2018 – Page 3 – Shall Not Be Questioned

A Victim of Their Own Success?

I think there might be something to this WSJ article.

The left had important achievements. It did rescue America from an unsustainable moral illegitimacy. It also established the great menace of racism as Americaâ€™s most intolerable disgrace. But the leftâ€™s success has plunged it into its greatest crisis since the â€™60s. The Achillesâ€™ heel of the left has been its dependence on menace for power. Think of all the things it can ask for in the name of fighting menaces like â€œsystemic racismâ€ and â€œstructural inequality.â€ But what happens when the evils that menace us begin to fade, and then keep fading?

Read the whole thing. I’m not saying there’s no racism anymore, but I do get the sense that the Democratic coalition has been rocked by its own success in the culture wars, and has been desperately looking for issues to hold their coalition together.

Attempts at Gun Voter Suppression in North Dakota

The North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party created a Facebook page on Halloween to stir up some election tricks.

They created a “Hunter Alerts” page to use as a platform for buying Facebook ads to target at hunters and gun owners. As you can see in this image from NRA created from screenshots of the page details and ads they are running, they are trying to convince any hunter who might hunt out-of-state that they will lose those licenses if they show up to vote.

If these tactics show any sign of working at all – if there is any drop in gun owner participation in the North Dakota election whatsoever – this will be copied around the country to try and keep gun owners from turning out to vote. They know that we turn out in very high numbers to protect our rights, so now they are trying to use our rights and lawful activities against our voters to convince them not to vote.

Also, if you see any paid ads like this at all in your social media feeds, make sure to get screenshots and drop a message to the NRA page. They can take a look to investigate further. Getting the word out to the voters they are lying to can hopefully give NRA & local gun rights leaders the chance to respond so that the goal of keeping these voters home doesn’t work.

Was It Wrong When Your Guy Did It?

I agree that DJT’s EO ending birthright citizenship is unconstitutional. But I’m seeing a lot of this:

Mr. President, amending any part of the Constitution by Executive Order puts every part of the Constitution at risk of being amended by Executive Order. Today itâ€™s the 14th Amendment. Tomorrow it could be the 1st. Itâ€™s OUR Constitution not YOUR Constitution. #ImpeachmentIsNotDead

— Congressman Al Green (@RepAlGreen) October 30, 2018

Unconstitutional Executive Orders? Where could he gave gotten that crazy idea from? I have an Uncle that loves to throw our the charge of “Whataboutism,” also known as pointing out hypocrisy. True Whataboutism is using someone else’s flaws to distract attention away from your own. There are certainly people out there who cheer their team, right or wrong. But a lot of people who do that wrap their cheerleading up in high-minded rhetoric and ideals. Pointing out “No, it’s just cheerleading,” is calling it for what it is. It’s no surprise the people who are having that pointed out to them don’t particularly like it. No one wants to think they are a sucker.

If it is high-minded ideals, can we all agree now that rule by EO, and specifically unconstitutional EO, is a bad thing? If yes, do we have a consensus on dismantling executive power and making the executive branch much weaker than it currently is? Or is it only bad when the other guy has the pen?

On Our Discourse

This is very much worth your time to read. From my social media feeds, I’m seeing a lot more virtue signaling about hate than I am debate over gun control. Â That’s should be a good thing. Who likes hate? But it’s all coming from people who do some pretty impressive hate mongering for anyone who disagrees with them on an hourly basis. There are nazis on every street corner, you see. Trump is responsible for each and every one of them! If you voted for Trump, so are you!

In other words, more than half of my Shabbat morning congregants, and in some more traditional synagogues, almost all of them, should have the doors barred against their entry. Jews who make minyans, pay shiva calls, underwrite nursing homes and kindergartensâ€”people who make Judaism possible, with their flawed but real human presence, for other peopleâ€”should be cast out of our midst because of the levers they pull in the privacy of a voting booth. And what, after all, would a Jew who fled from Iran know about anti-Semitismâ€”or protecting the Jewish community?

Donald Trump is neither a devil or an angel. He is not Hitler, and fascism is not descending on America. I am becoming more convinced this madness is being driven by Baby Boomers who, as a whole, were never properly socialized for social media. I’ve been participating in online communities almost since there were online communities. You have to learn the pitfalls. People are not instinctively wired to interact in this medium.

I do know people my age who are being driven mad by the algorithms, and I know plenty of Boomers who have enough self-awareness necessary to put it in context or just stay away from it. But generationally, Boomers seem to have fewer tools to cope.

