Search






Jeff's Amazon.com Wish List

Archive Calendar

November 2024
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

Archives

“Gun Stats Liberals Don’t Want You To See”

Courtesy of Jawa, and including interactive maps and spreadsheets. Which, true, aren’t as persuasive as a Joy Behar rant or pictures of children’s caskets. But they do have the benefit of being factual. (h/t palaeomerus).

Also of note — and as reported here in the comments today — Utah and Vermont?  Among the lowest crime rates in the nation.

Despite lots of guns.

How is that even possible?

(h/t di and Pablo)

172 Replies to ““Gun Stats Liberals Don’t Want You To See””

  1. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Yeah, That makes as much sense as crime being down, despite incarceration rates at or near all time highs. How can they both be true?

  2. geoffb says:

    European Murder Rates Compared to the United States: Demographics vs Guns

  3. Pablo says:

    Meanwhile, I’m enjoying my new UpLULA Mag Loader. Them Israelis are clever lads.

  4. Jeff G. says:

    You’re just now getting that Mag loader, Pablo?

    It’s a must for a 15 round .45 double stack. Or it was, before I lost it during the skiff incident.

  5. Pablo says:

    Yes, I just realized it existed a week or so ago. Shame I don’t have anything to load with it.

  6. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I wasn’t aware you were crippled with arthritis. I’m sorry.

    (‘Cause I know there’s no way a responsible, law-abiding, peace-loving citizen such as yourself would even concieve of ever having the need for a magazine holding ten or more rounds)

  7. Ernst Schreiber says:

    That was for Pablo. We all know what Jeff is like. I mean, just look at his avatar!

  8. Pablo says:

    I have had a couple of HKS mag loaders in various calibers, but this puppy is the shit. Or would be, were it of use to me.

  9. Pablo says:

    Actually, Ernst, I used to have a perfectly sane 9mm that was an absolute bitch to load the last few rounds in without a loader. I’m guessing this thing would work like a charm.

  10. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Well, I’m just a humble John Qualen who doesn’t know about these things. I always thought capacity was theoretical –like in town MPG.

  11. wolfie773 says:

    Meanwhile, Illinois is working (again) to make it harder for law-abiding citizens to arm themselves so criminals continue to have free reign to commit crimes unimpeded. At this point in Chicago I’m in favor of providing gang members shooting lessons, so at least they’re hitting each other rather than some 12-year-old on a bike.

  12. I Callahan says:

    So, Brazil is the most unsafe place to be on the planet. Color me unsurprised.

  13. dicentra says:

    Colombia is about the same. Most of those murders are in the selva, among narcotraficantes, no doubt.

  14. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Meanwhile, Illinois is working (again) to make it harder for law-abiding citizens to arm themselves so criminals continue to have free reign to commit crimes unimpeded. At this point in Chicago I’m in favor of providing gang members shooting lessons, so at least they’re hitting each other rather than some 12-year-old on a bike.

    More likely our would-be Padishah Emperor needs his Sardaukar, and Chicago is as good a Salusa Secundus as any.

  15. sdferr says:

    “. . . rather than some 12-year-old on a bike.

    Unless it happens little Tiffany just needs killin’.

  16. TaiChiWawa says:

    Interesting YouTube video about crime statistics:

    Choose Your Own Crime Stats

  17. cranky-d says:

    The word in DC is that some House Republicans would be willing to vote for another assault weapons ban. Isn’t that lovely?

    Then again, that’s just the rumor being passed around. It’s not sourced.

  18. palaeomerus says:

    “HIGH CAPACITY MAGAZINE BAN for WHAT?”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeQiVBvy0m0

  19. cranky-d says:

    I lost all my high-cap mags in an ice-fishing disaster last winter.

  20. SBP says:

    Illinois legislature adjourned with no AWB and no gay marriage:

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-gay-marriage-assault-weapons-ban-votes-delayed-in-illinois-senate-20130103,0,6351516.story

    Note the idiot in the comments who thinks that a semi-auto AR-15 “shoots 50 bullets a second”.

  21. leigh says:

    Cranky you really do have the worst luck. It’s uncanny.

  22. Pablo says:

    I lost all my high-cap mags in an ice-fishing disaster last winter.

    Oh, yer doing it wrong. Sorry ’bout that.

  23. LBascom says:

    Denny’s just asking to be robbed…

  24. cranky-d says:

    You never know about those fish. They could be packing.

  25. newrouter says:

    ” a semi-auto AR-15 “shoots 50 bullets a second”.”

    water cooled i’m sure.

  26. palaeomerus says:

    “Note the idiot in the comments who thinks that a semi-auto AR-15 “shoots 50 bullets a second”

    My finger doesn’t work that fast and I think you’d risk bursting your gas tube if you happened to be some kind of a freaky mutant that could do it. And I doubt the reload is that fast anyway. Max cyclic firing rate of the M-16 (950 r/m) is only around 16 per second.

  27. Seth says:

    If you graph gun ownership vs murder rates (by *any* method, mind you) internationally, it become clear that at a certain point (around 1 gun to 5 people), there is a sharp drop in in mortality.

    Now, mind you, it also become clear that there are some societies with low murder rates and low gun ownership, but it suggests that a high rate of ownership is *a* factor among others in leading to lower murder rates. Wish I could post the graph.

  28. SBP says:

    50 Hz is approaching the A-10 rotary cannon rate of fire (just an estimate based on the sound, but I’ll bet that’s not far off).

  29. LBascom says:

    RIP Bob Munden.

    If you don’t know who he is, here ya go:

    Fast draw

    200 yards with a .38 revolver

    20 shots without a clip

    Hitting the nail on the head

  30. palaeomerus says:

    GAU-8 fires at 4200 rounds/min (according to wikipedia) which is 70 hz.

  31. SBP says:

    That’s a helluva trigger finger.

  32. cranky-d says:

    That 20 shots without a clip video was impressive. I’m sure the rest of his vids are equally awesome.

    As far as those jackasses who think an AR-15 can fire that fast, it goes to show that people who want to ban guns usually have never fired them and know nothing about them. Furthermore, they have this weird notion that a high rate of fire is the same as a high kill rate, which is equally, if not more, stupid.

  33. geoffb says:

    Minigun M134, 6000 rounds per minute, watched this movie New Years eve.

  34. geoffb says:

    Fast aimed semi-auto is the way M4s, M16s are mostly used AFAIK.

  35. palaeomerus says:

    Act of Valor is on streaming Netflix right now.

  36. McGehee says:

    Even full auto they say should be limited to three-round bursts. Very few can hold aim beyond that.

  37. cranky-d says:

    Full auto is suppression fire. It’s something you do if you have a lot of ammo available. You don’t expect to hit much with a given bullet.

  38. Slartibartfast says:

    GAU-8 fires at 4200 rounds/min

    The Avenger’s rate of fire was originally selectable, 2,100 rounds per minute (rpm) in the low setting, or 4,200 rpm in the high setting.[8] Later this was changed to a fixed rate of 3,900 rpm.[9]

  39. Slartibartfast says:

    Yeah, I too have seen preposterously overdone claims of rate of fire of e.g. Bushmaster. Even if you could fire 50 rounds per second, you’d have to change clips once a second or so.

    Which, who needs that?

  40. steveaz says:

    I’d like to share a criticism of the blogosphere that is aimed particularly at comments boards like the one Jeff runs here. This is very much on-topic (in fact, I think it’s shelf-life is nigh-on infinite), what I am about to write may offend some of you, and I apologize in advance for its length.

    (Note: In the interest of brevity I’ll leapfrog over the symptoms that define the reader I intend this message for, and get right to what afflicts them. If you feel like I am describing you in my rant below, suffice it to say I hit a bullseye, and this message is for you. And if folks want to deconstruct what I intend, gently, to be a palliative insult, then I’m willing to stick around for awhile to defenestrate those deconstructions in the comments. Just be gentle, it’s my first time, and I’m sensitive.)

