So I was given cause to think…between the imbroglio about the no-right-turn traffic light, and the gun-grabbers stirred up into high dudgeon by the Florida school shooting…about my favorite Robert Heinlein quote. The story about the bikini baristas suing the city of Everett, Washington, my old stomping grounds, over the new dress code got me thinking about it again.

In all three cases it seems we’re dealing with a mentality that has become influential. And, should never have become influential. A mindset that, by becoming influential, reflects poorly on all of us. The mindset seems to be one of: When in doubt, impose more rules and take more things away. This will eventually lead to perfection and it is not at all necessary to ruminate on how that’s supposed to work. It just will. Ban more things, take more things away, we will have Nirvana.

Heinlein said,

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

This could use some improvement, I’ve always thought.

But first, let me be fair about it. I am noticing the improvement it needs because I am noticing the quote in the first place, and I am noticing the quote in the first place because it is already quite good. Look how well it fits into the three significant recent events, listed above. All three. And if you take the time to go noticing some more things happening around you, you see it continues to fit. It’s one of those things you can’t stop noticing, once you become aware of it.

The tiny meaningless correction is: Humanity is a species, not a race.

The bigger one is: We have not yet located the root cause. Why do some among us want people to be controlled? Obviously it’s because they see people as liabilities. The others, who “have no such desire,” see people as assets (or at least, as not-liabilities). It is the difference between the negative and the positive.

I have long noticed that there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who are trying to achieve work upon external things, measurably altering states in one or more definable ways, upon one or more definable objects; and those who are acting as stewards of their own emotional state. In very crude terms, you might think of this as the difference between those who want to work and those who want to play. The former seeks to accomplish something and the latter wants to feel good all the time. It’s a maturity thing, since acting as a steward of your own emotional state is exactly what newborn babies do. It is the default condition. Later on, we get concerned about getting work done — for a variety of different reasons. But if you want to be effective at that you have to let go of the “be happy all the time” thing. Some people don’t, ever.

They come to think of the whole point to life, the whole reason for our existence, as to be happy. Obviously, once we start thinking about our reason for being here, we’re getting into some heady stuff, some things that can directly and dramatically impact many other things. Value systems come from these. Priorities come from these. Self-tasking, the determination of necessary prerequisites, logistics, tactics come from these.

From this comes a split in how to deal with time. If your objective is to get work done, time is a resource and you never have as much of it as you might want to have. So you have to learn to prioritize. If your objective is to act as a steward of your own emotional state, you have to make sure you’re never bored. Time becomes a liability instead of an asset. As a consequence, you don’t prioritize, at least you don’t prioritize the same way as people who are trying to get a certain amount of work done in a limited amount of time.

And so from that — somehow — another split emerges about people. People become assets or liabilities and this seems to be connected to whether time is an asset or a liability. We find…and we should expect to find…the far greater bulk of sloppy ramshackle thinking, and of hypocrisy, is on the negative side, since people who embrace this idiom of other people being liabilities, always have these circles of friends who are exempt from the curse. People are trashing the planet, people shouldn’t have guns, people should be forced to ride bikes to work, people need to slow down, take turns, get a mother-may-I for every little thing…but MY PALS are all okay and can do whatever they want.

Another division emerges between those who see the moral imperative of coupling extraordinary authority with commensurate responsibilities, and those who eschew any such coupling, insisting that certain privileged classes and members should enjoy great power without ever having to answer for how it is used.

I think Homo Sapiens divides politically into those who are ready to live among others, in a society devoid of special privileges reserved for any individual or class, and those who are not ready to do this. The latter don’t see the need, and they don’t see the point. Their problem solving acumen, translated on a case by case basis into flow charts, each and every time would be manifested by a huge box in the middle labeled “AND THEN A FUCKING MIRACLE HAPPENS,” with “take things away and ban more things” on the left and “life gets all perfect and wonderful” on the right. One might go so far as to say…and one would be justified in basing it on empirical observation in saying this…that these nattering nabobs have allowed their understanding of cause-and-effect to atrophy. For their extreme cases, there IS no cause, there IS no effect, there are only things that happen and there are other things we want to have happen.

