Monday, December 24, 2012
The Dictators for Dynasties Program
What Anomaly UK describes, I think, is pretty standard practice for US-led Progressivism (as he points out, this is usually called "the International Community") when it looks like autocracy might be getting another chance.
Worth Reposting
Larry Correia lays out the argument against gun control.
I am not political, and I don't think there's a point to arguing with voting idiots, so why am I reposting this? Because it is excellent. 10,000 words of TL;DR that read like 100. He covers everything he can cover. He shakes no rifles, makes no bold statements about his cold, dead hands, and doesn't threaten violence if he doesn't get his way. This essay is the work of a man who is what every phony intellectual gun blogger thinks he is.
There are so many ways that a post against gun control can go wrong, but this one went only right.
I am not political, and I don't think there's a point to arguing with voting idiots, so why am I reposting this? Because it is excellent. 10,000 words of TL;DR that read like 100. He covers everything he can cover. He shakes no rifles, makes no bold statements about his cold, dead hands, and doesn't threaten violence if he doesn't get his way. This essay is the work of a man who is what every phony intellectual gun blogger thinks he is.
There are so many ways that a post against gun control can go wrong, but this one went only right.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Prevention and Containment
I liked this article.
If policies like this one ever get implemented, it will be because of dedicated executives, not because of any raised political furor. Such levelheaded thinking does not come naturally to hominid tribes when they are in a lather.
Beyond proper care of the insane, I think this type of policy is the best defense against these sorts of things.
A Carousel of Laughing Crocodiles
It all started with this video. A near-perfect example of crocodile humor, the only people who laughed at it were liberals, specifically gay marriage advocates. Conservatives felt some part of them that they don't want to admit exists burst into tears, while maintaining that it was not funny. I really didn't give a fuck, and thought it was unfunny.
Men, who naturally have a much better sense of humor than either gay men or women (who do you think wrote the script?), responded with this video. It is actually funny, because it's not crocodile humor.
Naturally, this begot a series of other videos, including two videos where women threaten "we would so marry our gay friend!" It's funny; if they thought they were such good potential husbands, you'd think it would be common practice.
The first video in that second string is especially unfunny and out-of-place. Lesbians, despite the handpicked selection in the video, are usually quite ugly. I don't know how the causality works, exactly, but I've met a number of lesbians in my time, and I wouldn't have dated any of them. A hot lesbian is pretty rare. The unfunny goes beyond that, however. Why do these videos assume that men give a damn about marriage? Sure, some do; they're called betas, and they live to provide supplicating commitment to women, but the probably vote Democrat anyway. Your typical, little-m misogynist Republican voting asshole (hi Roissy!) doesn't give a rat's ass for marriage. If some lucky gay man happened to pick up his woman of the hour, he'd just go elsewhere. No big deal.
That's why the second video is funny. Good comedy, not crocodile humor, is built on exaggerating and emphasizing reality. If your dogma runs counter to that, you'll have a very hard time generating genuine laughs, and you'll settle for crocodile humor.
Men, who naturally have a much better sense of humor than either gay men or women (who do you think wrote the script?), responded with this video. It is actually funny, because it's not crocodile humor.
Naturally, this begot a series of other videos, including two videos where women threaten "we would so marry our gay friend!" It's funny; if they thought they were such good potential husbands, you'd think it would be common practice.
The first video in that second string is especially unfunny and out-of-place. Lesbians, despite the handpicked selection in the video, are usually quite ugly. I don't know how the causality works, exactly, but I've met a number of lesbians in my time, and I wouldn't have dated any of them. A hot lesbian is pretty rare. The unfunny goes beyond that, however. Why do these videos assume that men give a damn about marriage? Sure, some do; they're called betas, and they live to provide supplicating commitment to women, but the probably vote Democrat anyway. Your typical, little-m misogynist Republican voting asshole (hi Roissy!) doesn't give a rat's ass for marriage. If some lucky gay man happened to pick up his woman of the hour, he'd just go elsewhere. No big deal.
That's why the second video is funny. Good comedy, not crocodile humor, is built on exaggerating and emphasizing reality. If your dogma runs counter to that, you'll have a very hard time generating genuine laughs, and you'll settle for crocodile humor.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Your bones are His canvas, your blood, His paints
"In modernism, art becomes a philosophical enterprise rather than an artistic one."
Modern art is a contest of cleverness, a higher-status version of getting a mustache tattoo on your finger. As the author of the article continues,
"The driving purpose of modernism is not to do art but to find out what art is. We have eliminated X —is it still art? Now we have eliminated Y —is it still art? The point of the objects was not aesthetic experience; rather the works are symbols representing a stage in the evolution of a philosophical experiment. In most cases, the discussions about the works are much more interesting than the works themselves. That means that we keep the works in museums and archives and we look at them not for their own sake, but for the same reason scientists keep lab notes—as a record of their thinking at various stages."