    Let’s begn. There is a shallow, superficial, almost crepe-paper thinness to the bravado I hear voiced here. And it is not new. I have been a regular visitor to Jeff’s blog since he and Michelle Malkin were playing patty-cake at Hot Air, and before the pill-laden sofa got put out on the curb for the Goodwill guys to pick up, and even before the Armadillo returned sedated from the Betty Ford Clinic (sadly, he’s never been the same since the shock treatments). This skin-deep aspect of the commentary was evident to me even way back then.

    The effervescent, buoyant libido I see bandied about at Jeff’s blog (again, if some want to discount my observation, fair-enough…I’ll see you in the comments) is persistent, is mutative –it changes its expression to match the tempo and concerns of the prevailing zeitgeist, and is somewhat muffled by an easy political correctness as it conveys literally what might be called “the conservative/libertarian thinking of the day” (this being the often unanimous “preaching to choir” redolent to kowtowing to the host I perceive on many blogs both Left and Right). And I fear this wafer-thin bravado redounds to a solid majority of the commentariat. It’s not hard to guess the reason. Here’s one gandered: possibly as much as 85% of Jeff’s devoted posters are under the tender age of 35 (and so, still cocksure, immature,and status-seeking), a renter – not a property owner, lives in an urban or suburban conclave (which means they are accustomed to urban amenities like uninterrupted electricity and AC, paved roads, government schools, municipal sewers, always-on water supplies, and well stocked, FDA-approved grocery stores), and is not engaged civically – here I point at the pawltry rates for unpaid volunteerism in civic organizations among urbanocentric Gen ‘X and ‘Y-ers and their kids, and the resultant imcompetence they exhibit in performing exactly the sort of consensus-building, chairing activities and, yes, social strategies that might yet avert our “cold” civil war turning “Hot” – or swathes of the country seceding, both of which, remarkably, appear to be the outcome being most earnestly extolled here. That is, if my sample of Jeff’s commentariat’s encyclopaedia of opinions from just the last week is accurate.

    But wait. It gets worse: a majority of the majority of our militant, domesticted, online-and-loquacious, in addition to being town softies with keyboards and copies of John Locke, are likely still lodged bur-like in the fur of some campus – virtual or physical, grappling for the credentials, friends and other status symbols that they still think will bestow lasting wealth and notoriety to them in the 20teens’ global, ‘new-normal’ economy.* That is, a disturbingly large proportion of regular commentators at blogs are overly beholden to the same hand-me-down infrastructure, urban fashion pressures, social safety-nets and ‘mean’ material wealth-levels that Global Socialists use to bait their modern electoral traps with.

    Drum Roll, Please,…here comes the (I hope) provocative if not insulting gist of this tirade: I use the words “disturbingly” and “overly” decisively above because this majority cohort displays an excess of shallow, spit-n-vinegar commentary that renders its capacious content almost useless to the actualized American, Asian or European reader, especially when it is offered as free counsel to the propertied Free Man striving for self-reliance outside the urban brambles in a new, tumultuous century. If reading this offends you, then, drink some ny-quil, blow a doob of Kush, or pour a snifter before reading on, you may need a nervine after I’m finished with you. If it doesn’t, then you don’t need to read on – you already understand what I’m driving at!

    Knowing the soft-shelled state of most of Jeff’s breathy, incognito literati musculoso, it’s necessary, I feel, to deliver this medicine covertly: Polio vaccine needs be delivered to the toddler on a sugar cube, a similar sweetener for my vaccine is gonna be necessary for a tranche of Jeff’s readership, too.

    So, backing-up to take a second, softer rhetorical tack, here goes: we all know what they say about unremunerated advice. And we’ve all heard the old saw about how, when discerning the veracity of any advice – paid-for or not, we should always consider the source. Well, put the two together and you’ve got my gist: we pay nothing for this plein de conseill so the value of its boasts to call men-to-arms is at least suspect, and, considering the source of the source, soft middle-aged, urban conservatives who are at War with “drugs,” and thought Chris Christie was “the sh_t!”, and expect to retire on Social Security, the pool of proffering agents is similarly suspect. The result is…wait for it, this reader is suspicious!

    Let’s pursue that last, because I know it ruffled a few feathers (if you haven’t noticed yet, by the end of this admittedly too-long screed, most of you will find you’ve been taken to the woodshed and paddled by the Principal!). If any pool of plaintiffs (and, Yes readers, “plaintiffs” is the correct word – as commenters at Jeff’s blogsite you are ‘plea-ing’ for simple attention at a minimum, and for this readers’ credulity at a maximum) is enrapt to the same vices that animate the Left’s global campaign circuitry, then what real tender will their plaints fetch in a discursive market where the enrapt are bargaining with Free Men? That is, if the prevailing type of commenters at Jeff’s site are operating already from inside the Left’s semiotic and physical compounds (cities, credit-ratings, contemporary fashion, television series, status perks, tnjaf), then the thinking man can safely assume that this tranche is already corrupted swayed by its subjection to the illusive ‘bricks-and-mortar’ that keep them there…and so, having proven themselves too impressionable to media products and the favor of crowds to honestly describe their own straits or discover novel avenues of “escape,” and must, therefore, be deemed unreliable to serve as advisers to free-men in these perilous times. In short, they have disqualified their missives from this patriot’s consideration.

    Viewed en masse, appearances are Jeff has nurtured a “right-sounding” coterie of regular plaintiffs that is captured by modern fashion, paying wages to live in someone else’s home and confabulating in Progressive-planned-and-paved communities that chest-thumps in his public space daily about radical secession, armed insurrection and how-gawd-awful that Obama is…but…that, given any hardship, will still pout-to-power, like, say, if the electricity goes out and they can’t “watch the game,” or, Heaven Forbid!!!, they have to be their own ‘first-responder’ after a neighbor’s grease-fire ignites, a relative suffers an heart-attack, or the Moozies bomb their favorite Starbucks. And this coterie, this reticulated roster of romper room’ers pretends to be the chorus of wisdom to Free Men? In America? Today?

    This coterie of cheap-talk’es, only degrees-removed from the Progressive busy-bodies in DC, Chi-town, Seattle, Jersey and Jakarta that this blog professes to combat, dares to tell a Free American ‘what it is?!’ It would be comic if this chorus, suddenly transfused with testosterone after 2012’s defeat, didn’t take itself so seriously.

    And, if in concrete terms (rather than abstract, polemical ones) this cohort’s real-life reaction to any hardship (like to a broken cell-phone, some moderate flooding (a la Sandy), a late bus or a kidney failure) is to vote reflexively to elect another increment of the Progressive’s agenda – be it a misbegotten uptick in property taxes for “first-responders” (whatever they are), another 5 billion of the tax-payers monies sent to union-dominated Left-coast ports for “security,” or an increase in the eligibility age and contribution requirements for some bankrupt collectivist program like Medicare – and, it’s clear from the continued slide of the GOP towards outright mimicry of America’s Left that their reaction, incontrovertibly, is – then this roster of roosters offers no better counsel to the Free property-owning Man and Woman in America today than the execrable crowd at the Huffington Post or The Nation or Al Jazeera does. And, my time’d be spent just as, well, well, performing page-views, lending my opinions, and clicking advertisers’ pop-ups at their sites!

    We’re almost done here. I’ve just about run out of energy spanking you guys. It’s beer-o’clock, and my swinging wrist hurts (and, I think I broke a nail with that last swing, Damn!). Lesson learned?

    Nope! I can tell from your blush of Lupus-bloom on your face and your spilt beer, you still just don’t get IT yet. And, ollee…ollee…incomefree!! For some of you, it’s getting time to go – I can hear your mothers, procters and Corinthian Leather calling you to beck (spent all day armour-all-ing it, din’t you? Ain’t it perrrrtie?)! And, I know, somewhere there’s a television braying for your attention. But you might need one more session downstais before you’re fixed.

    I am weary, and I have carried on too long at Jeff’s space (shoot! Fact is, I broke my figurative switch on your naughty backsides two paragraphs ago, and should have quit the whipping then), so I’ll give you-all one last, light welting with a special whip, one forged of the unalloyed, primal fear that my read of Jeff’s feedback’ers tells me is this site’s bette noire, namely Alinsky’s Rules, by pressing home (once again) why they should hang from the tool-belt with the rest of your armory on the hip of the Free Man and American Patriot.

