Time magazine has offered eleven ways to cope with the profound sorrow and anguish of Trump’s inauguration. These include: getting a pedicure, hugging yourself, singing Tomorrow from Annie at the top of your lungs, and meditating in the forest surrounded by fawns and bunnies.
I don’t recall a similar list four years ago for dejected Trump supporters, just suggestions to ‘cry harder’ and to stop spreading the Big Lie™ that all those mystery ballots appearing at 3 a.m. were indicative of anything other than The Most Free And Fair Election Evah™. To be fair, though, most Leftists are mentally ill, so coping with setbacks is a far greater struggle for them. To help them make it through this, the darkest day in human history, I offer eleven more self-care techniques.
1. Eat some eggs
True, a dozen eggs still costs three times what it did last time Trump was president. But eggs are comfort food, and you definitely need comforting today. So indulge in these rare delicacies, whether fried, scrambled, in an omelette, or as part of Mark Milley’s favorite breakfast, Eggs Benedict Arnold.
2. Get another booster shot
Sure, you’ve already had one this week, but why not another? They don’t work, but they sure do make you feel good in a placebo kinda way. For the Fauci Ouchie is to a Branch Covidian what going to mass is for a devout Catholic. Spike protein of Wuhan, you take away the sins of the World.
3. Move to Canada
You vowed to do it after 2016. You vowed again if he were reelected in 2020. With Literally Hitler back in the White House, this may be your last chance to escape the Republic of Gilead for the gun-banning, vax-requiring, pronoun-enforcing utopia to the North.
Say what? Justin Trudeau has resigned? Change of plans …
3b. Move to Cuba
For 66 years, Cuba, under the benevolent dictatorship of Justin’s Papi and Tito, has been a paragon of equity. Everyone in Cuba is equally miserable, malnourished, and oppressed! Every citizen, regardless of race, creed, or gender identity, enjoys regular water and power outages. Good thing you’ve kept your high school Spanish fresh by ordering at the taco truck.
4. Be raped and murdered by an illegal alien
This popular pastime really took off during Border Czar Kamala Harris’ tenure. But the very violent criminals needed for this fun activity will be deported faster than you can say ‘The Laken Riley Act.’ Hurry up and book your rape and murder today!
5. Pet your cats
Researchers agree that petting a dog or a cat is a soothing exercise that lowers heart rate and releases endorphins. You don’t have a dog. Or any children, for that matter. But you do have cats. Lots and lots of cats.
6. Trans one of your students
School teachers will be especially hard hit not just today, but tomorrow, when they return to their classroom to find the sincere, grandfatherly smile of Uncle Joe on the wall replaced with the scowling mug of the 34 Felonies And Adjudicated Rapist. While totally not teaching CRT — an arcane college subject, by the way — will now get you sent to a gulag, it’s still possible to surreptitiously trans one of the remaining cis holdouts in your class. That awkward autistic or lesbian girl boy will never be her his true self, unless you convince her him she he was born in the wrong body and needs to mutilate it ASAP.
7. Celebrate Ibram X. Kendi Day
At noon, this Federal holiday created by Joe Biden will revert to Martin Luther King Jr. Day. So get up early to spread Kendi’s unifying & uplifting message that “the only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” Then we’re back to MLK’s hateful, divisive rhetoric about judging people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
8. Scream on TikTok Because TikTok has only hours left before it shuts down forever. And just screaming to yourself does nothing to change things.
9. Invent a new constitutional amendment
Any amendment, whatever strikes your fancy. Go wild — if Joe Biden can ignore Article V, so can you!
10. Stick more pins into your Elon Musk voodoo doll
It is all his fault Trump won, after all. Also remind your husband that the only reason you’re now stuck with a Tesla is because he said the Prius ‘looks kinda gay.’
11. Take a long, hard look in the mirror
Because, actually, this is all your fault. So stop blaming MAGAts, ‘low information voters’, christian nationalists, or Elon. You’re the ones who shoved your radical agenda, with your DEI and your crime wave, your drag queens and all those personal fucking pronouns, onto everyone. You’re the ones who thought an incompetent, lazy, and extremely unpleasant individual would make a great presidential candidate, simply by virtue of being a woman of color. Time to change your ways. Or better yet, don’t, and keep on losing.
Oh, and one bonus suggestion:
12. Cry harder.
(c) 2025 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved..
Biden’s epic disaster of a debate performance has led to calls for, and much speculation about, replacing him at the top of the Democrat ticket. It ain’t gonna happen. The Emperor has no brain, and nobody cares.
