Embrace Hollywood

Why Did it Have to be … Guns?

L. Neil Smith

Over the past 30 years, I’ve been paid to write almost two million words, every one of which, sooner or later, came back to the issue of guns and gun-ownership. Naturally, I’ve thought about the issue a lot, and it has always determined the way I vote.

People accuse me of being a single-issue writer, a single- issue thinker, and a single- issue voter, but it isn’t true. What I’ve chosen, in a world where there’s never enough time and energy, is to focus on the one political issue which most clearly and unmistakably demonstrates what any politician—or political philosophy—is made of, right down to the creamy liquid center.

Make no mistake: all politicians—even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership—hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it’s an X-ray machine. It’s a Vulcan mind-meld. It’s the ultimate test to which any politician—or political philosophy—can be put.

If a politician isn’t perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash—for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything—without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn’t your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn’t genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody’s permission, he’s a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude—toward your ownership and use of weapons—conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn’t trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

If he doesn’t want you to have the means of defending your life, do you want him in a position to control it?

If he makes excuses about obeying a law he’s sworn to uphold and defend—the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights—do you want to entrust him with anything?

If he ignores you, sneers at you, complains about you, or defames you, if he calls you names only he thinks are evil—like “Constitutionalist”—when you insist that he account for himself, hasn’t he betrayed his oath, isn’t he unfit to hold office, and doesn’t he really belong in jail?

Sure, these are all leading questions. They’re the questions that led me to the issue of guns and gun ownership as the clearest and most unmistakable demonstration of what any given politician—or political philosophy—is really made of.

He may lecture you about the dangerous weirdos out there who shouldn’t have a gun—but what does that have to do with you? Why in the name of John Moses Browning should you be made to suffer for the misdeeds of others? Didn’t you lay aside the infantile notion of group punishment when you left public school—or the military? Isn’t it an essentially European notion, anyway—Prussian, maybe—and certainly not what America was supposed to be all about?

And if there are dangerous weirdos out there, does it make sense to deprive you of the means of protecting yourself from them? Forget about those other people, those dangerous weirdos, this is about you, and it has been, all along.

Try it yourself: if a politician won’t trust you, why should you trust him? If he’s a man—and you’re not—what does his lack of trust tell you about his real attitude toward women? If “he” happens to be a woman, what makes her so perverse that she’s eager to render her fellow women helpless on the mean and seedy streets her policies helped create? Should you believe her when she says she wants to help you by imposing some infantile group health care program on you at the point of the kind of gun she doesn’t want you to have?

On the other hand—or the other party—should you believe anything politicians say who claim they stand for freedom, but drag their feet and make excuses about repealing limits on your right to own and carry weapons? What does this tell you about their real motives for ignoring voters and ramming through one infantile group trade agreement after another with other countries?

Makes voting simpler, doesn’t it? You don’t have to study every issue—health care, international trade—all you have to do is use this X-ray machine, this Vulcan mind-meld, to get beyond their empty words and find out how politicians really feel. About you. And that, of course, is why they hate it.

And that’s why I’m accused of being a single-issue writer, thinker, and voter.

But it isn’t true, is it?

Compare And Contrast: Pro-White High T Trump Vs Anti-White Low T Obama

Chateau Hartiste

2016, the Gay Mulatto’s Columbus Day message:

Obama’s proclamation acknowledged Columbus’ spirit of exploration. But he said the nation should “also acknowledge the pain and suffering reflected in the stories of Native Americans who had long resided on this land prior to the arrival of European newcomers.”

2017, President Trump’s Columbus Day message:

The president’s proclamation Friday directs the U.S. to celebrate his discovery of the Americas, noting “the permanent arrival of Europeans … was a transformative event that undeniably and fundamentally changed the course of human history and set the stage for the development of our great Nation.”

Trump’s proclamation only praises Columbus, Spain and the explorer’s native Italy.

The difference between Trump and Gay Mulatto is like the difference between white and black, testicles and ovaries, a 300 pound bench press and pendulous man titties. You may think this is small potatoes, but symbolism in act and speech matter. Leaders set the tone and can demoralize enemies and uplift supporters. Gay Mulatto’s instinct was to demoralize Whites and uplift anti-Whites. Trump’s instinct is the opposite, and America is better, and more closely aligned with Truth&Beauty, for his sensibility.