    (Note: as a student of Jeff’s writing style, I’m setting myself the very do-able goal of winding down your scolding and sending you to showers red-cheeked and sobbing with a single, long, spiny-toothed sentence. Some writers strive to mimic Hemingway – me, I set my sights a little higher! Here goes!)

    Like truth and consequences to the post-modern progressive…like sunlight to the Vampire…like Medussa’s glare to every man with eyes, so, too, the simple practicality of Alinsky’s rules dribbles cold dread into the hearts of the bulk of Jeff’s commentariat: souls being so loosely attached to their holders that the exercise of the same devices for sharp ridicule, taunting and dishonest misdirection that an eight-year girl or boy adopts, by necessity, to counter the teases of the bullying brother or the bossy sister in the daily tussle for notice, favor and rewards in any extended human family…that employing his neutral rhetorical spiels, even if only once and with effect, might cause them to float free from their personal moorings, were probably never owned souls in the first place, and certainly, those fearful of losing their souls in the cause of preserving bigger things like our constitution, personal autonomies, and national character were probably never really patriots in the first place, either; the expressed fear of losing them to a theatrical tactic represents nothing less than a quissling’s admission of temerity in the face of an unconstrained, circling-for-the-kill, discursive foe, while conveying the false impression that all of American Conservatism’s polemical weaponry has been depleted and there is no option left to America’s remaining Freemen to sway our countrymen but to prosecute a bloody, armed conflict (which is certain to kill or revolt as many citizens that it will win to our side), secede from the USA, or try for Russian citizenship, and which*, until we’ve exhausted Alinsky’s fusillade of political techniques on our adversaries’ campuses, barracks, and redoubts, is clearly NOT our ONLY OPTION – a fact, the consistent denial of which on moral terms says less about the efficacy of employing the Alinsky’s bag-of-tricks for ourselves, and more about the, hmmm, shall we say, yen for the guts, blood and spectacle of bloody War.

    Had enough? Yes..I can see you have. Now, stop crying, wash up and get ready for dinner. And don’t you ever let Papa catch you wearing pink in public again, dammit! Or you’ll get twice as bad with no spell check and longer sentences! Kapisch!?

    Oh! And someone get Chris Christie a pacifier and a tissue! He’s suffering from Congressional pork-withdrawals right now! Quickly! He’s oozing!

    * Sorry to thinking men and women out there who understand the interchangeability of the words “conclave” and “campus,” squares being rectangles always, and rectangles also, sometimes, capable of being squares, but not always… One does risk repeating oneself when talking down so as to better reach the low-information voters at Jeff’s site. I’m after then, not you! I’ll try to limit it to that single offense).

  41. Ernst Schreiber says:

    That was a long way of saying folks around here a big on bitching and short on offering constructive solutions to intractable problems.

    I think.

  42. John Bradley says:

    Sure you aren’t thinking of Ace’s commentariat, by mistake? I’m under the impression that nearly everyone who posts here is mid-40’s or older. There are probably a few 30-something younguns to be found (‘feets?), but that’s about it. I don’t think any of the regulars are in college. They’re more likely to have kids in college…

  43. geoffb says:

    Or grandkids.

  44. geoffb says:

    Maybe it is just a “Whitlock” moment kind of thing.

  45. geoffb says:

    Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) will be introducing a bill today that will mandate reduced-capacity magazines and will ban sale and transfer of standard-capacity magazines.

  46. palaeomerus says:

    “Had enough? Yes..I can see you have. Now, stop crying, wash up and get ready for dinner. And don’t you ever let Papa catch you wearing pink in public again, dammit! Or you’ll get twice as bad with no spell check and longer sentences! Kapisch!?”

    TLDR.

  47. palaeomerus says:

    TSIF/DC

  48. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Make ’em reload thrice ‘stead of twice! That’ll larn ’em!

    Seriously, somebody ought to have the brains to amend that bill to define standard capacity as 50 or more rounds.

  49. steveaz says:

    Guys, my tome above was an exercise in Alinsky-ite shaming. It was originally drafted as a generic critique of blog commentariats, and I only had to do a little jiggerin’ to it to personalize, freeze and shame a vague slice of Jeff’s commentariat selectively.

    That’s the brilliance of his Rules for Radicals – we all use them in our turbulent human relations already, like any other inanimate tool they are tactically neutral, and they can be used equally well by any party to a conflict.

    Let’s roll!

    John Bradley, Question: if I change the supposed age of the to-be-shamed cohort to 45, does it make my essay any more accurate?

    Since, the more accurate allegations (and make no mistake, that’s all my essay is, is allegoric) work better to shame, I’m all about accuracy with this exercise. I’ll change he target group’ age in a heart-beat to make the shame work.

  50. geoffb says:

    I’m going with the “or more” option.

  51. palaeomerus says:

    Well they’ve not even actually passed a law yet and magazine prices are already trebeled. Like wow man.

  52. palaeomerus says:

    Mags are totally the new pot. Or Nintendo Wii.

  53. geoffb says:

    A” should meet “B“.

    TL/DR beats shame.

  54. Ernst Schreiber says:

    That’s the brilliance of his Rules for Radicals – we all use them in our turbulent human relations already, like any other inanimate tool they are tactically neutral, and they can be used equally well by any party to a conflict.

    I keep saying this, I know. But you can’t shame the shameless.

    It’s a consequence of the transvaluation of all values, I think.

  55. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Fine with me geoff. I wasn’t aware that any of those things actually worked. Or are you supposed to have one so you can practice failure-to-feed drills?

  56. geoffb says:

    I saw a review of the 60 round in Gun World magazine where they used it in a test of a new Colt AR and they were impressed with how it worked. Those drum type mags are supposed to be shit though.

  57. steveaz says:

    Ernst,
    “You can’t shame the shameless.”

    You’re right! And it’s not the goal. The goal is to shame the uncommitted and shame-able by associating them with the shameless.

    Dick Foley probes a page, OK? and the Democrats use Alinsky’s tactis to make it shameful to reelect Dick Foley. George Bush wants to reform SS, so the left uses Alinsky to make it shameful to support a hay-seed Texan who tortures people. See how it works.

    I see I’ve got some more work to do here. I’ll stay on for a couple more days.

  58. Patrick Chester says:

    John Bradley, Question: if I change the supposed age of the to-be-shamed cohort to 45, does it make my essay any more accurate?

    No, inaccurate guesses on the averate age of the blog readership/commenters is not the main problem.

  59. steveaz says:

    Dial me in Patrick.

    Aside for the length, and a couple of typos I’d like to fix, where did I go wrong?

    I’m off to bed and I’ll check out this thread in the morning. But, I’d like to leave you with an assignment if I might: Take out your enemies list and look it over. They might be the neighbors’ dogs, your ex-wife and her new boyfriend, or they might be political targets. It. Does. Not. Matter.

    Jot down two or three names to keep things simple, and simply replace “Jeff’s commentariat,” or “soft, urbanized conservatives” with your own, special-to-you adversaries.

    And then drop into this thread in the morning. I sincerely want to see what you come up with.

    ‘Night.

  60. geoffb says:

    MEGO defensive shield deployed.

  61. beemoe says:

    as a student of Jeff’s writing style

    You fail.

    That was largely unreadable.

  62. McGehee says:

    And don’t you ever let Papa catch you wearing pink in public again, dammit!

    No fair! That tuutuu doesn’t come in mauve — what choice did I have?

    The goal is to shame the uncommitted and shame-able by associating them with the shameless.

    Spot on. I tried to bring this up myself and I think I got misconstrued because I also said (too subtly, I suppose) we would constrain our use of the rules, intentionally or not, precisely because we’re not soulless would-be tyrants and all we want is to be left alone by those who are.

  63. steveaz says:

    Beemoe, do you give any points for effort? I certainly put my back into that one…and I respectfully challenge you to attempt the feat.

