So Saturday night I spent over at a buddy’s house for his birthday, a former special ops guy who doesn’t usually drink very much but who did that night — my whole family had a great time, incidentally, despite the carousing — only to wake Sunday, hung over, to see that another internet “conservative” had decided I needed to be taught a lesson. Over a Tweet I made in April. The details of which were already spelled out here and elsewhere.
What started off as the typical name-calling BS — among other things I’m a “faggot,” a “latent homo,” a “sick fuck,” a “half-wit,” the “dumbest person on Twitter,” a cuckold, a child molester, a lover of being molested by men, an “abuser of women,” a “stalker,” etc. — escalated, however, when I asked “Alex’s Ashes” (@ymtise) to stop Tweeting out a pic that had Satchel in it. Which of course, made him Tweet it out more. Because I posted it in my profile. So, you know — I was just asking for it.
Among other lessons I learned in this second go-round with our “new” batch of Twitter “conservative” opinion leaders (followed, in one instance, by the likes of Michelle Malkin) — the post-2009, we-invented-conservatism-on-the-internet crowd — is that having a blog is to be mocked; that one can’t be a race-baiter (or use the tactics of one) if one claims to have “Moor” blood in him (reached for comment, Spike Lee and David Dukes high-fived each other and then tongued kissed). I also learned that if you “wrassle” — like my son does — you’re a “fucking faggot,” and yes, that includes the “sick fuck faggots” I posted pics of Satch with: US Olympian Rulon Gardner; US Olympian Ken Chertow; US Olympian Ben Provisor; UFC Heavyweight champion Shane Carwin; 4x All-American Travis Himmelmen. All “faggots” who like to “roll around half-naked with men.”
Recall, this is the new voice of a large swath of purported online conservatism: “homo” and “faggot” are slurs; race is not only real, but it’s essentialist, and if you lay claim to having a drop of Don Quijote-era “black” blood in you, you can’t possibly be racist; US Olympians are “faggots,” while you yourself can proclaim your superior patriotism by posting a background of an eagle on your Twitter page, etc.
But that’s not the worst of it. What I also found out is that, in addition to attacking — unprovoked — someone you don’t know, someone who has preached classical liberalism and constitutional conservatism online for 12 years, and someone who has in some small way contributed to an understanding of how and why progressivism has taken hold, you are also permitted to post pics of his kids, his house, and then publicly muse about calling Child Protective Services to come over and check on his kids. You can call for others to contact the police to have them come by and check on the welfare of his family. You can speak about his wife, claiming that she’s out banging strangers by the score.
And you can do this with impunity because you are a “conservative” with 2000+ followers, so you must be really really important and a boon to the movement.
— Except that this new band of kiddie cons (both of whom, in this instance, are not children at all: hell, one of them is 64-years-old and writes in leet speak, for Chrissakes) is the exact opposite. We sometimes wonder why classical liberals or constitutionalists get the reputation for being bigoted assholes, when we know from our own experience that this isn’t the case. And yet, people like “Alex’s Ashes” or @SemperPrinceps — defended as being good people by the likes of @CaliAzona, who didn’t wish to be bothered to stop their behavior, though they claimed to be avenging her honor — do everything to maintain that harmful view of who we really are not and what we actually don’t stand for. Which has me questioning their authenticity.
I don’t use “homo” or “faggot” as slurs, nor do the conservatives of my acquaintance. My position on race is well known, and though silly, boorish, stalkerish leftists like Timmy B always show up when my name is mentioned (poor groupies just can’t quit me; it’d be funny were it not so sad and needy) to declare me a white supremacist, the kind who marries a half-Japanese woman, there’s plenty of writing that I’ve done on the subject to allow people to draw their own conclusions; I also don’t use the vile tactics of the left: threatening to call Child Protective Services, or the police, etc. I don’t engage in back-channel email exchanges and networked shunnings; and I’ve always used my own name, and have been willing to meet people personally if that’s their real desire.
Today’s voices for conservatism, in too many instances, are merely posers who find some sort of anti-establishment impulse to join the TEA Party, or pretend to, even though they haven’t a clue what it means to be a classical liberal. These are thrill seekers, wannabe iconoclasts who bask in their break from the the prevailing political powers. Either that, or they are infiltrators. False adepts. Because by their thinking you will know them.
