Friends, Big Brother is watching you, and indeed all of us, including the recently named prime suspect in the murder of the United Healthcare CEO. Once again, it appears that a lone nut is responsible for this outrage, although, unlike DJT's potential assassins, this guy knew how to shoot straight. It makes one wonder whether attempts on the lives of prominent people will be the new normal in America. Heaven knows we certainly have enough citizens with the desire to kill, matched with an extreme ideological perspective that tells them that any means necessary to stop evildoers can be justified. Whether we have all that many people with the guts and gumption to follow through is another matter.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9nxee2r0do
Meanwhile, here's an insightful analysis of the current situation in the Russia-Ukraine War. Both sides are facing some pretty considerable headwinds, so it's hard to say which leader -- Zelensky or Putin -- might be more desperate to come to terms.
Dr. Waddy from Jack:Re the killing of the CEO: aside from the terrible tragedy for the victim's family, this event is becoming a "danse macabre". First there is the apparent mental and emotional imbalance of the suspect; if it is genuine it may earn him a viable insanity defense.
ReplyDeleteBut now politics has made an exceedingly grotesque imposition on the fundamental elements of tragedy and legality and has turned it into a tawdry spectacle.In that vein, it will be interesting to see disgraced Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's position. How can he best serve his biases in the administration of this very visible, yes, phenomenon? How can he enhance his political ambitions? It's like watching a horror movie; how bad can it get?
The far left must be desperate indeed to try to take advantage of this to revivify its historic, catastrophically discredited animus toward capitalism. Why even their recently frustrated character assassination machine has relit its boilers and is prepared for sea. In utterly base fashion, obscenely close upon the killing, it has imposed snidely understated suggestions of administrative misconduct upon the victim, even NOW!
Frivolity is far too light an evaluation of the online conduct of fey, effete , left inclined (as far as their ethereal psyches manifest any measure of determination) sybarites who celebrate this abomination and its perpetrator. But they are probably far too dissipated to marshall the resolve which a follow on attack requires. However, those dark and silent souls who rise to the fore they crave only by actually carrying out
hellish evil may take inspiration and confirmation of their fevered dreams from the highly publicized bizarre manifestations of this summary execution. And its freedom in the first instance from established legal paradigms such as tedious due process carried out by duly authorized officials is especially attractive to the frantic motivation of the radical.
On balance, I guardedly doubt so far that this shamefully politicized event and the assassination attempts on DJT presage an onslaught of similar offenses. We thought that possible after 1968 but it didn't develop so.After virtue signaling McGovern's burial in the '72 election, which confirmed the political absurdity of the Aquarians, only the nonsensical Patty Hearst epic remained of the far left's immediate "revolutionary "strategy. The radicals necessarily and reluctantly acceded to the necessity of corruption of the despised "system" from within.
But I have never seen anything comparable to the wave of redeeming common sense which MAY have been the cumulative product of this perhaps seminal year.Will it generate a descent by the antiamerican left underground, replete with anarchic violence? Maybe, but the Dems still retain some power; they are close enough to a majority in the "People's House" to cling to dreams of yet triumphing by corrupting from within.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Its beyond appalling to know that fighting nearly as intense as that of the WWII Eastern front continues.
ReplyDeleteRecent public statements by Nato officials that Nato membership for Ukraine is inevitable ensure that there will be no letup until the West realizes that Russia will never tolerate what it regards as an unendurable affront and threat to its national security . The human and financial cost of the war so far very probably further hardens its resolve in this.
Proposals of "European" peace keepers in Ukraine: why would Russia consider such a , to them, strategic imposition.?They will not tolerate declared or potential hostiles in this region for which they harbor so many vital historical , geographical and military considerations. Its a grim reality which must be acknowledged, no matter the very justified regret and unwillingness to face it, by the West.We have very unwisely pushed a very brutal and rugged nation far beyond its capacity for retreat.
Jack, you're right that predictions of chaos in the late 60s/early 70s proved...inaccurate? Premature? What's different now is that the whole media infrastructure cultivates self-righteous fury AND a much larger percentage of the population is narcissistic and mentally ill. Oh, and there are many more guns floating around. Food for thought.
ReplyDeleteHmm. NATO forces in a rump Ukraine? An interesting thought. So far no European state has the gumption to send its forces into the fray, but they might have the courage to send them to a place where the fighting has "ended"?
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Proposals for "peacekeepers" of virtually any nation to be tolerated in Ukraine by Russia probably only compounds dangerous Russian frustration at the inability of much of the world to accept their perception of a fundamental affront and threat to their national security from any military support for Ukraine. Maybe, just maybe, a symbolic UN force might be acceptable to them.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: I would not have thought it so but you may well be right that more guns are present in our civilization. If so, I see it as a reaction to the left's onslaught on the 2nd Amendment. The number of hunters has declined sharply and the Dem run cities where criminals prosper also enthusiastically enact draconian restriction on self defense on the part of the law abiding. One would think initially that that would make guns far less possessed.
