating about impeachment at that time, but two months later, they’ve changed gears and gone after the skinheads. While that, in and of itself, isn’t of particular concern, there is a more disturbing trend emerging. Antifa feels free to organize against any “unwoke” social gathering and attempt to get some scalps. What used to be a Simon and Garfunkel concert is now a Dropkick Murphys mosh, and the cops are happy to just sit there and watch. Even if there was just a small escalation in arms between the commies and the nazis, it wouldn’t be noteworthy, except for the way that Antifa is being treated by the left and their media hack cronies.
As I wrote in the May article:
Although people joke about “alternative facts,” it’s not a joke. There are two prevailing agendas across the country: 1) Trump is LITERALLY HITLER and A RUSSIAN MOLE AT THE SAME TIME!!! 2) Trump is DADDY and GOD-KING OF KEKISTAN, VANQUISHER OF THE SJWs and CUCKS!!! The left has their educational and media empire churning out outrage by the gallon. The right has their independent media matching the outrage of the left.
Antifa is smashing windows and folks like Based Stickman (who the fuck is Based Stickman and why is he called that??) are bashing Antifa heads in. People are primed to believe that the violence will do nothing but escalate.
This dynamic is still there, and the excuse making for the violence injected by Antifa has come to a fever pitch. It wasn’t enough that Trump denounced all of the violent elements in a volatile situation. No, he specifically had to denounce the supposed “right wing” (read: non-Marxian) “hate group” (read: non-PC group). Now that he’s showing an ounce of backbone in standing up to the Prog-Fascist media, he’s LITERALLY HITLER yet again.
Once again, we approach a crossroads. Will a critical mass of people buy the media’s angle? Will the escalating violence of Antifa be excused away as a righteous backlash against an evil President backed by a malignant social movement? Or, will people cut through the BS and hold both sides accountable for the increasing tension and violence? The first fatal blow has been struck, and it’s just a matter of time before more are landed. Will people give a collective shrug and go back to living their largely unaffected lives, or will they be galvanized to one side or the other by the unaccountable mayhem?
I still think that a widespread conflict is quite unlikely, but let’s jump back through the portal and get comfy in the Derplight Zone once more. What factors are festering under the surface that could bubble up into a civil war?
LITERALLY HITLER
Antifa and their media and political organs are doubling down on the LITERALLY HITLER rhetoric, which is absolutely polarizing and dehumanizing. There’s a reason that people were extremely hesitant to analogize to Hitler in domestic politics for 50 years. The guy was so dangerous that we co-opted an entire nation’s resources for 4 years to end his reign, at immense cost in human and economic terms. When the left compares Trump to Hitler (even implicitly), they’re sending a message to the right, and especially the Alt-Right, that this isn’t just a domestic debate, but a fight to the death.
The dangerous part is when the left leaves no room for dissent. People on both sides of the political aisle have always been susceptible to hyperbole and puffery, but when the left uses the power of boycott, violence, doxxing, and blacklisting on a regular basis, people who believe differently are given no outlet to vent off their pent up political energy. Much like gunpowder, their anger fizzles out when lit in the open, but when contained in a tidy little container, the results are explosive. The increased “all or nothing” attitude from the LITERALLY HITLER left is boxing the Alt-Right up in a tidy little container.
“They’ve Gone Too Far This Time”
I’ve seen a lot of people react this way to the way Antifa has been acting lately. It’s one thing to protest, boycott, shout down, or even make a hostile work or learning environment. It’s a completely different thing to act as a mob. People don’t like mobs, and average non-political folks are taking notice of the mob mentality that has taken hold in certain parts of the left. Antifa has chosen their targets very carefully so far, but one poorly chosen location for a riot could result in a violent response from otherwise unattached people. For most of the unattached, the distance between them in their cozy suburban or rural lifestyle and the violence in the urban liberal college setting is far enough that they don’t feel threatened. If Antifa were to overstep their bounds and perhaps threaten something more relatable to suburban folks (like schoolchildren), the backlash would be swift and violent.