Men behave improperly, and that has something to do with not enough scolding, too many guns, too much meat, free right turns on red, and nice looking girls in bathing suits. Take all that stuff away and things get better…somehow.

They don’t think logically because they are not comfortable discussing things logically. They aren’t comfortable discussing things logically because their ideas don’t hold up to inhospitable inspection. Every now & then they’ll go through the motions, but when they do you’ll notice they’re overly hung up on “facts.” And their facts aren’t really facts, they’re just things they’ve decided should capture everyone’s attention, that might be true, but may not be. How these things all connect together…things happening as consequences of other things…they don’t really believe in it. Closest they get to it is “no one is going to shoot anybody else if there aren’t any guns.” But even there, it is their opposition that says “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” which wins, because it’s catchier, gels more evenly with observed history, and falls in line with the truth of how humans behave. And in this example, as in so many others, you see them making their common mistake: Let us presume people doing X is a thing of the past, for behold our new rule. We just banned X. No more people doing X. They can’t distinguish between a thing being forbidden, vs. a thing no longer happening.

The unpleasant truth is, these two sides do not find overlap, nor should we expect them to ever find overlap, because they aren’t building the same world. Those who have faith in people to ultimately do the right thing, acknowledge that this comes after mistakes because people are fundamentally flawed. Those who lack this faith, contrary to their rhetoric, are not trying to stop bad things from happening, but instead are trying to escape the consequences of occupying a common habitat with their inferiors. They want to be protected so they can feel happy all the time. When they prattle away with their sloganeering about “taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society,” they aren’t talking about themselves. Again, logic: If they want to pay more taxes, nothing’s stopping them.

We divide politically into people who see bad behavior as consequences of poor character or perverse incentives, either one of which can be fixed, or at least prevented…and, those who see it as an indicator that the rules are not yet perfect, require more tweaking, more grabbing of their fellow citizens by the scruff of the neck, so they can be dragged over to where they’re supposed to be. Those who believe in human intelligence, as in the ability to learn from prior mistakes, and those who do not.

Just for the record, I think legally the bikini baristas are wrong. I do agree that imposing a “dress code” at the city-ordinance level, is risible. But it’s not an idea to be taken any more seriously than that, that dress codes infringe on the First Amendment. That comes under the heading of “that law conflicts with my personal preferences therefore it must be oppressing me.” That having been said, however, if the plaintiffs end up owning City Hall, I’ll not be shedding many tears about it. Having lived in Everett for a stretch, and in the general vicinity for a bit longer than that, I know what I’m talking about when I note a regional epidemic of the flawed thinking I’ve described above. This flawed thinking of, things aren’t the way they want them to be yet, ban more things, a fucking miracle will happen and life will be wonderful. Yes, the Pacific Northwest suffers from this.

Well, here we are again. A socially maladjusted male youth shot up a school. So now we’re again debating gun control, which I’m told is a winning topic for pro-gun-control liberals and a losing topic for anti-gun-control conservatives. At first blush, it seems like that’s really true. “Can’t we get rid of all these guns lying around” seems like a natural reaction to have, and an effervescent one. And if I try to deny it, someone is sure to posit the hypothetical that I’m minding my own business and someone points a loaded gun at me…won’t I then experience a natural impulse to wish the gun away?

Sure, I imagine that’s so. In fact, having not been through the experience, who’s to say — I might even pee my pants a little. But let’s think on this longer than the thirty seconds or so it takes for the scene to unfold. Not only do I disagree with gun control, I find it hard to pay the requisite minimal respect to it. Gun control means we’re going to put together some rules that say you can’t have certain types of guns, right? Murder is against certain rules we have in place already. So we’re talking about people who are ready, willing and able to break rules. And what we’re talking about is more rules. We’re having a debate about whether this would be effective? Why are we even having the debate? We know it won’t be.