    But, start small so you don’t bruise anything like I did. (BTW: I see that Kate at Small Dead Animals has a post up called Shaming the Gun-Shamers. Looks like our side is slowly getting the message!

    Looking back at the piece, I notice that I did dangle a participle in my Jeff-mitation, and it would have helped comprehension if I’d restated the subject “souls” again before tagging-on another verb-object clause. Live and learn, huh?

    I also screwed up the “Jeff-Which,” that little five-letter word that gives the run-on sentence new life by tagging on yet another syntactically-correct clause to the creaking structure of an already overloaded sentence, in that same ‘graph.

    Gawd, I love the “Jeff-Which!”

    There’s lots I’d change upstream,too, like, “capacious” should have been “voluminous,” “allegoric- (sic)” should have “allegorical,” and such.

    It was late, my stamina was faultering, and perhaps I was too impatient to post my tongue-in-cheek challenge to Jeff’s board to finish editing the thing.

    Anyway, I feel the piece has already served its function. Next!

  64. leigh says:

    We spent the better part of a day discussing Alinsky’s ‘rules’ and their deficianies.

    Who was that troll who claimed to have all the solar panels and a wind turbine and bicycle powered batttery-operated home appliances? Didn’t he live in Arizona, too?

    This guy sounds like him. You know, insufferable.

  65. steveaz says:

    Thanks, McGehee. I knew you were with me there!

    And, OOPS!, it Mark Foley who got run off the Republican ticket for an indiscretion. Funny, isn’t it, that when the Democrat’s first “black” President, Bill Clinton, got caught in his piccadillos, the Dem’s media arm muffled their Alinskyite impulse in order to protect him. But, when a Republican Congressman takes a “wide stance” in an airport bathroom or, ahem, fondles a page, then they open up the Alinsky spigots on them.

    Which goes to show, the tactics are very controllable – not at all like Tolkien’s fabled, irristible ring.

  66. sdferr says:

    Prodicus-like, let me point out that allegation and allegory aren’t really even cousins, etymologically speaking. Un-Prodicus-like, I’ll leave it at that.

  67. steveaz says:

    Ernst,
    CIP (case in point)

  68. beemoe says:

    Beemoe, do you give any points for effort? I certainly put my back into that one…and I respectfully challenge you to attempt the feat.

    Brutally honest time: it takes a real talent to write like that and keep me interested, Jeff has it, you don’t , yet.

    I really am interested in your point, I just don’t have the time or inclination to plow through all the noise there to find it.

    I like my propaganda clear and concise.

    And I do give points for effort, just also call them like I see them.

  69. steveaz says:

    sdferr,
    I smell an Old French connection in there by way of a latin root, thrice removed. I won’t go to the parapets to defend it, though.

    As I said, “This cohort […] takes itself too seriously.”

  70. sdferr says:

    If attaching oneself in jest to a sophist of some note is too serious, then we’re going to have trouble communicating I fear. What will you have me do? Stop taking you seriously? That wouldn’t be square. So maybe, let me gently suggest you try again.

  71. Bob Belvedere says:

    Well…I’m going to be shameless [I am 51, after all] and plug my blog post from this morning that looks at the Will To Power in the current Administration:

    Officials Of the Flies

    Note to Ernst: Apologies for not using the phrase ‘transvaluation of all values’ in that post. That would have doubled it’s length and, unlike certain commentators [Le Commentariet], I like to keep my musings succinct.

  72. Bob Belvedere says:

    Beemoe wrote: Brutally honest time: it takes a real talent to write like that and keep me interested, Jeff has it, you don’t, yet.

    This.

  73. BigBangHunter says:

    …the Democrats use Alinsky’s tactis to make it shameful to reelect

    – They use any pretense available to suppress self-awareness and thought, period. But this political vampirism has been stated here ad nausia, and is not at issue.

    – The neo excitement of “diadetic slouth and willful ignorance to reality” is self perpetuating, which works for awhile, human nature being what it is, but it is also self-correcting with time.

    – When the well runs dry it will end with a wimper, not a bang.

    – This from a 74 year old OUTLAW!

  74. serr8d says:

    From the vantage of a tiny mobile screen (all’s I have until tomorrow) that supersized comment way up there doesn’t fit me very well.

    But I only speed-read the thing. First and last sentences, and keywords in between. Still, it seems out of sync, mostly.

    Carry on!

  75. serr8d says:

    We must use whatever tactics necessary to sucessfully battle our adversaries, or we shall be the latest addition to the ash heap of failed ideologies.

  76. leigh says:

    BBH, it’s not even a matter of shaming or making it shameful to reelect offenders. With few exceptions, the Mark Foley’s resign and remove that option from the table.

    The difference between us and them (and I fear there is no overlap any longer) is that we have principles beyond merely holding a given office.

    As the old saw goes “You have to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.”

  77. McGehee says:

    It seems to me that fear of using the Alinsky rules where appropriate isn’t much better than fear of using guns where needed.

  78. sdferr says:

    It seems to me, serr8d, it would be better not to assign our political views to the category ideology to start with: there could hardly be a better dead-end designed to fail.

    The key to your otherwise helpful suggestion is necessity, i.e., to find what is necessary to each circumstance. But that itself requires we constantly return to the origin of our purpose, or to say another way, to examine our principle(s), not so much for the sake of questioning them, as for the sake of deepening our understanding of them and to improve our aim as we unearth the hidden needful things toward achieving those ends without violating them or running counter to them (which latter is part of what seems to give people such pause as to Alinksy’s prescriptions).

  79. steveaz says:

    Bmoe, the essay works well grammatically until around the final quarter,and then it only stumbles a little bit. Subject-verb-object flow, subordinate clause links, conjunctions, modifiers and pronouns are al mostly correct. And, except for a couple of mischosen words, the meaning is easily discerned and syntactically intact.

    And, since I copied Jeff’s style almost to the T, if my essay is too bulky for ya, then, gently, how do you manage to get through some of Jeff’s hum-dinger, single-sentence paragraphs, which, btw, I find incredibly stimulating.

    I’ll take your points for effort, and give myself a C-. K?

    Sdferr, I’d have you take the essay seriously first for starters. We only share our words here, and, really, I cannot know you from Adam. So, let’s start there. It is actually a brisk, continuous breeze of a read, until the trainwreck in the second to last graph.

    So, first start with reading the Essay (I get to the grist ’round the third or fourth paragraphs, if you want to skip the aggressive (on purpose) set-up in the first two.) It is legible and comprehensible, I promise, so you WILL get my points.

    And maybe later, in another thread even, you will find yourself adding fluently to my thesis, which is itself only built on others’.

    ‘Off to work, so I’m pulling out for now. This troll’s gonna take a long nap after work today. Love ya!

  80. Bob Belvedere says:

    Leigh, I’m glad the idea that there’s an overlap between the Left and Right is dying.

    Whatever overlap appeared to be there was the effort on our part to grant the Left the same respect that we ourselves hope to receive when we express our views [‘Love thy neighbor….’ and all that].

    The Left consciously took advantage of our civility, our Morality, only because it was one of the useful means to it’s ends.

    The overlap always was an illusion [one that I bought into for many years, even though I had studied Leftist Thinking and knew it was pure Evil].

    ‘We surrounded; that simplifies the problem’ – Chesty Puller.

  81. sdferr says:

    I’ve no idea why you seem to think I hadn’t already read your essay steveaz, since in the main I’ve not spoken to it one way or the other. As it happens, I have read it, and chose to leave it to marinate for a time, after which, if I discover something to contribute to the discussion of the essay, I’ll do, and if not, not. That you’ve jumped to this evident conclusion however, will not prejudice my view of your earnest intentions, if I can help it. Still, something isn’t firing here.

  82. BigBangHunter says:

    – McGehee, as we used to say in the drag racing world, brute power is as much a failing as too little power.

    – The most consistant victor in any enterprise is the person that uses any and all available tactics and talents at his disposal within a framework of consistancy, principle, and honesty, or to paraphrase: “Run what you brung like you mean it”.

  83. leigh says:

    Well said Bob.