Trump understands that he has to change the culture.  And he is; Western Culture is counter-attacking and the Left is reeling.

After the smash

Richard Fernandez

After several ominous rumbles outside the tower the individual creaks have finally merged into a continuous roar. Brexit, the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the crumbling of the Iran deal, America quitting UNESCO, Trump dismantling Obamacare, consular withdrawal from Cuba, the pullout from the Paris accord -- these have piled on so fast they've acquired the character of a single collective event. Now the fall of Hollywood has followed like the inevitable comedic boulder right on Wile E. Coyote's head at the bottom of the gulch. Are we still in Kansas anymore?

It's becoming increasingly hard to believe the world can return to the status quo ante, even if Trump is impeached. It's too far gone. A whole landscape has vanished seemingly overnight going from the post-Cold War to the post-post Cold War; from a post-Modernist culture to post-everything in the blink of an eye. Even the political scene is unrecognizable. The Republican party is in shambles; the Democrats in disarray....

There will be danger -- perhaps immense perils -- associated with this paradigm shift. Yet the danger may have even been greater had the population not risked adapting. For one thing it might have been trapped in the Tower now fallen to dust. What is manifest is the gods have fallen, leaving many institutions rudderless. The Left spent decades replacing traditional myths and social sanctions with their own structures only to see these fall to ruin.

Political shock and awe.

I don't want to live in a world where Harvey Weinstein is God

Mark Steyn is the best wordsmith in America (even if he is Canadian).

Contradictions and Condescension

Not so long ago, picking up a Golden Globe for her turn as Mrs Thatcher, Meryl was happy to salute Harvey Weinstein as God, notwithstanding that the previous occupant of that position was famously antipathetic to the sin of Onan, with or without attendant shrubbery....

Why do Mitt's binders full of women outrage liberal sensibilities but not Harvey's pot plants full of semen?

Well, in the old days, the bourgeoisie expected bourgeois values throughout society. The wealthy and powerful disdained them, but discreetly. Now they disdain them openly. Indeed, they wage war on them, relentlessly. Instead, they enforce "progressive" values. Institutions fundamental to the nation-state, such as citizenship, have to be rendered meaningless - so that what matters in any immigration debate is not the citizens but the invaders, to the point where Nancy Pelosi thanks the parents of "Dreamers" for breaking American law and bringing them here, as a precious gift to a nation crying out for even more low-skilled immigrants. As for institutions that pre-date the nation-state - institutions almost as old as humanity - they're as easy to redefine, so that marriage can no longer be confined to those of opposite sexes. Speaking of the sexes, human biology can be vaporized, so that two sexes become 57 genders, and grade-school boys more interested in Barbie than GI Joe get to be pumped full of puberty blockers and directed to the girls' bathroom. And after all that, religion has to be put on the back foot, so that any recalcitrant mom'n'pop bakery for whom two men atop a wedding cake is an abomination, must be hunted down, dragged into court and financially ruined pour encourager les autres. And in a revolutionary present it is necessary ultimately to throttle the past - eliminating Robert E Lee, Christopher Columbus, Dr Seuss, Stephen Foster, the national anthem, to dam up the stream of history, the flow of past to present to future, and thus sever the citizenry from their entire inheritance, so that we are mere flotsam and jetsam on the frothing surface of the moment - a world where, in a certain sense, Harvey Weinstein is God....

Amid the condescension, there are contradictions. So a century-old statue of someone dead a hundred and fifty years who does not conform to the identity-group pieties of 2017 must be torn down - whereas an actual flesh-and-blood human being who does not conform to the identity-group pieties of 2017 can stagger around Hollywood and New York and London and Rome treating women like garbage.

Read the whole thing.