This scientific approach to art sounds valid... Until you remember that art is not the Higgs-Boson, and does not need discovering, only defining. Oh, I guess it was just intellectual wank all along.
Postmodern art is the tradition for which Duchamp was the spiritual ancestor - pissing on art itself. Why I wouldn't consider Duchamp to be a postmodern artist ahead of his time is that Duchamp was pissing on modernists, whereas postmodernists are indiscriminate - they will as soon piss on a Pollack or a priceless grand piano.
Postmodernism has made art the vanguard of the Progressive society - ever marching towards the destruction of everything that came before, the abortion of everything that would come after, and the exploitation of everything that is unlucky enough to share its present.
Modern art is a contest of cleverness, a higher-status version of getting a mustache tattoo on your finger. As the author of the article continues,
"The driving purpose of modernism is not to do art but to find out what art is. We have eliminated X —is it still art? Now we have eliminated Y —is it still art? The point of the objects was not aesthetic experience; rather the works are symbols representing a stage in the evolution of a philosophical experiment. In most cases, the discussions about the works are much more interesting than the works themselves. That means that we keep the works in museums and archives and we look at them not for their own sake, but for the same reason scientists keep lab notes—as a record of their thinking at various stages."
This scientific approach to art sounds valid... Until you remember that art is not the Higgs-Boson, and does not need discovering, only defining. Oh, I guess it was just intellectual wank all along.
Postmodern art is the tradition for which Duchamp was the spiritual ancestor - pissing on art itself. Why I wouldn't consider Duchamp to be a postmodern artist ahead of his time is that Duchamp was pissing on modernists, whereas postmodernists are indiscriminate - they will as soon piss on a Pollack or a priceless grand piano.
Postmodernism has made art the vanguard of the Progressive society - ever marching towards the destruction of everything that came before, the abortion of everything that would come after, and the exploitation of everything that is unlucky enough to share its present.
Friday, December 21, 2012
The end credits track for the TV movie about America
Angels and demons holding hands and whistling 'Dixie'
We haven't had that kind of fun 'round here since 1960
We wait in longer lines than the Russian's ever did
Selling our children's souls to the highest bid
I can't describe the way it feels
These songs will blare out of your eyes
When I get to the green building
My arrival will be televised
When I get to the green building
When I get to the green building
Na Na Na...
Na Na Na...
Satan's cheerleaders prancing 'round the maypole in December
We haven't had that kind of spectacle here since I can remember
Our fearless leaders say they're equal to the task
And every point of view on this depends on who you ask
It doesn't matter any way
Our prophecies are realised
When I get to the green building
The stars will shine out of your eyes
When I get to the green building
When I get to the green building
Na Na Na...
Na Na Na...
Isn't it interesting to see whose heart shall pass?
When they try to hide them, but they're made of glass
Isn't it interesting to see who lives or dies?
On the rollercoasters and the water slides
Isn't it interesting to watch them play their game?
When they're all such cheaters and they have no shame
And isn't it interesting to hear the demons sing?
When the doorbell rings
At the green building
Isn't it interesting?
Isn't it interesting?
When the doorbell rings
At the green building
Isn't it interesting?
Isn't it interesting?
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Well, not quite
I don't think they're accounting for the fact that, before 1968, nobody would vote for a black guy.
Azathoth loves the poor, and misery is his favorite relish!
I had thought all the priests of this order were gone, defrocked. Does their particular brand of piety still get reaffirmed by course of habit, or has some new sect of True Believers risen to take their place?
Whatever the reason behind it, we've seen once again the rearing of the ugly head of a policy that, while standard issue in the sicklier trees in the grove, has never quite caught on close to the geographic center of the Cathedral. A half-assed implementation was tried in 1994, but was quietly sidelined when the law expired.
Azathothian capital-P Progress reacts to tragedy by finding something or someone safe and easy to blame, in lieu of doing anything actually effective to help solve the problem or prevent it from occurring again. What is most curious about this particular instance, is, that with more than 105 million guns being sold since the Assault Weapons Ban sunset, I'm not sure that this is such an easy target. In 1994, gun enthusiasts were normally hunters, but since then, much has changed. Not only has the number of active hunters declined, but the number of gun enthusiasts has risen, and the "scary military rifles" of 1994 are the hunting rifles of 2012.
So the number of folks whose jimmies would get rustled by such legislation is much higher in 2012 than it was in 1994. How do the democrats think they'll get away with such legislation?
Well, in the case of Obama in particular, it's his last term and thus time to piss everyone off. But, in the case of other leftist politicians, I think the election results were pretty clear: Screw men, women are the only voting block we need. Fifty Shades of Grey-reading soccer moms will turn out in droves to support legislation that promises however falsely to protect their precious babies, so term-unlimited congressmen can reasonably expect to come back to pre-warmed leather office chairs in 2014. Bureaucrats, of course, will remain unaffected whatever happens, but they are still normally reluctant to sacrifice their elected puppets for no reason whatsoever.