Perhaps being online is not the bailiwick anymore for people like me. I actually used to believe that this medium could be used to teach, to debate publicly, as a way to bring intellectualism to a wider audience beyond just the phony, middling consensus of academia and their predictable progressive cant.
I used to invite progressive and liberal thinkers to post here, to engage with them, to do things that I thought would create a public space for argument of one’s beliefs, with the result being that people would decide for themselves who was right, who was wrong, and what to do with that information. In short, I was an idealistic idiot, as time has proven. This medium is home to the self-serving and the backstabbing in far greater quantities than it is to the thoughtful or the truly intellectually engaged. It’s a rah-rah chamber, in its political zone, with people declaring their team affiliation to differentiate themselves, and then using the same tactics and flawed thinking to pretend they are supporting anything other than the ever-growing disease of tyrannical identity politics.
It’s a damn shame. But it is what it is.
I’m not hard to find. I’ve never made myself hard to find. In fact, I posted my address yesterday to take away the power from these loathsome “conservative” wannabe cyberbullies who rely on people’s fear that their identities will be exposed.
If this is the new conservatism — and I’m not sure it is, except by those suckered into following these people — I’ll go back to calling myself a classical liberal, thanks. And these pretenders can go on using the internet to stroke their egos and fill some need in their empty lives — even if it’s only to fantasize about being rewarded for white knighting a tit avi. Which, I hate to tell them, won’t stroke back.
It’s still just their own fist doing all the work.
The truth is, I think these are Mobys. I have to. Because I simply refuse to believe any actual conservatives — even misguided ones — would behave the way they do.
Even though I’ve seen it before first hand.
Call me the eternal optimist.
Funny thing about “social” networking is how much of it is done by anti-social fuckwits. Anyone care to ask me again why my Facebook and Twitter accounts are nevermore? I didn’t get suspended or banned, I got fed up.
I don’t use Facebook because of the old maxim — if they ain’t charging you, you aren’t the customer, you’re the product being sold to others.
And I refuse to be sold, most especially when it is for no other gain than being able to contact all the people that I am still able to contact, but in a new and exciting way!
Meanwhile, we have people establishing their societal worth by the number of people that “follow” them, while Jesus (with roughly 2 billion ACTUAL followers) is derided and demeaned by people whose most commonly spoken words are “bro” and “dude”.
The return swing of the pendulum is coming, and I will not shed a single drop of sweat to rescue them nor a single tear when it becomes no longer necessary.
Sort of seems like a case of twitter bringing the two polar (dwindling) ends of the bell curve together just for the laughs and frictions, but then maybe I mistake the purpose of twitter.
Amen, Drum.
Twitter is a horrific shit show. The only nice coherent people there are trying to sell you something.
Twitter is the tool of the Id. Further, it’s Orwellian, in that it prevents expression of complex thought. What’s left is 140 character assassination.
and if you lay claim to having a drop of Don Quijote-era “black” blood in you, you can’t possibly be racist;
Oh, dude. So much before that. Quijote came out in 1605 & 1615; the Moors were tossed out of Granada in 1492.
Not that there weren’t any Moors remaining in Spain: they just had to convert to Christianity and swear allegiance to Fernando & Isabella.
Which, given that the earliest descendents of the remaining Spanish Moors would have gone to extra effort to hide their ancestry, I’d be highly suspicious of anyone claiming to know he had said ancestry.
That information being highly unreliable and such.
140-character assassination
Sooo stolen.
I think you are correct.
I further think that they are the product of the Community Organizer – Camp Obama system which has been churning out “graduates” for years now.
What astonishes me most about some of these twits, community organizers or otherwise, is their enormous ego coupled with little actual value and even less accomplishment.
I think these are Mobys
Some are.
But the trouble with festering a-holes is that they’re as ubiquitous as bacteria. They self-identify as “conservative” or “classically liberal” or “Republican” for a variety of reasons — they hate liberals, they were raised that way, they’re lying — but the sickness in their souls is impervious to the principles they ostensibly uphold.
Said the daughter of a malignant narcissist who was also a Mormon and a psychology professor.