Widespread Acceptance of Increasing Violence
I hate the phrase “the new normal,” but it is apt in this situation. Most people see the increasing violence, rail about it for 24 hours, and then forget about it. Like mentioned above, there’s a comfort in the fact that these goons seem to be contained on Marxist-sympathizing college campuses. However, you get less of what you penalize and more of what you celebrate. While the average Joe and Jane are ignoring the violent protests, the mainstream and leftist media are praising these goons for “punching Nazis.” We’re going to see more of this simply because there are hardly any consequences worth mentioning in comparison to the accolades bestowed upon these “woke” counter-protesters standing up to the evil Nazis. It’s getting to the point where people are resigned to the possibility of a second civil war.
Shifting Reaction to SJWs
The time is starting to come where perceptions of SJWs are shifting from a mix of fear and apathy to abject hatred. The problem is that most SJWs are emotionally stunted and unable to handle rejection. The resulting dynamic is a bunch of SJWs throwing temper tantrums, seeing that their Antifa friends (there is a significant crossover between the groups) are the golden children for breaking windows and harassing “Nazis.” On the other side is the Alt-Right, a reactionary group that makes its hay harassing SJWs and is stepping up its own reaction to these Antifa goons. As much as the Alt-Right dislikes Antifa, they HATE SJWs. They’re looking for an excuse to use Antifa’s tactics against the SJWs.
Economic Downturn
We’re about due for another recession, and people tend to be more amenable to violence when they don’t have a job. This one is fairly self-explanatory and well-documented throughout history.
Floundering Media
The traditional media is dying, and they’re trying everything they can to get people to consume their content. They’ve long since removed their mask and exposed their Marxist-sympathetic leanings, but they get consumers when there is conflict. These days they’ve gone from reporting on conflict to stoking it, and I don’t think there’s an end in sight. They’re going to do everything they can to start a race war, a communist revolution, and a national witch hunt all at the same time. The ratings will be amazing!
Overall, I’m still pessimistic on the chances of widespread fighting. I think the worst we will possibly see is an LA riots type situation. However, as shown in Charlottesville, all it takes is one body for the self-righteous leftist media to climb on top and start agitating. Like a high-stakes game of “Press Your Luck,” both sides keep smacking the button, hoping to hit the political jackpot, ignorant of the lurking Whammy.
[GLIBS STAFF NOTE: Whirling vortex of angry moved to moderation – including this note.]
There is a lot of talk about sex (there’s a song in there somewhere) and gender in the news recently. People are using them as basically the same, as completely different, or as “it’s complicated.” My point of view is that it is purposefully and needlessly made more complicated than it needs to be, that there is way too much talk of it, it is not that relevant in the grand scheme of things (it really really, really isn’t, no part of the so called culture war is), and, occasionally, I go the route of “oh my god let’s just drop it already.”
Now this post may be a bit controversial, but hell what is the point of just agreeing with everything? So, of course, here come the disclaimers. This is not a scholarly work and it will not have any reference to studies or other articles. None of my stuff does. I just do op-ed.
I am not a biologist or a neurologist. I am not, thank your deity/empty meaningless void of choice, a social scientist. I am an engineer and, stereotypically, I hold most (not all) social science in disdain. I don’t see them as reliable enough to be fit for purpose, and most of it of little use, besides pushing political agendas. So this is not going to be in any way based on professional experience.
Trigger warning: I am about to state my view of things and I do not care whether people agree with me or find me offensive. It may be long, rambling and incoherent. And I will try to include jokes as I go along, most likely bad ones. You have been warned. Also the spell check keeps trying to get an “u” out of behaviour, but I am keeping that “u” in, so there!
Another thing that I am is an individualist. I believe that the individual is the basic unit of humanity. In my view, only individuals can act and be responsible for their actions, only individuals can have rights and, in the end, individuals suffer when the shit hits the fan. Groups cannot act; they can, at most, try to coordinate their action. I do not believe the group is higher than the individual and I believe a group needs to be seen as simply an aggregation of individuals.