The American militia movement has basically demonstrated that it'll put up with anything the Left has thus far thrown at them, having put up with two elections of a black man as president, the passing of the healthcare bill, and the continued financial ruination of their country's economy without violent incident. Maybe a gun ban would be the match in the powder-room, but I doubt it, and so does the Left.
So, then, we might actually see another scary looking gun ban pushed through. Well, that would make me sad, but what does that actually mean for the country?
Well, in short, it won't remove an avenue by which tyranny can be kept in check, and it won't solve the problem of crazy people going on rampages, either.
What will it do? Force the poor to rely on strong, aggressive males for defense.
With effective weapons like AR-15s and Glocks out of the picture (I'm imagining the worst kind of ban, here), poor people will have to resort to swords, knives, clubs and other primitive weapons that are only effective in the hands of strong, aggressive men. The elite, of course, can just move away from crime, hire armed bodyguards, drive everywhere, and apply for the now-rare permit to carry a handgun (which, itself, is now three or four times as expensive as before the ban). The poor, however, don't have any of those options, and must instead rely on a more medieval structure for defense.
Once again, Progressivism proves itself the poor's best friend (in the same way that a casino owner is the best friend of a habitual gambler).
postscript:
It's salient, I think, that progs today actually believe that inanimate objects can cause people to be evil. They can't say it that way, of course, because they're currently pimping an image of rationality (maybe in a half-century or so they'll be pushing faith, and we'll get some really funny protests), but it's still a pretty good indicator that we're experiencing a third Renaissance (or maybe one big continuous one).
Whatever the reason behind it, we've seen once again the rearing of the ugly head of a policy that, while standard issue in the sicklier trees in the grove, has never quite caught on close to the geographic center of the Cathedral. A half-assed implementation was tried in 1994, but was quietly sidelined when the law expired.
Azathothian capital-P Progress reacts to tragedy by finding something or someone safe and easy to blame, in lieu of doing anything actually effective to help solve the problem or prevent it from occurring again. What is most curious about this particular instance, is, that with more than 105 million guns being sold since the Assault Weapons Ban sunset, I'm not sure that this is such an easy target. In 1994, gun enthusiasts were normally hunters, but since then, much has changed. Not only has the number of active hunters declined, but the number of gun enthusiasts has risen, and the "scary military rifles" of 1994 are the hunting rifles of 2012.
So the number of folks whose jimmies would get rustled by such legislation is much higher in 2012 than it was in 1994. How do the democrats think they'll get away with such legislation?
Well, in the case of Obama in particular, it's his last term and thus time to piss everyone off. But, in the case of other leftist politicians, I think the election results were pretty clear: Screw men, women are the only voting block we need. Fifty Shades of Grey-reading soccer moms will turn out in droves to support legislation that promises however falsely to protect their precious babies, so term-unlimited congressmen can reasonably expect to come back to pre-warmed leather office chairs in 2014. Bureaucrats, of course, will remain unaffected whatever happens, but they are still normally reluctant to sacrifice their elected puppets for no reason whatsoever.
The American militia movement has basically demonstrated that it'll put up with anything the Left has thus far thrown at them, having put up with two elections of a black man as president, the passing of the healthcare bill, and the continued financial ruination of their country's economy without violent incident. Maybe a gun ban would be the match in the powder-room, but I doubt it, and so does the Left.
So, then, we might actually see another scary looking gun ban pushed through. Well, that would make me sad, but what does that actually mean for the country?
Well, in short, it won't remove an avenue by which tyranny can be kept in check, and it won't solve the problem of crazy people going on rampages, either.
What will it do? Force the poor to rely on strong, aggressive males for defense.
With effective weapons like AR-15s and Glocks out of the picture (I'm imagining the worst kind of ban, here), poor people will have to resort to swords, knives, clubs and other primitive weapons that are only effective in the hands of strong, aggressive men. The elite, of course, can just move away from crime, hire armed bodyguards, drive everywhere, and apply for the now-rare permit to carry a handgun (which, itself, is now three or four times as expensive as before the ban). The poor, however, don't have any of those options, and must instead rely on a more medieval structure for defense.
Once again, Progressivism proves itself the poor's best friend (in the same way that a casino owner is the best friend of a habitual gambler).
postscript:
It's salient, I think, that progs today actually believe that inanimate objects can cause people to be evil. They can't say it that way, of course, because they're currently pimping an image of rationality (maybe in a half-century or so they'll be pushing faith, and we'll get some really funny protests), but it's still a pretty good indicator that we're experiencing a third Renaissance (or maybe one big continuous one).
Monday, December 3, 2012
Homage to the New Puritan Man
If this doesn't remind you of Stalin-era pageantry, you are impossibly thick, and certainly no fun at parties.