Harvey Weinstein didn't persist because he failed every single time

From the madgeniusclub:

So it is kind of the same level of shock as the revelation of gambling in Rick’s Casino that I read of Harvey Weinstein harassing actresses for sexual favors. It’s as surprising as Bill Clinton… And the reality is, in an environment where there are 100 (or 10 000) nearly equally qualified eager applicants for a job, and Harvey or Bill or Mary or Sally… have got the power to decide which of you gets that break, and you expect none of the deciders to use that, and none of applicants to use that either? I don’t know where you find such humans, but it isn’t Hollywood. I’m not excusing it, but let’s try and pretend we understand the basics of evolutionary genetic selection: AKA survival of the fittest. Such tactics must have succeeded-on both sides, probably with a substantial number of directors (or people in positions power, be they kings or tribal medicine men or Company directors or presidents) and substantial part of Hollywood’s A-list back when they were no-list or low-list. Let’s be real here, Harvey didn’t keep trying because he failed every single time. But maybe I’m wrong: Who knows, perhaps all those eager pussy-hat wearers who became vastly wealthy, famous and successful due to Weinstein never ever gave him what he wanted, and he just kept right on trying…

Oddly, now, many years later, some of them are complaining. None of them have yet volunteered to give back the tainted money and awards… And some of his award winners aren’t complaining, or at least yet.

Look… take the sex aspect out of it, and many an author is no less of a slut, willing to do whatever necessary to please an editor or publisher, and many an editor, publisher or agent, is not much of a moral step up on Harvey. Let’s not get sanctimonious about it. It’s mercenary, not admirable behavior perhaps, but realistically many an author faced similar choices – and not just authors. The two aspects are that the honorable mercenary (or individual of negotiable virtue) stays bought, and secondly doesn’t pretend they’re the soul of virtue. Looking at Hollywood’s A-list (and their all too public private lives) they seem to make a big deal out of telling the world – or at least those who disagree with them, just how wicked and without virtue others are. Yeah, the bimbo who had sex with something that resembles Baron Harkonnen, to get her success, with the intellect of lard, who has a personal life that resembles a psychological and social train-wreck… preaching morality. Telling the public – for example – that guns are bad, and abortion is essential.

But the scary part is…

Some people listen.

It's not really surprising that Weinstein and people like him exist, and most especially in Hollywood where beautiful people go and who will do anything to get fame and wealth.   What's surprising is that others give them the power to shape our culture, our ideas. These people are eye candy; they are not famous for their virtue or their wisdom ... things that they totally lack.  

ISIS Fighters, Having Pledged to Fight or Die, Surrender en Masse

What a difference Trump makes.  Yet not one word in the NY Times story about the change in military policy from that under Obama, when ISIS grew, to it's defeat under the Trump administration.

Nothing Makes Liberals Angrier Than Us Normals Insisting On Our Rights

I don’t agree with liberals often, because I’m not an idiot and because I love America, but when they once again say, “We must have a conversation about guns!” I still couldn’t agree more. And, since all we’ve heard is you leftists shrieking at us all week, I’ll start it off.

You don’t ever get to disarm us. Not ever.

There. It sure feels good to engage in a constructive dialogue.

Now, we should have this conversation because in recent years we’ve seen a remarkable antipathy for the fact that normal Americans even have rights among those on the left. We should have this conversation to clear the air before leftists push too far and the air gets filled with smoke. But we really don’t need to have a conversation about our rights to keep and bear arms. They’re rights. There’s nothing to talk about.

This goes for all our rights that the left hates, like the rights to speak and write freely, to practice our religion as we see fit, and to not be railroaded by liberal authority without due process. Leftists hate our rights because they hate us, and when we assert our rights it gets in the way of their malicious schemes to dominate and control us. It makes them stamp their little sandaled feet in rage when we normals just won’t cooperate and surrender our rights. But we love our rights – rights are wonderful things with which we were endowed by our Creator, and which our beloved Constitution merely reiterates. But the left, including its pet media, thinks that our rights were merely iterated, and that the left can take an eraser to the parchment and – voila! – no more pesky rights for you flyover people....

I, for one, am not super inclined to give up my ability to defend myself in response to demands by people who eagerly tell me they want me enslaved or dead. Literally dead.