I understand that human brains create categories and, as you cannot know every single person in the world, everyone will resort to generalisation. But one should try to minimise it and drop it when one actually does know the person. Also, stop worrying so much about people you don’t know, and you will not need to categorise them. I really do not care a jot about the average wage of a man, a woman, and the difference thereof. I care mostly about my wage – to low if you ask me, and maybe those of people I know. That’s about it. While one can draw general average statistics over large populations, I find them meaningless, outside pushing politics.The general destroys the particular, as someone else said once. The average shoe won’t fit many. But this is a topic that can go for many pages, keepin’ it brief!
Now after ample disclaimers and such, let’s get to it, dive in the deep end, as it were.
What the ever-loving fuck is all this sex and gender stuff? And why should we care? (spoiler alert: in a better world, we shouldn’t. Unless we plan on having sex. Which sounds gross.)
We have a bunch of words. Some of them are man and woman, “male” and “female.” Back in the day, words used to mean something. That was their point. An accurate description of these words I got from someone else was “bimodal population pattern based on anisogamy and the traits correlated with it.” Humans, like all other mammals (you and me baby are nothing but .. gah sorry about that), have a reproductive anatomy based on this bimodal pattern, with associated gamete, hormones, chromosomes, a degree physical dimorphism and some degree of behavioural dimorphism. This is good and all, and should be uncontroversial. Ah, should…
Of course there are small numbers of people who do not fit clearly as male or female, this is quite true, but the number is small enough to not be that relevant for the vast majority of cases. Bimodal in not necessarily binary, and there are outliers.
Now the complicated part kicks in. Gender, baby. Gender is more of a linguistic designation, which was used to describe some elements of identity and behavioural bimodality somewhat separated from the physical. This was, throughout a majority of human history and a majority of cultures, strongly correlated with sex. It still mostly is. In Romania, not being so far down the road of social science, most people still see the terms as almost interchangeable, although young urban progressives are working hard to change this.
In the modern mind of the social justice crowd, gender has been completely separated from sex, which makes it much more flexible, not being bound by any biological limit. I would say good luck to em, use it whatever way you want. But keep in mind that being so flexible and undefined, in time there will be little to separate gender from a personality type, a mood, a fashion statement.
This brings me to my main question: What is the goddamn point of even having it? Sex is a clear biological designation. It is needed as human sexuality is strongly linked to it. There can be medical reasons – different treatments, ailments, etc. based. Males will not get ovarian cancer.
But what is the goddamn point of gender? They say gender, as different than sex, is a valid concept, but I just don’t see it, especially unless quite clearly defined and delimited. Unless it is to utterly confuse everything. If it has no biological boundaries, no conceptual boundaries, no nothing, then yes, you can identify with any of the 33,498,227,345,456 genders. But what is the use of it, at this point? If there were 2 or 3 or 7 genders with specific designations, I would see it. But if it is a vast, continuous spectrum, there’s no point to it. Each has his own personality. Leave it at that.
Well, what about gender roles? What about them? Fuck gender roles as well. Do whatever the hell you want, just leave me be while doing it (unless you are an attractive female and what you want to do is me, in that case you can bother me about it).
Sex is a biological descriptive category, which is now turned by progressive in an oppressive prescriptive category. Which leads them to the conclusion blank slaters get about everything: it is a social construct. One example is having gender supersede sex, as far as sexual desire and behaviour. Sexual attraction and behaviour is based on biological sex and anatomical features, whatever those may be. Now I am a bit of a shitlord. I believe in biological difference between men and women. I also believe sucking a penis is gay, even if it identifies as vagina. And I also strongly believe there is nothing wrong with that, if that sort of thing is your bag.
That being said I am the epitome of live and let live. I don’t care. My only problem is that fewer and fewer people seem to take this approach. I let them live, but they won’t let me. This is annoying, especially since besides activist profiting for this, all this drama is not helping anyone.
I have no problem with people switching sex, gender, what-goddamn-ever. Out of politeness, I am willing to treat them with respect. But there are more and more attempts to codify this into law, and with that I have a problem. I would not, were I a business owner, refuse to employ someone because they are transgender. But I do believe it is the right of some other business owner to do so, for whatever reason they may have.