Shock and Slack Jaw
In the TV series, Mad Men, there’s a scene involving newlyweds Kitty and Sal. Kitty complains that Sal has been neglecting her wifely needs. Sal makes the excuse that he’s stressed about a TV commercial he’s directing. As Sal pantomimes the flirty dance routine of the actress in the commercial, a look of shocked realization comes over Kitty’s face: her husband is a closeted homosexual.
Similar sad epiphanies struck millions of Democrats mere minutes into last week’s presidential debate. As with Sal in Mad Men, the glaring signs were apparent all along, yet the unpalatable truth denied: Joe Biden has advanced senile dementia. Even before the debate was over, Democrat bigwigs openly panicked. Their flying monkeys in legacy media — who for weeks had gaslit the public that footage of Biden wandering off, looking confused & aimless, staring catatonically into space, were ‘cheap fakes’ — turned on a dime. They were shocked, shocked they told us, to discover Biden’s true state. Calls for Biden to step aside roared down like an avalanche.
A Flock of Birdshit
In truth, as Bari Weiss so scathingly notes , they knew all along, but dutifully praised the Emperor’s New Clothes. ‘Dark Brandon’ was as massive a fraud as the Great And Powerful Oz.
After years of insisting the geriatric POTUS was as sharp as a tack , the pundits and talking heads are now frantically scrambling to keep up with the latest narrative. Mere minutes after the debate, David Axelrod suggested Biden withdraw. The next morning, sociopath Joe Scarborough — who’d recently declared Biden “cogent … better than he’s ever been,” solemnly declared Joe must step down. Then, as the Dem oligarchs started circling the wagons, the pundits changed direction once again mid-flight, dutifully returning to roost. Axelrod counseled Democrats accept the likely fait accompli of Biden as their nominee. Then sour-puss Mika Brzezinski began mopping up the mess on the floor. She chided Biden’s handlers for not ‘managing’ his age (they dragged him through too many time zones, donchaknow) before waxing fondly about how Biden’s age also brings wisdom and experience. In soaring tones, she reeled off his many astonishing accomplishments. “I’m just not ready to count Joe Biden out,” she concluded, voice wavering, “not even close.” I haven’t seen such a performance since I used to watch East German television.
Qui Bono? Nemo.
Calls to replace Biden ‘for the good of the party’ fall on deaf ears. For the Democrat Party — every political party ever — is but a loose affiliation of machiavellian individuals and their factions. Power within the party is a zero-sum game, and every politician is a Tommy Carcetti. They only care about the good of the party when it also serves their personal ambitions. They care even less about the fate of the nation.
Why would the cabal of deep-staters actually running the country — Anita Dunn, Ron Klain, Anthony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, John Kirby, Janet Yellen, et al. — toss out the puppet through whom they rule?
Why would Doctor Jill, bolstered by her Rasputin-like “work husband” Anthony Bernal, forsake the thrill of playing White House while channeling Edith Wilson?
Why would the lazy, incompetent, and/or criminal members of the Cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment, jeopardizing their continued graft and cushy positions?
Nor are are Pelosi, Schumer or the rest of the Democrat gerontocracy inclined to shake things up, lest it unleash a whole-scale purge of ossification.
As for the bevy of younger pols dreaming of the White House, why raise even a finger to boost a rival? Either Biden or Trump will serve equally well as seat warmers for their Oval Office aspirations. In contrast, a successful Whitmer candidacy forces Newsom to wait until 2032, and vice versa. Likewise for lurkers like Polis or Shapiro, whose machinations are timed to a lane opening up four years from now, not sixteen.
Incumbents facing uphill reelection battles, like John Tester, Jackie Rosen, and Sherrod Brown, must feel queasy about a deadweight at the top of the ticket. But no one’s gonna go out on a limb to rescue potential rivals, who’ve probably already been written off as lost causes along with retaining control of the Senate.
That leaves Kamala. Biden is her surest (and likely only) path to the presidency. No wonder she’s shamelessly & insincerely simping for him post-debate. The Party would love to dump her but, due to their ideological capture, can’t. Another sticking point: with Biden deleted, the Biden-Harris campaign’s massive war chest may by law only go to Harris.
The DNC likewise has left itself little to no flexibility. They quashed the primary process to anoint Biden. The convention, as it has been for ages, was designed as a mere pep rally. In their minds, the drawbacks of sticking with Dementia Joe are far outweighed by the chaos unleashed, and deep rifts exposed, by a floor fight.