You can play with certain hypothetical situations, putting me in a position where my emotions will persuade me toward the wrong conclusion? So what? That’s why we don’t listen to our emotions when we’re adults. What else ya got?

In fact, if someone is wholly unacquainted with these fundamental concepts of “conservative” and “liberal,” I would refer them to the school-shooting-gun-control topic first & foremost as an ideal orientation scenario. Oh I can hear the conservatives now: Freeberg, whaddya doing?? You’re manufacturing a new liberal!! Well…dunno.

What’s the conservative solution to school shootings? Get rid of these “gun free zones.” Arm the teachers. Post armed guards. Have faith that legal gun owners value human life and make the right decisions…which they overwhelmingly do. What’s the liberal solution? Ban this magazine-capacity, ban this feature, ban this model, ban open-carry, ban concealed-carry, ban from here ban from there…

Conservative: Empower empower empower.

Liberal: Ban ban ban.

In short, I would expose the politically inarticulate and uninitiated to the gun-control topic as a primer-introduction to the conservative-versus-liberal power struggle, because it’s clear, concise and it’s honest. We have walking around us certain malcontents who think the solution to every problem that comes along is to ban more things; these people make things worse, overall. And they are represented by the political faction we today call “liberalism.”

Now I should disclose that, for me, this tragedy carries an odd chronological juxtaposition, since as the days & hours wound down to the moment Nikolas Cruz started puling fire alarms and ventilating people, my NextDoor post had been “enjoying” a renewed flare-up, much like an ulcer or a hemorrhoid. To this day I don’t know why exactly. But I’d started a thread a month or two ago, because I honestly wanted to know of an answer to my question: How come there’s no right turn on red allowed at this intersection?

This connects back to the school shooting in a certain way. There is a certain consistency between the two situations in how people evaluate what must be done, and how they interact with each other. Gimme a little space on this, because underneath the layers we excavate, as we think about it and inspect, I believe there’s a productive answer.

I will apply the precision here at The Blog That Nobody Reads, that I applied there…it was a futile endeavor there. People couldn’t follow. But I don’t think my position is that complicated. You see, my wife and I like the new traffic light. We’re in favor of it. We bitched about it long & hard before the light was there, because when the intersection was uncontrolled it was a death trap. The thing is, now that the light is there; if you intend to take a right turn, and the light is red, you are not permitted your free-right turn that is legal by default in this state. It turns out the denizens of the neighborhood are about evenly split between seeing things my way, versus seeing things the other way. But people who see things the other way seem to be retarded or something. They can’t puzzle out details, or they don’t want to do this. I received a number of lectures about the virtues of a controlled intersection, from airheads and malcontents who didn’t bother to read the background that we’re actually in favor of the light.

Some of them did make out that the “no right turn” was the crux of the issue, and let me roughly paraphrase their comment on that: I hate cars. Sucks to be you. We hate you. Choke on it. Now this is rather sad, to people like me, since we have the capability of thinking like adults…and we notice the airheads retards and malcontents are bellyaching away about crazy drivers…and we know that this is what makes drivers crazy. That’s not an apologia offered for the benefit of the crazy drivers, you could read it as an indictment against the practice of formulating medications that make more of the sickness for which they are prescribed. It is “progress” in 180 degrees the wrong direction. The airheads-retards-malcontents do not like crazy drivers. So they’re making more of ’em.

As the thread went on back & forth, I noticed, but did not comment upon, a curious sex-dynamic. There was one cool lady who was in my corner. All the other females were solidly on-board with the “If it saves one life then it’s worth it”…never bothering to specify exactly what lives would be saved, or under what circumstances. One charmer helpfully volunteered the information that people in wheelchairs might get killed — but was ONLY giving me information! Hear that? She didn’t want to get into a debate. Clear?