Black Lives Matter Students Shut Down the ACLU's Campus Free Speech Event Because 'Liberalism Is White Supremacy'

Students affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement crashed an event at the College of William & Mary, rushed the stage, and prevented the invited guest—the American Civil Liberties Union's Claire Gastañaga, a W&M alum—from speaking.

Ironically, Gastañaga had intended to speak on the subject, "Students and the First Amendment."

The disruption was livestreamed on BLM at W&M's Facebook page. Students took to the stage just a few moments after Gastañaga began her remarks. At first, she attempted to spin the demonstration as a welcome example of the kind of thing she had come to campus to discuss, commenting "Good, I like this," as they lined up and raised their signs. "I'm going to talk to you about knowing your rights, and protests and demonstrations, which this illustrates very well. Then I'm going to respond to questions from the moderators, and then questions from the audience."

It was the last remark she was able to make before protesters drowned her out with cries of, "ACLU, you protect Hitler, too." They also chanted, "the oppressed are not impressed," "shame, shame, shame, shame," (an ode to the Faith Militant's treatment of Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones, though why anyone would want to be associated with the religious fanatics in that particular conflict is beyond me), "blood on your hands," "the revolution will not uphold the Constitution," and, uh, "liberalism is white supremacy."

W&M put out a meaningless statement that was the functional equivalent of "Tut, Tut."  There is no free speech at W&M.  But we knew that ahead of time.

Glenn Reynolds comments:

It’s almost like they’re commie agitators, rather than peaceful civil rights supporters. But any students involved in this sort of thing should be suspended or expelled.

Harvard prof calls NRA a 'domestic terrorist organization'

This is what is now considered reasoned debate at Harvard.

Dr. Jonathan Walton also declared that "cultural anxiety, toxic masculinity, and racial, religious, and ethnic bigotries are eating away at the soul of this nation," causing us "to elect a madman to the presidency."

In other news, Harvard is under investigation by the Department of Justice for discriminating against Asians. 

Liberals Only Like State Power When They Wield It

Daily Caller:

Most liberals have come to terms with what they want state power to achieve.

Enforcing immigration law is tyrannical, but rounding up hate thinkers is noble. Police drawing guns on minorities is an outrage, but law enforcement mowing down armed rednecks is something to aspire to. The president criticizing left-wing journalists is a sign of fascism, but shutting down right-wing “fake news” on Facebook is necessary.

The Tragic Incoherence of the NFL Protests

Inordinate Police Brutality Against the African-American Community?

While there certainly have been a large number of well-publicized shootings of African-American suspects, statistics do not bear out, as alleged, a supposed wave of police violence against black unarmed suspects. Is the anger then directed at regrettable though isolated iconic incidents but not at prevailing trends?

White police officers are more than 18 times more likely to be shot by African-Americans than white police officers are to shoot unarmed black suspects. Does anyone care?

In absolute numbers, more white suspects were shot yearly by police than were black suspects. Given respective crime rates and the frequency of relative encounters with police, black suspects were not statistically more likely to be victims of police violence than were whites.

Given the topics of race, crime, and violence, the frequency of black-on-white crime versus white-on-black crime—depending on the particular category—while comparatively rare, is still widely disproportionate, by a factor of 7 to 10.

Roughly 40-50 percent of all reported U.S. arrests for various violent crime involve teen or adult African-American males, who make up about 4-5 percent of the population. Blacks are well over 20 times more likely to be shot and killed by other blacks than by police officers.

The Left often does not pay much attention to such facts—though it grows angry when others do.

Read the whole thing.

Liberals say only people approved by the government should have guns

The Las Vegas gunman who killed nearly 60 people at a country music festival worked as a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, an IRS agent and in an auditing department over a 10-year period.

A spokeswoman for the Office of Personnel Management told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Stephen Paddock’s employment included about two years as a mail carrier from 1976 to 1978.

After that, he worked as an agent for the Internal Revenue Service for six years until 1984. And then he worked a defense auditing job for about 18 months.

The information helped complete the timeline surrounding the 64-year-old Paddock’s life. He graduated from college in 1977 from Cal State Northridge and also worked for a defense contractor in the late 1980s.