  84. palaeomerus says:

    “Funny, isn’t it, that when the Democrat’s first “black” President, Bill Clinton, got caught in his piccadillos, the Dem’s media arm muffled their Alinskyite impulse in order to protect him.”

    Actually no, the left did not. What they did was they turned their Alinskyite impulses on his accusers. They were liars, sluts, lunatics, and poor white trash. They called Lewinsky a crazy and a liar until she produced a spunked up dress. They called Ken Starr a sicko and a monster.

  85. McGehee says:

    BBH, exactly. The “Sauron’s ring” analogy some used earlier fails in this instance, as it must in any real world instance, because Alinsky only wrote the rules — he didn’t forge them in the fires of Mount Doom.

    He didn’t even really invent them, but merely distilled them from tactics that were used effectively by others, mostly against naive milquetoasts — the very same kind who today disavow any willingness to use a gun, even in self-defense, for fear of what monster they might unleash irrevocably from within themselves. Better, they tell themselves, to deny that the monster exists — even to the forfeit of their own lives.

    It’s there, though. And the more steadfastly they deny it the more power it holds over them.

  86. McGehee says:

    Holding the monster back demands that you know it, study it, learn from it what might be of use, keep it on a short leash and watch its every move. Being stronger than it, is optional — being smarter than it is what works best.

    Sometimes you need your monster. That’s what Alinsky understood.

    Update: He also understood that those on the other side who need their monster but won’t use it, are the easiest to defeat using his rules.

  87. sdferr says:

    How far does Tolkein attach his Ring to the Ring of Gyges earlier deployed by Plato from out his brother Glaucon’s mouth in the challenge to the just man in the Republic?

    And is Tolkein’s answer to the challenge substantially different than Socrates’ response, on the whole? Or does the interposition of technological advance — as it comes between the choices of the Ancients vs. the Moderns — substantially alter the original proposition to the point that there simply is no correlation worthy the name?

  88. McGehee says:

    How far does Tolkein attach his Ring to the Ring of Gyges earlier deployed by Plato from out his brother Glaucon’s mouth in the challenge to the just man in the Republic?

    <Ralph Wiggum> Me not know. </Ralph Wiggum>

  89. McGehee says:

    <after Google> Okay, all I can say is, the fear of being caught and punished has a different meaing to those of us who believe in an all-knowing God. I guess if I had that Ring of Gyges I’d find out just how truly I do believe in Him.

    Fortunately for me there is no such ring, and I get to wait until I meet Him to find out how truly I believe in Him.

  90. Squid says:

    I maintain that the best defense against Alinskyite tactics is simply to call them out as the pretentious twats that they are:

    “You say I hate {poor people/minorities/schoolkids/baby seals/whatever} because I want to end State-run programs that ‘help’ them. In fact, your programs only make things worse, and every million dollars you suck up into those programs is a million dollars that isn’t available to fund programs that actually work. Programs that I actually do support, because I’m concerned with actually helping {poor people/minorities/schoolkids/baby seals/whatever}, as opposed to you, who really just wants to be seen as caring, without ever sacrificing one hour or one dollar of your own. Perhaps one day, when you quit making unfounded accusations about my motivations, and take a clear-eyed look at the damage your feel-good-but-accomplish-nothing policies are doing, people might start taking you seriously. Get to work on that, you pretentious twat.”

    “You say you want to help the working man, but every policy you promote serves only to make it harder for him to find a good job or a good school for his kids, to get around town, or to defend himself from the thousands of hopeless, amoral ‘citizens’ created by the last three generations of your preferred policies. Further, every time your policies were given a chance in the 20th Century, those policies resulted in the starvation and deaths of hundreds of millions of people. I’m starting to think you don’t actually care about working people at all, you pretentious twat.”

    “You say that Big Business is corrupt and has too much control over our lives, and yet you throw yourself 100% into supporting the biggest, most corrupt organization in the country: Uncle Sam, Incorporated. Walmart might sell a lot of guns, but they never use ’em to threaten you if you don’t shop there; Uncle Sam will kick in your door in the middle of the night. Amazon might track your purchases and preferences, but Uncle Sam mounts cameras and forces you to fill out forms and carry identification so that you can be tracked everywhere you go, from birth to death. Think about that for a while, you pretentious twat.”

    It’s not hard. You just have to keep at it, week after week.

  91. palaeomerus says:

    I still think that ‘will to power’ and pursuit of the moral license to do and say anything in pursuit of a goal corrupts absolutely. Incremental adoption of ‘will to power’ leads to incremental corruption that will either plateau when you can’t go further or will lead to becoming a Saruman, who in turn will become a Sharkey who gets his ass kicked by Hobbits and possibly his throat slit by a Wormtongue.

    Some Alinskyite stuff is probably doable without much harm (or effect). But ultimately imitating Alinsky unreservedly will make you Alinsky like in your judgement and perspective. And being Alinskyite reservedly will leave you easy prey for an unreserved Alinskyite who will always be quicker to go further than you.

  92. Gulermo says:

    A wise man once said: “Brevity is the soul of wit.” And as a cultural icon once said: “Learn it, know it, live it.”
    “Whatever overlap appeared to be there was the effort on our part to grant the Left the same respect that we ourselves hope to receive when we express our views [‘Love thy neighbor….’ and all that].” Unless you are at the point of looking at your neighbor, (in some cases family and friends), and calling him enemy, what’s the point? Are you at that crux? Do you want to be at that point?

  93. McGehee says:

    I still think that ‘will to power’ and pursuit of the moral license to do and say anything in pursuit of a goal corrupts absolutely.

    Power is what corrupts, and absolute power is what corrupts absolutely. What power is being sought by people who JUST WANT TO BE LEFT THE FUCK ALONE?

  94. McGehee says:

    Unless you are at the point of looking at your neighbor, (in some cases family and friends), and calling him enemy, what’s the point? Are you at that crux? Do you want to be at that point?

    Are my neighbors, family and friends trying to shame me into acquiescing to their wielding power over me against my will? If so, is it because I want them to? What does it say about me if I let my friends treat me that way and I still call them friends?

  95. cranky-d says:

    You did not “copy Jeff’s style to a T.” Not even close. The fact that you think you did is a tad troubling.

    First of all, Jeff would never use as many words as you did to say so little. Second, he does not have to attempt to sound literate by creating convoluted sentence structures and over-using Latinates (I assume that’s what’s going on, because piling on a lot of Latin-derived verbiage is a sure-fire way to “sound smart” and yet bore the crap out of the reader). For some reason, a lot of people think Jeff’s style lies somewhere on the spectrum of difficult to impenetrable when he writes essays (likely because he will often craft very long sentences, which, nevertheless, convey meaning more succinctly than a long series of disjoint sentences would), but it is not. I have never had any trouble following his line of reasoning.

    That long pseudo-intellectual screed was off-putting in its pretentiousness from the very first paragraph. I tried to read it deeply, and failed, because it was just, frankly, awful. I ended up reading some when I could stand it, and skimming the rest. Furthermore, if one is trying to tailor such a screed to this audience, one must not make so many erroneous assumptions about said audience. The age thing was one, since corrected. The notion that Jeff is preaching to any generalized right-wing choir was another. Yet, even if those problems were corrected, such a screed would not work here as desired, because the people here are, for the most part, not easily swayed by such things.

    Ultimately, this stinks of concern troll. Perhaps I’m not the intended audience because even a well-written piece attempting to make me doubt my principles would fail.

  96. McGehee says:

    As for the secondary issue of steveaz’s long comment, I skimmed it and, not seeing a point, reserved judgment until one was offered in subsequent commentary.

    I think he might have done better expressing his point in his own style in the first place. Jeff writes the way he does because he’s found it the best way to communicate the complex ideas he wants to express. I’m not sure steveaz’s point was that complex, even in meta-illustration.

    But as I said, literary criticism of blog comments strikes me as kind of secondary.

  97. palaeomerus says:

    “What power is being sought be people who JUST WANT TO BE LEFT THE FUCK ALONE?”