Surrounded by information about how to not be a miserable father and husband, he was nevertheless a miserable father and husband, because he was a freaking mess inside and couldn’t perceive the disconnect between his pathological behavior and the pathological behavior he recognized in others and helped heal in counseling.
Which means that if you self-identify only with groups that contain no festering a-holes, you might as well stop self-identifying as anything at all.
Best cleave to true principles, then resign yourself to the fact that festering a-holes will always claim to be on your team.
Block these sorts. There’s nothing good that comes from engaging past a quick backhand.
From April, eh? This particular Moby has ties to Anon. Recall who else sought help from that wellspring. Seems odd that a sniveling dipshit came across this old wound without being led to it.
Block the next feint. Let the next attempt fizzle.
There’s no one quite as badass as the pseudonymous Internet badass.
Reading the comments on any number of bogs, I think there must be a mathematical equation that can be discovered as to how far down the chain one must go before the back and forth devolves to “You’re an asshole” and “Says you.”
I am not in any way crossing myself off as being an Internet badass. I do try and rein in the belligerence to something approaching what you’d get in person.
Probably, I fail sometimes.
I find that when discussing things in person, I have to be very careful to not respond as if that person were on the Internet.
That would be contraindicated.
2:45 a.m. US Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Monday that the US is providing $47 million dollars in humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
The aid includes “an initial $15 million contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in response to UNRWA’s $60 million Gaza Flash Appeal,” according to a statement released by the US State Department.
The remaining funds will go to USAID humanitarian projects in the Palestinian coastal enclave.
– One reason why the Arabs will never choose peace.
> One reason why the Arabs will never choose peace.<
Report: UN Agency Gave Rockets Back to Hamas
Yeah, saw you’d collected another “live one”. This one was denser than most, though.
I think many of them are, as Jeff wrote, ‘wannabe iconoclasts who bask in their break from the prevailing political powers’. Some people perceive being ‘Conservative’ as being Cool because the Left is now The Man. And such people are often arseholes.
But I don’t think there are that many infiltrators. What we have, instead, are people who are emotionally, in some way, attracted to conservative ideas, but, having been propagandized to thinking like a Leftist, like an Ideologue, their approach to being a conservative, to proclaiming it and advocating for it, is Ideological. Thus, they inevitably end-up acting like Leftists, even resorting to their ugly tactics [which are, more accurately, the tactics employed by all who put their faith in a System Of Ideas conceived in the sterile laboratories of the Mind, far away from Reality – ie: any Ideologue].
These people are also lazy – practicing a Slothful Self-Interest, as I mentioned in another thread here – and refuse to do the homework necessary to understand the philosophies of Classical Liberalism and conservatism. You have to read and think and observe Life as it is and think some more. As you all know very well: the learning and contemplating can never stop, but these people don’t get it – and don’t want to get it because there are luxuries to be enjoyed, circuses to watch. Some of them may even speak of Virtue, but they haven’t a clue what it is.
Leave ’em by the roadside and move on.
> ‘wannabe iconoclasts who bask in their break from the prevailing political powers’<
their problem is they don't have solutions. just like proggtards: they want to control big fed gov't for their own ends.
also
This organisation were caught with their pants down the other day. Some 20 missiles were ‘found’ in one of their schools. Of course they knew nothing about this cache.
Looks like just another asshat with his pants pockets cut out, probably on a library computer over at Breda’s place.
– There are many sources of manufactured insanity and sophistical madness around. One must pick and choose his/her battles wisely.
– I can imagine no pastime more wasteful of ones energies than serving as fodder for the social networking group mind fuck.
twitter & fascistbook seem to be big gov’t early warning platforms. hi amnesty zuckerhead.
– The myth of the moderate Muslim. There are none, there are only radical Muslims and scared Muslims.
ps what does a “free” service like “fascistbook ” do exactly? outside of the nsa?
no allan’s death cult is to be avoided by civilized peeps
Twitter is useful for getting the word out about your own posts and news, and keeping in touch with what I call my Friends In The Ether.
Meaningful conversation, not at all.
That seems to presume that the weapons were out of Hamas’ possession at some point. They were not.
How very odd.
This falls solidly into the “I know you are, but what am I?” Category. Rubber, glue, bounce, stick, etc., etc.
Nanner nanner, nanner, fuck you.
POW! Right in the butt hole.