Social media is total poison. Even the dealers know it. I have to embrace Social Media to cultivate an audience these days. My motivation to keep doing that, in case you can’t tell, diminishes with the day. I must pay homage to the gatekeepers. They are the first to tell me, daily. Pay us money, and you can access your audience. Once upon a time I earned my audience without transfer payments to Silicon Valley. Not anymore. I won’t pay them, but I pay for it with reduced traffic.

Armed in Houses of Worship

I’m not the church going type, but I don’t think I’ve been in a church unarmed since I got my carry permit 16 years ago. The fact is they are juicy targets for whack jobs looking for headlines. Same for festivals and other public gatherings.

“Gun-toting rabbi says congregants should arm themselves.”

I couldn’t agree more. I get a lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea of guns in churches, but the fact is that the quickest way to end a mass shooting is accurate and prompt return fire. Doesn’t matter whether it’s the cops or someone else. Carefully aimed bullets are carefully aimed bullets, and despite what idiots in the media think, these are trainable scenarios where armed citizens usually prevail when around. Other than the emotional reaction, there’s nothing special about a church as a place that makes it different for carrying than any other place.

Giving Him What He Wants

There’s an article running in USA Today that is offering the mass killer exactly what he wants. I was reluctant to link to it, but people should see. “Who is [murdering loser]? Accused Pittsburgh synagogue shooter left anti-semitic trail.”. USA Today is hardly alone, though.

CNN: “Here’s what we know so far about [murdering loser], the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect.”

New York Times: “Who Is [murdering loser], the Suspect in the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting?

ABC: “Pittsburgh synagogue shooting: What we know about alleged mass shooter [murdering loser].”

Fox News: “Who is [murdering loser]? Pittsburgh synagogue suspect posted views online.”

Oh yeah, go read his manifesto and everything. From everything I’m seeing the guy was a loser. That fits the profile of most mass killers.Â For all the whack jobs in the tin-foil hat part of the gun community, saying this is a “false flag” because of the timing, it’s not. It all makes sense if you understand the motivation. We’ve unfortunately reached the point where in order to get the infamy you seek, you need to be politically useful to a narrative, or you need to kill a lot of people. Otherwise you’re act is going to get memory holed in a few days. If you want weeks of seeing your name in lights, you need to work for the media.Â This is not some crackpot theory. It’s also known that mass killers extensively plan their rampages:

Extensive planning indicates that rampage attacks serve purposes. These also fall into clear repeated patterns, including vengeance, infamy seeking, and a need for a sense of macho power, often with a background of long-term internal discord and interpersonal defeats.

We can’t do much about the other factors, but we can do someone about infamy seeking. I’m not asking the media to not cover news, and I would never suggest the government ought to restrict freedom of the press. But we can voluntarily take action. We can drive a culture that doesn’t offer infamy to those who seek it.

Don’t make the killer famous. I won’t even mention their names. I’m not going to quote the killer, but he has a quote which indicates he understood the timing of this. I believe he realized hitting this close to an election would make him useful and would drive heavy media coverage. The media fell right into place, on cue. “Who is <asshole murderer>?” Way to go guys. Out there, somewhere, the next murdering loser is taking notes.

Places to Shoot

It is basically impossible to maintain a healthy shooting culture without having places to shoot. Even if we change the laws in places like New York City, because they’ve been so utterly successful at destroying their gun culture, Bloomberg likely won’t ever have to worry about icky gun people in his city. There’s almost nowhere to buy a gun, and almost no places left to shoot. This is a city that once contained NRA’s primary shooting facility! Can you imagine that today? Actually, you don’t have to. This is where NRA’s range in New York City was:

Think there’s any chance of getting that facility back as a shooting range? Not a chance. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be possible to make new places to shoot in the Five Boroughs, but it’ll take generations, and a court willing to take the Second Amendment seriously.

It’s far easier not to lose those places to shoot in the first place. Generally speaking, I’m not going to air my club’s dirty laundry in a public forum. But I’ve spoken about some things either seeking advice or pointing out things that might be useful for people in the same position. I see a few comments here and there like this:

“Sorry, but, your club sounds like a Fudd club. Â Are black rifles banned too? Â Only 1 shot every two seconds?”

Now, my club it’s actually not a Fudd Club. It’s Gun Culture 1.5, to use that analogy. No issues with black rifles there: but we do have some rules that are… outdated. I am not likely as far behind as some other people would be in participating in an effort to bring Gun Culture 2.0 to a Gun Culture 1.0 club. But anyone struggling to help in such an endeavor has my respect: we owe it to future generations of shooters to try to preserve places to shoot.