    Apparently the power to bend truth and language to facilitate getting your way. I’m not saying that you should be nice. Or even fair (gentlemanly). But reality manipulation, cult information bubbles, intimidation, and cynical shit stirring for purposes of exploitation is bad bad shit.

  98. McGehee says:

    Exploitation, or self-defense?

  99. sdferr says:

    I don’t take steveaz’s work so much for concern troll as instead the grip of enthusiasm over an enthusiast, and to that extent — despite not being gripped enthusiastically m’self — I’m personally content to let steveaz’s movement play out as he moves and see where he goes, or gets.

  100. McGehee says:

    I not only want them to stop trying to wield power over me against my will, I want them to not want to try it again. I want them to not want to go on to someone else and try it on them — or if they do, to find that those others saw what happened when they tried it on me and are ready for them.

  101. Gulermo says:

    “Are my neighbors, family and friends trying to shame me into acquiescing to their wielding power over me against my will? If so, is it because I want them to? What does it say about me if I let my friends treat me that way and I still call them friends?” Simple question. Do you think that is where you are? FTR Steveaz is a sh*t stirrer. He is at Ace, Patterco and now here.

  102. Gulermo says:

    Or for those of you in Texas, turd poker.

  103. sdferr says:

    Speaking of enthusiasm, however, let me indulge again one of my own: how about we consider the modern press, the so-called mainstream media, as itself an embodiment of Gyges’ Ring, a Ring Obazma slips on in order to make himself invisible, and thereby to take advantage of whatever whim, just or unjust, may strike his fancy?

    Kinda neat, if you ask me. But then as I say, it’s an enthusiastically offered analog.

  104. palaeomerus says:

    He’s doing the missionary thing. No, not THAT missionary thing. The other one.

  105. BigBangHunter says:

    – The Lefts pen-ultinate truthiness top shelf elite rejoinder when the mustard falls off the hotdog:

    Because Shut up.”

  106. LBascom says:

    It seems to me that fear of using the Alinsky rules where appropriate isn’t much better than fear of using guns where needed.

    I think fighting a progg using Alinsky is like fighting the darkness with shadows.

  107. palaeomerus says:

    I’m all for using occasional black magic like cursed deserters and Mordor tactics if need be, but the ring is the big banana. It WANTS to be used becuase it uses those who use it. I’d rather have Gandalf and Shadowfax, and those Eagles on my side. And if there is no Gandalf and Shadowfax, and Eagles at all, then we are all just feral apes fighting over roots anyway waiting for a monolith to show up.

  108. cranky-d says:

    But as I said, literary criticism of blog comments strikes me as kind of secondary.

    I saw the claim of “copying Jeff’s style to a T” and decided to not let that stand without some kind of rebuttal. From a content standpoint, style is secondary or worse, and I would agree that normally it would not be worth notice.

    Anyway, steaveaz has been around here for a while, and I know he’s not a troll. I was apparently not clear that I was referencing what the comment appeared to be, and not what steveaz appears to be.

  109. McGehee says:

    Do you think that is where you are?

    What is the point of your question, since you’re so insistent on an answer?

  110. McGehee says:

    I saw the claim of “copying Jeff’s style to a T” and decided to not let that stand without some kind of rebuttal.

    Fair enough.

  111. McGehee says:

    I think fighting a progg using Alinsky is like fighting the darkness with shadows.

    That goes back to the “you can’t shame the shameless” argument that completely overlooks that Alinsky’s rules aren’t only about making the target feel shame — they’re about disempowering the target by making them look shameful in the eyes of others.

    If your whole attack on proggs is to be judged on whether you cause them to feel shame, you’re already defeated, chained, sold, cooked and eaten.

    That’s not how it works.

  112. RI Red says:

    No literary criticism here, cranky, just substantive. I read steveaz’s comment looking for substance. Couldn’t find a lot since he painted the commentariat with a brush as wide as moochelle’s backside.
    And as for approach, the whole schtick put me off. If someone is trying to f**k me, I prefer to be kissed first.
    If he’s trying to say put up or shut up, it could be said in a Jeff micro-story instead of a mind-numbing waste of bandwidth, e.g., “Obama’s vacation diary – ‘$7 million and counting, bitches. What are you going to do about it? Pussies.'”. And I don’t even pretend to be Jeff.

  113. LBascom says:

    That goes back to the “you can’t shame the shameless” argument

    No, actually it goes back to the wrestling with pigs argument.

  114. palaeomerus says:

    “What is the point of your question, since you’re so insistent on an answer?”

    So you admit that your racism leads you to slap retarded children around and fantasize about exterminating everyone you don’t agree with? Oh wait. I sound like Slippery Slope now. Shit.

  115. McGehee says:

    No, actually it goes back to the wrestling with pigs argument.

    Well, normally I would shoot pigs, but that’s frowned upon in politics.

  116. sdferr says:

    “Well, normally I would shoot pigs, but that’s frowned upon in politics.”

    Ha! I’d already written, but not posted a like thought:

    It’s good advice, recommending one not wrestle pigs. Those fuckers bite, and their teeth are a damn sight better suited to biting us than ours to biting them. Shoot ’em instead, then cook and eat.

  117. McGehee says:

    So you admit that your racism leads you to slap retarded children around

    I admit to slapping slippy around, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because of racism.

  118. palaeomerus says:

    They are more equal than other animals where apple and milk and decision making are concerned. Except Snowball. And why not since they can walk like a farmer and wear clothes ?

  119. McGehee says:

    palaeomerus says January 4, 2013 at 12:15 pm

    Winner.

  120. Pablo says:

    I think fighting a progg using Alinsky is like fighting the darkness with shadows.

    I like the mockery part because it’s such fun watching them get wound up when you do it. But as Swift said, it is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into. Nor will you shame him out of it, especially if he’s shameless.

  121. palaeomerus says:

    Gaze not into the abyss lest the abyss go and speak with its lawyer and get a court order mandating that you remain no less than 500 feet away from the abyss at all times, and call your boss, and try to get you fired, and send you many cease and desist letters supposedly documenting your lack of compliance with the court order, and hire private detective to follow you around…

  122. McGehee says:

    and hire private detective to follow you around…

    I hope he’s charging the abyss good money.

  123. “Beware of any man who keep pigs.” — Bricktop

  124. McGehee says:

    Swift used satire to make shameless people look shameful. In a way that’s a sort of bending of truth and language, a manner of distorting reality.

  125. McGehee says:

    Never turn your back on a man who would rent a pig.

  126. palaeomerus says:

    Guns don’t stab people. Rethuglicans stab people. Allegedly.

  127. Ernst Schreiber says:

    And, OOPS!, it Mark Foley who got run off the Republican ticket for an indiscretion. Funny, isn’t it, that when the Democrat’s first “black” President, Bill Clinton, got caught in his piccadillos, the Dem’s media arm muffled their Alinskyite impulse in order to protect him. But, when a Republican Congressman takes a “wide stance” in an airport bathroom or, ahem, fondles a page, then they open up the Alinsky spigots on them.
    Which goes to show, the tactics are very controllable
    – not at all like Tolkien’s fabled, irristible ring.

    If you think that’s what happened then you’ve failed to grasp the nature of either Alinskyite tactics or their practitioners.

    Before you go down the Alinskyite path, please re-read “Politics and the English Language” at the very least. You might also want to refamiliarize yourself with the concept of Doublethink.

  128. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I prefer Goldstein to Alinsky myself.

  129. LBascom says:

    Winner

    Kinda missed the point I think. The metaphor isn’t really about the pig, but the wrestling.

  130. Gulermo says:

    “What is the point of your question, since you’re so insistent on an answer?” I insist on nothing. The question was not directed to you, but you seem to feel the need to answer, have at it. What I was asking Bob was if he had reached the point of no return, so to speak. And if so, what will he do about it.

  131. LBascom says:

    Politics and the English Language

    Yes, excellent. Go read one and all.

  132. LBascom says:

    Gulermo, some blockquotes and/or paragraph breaks would make your comments easier to understand.