Knee Jerks by Intellectual Froglegs

Howie Carr: President instantly sidelines criticism of NFL

The NFL’s run of terrible press is over — when President Trump attacked the league Friday night in Alabama, 99.99 percent of the alt-left media reflexively fell into line in defense of a sport they were denouncing as barbaric as late as Friday afternoon.

You know that torrent of negative news the fellow travelers has been spewing out about pro football — the epidemics of CTE and spousal abuse, the league’s plummeting TV ratings, the half-empty stadiums in California, the $6 tickets going begging, etc., etc.?

Now that Trump has slammed the NFL, it is once again ... America’s Pastime!

The Psychology of Overrated Art

For as long as I can remember, the "My child could do that" critique of modern painting and sculpture has resonated with me. Broadly defined, I hasten to add, modernity creates great new visual art all the time; just look at graphic novels over the last forty years. But to my eyes, high-status painting and sculpture - the kind displayed in the "modern" section of museums - almost always looks like junk. When my little boy loudly declared, "That's not art!" at the modern section of the National Art Gallery, I thought of the Emperor's New Clothes and proudly smiled.

I know that most art aficionados will attribute my philistine position to ignorance. But what's my theory about where they go wrong? I can hardly call them ignorant; they plainly know vastly more about the art they prize than I do. Instead, I blame their aesthetic errors on some well-known psychological biases. Leading the list:

Read the whole thing

Police officer reports from Puerto Rico

Hugh Hefner’s Real Legacy

Let’s not kid ourselves, Hugh Hefner pioneered legal porn.  

That’s his legacy. 

The first issue of Playboy was wildly popular because it featured naughty pictures of Marilyn Monroe who was, at the time, the leading Hollywood sex symbol.  Like most moral corruption it begins with baby steps.  Those pictures of Monroe would not get a second glance today.  Pictures like those can now be found in almost every magazine, usually selling fashion - to women.

The heirs of Hefner have moved on.  Nothing that people have done to themselves or to others in the name of sex can now be found … instantly, in living vibrant color. 

Perhaps it was inevitable.  Perhaps the culture was ready for this in 1953.  Of course, the avant garde could not admit they liked porn.  Instead porn was peddled on constitutional grounds.  You remember learning about the rights of free speech and a free press being vital to a free republic, don't you?  

We were told that if we are prevented from instant access to porn the next thing we know we will have lost our right to speak freely about political issues. In other words, porn was the guardian of the First Amendment.  The watchman on the ramparts of freedom.  This formulation is now axiomatic.  It’s been internalized.  It’s no longer an issue for debate.

Yet, despite the omnipresence of the most graphic porn, there are large areas of this country where political speech is effectively banned.  Where exercising your right to speak freely about – say – support for Conservatism, to admit to being a Republican, and – worse yet – a supporter of Donald Trump will get you a beating.

People are beginning to wonder if porn is really the “canary in the coal mine” that protects my right to speak freely without fear of losing my job, or being investigated by the IRS, or getting ostracized in Academia, or being physically attacked by the AntiFa mob? 

It was all a lie, wasn’t it?  It really was all about wanting to see dirty pictures. 

How’s that turning out for you?

Colin Kaepernick donated $25,000 to group named after convicted cop killer and former Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur who broke out of jail and fled to Cuba

This is the guy who started the NFL on the path to self-destruction.  This is the guy who young Black men look up to as a role model.  It's a problem.

Wind Power?

Some politicians and newspaper editors - illiterates all - propose wind power as a substitute for coal/oil/natural gas/nuclear based electricity.  Here's where reality intrudes.

... physicist Howard Hayden has commented:

“Power from wind varies dramatically with wind speed, as anybody can tell by merely looking at the power curves from any turbine manufacturer on the planet. If the wind speed increases from 10 mph to 20 mph, the power  increases by a cool factor of eight. If the wind speed drops from 20 mph to 10 mph, the power it produces drops by 87.5%. Such variations are at odds with the necessity of keeping the grid voltage constant within a few percent, and the frequency constant within 0.03%. In the electricity business, stability is the key ingredient”

Not experienced in physical issues, some politicians might readily endorse schemes where the instability is hidden; their failure to perceive the fatal limitation of wind power is one such example.