Plan ‘A’ Or Bust
Doctor Jill’s plan has always been to ride Joe until he croaked, (and even then, she’d probably be tempted to turn the White House into Bates Motel.) Apparently, Jill also harbors delusions of becoming POTUS herself.
For the Cabal, it was always a crap shoot as to how long Biden could last. While they were able to (and to a diminished extent, still do) fool some of the people all of the time about his mental acuity, there’s no predicting when Joe’s frail (and likely Parkinson’s-ridden) husk will give up the ghost. It seems their plan was something like the following:
Mortally wound Trump with lawfare, ideally forcing him to campaign from a prison cell;
Exploit the resulting Blue Wave to expand the Supreme Court;
Dispose of Kamala by promoting her up to SC Justice;
Replace her as VP with one of their own — John Kirby most likely — confirmed by a compliant Congress;
Threaten Jill with the humiliation of 25A if she doesn’t tell Joe to retire, or;
Just wait for him to die;
President Kirby issues a slew of executive orders, rubber-stamped by the SC, including –
Blanket amnesty & voter registration for 40 million, eternally grateful, illegals, transforming America into a one-party dictatorship with the Cabal as a perpetual oligarchy.
Powerball Ticket over Scratcher
The lawfare against Trump, which has backfired to date and has now run out of steam, was a miscalculation on their part. Their hubris, in presuming they could continue to get away with the Dark Brandon charade, finally bit them in the face. In spite of all that, through swift and vigorous damage-control they believe they can right the ship. So far, it seems to be working, although several mega-donors are restive. The potential pay-off of Plan ‘A’ is so huge, it’s worth still pursuing it in lieu of some ad hoc Plan ‘B’ that necessitates the Cabal relinquish the reins of power. As noted, it’s in the personal interests of many of the Party’s princelings to go along for now. The media are already back to gaslighting. And, so long as the Democrat base prefer Biden’s head in a jar of blue liquid over LITERALLY WORSE THAN HITLER, the Cabal is likely to get away with it.
Make no mistake – none among the Dem party nomenklatura believe their own Chicken Little agitprop: a second Trump presidency will not spell the end of ‘our Democracy’. Indeed, it could prove beneficial for certain Democrats. Better to bide one’s time, harbor one’s political capital. This was precisely their strategy in 2020, when no one expected Biden to win — until covid and the Summer of Love put the election within a few thousand early-morning ballots’ reach. This year, most Democrat pols are perfectly willing to ride out the storm while praying for black swans and 2000 mules.
It’s all droll in a way, but let’s call this for what it is: a Putsch. Our nation is in the hands of an unelected Junta, facilitated by a complicit media and an irredeemably corrupt Democrat Party. Whether or not Joe Biden is at the top of the ticket come this November, a vote for any Democrat will be a vote for a Banana Republic style tyranny.
(c) 2024 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.
As Israel readies for an invasion of Gaza to eliminate Hamas, the free world must lend its unconditional support, render material aid, and grant Israel the time to finish the job. The reckoning only begins in Gaza — it must be carried out across the globe and at home in the West.
Slip the Leash, Israel
As Israel’s air force pounds Hamas installations in the Gaza Strip, and its ground forces marshal outside for an imminent invasion, the free world — with notable exceptions from Western Leftists — has expressed its wholehearted support for the people of Israel, and condemned the shocking barbarism perpetrated by Hamas.
Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, vowed to “eradicate Hamas from the face of the earth.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared “every Hamas member is a dead man.” In the past, the world has kept Israel on a short lease when responding to repeated terrorist acts by Hamas. Not only should the free world not again stay Israel’s hand, it should lend a hand in every way possible. Because this is not merely a fight for control of Gaza, or even for Israel’s existence. It is a war between modern enlightenment values vs. 7th century barbarism, between freedom vs. smothering, theocratic oppression. And, for once without sounding trite or hyperbolic, it can truly be called a struggle between Good and Evil.
Savages
Ever since its founding in 1987, Hamas’ openly declared objective has been the elimination of Israel and either the deportation or extermination of every Jew within. Since 2007, when Palestinians placed it in power in an election landslide, Hamas has converted the Gaza Strip into a giant paramilitary base dedicated solely to murdering Jews. Its own people Hamas has exploited as human shields and a recruiting base for cadres, while commandeering all humanitarian aid & supplies for its own nefarious purposes. Even their corpses are not wasted by Hamas. International news agencies unfailingly reproduce the hackneyed photo of a limp child cradled in a Gazan father’s arms (haya dictating the mother not be photographed) following the latest Israeli air strike — while forgetting that strike was reprisal for a Hamas rocket attack that had murdered Israeli children. Cliché yes, but highly effective on the soft-hearted and soft-brained of the West.