Know what else is childish? I cannot believe this. I tuned in and saw this and thought, “Are you children, or what? ” And the answer is “Yes.”
Let me also add to my remarks of last evening at 7:54 PM:
These types of conservatives remind me of those who, in the 1920’s and 1930’s, sang the praises of Mussolini and Hitler.
*** In his dissent, Judge Harry Edwards, who called the case a “not-so-veiled attempt to gut” Obamacare, wrote that the judgment of the majority “portends disastrous consequences.” ***
Ach, “portends” reading the laws as they are written! Disastrous! Run away!
sdferr, remember how Supreme Roberts read “penalty” as “tax”. Just as easy to read “State” as “Federal”. Which would be wrong, of course.
It isn’t difficult to understand where the two judges on the panel went wrong, RI, or how their eyeballs got so twisted they couldn’t properly identify the national exchange as a state exchange. Very simple, in fact.
They’re racists.
So, what’s so insulting about being called a bundle of sticks?
But please don’t think that it’s just the newbie conservatives who use homosexual slurs as insults: our oh-so-tolerant and inclusive friends on the left just love to label conservatives as being homosexual, because they, too, see it as an insult, especially if they are calling you the “bottom.”
That was Boston. Paris is worse.
O Canada
*** Even the German Left Party (“die Linke”) is split, with some of its leaders attending pro-Israel rallies while others join the largely Muslim demonstrators chanting “Jude, Jude, feiges Schwein, Komm heraus und kaempf allein” (“Jew, Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight alone”). It has the tacit (and sometimes not entirely tacit) support of Egypt, not to mention the Gulf states, in its war against Hamas. But it cannot afford a repeat of 2012, after which Hamas rebuilt its weapons capability. Where Hezbollah is concerned, the Chinese proverb applies: Kill the chicken while the monkey watches. The reduction of Hamas has to serve as a deterrent for Hezbollah and Syria, not to mention Iran. ***
Michael Ledeen: The World is Returning to Normal
Mark Levin, on core Hamas’ belief.
*** The FAA prohibited all US [sic — carriers] from flying to or from Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport for a period of up to 24 hours after a Hamas rocket landed in Yehud, near Ben Gurion Airport, earlier in the day. ***
*** Members of the family of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have secretly left Ramallah for Jordan, according to the online newspaper Rai Al-Youm. […]
The departure of Abbas’s family and the tight security measures came in response to growing resentment among Palestinians with the PA president and his policies in wake of the current war between Israel and Hamas.
Over the past two weeks, many Palestinians have accused Abbas of failing to display strong leadership in light of the Israeli military operation. Some have gone as far as accusing him of “collusion” with Israel and Egypt. ***
Y’know that prankish thing you did when you were a kid where you cupped your bare hand under your bare arm-pit and flapped your arm like a chicken-wing, making a nice fart simulation? Hopefully, that’s what Bibi Netanyahu is doing to JohnKerryInternationalDiplomat right now.
sdferr, it would be more appropriate if Mr Netanyahu greeted him with a real fart, a beer-and-cabbage fart in the first degree.
“German Protesters Chant ‘Gas the Jews‘ in Anti-Israel Rallies”
“JohnKerryInternationalDoormat”
I dunno Dana, if the Jew were to make an actual stink JohnKerryInternationalDiplomat would use the smell as grounds to accuse him of attempting to kill more Gazan children by gassing.
J-Kid!
Heeda man!
Lurching along.
Well of course the PaliPol cited JohnKerryInternationalDiplomat’s snide comments: that’s what JohnKerryInternationalDiplomat intended them for.
*** The school has been evacuated and UNRWA has submitted a formal letter about the shelling to Israel, he added. ***
Whereas the missiles found in the UNRWA school a couple of days ago were submitted back to the control of the local authorities, along with UNRWA’s submission of its own will to remain at work in the care and feeding of the terror cult in control of Gaza. Priorities.
dicentra says July 21, 2014 at 6:51 pm
I find that when discussing things in person, I have to be very careful to not respond as if that person were on the Internet.
That would be contraindicated.
For some reason that never bothers me. Don’t get me wrong. I’m nearly always polite. I just get a kick out of pointing out a lefties obvious lack of morals. Especially amnong my wifes friends. Almost all of which no longer talk to me.