We-ell…no. To my observation,

I notice communities tend to thrive when it seems the streets are designed by people who actually drive through them. In communities where the streets seem designed to punish the drivers, there is decay. Just a thought…

She replied with,

I actually have observed that communities thrive when those who inhabit them design them. [The] blvd is one of those roads where the majority of those driving it are passing through. We need to look out for our own…

…which may be right or it may be wrong; but either way it seems, to me, kind of like debating. But she wasn’t done with that. She reported me for “soapboxing” to the system’s authorities. Well yes, there is a no-soapboxing rule. But the sys admins must have decided the rule didn’t apply, here, or if it did, the other party was violating it just as egregiously. Ah, but she violated something else, too. The “tattle or retaliate” rule. Go tit-for-tat, avenge the perceived slight, OR go squealing to the yard-duty teacher. One or the other. Don’t go doing both, it’s bad form.

Now, gender dynamics are hazardous in this day and age. They invite accusations, which are not wholly without merit, that the speaker is engaging in intellectually unhealthy stereotyping, and as such, become undesirable distractions from the main point. I would add further that time is not on their side; to whatever extent they are accurate today, they are doomed to become less-so in the days and years unfolding into the future. We live in an age in which females are acting more and more like men, and males are acting more and more like women. Whenever I forget this, I take a look at the Pajama Boy meme to remind myself. Everyone else should do this too.

So we’re not really talking about “women” here. But there IS something. Let us describe it more fairly and more precisely. By engaging in exactly that transgression for which she was tattling on me to the authorities, thereby simultaneously upholding it as both forbidden and acceptable depending on who’s doing it — my antagonist was essentially playing a game of “Whatever it takes to get what I want.” And I’ve noticed this is commonplace among the “I don’t want to debate” types. Don’t-want-to-debate carries an implication of “I’m cool with not winning since I don’t wanna play” — which is often not forthcoming. What they really mean to say is “I don’t want to do any debating, I want to skip forward to the fun part where I win the debate I don’t want to have.”

There is swaggering. There is posing. The rhetorical tactic is invested mostly in — I would say, entirely in — the instillation of a feeling of futility. The question of “your idea is right, or my idea is right, one or the other, can’t be both” is entirely sidelined. In the end, I’m going to win and you’re going to lose. You are ineffectual. I am the princ[ess] of the universe. Give up. Go away.

I say it is counter-productive and futile to ascribe this to actual sexes; and, indeed, there are biological males who have bought into this. There are quite a few bio-females who have not. But it has become a thing, in no small part because it appeals to the evolutionarily-sharpened emotional impulses of the female. In all civilizations, even primitive ones, females get to be gatekeepers and there is a certain power involved in this. Theirs is the role that sits in judgment over who will be allowed to breed and who will not be allowed to breed. It is from that vantage point that the strutting matrons feel entitled to to hand out “go” and “stop” signals — to condescend to undesirable masculine figures that their DNA is to bleach away and thus depart the human condition forevermore.

It is the ultimate put-down — the male side of the species has no counterpart to it — but it carries a severe handicap: All the other fertile females have to agree, every single one. Or else the condemnation amounts to nothing. So there is a certain fragility to this.

Now, how is any of this relevant to the tragedy that took place in Florida Wednesday. It isn’t. Not in any way, not in the slightest, save for one thing: The shooters can be profiled too. As these awful tragedies continue to unfold, the pattern persists that the shooters are mostly, in fact almost exclusively, male. They have male energy but they lack male discipline. Absence of role models is a situation we see coming up often in these. And we’re talking about them because they’re a relatively recent thing. This is a post-Columbine thing, and as we contemplate that, we realize there must be a solution to the problem just barely within, or barely outside of, our reach. Lives are at stake. Innocent, juvenile lives that haven’t even been lived yet. So what’s the answer?

What’s the problem? Really?