    No offense…

  133. Gulermo says:

    “No offense…” None taken.
    Believe it or not, all of the comments appear the same on my monitor. Unfortunate, as it made reading stevaz’s comment a chore.

  134. LBascom says:

    I like the mockery part because it’s such fun watching them get wound up when you do it.

    Mocking pre-dates Alinsky, and is fun for everyone.

  135. LBascom says:

    I believe you Gulermo.

    You read all that? o_O

  136. McGehee says:

    The tactics spelled it in Alinsky’s rules pre-date Alinsky too.

  137. McGehee says:

    The metaphor isn’t really about the pig, but the wrestling.

    Being a metaphor, it’s also a simplistic way of making a point that may not be entirely appropriate to the discussion. The pigs in your metaphor like being dirty, but are empowered by a squeaky clean image.

    Just as Alinskyites attack their opponents’ image, we need to attack theirs. And we need to be willing to use what tools are available and best suited to the job. Right now we are in the position (Godwin forgive me) of the Allies, if Germany had gotten the bomb first.

    Does the fact the Nazis have the bomb make the bomb itself evil? Would any of us argue that we shouldn’t also be trying to get the bomb?

  138. LBascom says:

    Being a metaphor, it’s also a simplistic way of making a point that may not be entirely appropriate to the discussion.

    Whatever. What would Gandalf do, am I right?

  139. LBascom says:

    Right now we are in the position (Godwin forgive me) of the Allies, if Germany had gotten the bomb first.

    More like the position we find ourselves in combating terrorism.

    Paying the families of suicide bombers because that’s what terrorist nations do isn’t the way to deal with the problem.

  140. palaeomerus says:

    They don’t even care if they have public support. They think they can bootstrap stuff by wanting it. I can feel some of the addled feckless GOP in the house and Senate already loosening their belts so they can drop trou when the order is given and lean over the barrel efficiently.

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/04/Dems-push-eight-bills-gun-control

  141. LBascom says:

    The tactics spelled it in Alinsky’s rules pre-date Alinsky too.

    Yes, the Rules for Radicals is basically a handbook on how to exploit human nature for fun and profit. All in a handy little guide.

    The acceptance of Alinsky tactics is, to our goals as classic liberals, like accepting indoctrination in order to achieve enlightenment. The ‘double think’ Ernst introduced earlier…

  142. Ernst Schreiber says:

    There’s also the problem of ends and means. Can you really use subversive means if the end you seek isn’t to subvert the existing new new order, but to restore the old new order?

    This is especially problematic if what you really want isn’t the old new order, but a synthesis of the old order and the old new order, a new old order, so to speak.

  143. Ernst Schreiber says:

    (Now what the hell is that Sauer Kraut yammering about?)

  144. LBascom says:

    All I know is, when comes to new old orders, less is always better.

  145. palaeomerus says:

    Alinsky claimed that a lot of his rules were stuff that his mobster pals told him about running their territories. He just applied it to politics instead of extortion and managing black markets.

  146. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Somebody find us a Habsburg and a Bourbon and let’s get on with the Restoration

  147. newrouter says:

    oh to be a habsburg what with tasty vienna coffee

  148. leigh says:

    He just applied it to politics instead of extortion and managing black markets.

    There’s a difference?

  149. newrouter says:

    touch my hunky heart

  150. sdferr says:

    Back to Czik then: dis kai tris t’agatha

  151. steveaz says:

    I’m baaaaack!

    Hey, ‘just want to add a couple rolls of quarters’ worth of last two cents to this thread before moving on:

    Friends and detractors alike have asked me to clarify the points in my essay from last night. Like any engineered machine, my screed was designed to fulfill several distinct, personal goals for my personal delectation. I left the prior thread on Alinsky’s tactics very dissappointed in one of my favorite blogs. This is because, as a long-term reader of Jeff’s stuff, I expected the community at Jeff’s place to be much more daring and experimental than it turned out to be, and because the thread ended in an impasse with a crude consensus holding that it was somehow immoral to utilize a regularized polemical tactic in defense of Tea Party principals. This struck a nerve, but so did the severe cognitive disconnect and the astonishing lack of awareness that many of Jeff’s commenters’ display when exempting their own daily rhetorical habit from criticism while preening morally over using Alinsky’s Rules. Something had to give, so, sufficiently piqued by what I perceived to be a travesty of intellectual failure in Jeff’s Tea Party ranks, I began at once to frame a careful model of the comprehensive Alinskyite scold to unleash on Jeff’s blog with the goal being to, with tongue in cheek, persuade the community to rethink its religous taboos on using said same scolds, and to revisit the impasse in comments so as to nudge it in my own personally preferred direction. That is ‘the point’ of my screed from last night, and it has achieved all that I expected it would.

    An Alinskyite attempt at shame-induced persuasion must fulfill many strategic goals simultaneously while shielding its practicioner(s) from meaningful consequences; I achieved all of them last night, and more, all while flying safely above any significant reproach. This is not because I am such a sure-footed semantic goat that I can always evade the well-aimed criticisms launched by the likes of an Sdferr or a Bemoe; it is because the tactics work in elusive, diffuse and almost magical ways.

    Let’s list the successes, then have a celebratory glass of icy chardonnay and a restful night: At base, to be deemed a success, the candidate Alinsky-ite essay MUST elicit a response from its target to even qualify for notice and continued consideration in the judging to come. That minimum goal, I got. So Check!

    The next function expected of the successful Alinsky-ite scold is, upon impact it should generate an emotional, “off the cuff,” stupid-ic response from its target, and this response should be so rushed and reflexive as to provide ample harvestable rhetorical excesses and social tics to exploit for their salacity in todays, next week’s and future campaigns. This, too, I got, lots of, from the salacious, and the petty to the scandalous, in the target’s own words, all to be put to the uses of my choosing at the time of my choosing! Another big success for the piece!

    Another success, and the second to last one I’m going to describe for the record here, is I got my target-group to sell-out its moral-imperative to avoid at all costs using Alinsky’s tactics for themselves. “Make them break their own rules!” said the big-A. And it was a cinch to pull off. This quick supplication I achieved simply by wielding indirectly and off to one side, the threat of group-shame at the uncommitted subsection of the shame-able cohort that occupies the ranks of the conscientiously-confused-but-conscious conservatives, this conclave being the supra-target I already softened up with repeated blasts in my mammoth screed last night. When you hatch a crafty plan that relies on the actions of a self-determining cast “accidentally” contributing to your complex plans out of predictable human frailties like rashness, unchecked vanity and emotion, and the ploy works like a charm, then we can own the success because it was truly our own. I own this!

    The Last success that the substantial, late-night screed I posted last night can claim credit for is, increasing the level of acceptance for Alinsky’s Rules among Jeff’s hesitant posters. This was my original, driving reason for posting my screed at Jeff’s, and I believe it has worked! I cannot poll Jeff’s commentators with any accuracy, but the tenor of the opposition to Alinsky’s spiels has softened tremendously over the last 24 hours. I know it’s premature, but I think we can claim victory for my screed on this point, too.

    Sorry sdferr, got you confused with another poster. I read you, so I’m glad to know that you read me to.

    ‘Night all!

  152. sdferr says:

    When someone next asks you “Just what can a beachball with appendages do?”, answer only: “This!”

  153. Ernst Schreiber says:

    my screed was designed to fulfill several distinct, personal goals for my personal delectation.

    Your first mistake.

    Something had to give, so, sufficiently piqued by what I perceived to be a travesty of intellectual failure in Jeff’s Tea Party ranks, I began at once to frame a careful model of the comprehensive Alinskyite scold to unleash on Jeff’s blog with the goal being to, with tongue in cheek, persuade the community to rethink its religous taboos on using said same scolds, and to revisit the impasse in comments so as to nudge it in my own personally preferred direction.

    Your second mistake. Because it appears you haven’t moved anybody off of their previously held positions.

    As to the rest of it, I see a conversation about Alinsky’s tactics and their utility with some passing attempt at sussing out the long-term consequences of utilizing them, but that’s hardly unusual. It’s come up from time to time before and will undoubtedly come up again. And I imagine the areas of agreement and disagreement will remain largely unmoved.