I will fully acknowledge that some clubs and ranges are hopeless, and will die with their current leadership. I’m not suggesting every effort will always pay off, just that the effort is worth our collective time even if our individual effort fails.Â I can almost guarantee you that if you were to join a “Fudd Club” of sufficient size, you’re going to find allies in any effort to un-Fudd it.Â If you suddenly find yourself trying to take a Gun Culture 1.0 club into Gun Culture 2.0, I offer some advice:

Don’t be an asshole. No one likes someone who comes in with a personal agenda and has all the grace of a bull in a china shop. Those people are quickly flagged as trouble, because most of the time they are, no matter what they are selling.
Try some of the old shooting sports. I shot Silhouette for several years. I even shot air gun silhouette. It greatly improved certain aspects of my shooting. It’s also a great way to get to know people, which is key to changing anything. You’ll find friends in unexpected places. As I’ve introduced some more modern shooting sports, I’m finding a lot of unexpected crossover from shotgunners.
Be willing to help out. I was willing to help out when asked, or even when I wasn’t asked.Â Before I knew it, I received the ultimate punishment a club can administer to a member: I was given an officer’s position.
Don’t expect or push to change things overnight. I have been an officer for almost a decade at this point, and I’m just now starting to have enough influence to change some things. A lot of what got me to the point was circumstantial. It’s good to have an instinct for when an organization is ready for change, and when you’ll get resistance. When you get to those “ready for change” moments, go for it.
Talk to people. In deliberative bodies, if you bring an issue up and lose, that will be dead for a while. No one likes rehashing old shit that got shot down. So if you’re going to bring up an issue, be sure you have the votes. Have an idea which people are strong and weak yeas or nays. Think about compromise positions. Think about what you can do to firm up your weak votes.
Build systems and culture, not cults of personality. If you don’t bring other people along with what you want to do, even if you succeed in making changes, they likely won’t outlast you. People who are successful at building a legacy build systems and cultures. Culture is important, and it’s deliberate. It doesn’t just happen. It’s like a garden. You have to tend it.

I’ve heard stories of clubs that change through outright revolution. I recall a story told to me a while ago about a club in Pennsylvania who had a cadre of members that wanted to put on a machine gun shoot. The leadership said no. Next election, they replaced the leadership. That club now has an annual machine gun shoot. If you have the votes and the people willing to step up to affect that kind of thing, it’s an option. I am a reasonably good administrator. I’m a poor revolutionary.Â I’ve always wondered how the people who used the outright revolution managed it. I have to work within the confines of my own strengths and weaknesses, which I guess is a good final bit of advice. I’m always curious to hear stories in the comments from anyone who’s got one.

This Could Be a Disaster for Gun Control Too

Bloomberg’s The Trace is touting a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll that shows a lot of voters rank Gun Policy very high on their list of concerns. From Bloomberg’s propaganda wing:

The survey indicates that Republicans’ traditional turnout advantage on the gun issue may have eroded:Â 16 percent of both GOP and Democratic voters ranked gun policy as their most important issue, along with 15 percent of independent voters.

Actually, if you read the poll, GOP voters rank 17%, with Independents ranking 13%. It’s an awful stretch to assume that this means gun control is ascendent. What they are hoping is that people just assume those are gun control votes. We know there are still some Dems who care about gun rights, and I’d be very surprised if most of those independent numbers are votes for gun control.

Gun Policy is very important to me too, and I’d tell a pollster that if asked.

At Least We’re Not The Only Ones

Maybe the issue is just that not enough people give a shit about guns, if both sides are resorting to dabbling in other issues:

“Gun control advocates shift attention, money to other issues ahead of midterms”

I think NJT is right: there’s a viable “gun rights only please” coalition. There actually isn’t one for gun control. But both sides are seeking safety in broader coalitions. It’s hard to read the pitching seas and know what direction to steer the ship. It’s comforting to follow. But are you following everyone to disaster?

The fundamental problem is in a realignment like we’re going through, no one knows where your pet issue will end up. There’s strong temptations to seek out coalition partners that might make sense in the short term, but in the long term aren’t beneficial. You just want to get through the storm.

The Campaign to Make Us Pariahs Continues

Opinion published in Sunday’s USA Today says the Boy Scouts should ditch NRA and create their own firearms training program. This is just one guy’s opinion, so I’m not sweating it. But it shows the concerted effort to place us outside the mainstream, likely coordinated by Bloomberg, is continuing.

The NRA needs the BSA moreÂ than the BSA needs the NRA.Â The BSA is perfectly capable of creating a firearms safety program of its own without the NRA participation.

You want to test that nice theory? If you ask me, this is a bigger threat to the Boy Scouts, because I believe we have the cultural power in the circles BSA depends on to end it as a national organization of any consequence. This would not be a wise fight for the BSA to pick.