I just had the misfortune of reading through some of these new Twitter exchanges, Jeff.
Rather remarkable how some people have no sense of how stupid and vile they are. It’s sad really.
bh says July 22, 2014 at 2:08 pm
I just had the misfortune of reading through some of these new Twitter exchanges, Jeff.
Rather remarkable how some people have no sense of how stupid and vile they are. It’s sad really.
If they did they wouldn’t be lefties.
The most annoying and childish of my wifes friends is a retired phd in english lit. The guy’s in his 70s and acts like a spoiled 12 year old.
That guy sounds like a ton of fun, Mueller. Like the sort of fun that makes one suddenly desire three fingers of some brown booze or another and a long cigar enjoyed outside.
Like the sort of fun that makes one suddenly desire three fingers of some brown booze or another and a long cigar enjoyed outside.
Not that I’d ever turn down a good bourbon, but I’d hate to deprive myself of the opportunity of showing the good professor as the ignorant child he really is. There’s just nothing quite like the satisfaction of getting under the skin of a man who has demanded deference through his whole life, especially when one is able to punctuate one’s dressing-down with a drippingly sarcastic wielding of “Doctor.”
My job isn’t done until he’s assured of muttering “Why, I never!” to his poor wife in the car all the way home.
I reckon your wit is more rapier while I’m a bit of a slasher, Squid. It’d be fun for both of us (you and I that is) in the moment but I’d be as likely to expose myself as an emotional fool as I would be in revealing this in another.
Pacing around, thinking of what I might say were I to go back inside though? Genius, pure genius. Without equal.
The most annoying and childish of my wifes friends is a retired phd in english lit. The guy’s in his 70s and acts like a spoiled 12 year old.
Arrested development seems to be a common thread amongst the academic left. Having stayed in school since they entered kindergarten, they’ve never had to function in a non-academic context with people who aren’t academics but who nevertheless are pretty damned good at what they do.
I was fortunate enough to punctuate my studies with a few stints doing things that “ordinary” people did well while I never rose above mediocrity.
Sure puts things in perspective.
clowndisaster news
State Dept. Denies Coordinating with FAA to Put Pressure on Israel
a common core education
FOR SECOND TIME… UNRWA Finds Stash of Rockets at Gaza School
>Arrested development <
ok
link
It looks like there is a constant drain circling in that crowd. Jackals are more refined.
No Class losers, Geoff.
Squid says July 22, 2014 at 3:43 pm
Like the sort of fun that makes one suddenly desire three fingers of some brown booze or another and a long cigar enjoyed outside.
Not that I’d ever turn down a good bourbon, but I’d hate to deprive myself of the opportunity of showing the good professor as the ignorant child he really is. There’s just nothing quite like the satisfaction of getting under the skin of a man who has demanded deference through his whole life, especially when one is able to punctuate one’s dressing-down with a drippingly sarcastic wielding of “Doctor.”
My job isn’t done until he’s assured of muttering “Why, I never!” to his poor wife in the car all the way home.
That’s the way to do it. With a gleam in your eye and a smile on your face and facts that they can’t refute.
I know I got under the old farts skin because he signed me up for a bunch of uber left, progressive websites. Which I promptly got banned from.
Like Jeff, I can’t let a mindless lefty assertion go unchallenged.
Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so. — R. A. Heinlein
Late to the party, and I’m still not sure which is the worse possibility, that those a-holes are Moby’s who have suckered more than a couple conservatives, or they’re sincerely self-deluded in thinking that they understand conservatism and are useful in advancing its principles.
Jeff, you write, “This medium is home to the self-serving and the backstabbing in far greater quantities than it is to the thoughtful or the truly intellectually engaged.”
It’s not the medium, it’s the world — all of fallen creation — but do keep the faith and continue to let your light shine. In the very worst case, you’re like Nock’s vision of Isaiah, preaching to the remnant.
It’s terrible when times are that bad, but the remnant’s prophet ain’t a bad job to have.
Funny thing about “social” networking is how much of it is done by anti-social fuckwits.
McGeehee sums it up well. Jeff, I am sorry you have to deal with these individuals. Some are probably mobys, some are social fucktards, all of them are cowards.
McGehee, my bad.