In addition to being overwhelmingly male, undisciplined, unguided, the profiled perpetrator is gutterballed. Whether or not he can wreak havoc is a question that has been made meaningful by the establishment that he cannot, in any way whatsoever, productively contribute. He cannot be a creator or a preserver, therefore he must be a destroyer, or else he must be a nothing. And there is what he has in common with the rest of us, the non-monsters: None of us want to be a nothing. And so he chooses to destroy. That is the lead-up to all of these incidents, they all have that in common. There is a perpetrator who made the choice to be a destroyer, to escape being a nothing.

All straight men with a dating history who are willing to be honest about it, will confess to having encountered this female vindictiveness at some point. The non-rebuttal rebuttal of “Whatever.” We’ve all met here & there, now & then, the female-peacock who has unfortunately reached the age of maturity without finding any other way to relate to a man, save the one: “Right or wrong, I shall prevail, I am everything and you are nothing.” You have displeased the goddess, you are to be shunned, whoever does not shun you shall be shunned, whoever does not shun he who did not shun you, likewise shall be shunned…you are dirt. A non-factor. You are the salmon that shall not spawn. We are looking for the thing that causes all these school-shootings? The answer is right in front of us. These are the social failures, the social rejects; unless I’ve missed something, it’s each & every single one of them.

And no, don’t blame the women. It’s society at large who has been giving them this message. Society itself has found itself missing any other tools that could be used to relate to men, to communicate with men — just that one. “You don’t conform; you don’t comply; you are not what we expect to find. Therefore you are to become a non-factor.” Unless, that is, you can somehow prove us wrong…

The attitude is everywhere. It’s in our movies.

Your name is on the memorial wall of the very building you attacked. I would have it struck off. Soon, your past will be as non-existent as your future. I’ll never see you again.

I will think on you dead, until my husband makes you so. And then I will think on you no more.

Death comes to us all. But before it comes to you, know this: your blood dies with you. A child who is not of your line grows in my belly. Your son will not sit long on the throne. I swear it.

Wanna really hit a bad man where he lives? Make him a non-factor.

It’s a goalpost we have to keep moving, and moving again, and again, and again. Because it’s the only tool available, for many; carrots are not to be used, only sticks, and this is the only stick. Even the males who agree to abide by the rules of the post-gender world, making sure not to do anything we wouldn’t expect to see women do, always speaking in a voice at least an octave above middle-C, never growing any facial hair, not learning how to torque a wrench, how to tie a knot, how to change oil or a flat tire, not mansplaining, not manspreading — at the end of it all, they’re left wondering about the same questions. What’s the difference between the world in which I live, and the world as it would have materialized without me here? What makes me a factor? What makes me a figure of influence? Does anything? Anything at all? Modern “civilization” demands the man prove his harmlessness, nature requires him to prove his consequentiality. Doing both starts out looking easy, then with a few years of real experience, the ramifications of the contradiction start to rear their ugly head.

Some men engage in a trade that answers the question. They/we get to keep their/our sanity (I’m one of the lucky ones, I get to program computers and thus wrestle with real consequences, while my hands remain baby-soft and clean). And so we profit from the advantage of perspective. We see, as we refuse to play the game, we are not being ostracized from humanity, or civilization, but…something else. A perverse sort of game. Some of us have a big purpose, some of us only a tiny one; but a tiny purpose is better than none. We can see what sort of thinking leads to productivity, and what does not. And we recognize that those who go through the motions of ostracizing us, are merely ostracizing themselves.

So when we ask “Why can I not do a right turn on red?” and we don’t get an answer back that specifically addresses this…we notice.

People cheese us off sometimes. But we don’t pull out high-powered weaponry and start shooting people. Now…why is that? This is obviously a very important problem and men & women of good character want to find an answer, so let’s start with that. We get handed this steaming plate of swaggering-matronly “You are not a properly behaving male and so you shall be made ineffectual” just as often as the actual school shooters…we own guns…and yet we’re not joining them. What makes it so?