ReplyDeleteBut mostly what its done is motivate those for whom guns are no more "icky" or dangerous than universally owned cars, to ensure that their Constitutional right to be armed will not be suffered to be denied by incipient totalitarians and their sometimes perhaps too sensitive followers.For the latter, if they would give us a chance, we'd be glad to show them that we are responsible and free citizens. One way we have protected our rights is to avail ourselves of a still mostly free market and purchase more firearms and ammo. That's the customary response of those whose long established lawful access to a product is arbitrarily limited by wrong headed government. (eg. Prohibition).
Jack of Responsible and Free Citizens:
Delete"One way we have protected our rights is to avail ourselves of a still mostly free market and purchase more firearms and ammo."
Why thank you good sir! Analogous to the more the merrier - and - a based, logical argument!
With your good permission I just may use that on my wife with the next firearm that catches my fancy! :)
Dr. Waddy from Jack: I was wrong to characterize Prohibition as arbitrary. The demanding process for enacting a Constitutional Amendment pretty much rules out arbitrary imposition, no matter how mistaken Prohibition proved in practice to be.
ReplyDeleteRichie from Jack: Permission granted! Honestly, I think the fundamental motivation of the gungrabbers is not public safety. Rather, it is because they know that gun owners and our very influential organizations are one of the main pillars of the overall conservative movement and that we support candidates, lawmakers and executive office holders who are conservative on a wide range of issues even beyond 2nd Amendment rights. They believe that if they enact increasingly onerous administrative, judicial, legislative and executive restrictions on those rights that they will eventually discredit our organizations and discourage gun owners and that that would deal a staggering blow to conservative America. That is why they are so relentless about "gun control".
ReplyDeleteOnly trouble for them is: it hasn't quite worked out. Make hash of our Constitutional right to bear arms and gun owners simply become better and more extensively organized and become more determined to continue our insolently free enjoyment of this right. Too, the high crime rates typically manifested in the places with most stringent gun laws haven't exactly escaped our notice. Also, gee, this lawful Scotus we have now just is not buying their labored argument that private individual gun ownership, for a wide range of lawful activities, is somehow ruled out by the Constitution.
I know there people of good will who sincerely believe that restriction of gun possession will produce a society safer from violence performed with guns.I respectfully hold them mistaken. But antiamerican far leftists ,being fanatics , will continue to try to force ever tightening, objectively disproven "common sense" gun control on an unwilling America. Their bad will helped to elect a very pro gun rights administration this time.
Hear! Hear! Jack of not Making Hash!
ReplyDeleteAll the soft on crime legislation coupled with "common sense" gun control no doubt helped elect a pro gun rights admin.
Maybe more importantly, it has revealed the hypocrisy of those two positions much harder and harder to conceal!
Dr. Waddy from Jack: You are right about modern "touchy feely" narcissism being rife in our culture. But pardon me; it is my time of day to preen by the reflecting pond I maintain for that vital purpose. I am an ineffable child of the '60s and must not deny my commanding emotions and impulses.
ReplyDeleteRichie from Jack : Thanx again. I much value having my observations commented upon, especially in the affirmative but I welcome courteously expressed disagreement, as I should. I like reading your writing too.
ReplyDeleteI think antiamerica has been discredited by this now proven catastrophic year for them on a very wide spectrum of issues and I agree with you and exalt in it, that our gun rights, a tradition inherent in our freedom, has been thus bolstered.
"Have" been much bolstered. Jack
ReplyDeleteYes, Jack -- NATO "peacekeepers" in Ukraine would only compound the problem. Possibly some Bangladeshi monitors might pass muster.
ReplyDeleteHa! Jack/Richie, you're right that buying MORE guns is something of a psychological defense mechanism for those who fear that their 2nd Amendment rights are in peril. Of course, if the G men come for you in their black helicopters, you probably aren't going to be able to shoot at them with more than one gun at a time -- and even that would be self-defeating. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that 90% of all guns are owned by 10% (or less) of the population, but that doesn't change the fact that the right to keep and bear arms is in the Constitution for good reason.
Oh yes, Prohibition, whatever else it may have been, was not undertaken lightly! It took a generation or more to convince America to take a stab at it.
It's funny that gun rights didn't play a bigger role in the last election cycle, no? Perhaps that's because it was one of many issues on which Kamala had nothing to say except "I will follow the law". In this case, she was probably wise to keep her mouth shut!
There's no doubt that a perception that crime is rising and lawlessness is going unpunished was one of the factors that put Republicans and Trump over the top this year. And it's yet another issue on which the response of the elitist Dems was essentially "Crime? What crime? There's no crime in MY penthouse..."
Narcissism may be the defining sin of the modern age, and, having unleashed it and even made a "virtue" out of it, we will not find it easy to redress.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Yeah, being in close contact with criminals everyday on my job made a conservative out of me. Former Philly Mayor Frank Rizzo said it well: "a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged". I expect there are a lot more newly minted conservatives these days.
ReplyDelete