Now, although I have no problem with it, I do think that sex is a biological reality and you cannot truly change it. I think there is a mental problem with someone who thinks they are of a different sex. This is not, of course, any reason to disrespect or bully someone, just like you would not bully someone with autism. I think it is awful issue to have. I cannot imagine how it feels, but it must be very bad to feel like you are in the wrong body. But that cannot change my view that reality is reality.
There are brain morphology issues that may actually justify this belief, beyond a vague notion of mental illness. But I cannot see how mutilating one’s body in a significant and irreversible fashion is not the result of having a serious problem. Although I accept that this process may actually help the person, it may be a drastic treatment, but treatment nonetheless. Chemotherapy can also be debilitating. That being said, I am highly circumspect about it being applied to prepubescent children, who may be confused as much as anything else.
But I do think bodily mutilations can be ehm… problematic in general. Speaking of mutilation, I also think most piercings in general are terribly unattractive. Tattoos I am split on, I have seen some sexy tattoos, but overall most are not. Also, if male, you should not get a tattoo unless you can deadlift twice your bodyweight, at least; nothing worse than tattoos on guys with no muscle. And those people who want to look like lizards and such are crazier than most. But this is all beside the point.
So, in conclusion, you do you, have sex with whomever you want (as long as they want to, as well, obviously) and ignore all this gender crap, would be my advice. Also no piercings.
Now… feel free to school me on what I got wrong in the comments. Give it to me, so to speak.
The only way to describe the media’s reaction to Trump’s press conference and statements about the events in Charlottesville yesterday is irrational. To understand how irrational the reaction was, just imagine if instead of involving white nationalists and antifa counter protestors the events of last weekend had been a conflict between two rival biker gangs.
Do not change a single event from this weekend but imagine the events being the result of violence at a biker rally. One biker club has its national rally and a rival biker club shows up to protest and disrupt it. During the course of the weekend, a lot of shouting and violence take place. Fights break out on Friday. For reasons yet to be known the local police do nothing to separate the rival gangs and violence and conflict spills over into Saturday. Finally, on Saturday afternoon a member of the first gang runs a car into a crowd of its rival gang injuring nineteen and killing one.
Now ask yourself, would anyone in their right mind claim that only the first biker gang was to blame and everyone is obligated to condemn it? Of course, no one would. There would be national outrage about the problem of biker gangs. The local police would be called to the carpet for not maintaining order. Law enforcement would crack down hard on both gangs and biker rallies in general.
The only reason the media and the nation at large are not having the same reaction it would if Charlottesville involved a fight between biker gangs is because it involved white nationalists. And the media and political class are incapable of having a rational conversation about anything involving white nationalism or white supremacy. The reason for this is that to do so would be to call into question the entire concept of white guilt.
White guilt, like all racial collectivist beliefs, is completely irrational. White guilt is doubly irrational because it embraces the very sort of racial collectivism it claims to reject. It is irrational to say that one person is responsible for the actions of another person just because they share the same color of skin. It is irrational to say that anyone living today is in any way accountable or responsible or has any reason to feel guilty about events that occurred before they were born. The entire concept of collective guilt, be it based on race, class, sex or anything else is utterly irrational. It represents the worst sort of tribalism that civilization and rationality seek to end.
White guilt, like all irrational belief systems, is completely antithetical to any form of rational discourse about any of the areas it concerns. Once a believer in an irrational ideology is forced to have a rational discussion about one area of the ideology the entire ideology comes into question. This is why the integration of professional sports did so much towards ending the idea of white racial supremacy. When blacks and whites were not allowed to compete on the same field, whites could hold the irrational belief that whites were inherently superior athletes to blacks. Once Jackie Robinson became a star in the major leagues and Jim Brown became the best football player in the world, whites could no longer hold that belief. They were forced to have a rational conversation based on facts about the relative athletic ability of the two races. And once they did that, they could no longer refuse to question or discuss rationally their views on racial superiority in every other area of life. The entire ideology fell like a house of cards. Within a few decades, white supremacy went from a societal given to a fringe belief.