Such Hamas agitprop lost considerable impact, however, with their latest act of terror sinking to a sadism — including the beheading of little babies in their cribs — not seen since the Einsatzgruppen prowled Eastern Europe.
Dear IDF, Please put a bullet into every single one of these savages. Aim low.
No Quarter
This abject depravity has finally awoken the Free World, even many progressives, pacifists and sundry simps, to the long ignored reality that Hamas can neither be appeased nor negotiated with. Its continued existence can no longer be tolerated. Holed up in Gaza are 40,000 members of Hamas. They are not “human animals” as Netanyahu described them; that is an insult to animals. Nor are they human, other than in form only. They are monsters, demons, soulless and irredeemable, and all 40,000 must be exterminated.
Much hand-wringing is underway over the growing ‘humanitarian crisis’ in Gaza. All that suffering and blood is on the hands of Hamas, if not also on the Palestinians themselves for raising Hamas to power. During WWII, the US had no qualms about torching then nuking millions of Japanese civilians who’d suffered from a mass cultural insanity that encouraged & celebrated things like the Rape of Nanking, the forced prostitution of Korean ‘Comfort Women’, and the torture of PoWs. For four years, Britain’s heavy bombers intentionally targeted residential districts in Germany, which had given the Nazis only 37% of the vote in 1932. In heavily Social Democrat Hamburg, 40,000 civilians were consumed by a firestorm. By the end of the war, 80% of the buildings in hard left Berlin had been razed. Dresden, another majority Social Democrat city, was needlessly, vindictively incinerated in the closing weeks of the war.
To this day, many believe the German people deserved such death & destruction as punishment for the atrocities committed by a regime most had not voted for, and which had carefully hidden those atrocities from them. In contrast, Palestinians are dancing in the streets, openly celebrated the rapes, mass murders, and beheadings committed by the terrorists they elected in a landslide. All my pity right now is reserved for their Israeli victims.
A Gaza Protectorate
By air and by land, over the coming weeks, Israel’s armed forces will reduce the terror bastion of Gaza. The West must give Israel free rein to do so, and assist if possible. It will be bloody, brutal, and costly, but is absolutely essential. Though many Gazans won’t recognize it as such at first, it will also be their liberation.
Once Gaza is under Israeli control, it must remain so indefinitely as an internationally-recognized protectorate. Gazans who wish to stay will enjoy the same rights and liberties as do Arab and Druze minorities in Israel proper. For, lest we forget, Israel is a free democracy with Western values, the only one in the Middle East.
Any Gazans uncomfortable with that arrangement should be encouraged to leave. If you consider that harsh, again compare to history: following WWII, millions of Germans — at least the ones who hadn’t already been mowed down by the Red Army — were evicted at gunpoint from their ancestral homes in East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, and the Sudeten.
No Deal
For 76 years, an offer for a two-state solution has been on the table. For 76 years, the Palestinians have rejected it, instead insisting on a one-state solution: namely, a theocratic muslim Palestine with the Jews either eradicated or barely tolerated as second-class Dhimmi. When the moderate Fatah Party engaged in two-party negotiations, it was ousted by the Palestinian people. When Saudi Arabia signaled it was close to an entente with Israel that included tacit acceptance of the status quo, Hamas unleashed its recent barbarity to disrupt it.
Until the Palestinians wisen up, stop chanting, “from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free”, realize this is the best & final offer and finally negotiate in good faith, Israel must continue to occupy and administer both Gaza and the West Bank. That change of heart may come slowly or perhaps never, so the world must be fine with indefinite Israeli administration.
Iran and Beyond
After Hamas has been exterminated in Gaza, the Western powers must assist Israel in wiping out any remnants lurking abroad, Hezbollah included. The action must be ruthless, thorough, and pursued for as long as it takes. Assassinations and surgical strikes into uncooperative nations should not be shied away from.