It seems a silly question to some, I suppose. But it isn’t. The question we really want to have answered, “Why are there [so many] school shootings?” is buried inside the question, “Why aren’t there more?” It’s the rule about defaults. Maybe, if the answer eludes you, you’re getting confused about what the default is. It’s an unsavory thought, but it’s a credible one: Maybe being this kind of monster, is the default condition. Let’s look into it.

The first thing that stops us, obviously, has to be the value system. Human life is precious. Only God can make it happen, and once a life is gone it’s gone forever. And so men who have guns & rifles, and get angry at people, do not just start killing them. But wait…that’s a lie, isn’t it? Just something we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel good. There are people running around who do not value their own lives. There are people who waste those lives. And those among us who are most sensitive to the wrong being done there, in fact, are the ones who are most militant about preserving the sanctity of human life. Even when we see there is no sanctity. Where there should be some. In fact, it’s our friends the liberals, who are in such a hurry to be non-judgmental about others and show off how non-judgmental they are, who fail to observe the sanctity of human life.

So there has to be more to it than that.

There is civilization itself. Some may conflate this with the first factor, but it’s actually two separate things. If I watch you and see you are not properly respecting the miracle that is your own human life — my valuation of human life will not dissuade me from picking up a rifle and using it to make you porous. But my respect for civilization will dissuade me from doing that. This is what makes me think…hey…I do not like the way he is living his life, but maybe he doesn’t like the way I’m living mine. I do not want him to shoot me, or my family, because of cultural differences, therefore I should not shoot him because of these cultural differences. In fact, this is the definition of civilization itself, is it not? You weren’t there at the beginning, I wasn’t either…but if “civilization” means anything, it is an antidote against brutality, and brutality is being a brute. It is a bulwark against “brute force,” which means, I want it, I’m stronger and bigger than the person who has it, so it’s mine.

Civilization must have started with motherhood. I mean, think about it. I’m bigger and stronger than everybody else, so I want things and I shall go forth and start taking them…but wait a minute…when I leave my cave, there is my mother remaining back in the cave, and my sisters and my daughters…I cannot be there to protect them. So let us start to form a system of covenants, and compacts, and implied contracts…when I leave my cave, you won’t approach my mother and start taking things away from her just because you can, and when you leave your cave, I’ll leave your mother alone too. Civilization is born.

After the value system, and the implied contracts of civilization, there is the sense of community. This is measurably different from the first two things. Community is the thing that is wounded and scarred in the aftermath of such a senseless slaughter. You think it’s horrifying, I think it’s horrifying…that’s because we are invested in it. Community has people in it who have helped us, and it also has people in it we have helped. Now, imagine yourself as being in need of help. Maybe you have a flat tire. Someone helps you. You don’t want to see that person mowed down in gunfire, do you? Or their family? No of course you don’t. But here’s something interesting; imagine yourself as in a position ready to render aid, and it’s the other person who needs it. You give them canned food, or you watch their children when they have to go somewhere. It is an act of pure kindness, they cannot repay you in any way…again, you don’t want to see them made into bullet-fodder. Others help you. You help others. Both situations strengthen this sense of community. Make you a player. Someone with skin in the game. A part of the community. Giver, taker, both work the same way.

Now, those are the big three, the Three Big Reasons you & I don’t want to go shooting people, even on the rough days, when people are aggravating us. After that, there is a bunch of silly stuff…the Mandalay Bay maneuver is so time-consuming, all those elevator trips. It’s a suicide-run and I’m not ready yet. Blood is icky. Cartridges are expensive.