One of the primary tenants of white guilt is that white nationalism is a unique evil. White guilt necessitates that white nationalism not just be wrong but a unique wrong in the world, worse than communism or any of the sins of other races. If white nationalism isn’t worse than other isms, then whites have no more or less to answer for than any other race or creed and the whole edifice of white guilt collapses. This is of course irrational. White nationalism and belief in white supremacy is evil but no more or less evil than any other form of nationalism or religious or racial supremacy. So no believer in white guilt can have a rational discussion about white nationalism without calling the entire concept of white guilt into question.
When Donald Trump spoke yesterday, he attempted to force the nation to have an honest and rational conversation about white nationalism and its involvement in the events last weekend. He said two undeniably truthful and rational things about the events this weekend. First, he said that not everyone at the march in Charlottesville was a white nationalist. This is true. The march was a protest against tearing down of the Robert E. Lee statue. It was organized by white nationalists but 200 or so people attended. It is perfectly rational and truthful to say that not all of them were white nationalists. Some of them, albeit a small minority, no doubt were there because they wanted to save the statue.
Second, he said that the counter protesters deserve a significant share of the blame for the resulting violence and death. This is also true. The counter protesters were active willing participants in the violence that occurred. The proof of that is in the photos and accounts of the weekend given in the Virginia ACLU Twitter feed. And as I explained above, had the events in Charlottesville involved any other group but white nationalists everyone involved would be assessed their share of the blame.
To say those things and to try and have a rational and truthful conversation about last weekend is to admit that it is possible for white nationalists, no matter how bad they are, to have been if the victims of a wrong or at least not be entirely responsible for the events of last weekend. And to do that is to necessarily admit the reality that white nationalists are not uniquely evil or worse than other violent or supremacist groups. Donald Trump’s statements were a direct challenge to the entire concept of collective white guilt.
One of the interesting things about Charlottesville that no one seems to have noticed is that an event that was supposed to be about white nationalism and white supremacy was not a race riot. I have not, in any of the pictures and video I have seen of the weekend, seen a single black person. Charlottesville was a conflict almost entirely or maybe entirely between white people. There is a good reason for this. The debate and conflict over white guilt is almost always a conflict between upper class and middle and lower class whites. Black people are nearly always bystanders or props in that conflict.
To understand why you have to understand how white guilt works. You would think the belief in collective white guilt would be an expression of self-loathing, but it is not. When a white person believes in white guilt they are engaging in one of the purest forms of virtue signaling. Since the belief is irrational and has nothing to do with their actions, they are not accepting any real moral responsibility. What they are doing is asserting their moral superiority over other white people who refuse to accept the belief. When a black person asserts collective white guilt, they are doing it to attack white people. When a white person does it, the white person is saying they understand their burden and the horrible sins of their race. In doing that, the white person is showing their moral superiority over other white people who refuse to accept their guilt and responsibility.
Embracing some level of white guilt is one of the primary ways upper class and gentry whites assert their moral superiority over middle and lower class whites. Middle and lower class whites don’t believe in white guilt. As a result, they often have more rational views about race. Middle and lower class whites can say and think rational things about race that upper-class whites cannot do without losing their class status. Lower and middle-class whites can believe that black people are sometimes just as racist as whites. They can believe that black supremacist groups can be just as bad as the KKK. They can believe that the Civil War was a complex event that wasn’t just about slavery and white supremacy, or that just because South Carolina or Mississippi were slave states and have a bad racial history doesn’t mean there are no good parts of those places or that people from there can’t be proud of being from them.
Upper-class whites cannot believe any of that. No upper-class white would ever wave a Confederate flag. No upper-class white would ever say that the Black Panthers are as bad as the KKK. If they are conservative, they might say the KKK is insignificant but they would never say that a black group is qualitatively just as bad. To do any of that would necessarily call into question the idea of white guilt and mean being kicked out of the class.