    Next time, try “I’d like to speak to X point” and leave the performatives to Jeff.

    You might want to think about leaving the screedy polemics to Coulter, too. Or at least study her work so you know how its done when it’s done well.

  154. steveaz says:

    Gulermo,
    Como estas?

    Hey! Gotta correct you on something big guy. I never post comments at Patterico’s site – the registration has never worked for me. And I never post them at Ace either – same reason.

    Both ARE on my daily blogroll, but Paterrico’s been shortin’ us posts of late, and Ace, well, he’s Ace, and lately I’ve take a cotton to larger cabanas with cotton sheets where the shaved ice is free and the people speak in mulitsyllabic words.

    So, we’ve got another steveaz on the web? If we ever cross paths, I’ll kill the pretender where he stands!!

  155. geoffb says:

    “Just what can a beachball with appendages do?”

    And I thought you meant this.

  156. geoffb says:

    If we ever cross paths, I’ll kill the pretender where he stands!!

    Talk is so much easier in the VR world.

  157. geoffb says:

    Consumer reaction to the political rhetoric after the shooting in CT caused a rush of online orders at Cheaper Than Dirt! which led to the largest backlog in the company’s history.

    Cheaper Than Dirt! management had no choice but to suspend firearm sales while examining ways to meet customer demand and maintain the careful and lawful processes established.

    Firearm sales require a significant amount of individual attention compared to the automated system for non-firearm products. Firearm orders were being placed faster than the inventory system could update, potentially leading to an overselling situation and cancellation of orders on a very large-scale.

    Ammunition and shooting accessories orders more than tripled, resulting in week-long shipping delays. Since firearms sales are a much smaller portion of its sales and require more resources, the decision was made to utilize personnel in areas that would make the most impact servicing customers.

    The past three weeks have been spent catching up on the tremendous backlog of orders, training additional staff and increasing inventory back to acceptable levels.

    Firearm sales will resume on a limited basis beginning Tuesday, January 8, based on available inventory. The selection will increase as more firearms become available. Specifically, firearms that are in high demand are not currently available from manufacturers due to the lack of inventory. This includes most modern sporting rifles.

    Cheaper Than Dirt!’s goal is to maintain the level of service customers have come to expect.

  158. palaeomerus says:

    From Instapundit:

    Why ammo limits arbitrarily drawn up by overly emotional self righteous ignoramuses are a really bad idea.

    http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/woman-hiding-kids-shoots-intruder/nTm7s/

  159. palaeomerus says:

    Seen on Instry:

    “The Riddle of the Gun ”

    http://m.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun/

  160. palaeomerus says:

    From the above “I want more background checks and vetting style of gun control and close the private sale loophole but otherwise the NRA is right” article:

    “What a ‘real’ knife attack looks like.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ah_0gia4A0

  161. serr8d says:

    It seems to me, serr8d, it would be better not to assign our political views to the category ideology to start with: there could hardly be a better dead-end designed to fail.

    The key to your otherwise helpful suggestion is necessity, i.e., to find what is necessary to each circumstance. But that itself requires we constantly return to the origin of our purpose, or to say another way, to examine our principle(s), not so much for the sake of questioning them, as for the sake of deepening our understanding of them and to improve our aim as we unearth the hidden needful things toward achieving those ends without violating them or running counter to them (which latter is part of what seems to give people such pause as to Alinksy’s prescriptions).

    I use ‘ideology’ as, compass point. Observing me, my ‘ideology’ seems to observers as far-Right Conservative. But I’d wouldn’t have consigned myself to fight that direction, had not our Republic’s circumstances changed. After all, I did vote for Jimmy Carter in ’76, and I have a strong SCIENCE! background that’s quite opposite and annoying to some ‘real’ religious sorts, whom I will defend without question because just about any formal Religion instills in humans some necessary (and never innate) virtue and morality. Far better at this task than any other remaining source, is organized Religion; and, it’s still freely and publicly available to our sadly-lacking-both-morality-and-virtue ‘modern’ crappy society.

    My decision to vote and work to the far-Right ideological direction is now a requirement. Prior to the far-Left’s successes and long before they dragged this Republic Left (‘losing more slowly’ as jg has so aptly coined) the only real indicator I relied on for a couple decades in choosing where my votes were cast and support lended was a candidate’s NRA rating. Since 1996, there’s only one Party that has earned my complete support. A shame, that, because there’s some Democrats whom I voted for because their NRA ratings were excellent.

    But ‘Blue Dogs’ are dead, killed when Democrats went so far-Left and left me no other real choices.

    Now, today, all politics is are tinged (nuclear option) Alinsky. We’ve (they’ve) opened that bottle, that radioactive genie is out, there’s no choice left but to respond to their hateful Alinsky tactics with the nuclear Alinsky option. Otherwise, we, our ‘ideology’, will lose, and that means no freedoms unless we’re given enough leash by Leftists.

    Blame the Alinsky genie on the far-Left, but don’t ever hesitate to call on him. Until we have far-Left and far-Right again blended around a center, a Bell Curve if you need a visual, then we must pull opposite our adversaries, on every front they choose to open: guns, gay marriage, abortion, climate change &c. Our fight against these far-Left bastards must be multi-fronted; even if we are lukewarm to a particular facet of the battle, we must still engage. Because, like an amoeba, the far-Left’s ‘ideology’ is capable of surrounding and digesting us, spitting out what’s left as a waste product.

    So, in, like Flynn.

  162. steveaz says:

    Geoff,
    You are a buzzkill buddy…and I might deserve to eat some crow. But, wait before you pass the ketchup!

    I forgot the last time I commented at Patterico’s place, but you helpfully remind me that it was sometime in 2009 – at least three years ago! I cannot remember my login and password, it’s been that long.

    I responded in haste to Gulermo’s allegation that I was a shoo-fly troll there, which I am not, and have never have been. So, maybe I won’t eat crow, since my bad wasn’t so, well, bad. I’ll shoot, pluck and eat a wild sparrow instead.

    Thanks for the spike in my balloon, though! I needed to lose some elevation after my rocketing triumphs here this week.

    Landing gear’s down, breakfast’s cooking, and I’m gliding in for a smooth new year. It’s all clover and honey in my world!

    PS: 165 comments in this thread and counting! It’s been quite a run. But is it a record?

  163. serr8d says:

    ummm, steveaz, Patterico’s site has never had login requirements. You seem innately confuzzled.

  164. sdferr says:

    serr8d, we should talk. But first, which is to say, before commenting directly on your response, let me read it again to think on it some more, after which I’ll put down something better than this mere notice. Or to say another way, you’ve quite captured my interest! So please come back to chat.

    In the meantime, let me ask this: why are you wedded, if you are, as it seems, to the term ideology in particular? That is, is it a matter of necessity? A matter of mere alterable preference? Or a matter of superior use, perhaps? Anyhow, the gist of that is, where did you — or do we — come by it? But more about this later.

    (The stronger proposition you’ve suggested, namely, that “. . . Religion instills in humans some necessary (and never innate) virtue and morality,” is actually the deeper question I’d like to talk about, just to mention so it doesn’t go unsaid for the moment. But I’m off to think for a bit, which is only to say, for a few minutes.)

  165. LBascom says:

    ummm, steveaz, Patterico’s site has never had login requirements. You seem innately confuzzled.

    Is where Alinsky inevitably takes you. “forgetfulness”, lies, and confuzzlement.

    Or, as Charlie Sheen tells us, “Winning!”

  166. steveaz says:

    Hey LBascom!

    I used to shed comments like a doormouse poops. That is, frequently, everywhere, and carelessly. Ask me to name all the blogs I’ve posted at, and I’ll ask you to remember your first car’s VIN. Get my drift?

    After my 2+ year lull, I’m resolved to limit my exposure to a much smaller curcuit. Jeff’s place feels good to me. Wretchard’s blog Belmont Club” is my intellectual well-spring, so you’ll see ne there, too. And I’ll pop at Sultan’s place on occasion.

    About those mushrooms….. :-)

Comments are closed.