REFER BACK TO THE PROFILE OF THE SHOOTER, is my counsel on this. Think about the timeline. And think about your own experiences, especially if you are a straight male, with a dating history, preferably one that is a bit like mine, checkered…but, more recent. Respect for the sanctity of human life is not on a downswing, at least, it isn’t on a downswing that would explain this. There has been no significant change since before Columbine. Some people respect human life and some people do not. That situation has remained largely unchanged since the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. And it isn’t civilization. People want to recoup all the advantages of these implied contracts, while remitting no more than necessary to keep them going — that is human nature. Nothing significant has changed about the formulation in all this time. And yet school shootings are now “normal,” whereas twenty years ago, they were not. It isn’t the silly stuff like cartridges being expensive or blood being icky.

That leaves just one thing. Factor Number Three, the sense of community. You men who have checkered dating histories, you’ve no doubt met these unfortunate waif-girls, the ones who have no way of communicating with any being who is masculine, save one: The instillation of futility. The “Whatever.” You’ve seen how this reflects the growing attitude of society-at-large. “Your DNA is to pass into the ash-bin of evolutionary history un-nurtured, bleaching on the rocks” — could it be, the modern-day innovation of mass school shootings is simply a natural consequence of this? Well, something must be motivating these damaged boy-men. Something recent. And this is recent.

The swaggering matronly types seek to disengage the wayward males, still further from where they’ve been disengaged already. They are the authors of the misfortune, the constructors of this new modern-age monster; the cog whose teeth do not quite mesh with the rest of the machinery. The idled monster, who has been addled in addition to being idled. He spins away, fruitlessly, and eventually picks up a firearm.

Contrast this unfortunate phenomenon with the words of Lord Baden-Powell in his parting words to the Boy Scouts whose organization he founded — specifically, for the purpose of giving energetic growing boys an outlet, so they would not grow up into men who harm others:

I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life. Happiness doesn’t come from being rich, nor merely from being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy, so that you can be useful and so can enjoy life when you are a man.

Nature study will show you how full of beautiful and wonderful things God has made the world for you to enjoy. Be contented with what you have got and make the best of it. Look on the bright side of things instead of the gloomy one.

But the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people. Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time but have done your best.

“Be Prepared” in this way, to live happy and to die happy – stick to your Scout promise always – even after you have ceased to be a boy – and God help you to do it.

This is a voice not of our current time…and, it shows. That right there, all by itself, is an important clue. Words of real encouragement, to boys. Not any one particular boy, but to any of the strong capable boys living then, or who would come along later. The tone is different from what you see sent in their direction, typically, nowadays is it not? Of course it is. We do not talk to boys this way. Actually, society frowns somewhat on people who talk to boys this way. God? Be a force for good? Leave things a little better than you found them? Verboten! More like, take two big steps back lads; we need to do something to make girls feel important. Not your turn.

Whatever came of the Boy Scouts? The liberals made hay out of the “gay scoutmaster,” and have used their public accommodations rule to destroy more things. And now the Boy Scouts are just a hollow shell of what they were before. This story doesn’t line up perfectly I’ll admit. The BSA actually won their Supreme Court case, which was heard just a bit after Columbine. But the pressure was brought to bear, ostensibly to make the organization gay-friendly, but in effect as well as intent, it was about something else. The “reform,” exerted from within, but pressured from the outside, ultimately made the organization a mess, and a thing of the past. And that is the chapter in which we’re living now. We have generations of males flaying away, floundering around, looking for a sense of purpose that eludes them. This is exactly what Lord BP sought to avoid. Liberalism, we see once again, destroys everything it touches. It starts out being “No one can have it unless everyone can have it,” and when the liberal-locusts are done nibbling the crop, it’s…no one can have it. A generation ago, boys had ways to be happy, help others, take the first few steps on the road to being & feeling like a part of the community. Now they don’t.

And, EVERY disagreeable interaction with the fairer sex, or a pajama-boy bureaucrat who’s trying to act like he should be part of the fairer sex, results in a strong suggestion that he’s on the outs, destined for nothingness. Every. Single. One.

I’m thinking the problem we’re trying to locate, is right about in there somewhere.