So when Trump yesterday tried to force a rational conversation about white nationalism, Washington, that most white and upper class of cities, lost its mind. It was all hands on deck, left and right, to save and assert the white guilt moral privilege. The responses to Trump were predictably irrational and counter factual. For the crime of saying not every incident is entirely one sided, Trump was accused of being a white supremacist; the President everyone feared he would be. Some of the reaction was so counterfactual it can fairly be called insane. Mitt Romney and John McCain described the counter protesters as fighters for justice and equality against the forces of prejudice and racism. People who showed up waving Communist flags and carrying pepper spray and bags of feces and urine are now fighters against evil and prejudice. Really? The entire response boiled down to a giant guttural groan of “How Dare You!!” by the white upper class. Trump had attacked their most sacred moral privilege and they were not going to take it lying down.
What will be the fall out of all this? Like most things involving Trump, a lot less than people think. First, I don’t think it is going to make a bit of difference politically. The people who voted for Trump are almost to the person people who reject the concept of white guilt. So, they won’t see it the way the media and Washington has. They will see it as Trump saying entirely fair and rational things. I don’t see Trump’s support dropping one bit. Trump’s enemies will just have a new reason to feel aggrieved.
Second, I don’t think we are going to see much white nationalist antifa violence going forward. Trump tried to force a conversation the left doesn’t want to have. For the left white guilt is not just about class it is also how it enforces identity politics. The left needs white guilt. Trump also tried to force the left to talk about its role in this violence. And that is also not a conversation anyone on the left wants to have. The left has condoned and enabled antifa violence for years and gotten away with it. They do not want to have to answer for that.
So I think the police departments in Democratic cities are going to start doing their jobs. Instead of standing down at these marches and counter protests, the police will start keeping the two sides apart, arresting people who show up with weapons and bags of urine and cracking down hard on any fights that break out and maintaining order. Deprived of the ability to riot with impunity, antifa will find better things to do. They don’t want to go to jail any more than anyone else and protests get pretty boring if you no longer have free reign to attack people. Deprived of any violence to use to slander the right, the media will lose interest as well. These marches are going over the next few months return to being the small events of paper hanging losers they have always been. So, I wouldn’t stock up on ammunition for the coming civil war just yet.
Lastly, I think that the drive to tear down Confederate monuments will likely fizzle as well. They will tear a few more down in Democratic cities but the issue will fade away as well. Trump did another thing yesterday and laid down the mark that if this stuff didn’t stop they would be calling for tearing down George Washington statues. Of course, all right thinking people are today dismissing this. They, however, know that it is true. There are already calls to tear down the statues of Theodore Roosevelt in museums in New York City. You can tear down Confederate statues and largely avoid a rational conversation. Most people really don’t know who the people were and you can always use the “but it’s racist” charge to keep the average observer from objecting. George Washington or Teddy Roosevelt are different. People do know who they are and can’t be scared off by the racist charge. And the left doesn’t want a rational conversation about that any more than they want a rational conversation about last weekend.
The statue controversy like all leftist causes is entirely manufactured. We had a hundred year struggle for black civil rights in this country. During that time not a single person to my knowledge, not Martin Luther King, not W.E.B Dubois, not Booker T. Washington, not Malcolm X, ever cared or said a single word about those monuments. Yet, suddenly in 2017, they are a threat to all that is right and good. Give me a break. Once the left decides tearing them down is no longer to their advantage, and they will if they haven’t already, no more will be heard about the subject.
Booze: Hurricane
Tailgate of the Week
Marxist-sympathizing college campuses. However, you get less of what you penalize and more of what you celebrate. While the average Joe and Jane are ignoring the violent protests, the mainstream and leftist media are praising these goons for “punching Nazis.” We’re going to see more of this simply because there are hardly any consequences worth mentioning in comparison to the accolades bestowed upon these “woke” counter-protesters standing up to the evil Nazis. It’s getting to the point where people are 
The traditional media is dying, and they’re trying everything they can to get people to consume their content. They’ve long since removed their mask and exposed their Marxist-sympathetic leanings, but they get consumers when there is conflict. These days they’ve gone from reporting on conflict to stoking it, and I don’t think there’s an end in sight. They’re going to do everything they can to start a race war, a communist revolution, and a national witch hunt all at the same time. The ratings will be amazing!
Of course there are small numbers of people who do not fit clearly as male or female, this is quite true, but the number is small enough to not be that relevant for the vast majority of cases. Bimodal in not necessarily binary, and there are outliers.