I missed all the fun last night, but I went on those twitter feeds and the liberal use of the term “cunt” seems odd and intentionally misogynistic. Seems the same with the homophobic rants. Usually when someone protests too much, it can be revealing.
So my guess is Mobys, with the alternative possibility of too much Meth.
Mobys? I think it’s a mental illness, look-at-me neediness and narcissism. One and the same, really.
I figured back in 2009 that the self-professed conservative “opinion makers” who were “running the show” were full of shit, and I was right. Nothing that I’ve seen since has changed my mind. In fact, the more I read them, the easier it became to see how disconnected from reality they really are. Their followers and fellow travelers are worse, if not just as bad.
I’ll give you an example by way of un-related anecdote that parallels the situation. My oldest son, Cadet Cookies, only applied to one school, the US Military Academy at West Point. He put all of his eggs in one basket. He spent the last three years of High School working with the liaison to make sure that he had every box checked, it was NOT a simple process. It is not designed to be a simple process. In the course of the application process, my son, his mother and I, met every other candidate for admission in our district. More than once. It’s a competition, but it’s not really a competition. It’s more like a mountain climbing expedition and only one or two climbers can summit. At any rate, my son came home after Plebe year and after Air Assault school to find some douchebag from the rival High School is going around telling everyone that he was also accepted to West Point and chose not to attend. It’s a straight up lie. This douchebag of a kid didn’t even open a file, he probably didn’t even know what West Point was until last year when my son received his appointment and it was in the paper. It’s probably also no coincidence that this jerk is dating one of my son’s ex-girlfriends, and is now running in the same small-town social circle that the future Cadet Cookies helped create when he was “that kid”.
So now, after all the shit he had to go through to get there, and all the shit he had to put up with when he finally got there, and all the further shit he’s going to have to put up with over the next three years, Cadet Cookies comes home to find some lame-ass douche, who isn’t even ROTC, has everyone convinced that he got accepted and appointed to USMA and didn’t take it. So when my son arrives for the ten days he has for summer break and people ask where he’s been all summer and he tells them and then they say, “Oh, Douchey McDouche was accepted there too.” my son gets visibly upset and calls Douchey Mcdouche a liar…
Then it’s my son who’s the asshole. For any number of reasons like, “It’s not that big of a deal.” or my favorite, and the one McDouche chose, the Double Down. After all, my son doesn’t get to hang out all summer with the cool kids. He’s not around, and obviously he’s really uptight, and who cares anyway, and what is he going to do anyway, beat Douchey up? (This may happen.)
Why would you want to hang out with Cadet Cookies, who’s all uptight, convinced he’s right (even if he is right he shouldn’t be calling people names, but he’s not right because we say so, and he’s all Armied out so he’s probably crazy), and has nothing in common with the group any more.
All of his friends, all of the people he thought would be on his side forever, ditched him when he came home. Because of one kid’s lie.
Now, whenever Cadet Cookies gets a day off he takes a battle buddy with him. Another Cadet to hang with, someone who has the same experiences, knows how ridiculous and self-important the regular college drama is, and can help Cadet Cookies ride over the snipes from the bunch of assholes who used to need him as a friend.
My wife tells him to not let it bother him, that his friends will be back when they realize what a douche Douchey is. I gave him the opposite advice. If those people were so quick to ditch out on you because they found the new cool thing in town, they were never your friends to begin with. They were bandwagon-jumping assholes who aren’t worth worrying about and deserve the massive fucking over they’ll get when the shit-bird turns on them. They made him King, they can live with it.
Boy, it felt weird to type on the old innertubes again. Huh.
I am still comma crazzzzzzzy! WOOOOOOO!
,,,,, chameleon
Sounds like Cadet Cookies might enjoy the company of Michel Montaigne. Maybe.
Sdferr, Stubborn and ardent clinging to one’s opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
Que sçay-je?
Holy shit, you dredged up Chuck Fucking Adkins!
https://twitter.com/Americanist313
That boy is the turd that just won’t flush.
LMC, while I was reading your entry, I came to the conclusion that your son’s so-called friends were not his friends at all. Then you confirmed it.
Some of life’s lessons are tough.
“Best cleave to true principles, then resign yourself to the fact that festering a-holes will always claim to be on your team.”
Hear, hear.