I agree with James Comey. In the aftermath of the release of the much-touted Nunes memo, he says “That’s it?” Maybe, by that, we mean different things. As in, he wants to play down the importance, whereas to me, having argued with liberals on the Internet since 1986 off-n-on, I’m sitting here thinking “Okay…learned nothing new.”

Liberals made up a bunch of bullshit and wrote it down into a “dossier,” then they used the made-up dossier-bullshit to get a FISA warrant. Going forward, it’s going to be a bit tough to prove actual intent with regard to liberal lies, because what happened here is the liberals began to earnestly believe their own bullshit. I’ve been watching that for thirty years. That’s why when Oprah Winfrey babbled away with some foolish nonsense about “your truth” I didn’t need anyone to clue me in on what’s wrong with that. See, you & I live in a world in which water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit and it doesn’t matter how people feel about that. If you get in an argument with someone who says it freezes at 50, and they manage to pull off some rhetorical flourish that makes you look like a raging idiot and the surrounding crowd roars its approval…well guess what. The freezing temperature doesn’t change. Liberals don’t live in that world. That’s why they’re forever looking for the “gotcha.” To them, that is truth.

And only the extremely-casual consumers of news, the ones who only just barely have a passing acquaintance with what’s going on, need to have it explained what that means. But, that’s lots-of-people, so maybe I should fill in the blanks. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re lying when your fastening to truth is so twisted, so ramshackle. An intent to tell the truth, versus an intent to deceive, is only the second step, with the first being: Do you even sustain a belief in truth? Do you even know what it is? Do you buy into the idea that there’s a freezing temperature and it doesn’t matter what people think about it. Because if not, any comment you have on the matter will merely be a report on your expectations of what most people think. You could be 100% sincere about this and, still, not to be trusted.

Isolated hermit-authors of crackpot right-wing blogs, like this one, like me, understand this. We’ve gotten it for awhile. What happened yesterday was the whole country saw it. Or, at least, lost its excuse not to be aware.

So going forward, let’s ALL be sure to tell liberals to stick a cork in it whenever they…

1. Accuse someone of saying or doing something
2. Insist someone is innocent of something, or debunk a myth
3. Tell us history; tell us how anything went down anywhere
4. Tell us what’s going on with the climate, or for that matter, anything that has anything to do with science
5. “Libsplain” to us how many genders there are
6. Tell us about any “research” or “experiment” or “paper,” unless they can assure us no liberals were involved in doing it, and even then someone who isn’t a liberal should have to prove it
7. Protest something
8. Proxy-complain about something on behalf of some race, nation or creed that’s supposed to be offended
9. Bore us yet even more about their “triggerings” or “microaggressions”
10. Define ANYTHING
11. Tell us what we need to do to prove we’re properly respectful to women
12. Explain to us what is going on in the heads of anyone who doesn’t agree with them

That last one is particularly important. In my experience, if there is any one weakness liberals are going to candidly admit to having, it’s that they don’t really understand the motives of their opposition. And yet you’ll find, overall, that’s their go-to. “People disagree with me because they’re sexist.” “They hate Obama because his skin is black.”

We’ve let them take over our academic world. We’ve let them monopolize history. Liberals shouldn’t write about history. They don’t care about it.

They shouldn’t define things. They’ve made it their mission to prevent new definitions from being established and agreed-upon where they’re needed, and to eradicate the definitions that are already there.

They lie, they lie some more, they sell the lies to other liberals, and the other liberals believe the lies. And then the liberals who sold the lies start believing the lies because, hey, they successfully got them sold so they must be okay-lies.

And then they use these okay-lies to get warrants to spy on people.

You just saw it.

The guys on the radio made a comment in passing about this, and then one of the folks at work said something about it. But I had to do some looking to find the source. I’m told there are two million hits but I don’t see much of anyone actually talking about it.

So he’s been suspended & stripped of committee assignments and what-not. I guess this is some kind of lone rat then? Not manifesting any kind of culture involving other people that would’ve made him feel comfortable saying such things…well, I suppose time may tell.