Iran — itself a terrorist tyranny much like Gaza — must suffer the consequences of its support of Hamas. Severe sanctions should already have been imposed, except the Biden administration is impotent, compromised, and apparently infiltrated by Iranian moles. As for the EU, they are a bunch of pussies, afraid of the large, restive, muslim minorities they foolishly let in. Nevertheless, if ever regime change was merited, it is in toppling the medieval goatfuckers currently oppressing Iran and destabilizing world peace. For starters, any Iranian military or intelligence officers identified as having assisted Hamas should be liquidated.
Fellow Travelers
Every Westerner with a conscience must boycott the sick media outlets who refuse to call Hamas savages ‘terrorists’ but rather the anodyne ‘militants’ or ‘fighters’ — these include MSNBC, BBC, ABC, NYT, LAT, Boston Globe, the list goes on. Hopefully, these tasteless euphemisms will wake up people to just how far the media have sunk into ideological capture and amorality.
Social media are largely immune, but should at least be called out for censorship — Google for hiding search results, Facebook for ghosting or taking down posts, which either issue scathing condemnations of Hamas, or expose the true depravity of its crimes. [Update: Facebook is blocking links to this post.]
Photos removed by Facebook of an Israeli woman, bleeding from gang rape, being taken hostage by a soon-to-be vaporized demon in human form.
Here at home, the debased ideologues of the Left must pay a heavy cost for mindlessly continuing to blame ‘apartheid’ (sic) Israel while apologizing for terrorists. Free speech, even praise for infanticide, must remain protected. But as the Leftists themselves are fond of noting, actions have consequences. Every entitled college student or DEI administrator who signed letters of support for Hamas, every slackivist who celebrated gang rape and mass murder, should be exposed and forever blacklisted.
Any moral relativists or sham pacifists who persist in their inane both-sides babble and thinly-veiled denial of Israel’s right to exist, should be told to their face to go perform an auto-erotic act. That, or forced to look at the photos of the horrific acts they rationalized.
Fellow traveler orgs like DSA and BLM — who held pro Palestine rallies which they promoted with images of the hang gliders used in the massacre of 260 innocents at a music festival — should receive universal scorn and chastisement, and never, ever again be given the slightest respect, much less donations.
Jew Lives Don’t Matter
The Democrat Party must censure, or better yet, expel, the vile creatures who comprise ’The Squad’: first and foremost the terrorist-loving anti-semites Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, but also Sandy Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, and Jamaal Bowman for their ignorant & callous statements. Each should face primary challengers (although Tlaib and Omar will retain the support of their fifth columnist muslim constituency.) If Democrats demur on taking these steps, then decent Americans should seriously reconsider voting for any Democrat.
The free nations of the West should also take this opportunity to withdraw from the United Nations. The UN has long been a joke and a fraud, highlighted by some of the most dictatorial nations on earth serving on its Human Rights Commission. The apologetics and pro-terrorist resolutions that followed Hamas’ barbarism render the UN utterly morally bankrupt. Time for the UN to die.
The Religion of Peace™
All this is imperative, but much of it will take time. The rage and disgust all decent humans currently feel, must not be allowed to be replaced by resignation, apathy, or exhaustion. We must remain doggedly determined to root out all of the evil, all of the rot. Else it will creep back before long.
‘We need to address the roots of the conflict,’ we are told. Fine — the root cause is Islam. Not ‘islamic extremism’, for Islam is at core extremist. For the self-described ‘Religion of Peace’, the atrocities are the baseline, not the deviation. Its holy texts, the Quran and especially the Hadith, are filled with just the sort of mayhem, rape, plunder, subjugation, murder, and genocide that Hamas, Hezbollah, and ISIS commit. As Peter Quinn, the fictional operative in Homeland, observed:
What do you think the beheadings are about? The crucifixions … the revival of slavery? Do you think they make this shit up? It’s all in the book, their fucking book, the only book they read they read it all the time they never stop.
They’re there for one reason and one reason only: to die for the caliphate and usher in a world without infidels. That’s their strategy. And it’s been that way since the 7th Century. Do you really think that a few special forces teams are gonna put a dent in that?
Nor does there seem any hope of reforming Islam, creating a ‘gentler, kinder’ cult of hate. Worldwide, one in five muslims openly support jihadist terrorism; the number who privately do, but deceive the kuffar with taqiyya, is far greater.
Pace the naive bumper stickers, there is no coexisting with Islam. If you think you’re coexisting, it’s just the muslims biding their time until us infidels are weak enough to subjugate. For Islam is not just a religion, but also a political & legal system, a cultural paradigm, and a wannabe theocratic, totalitarian, world government. The Jews are just first on the list. Islam will not rest until it rules the world — that is its mission statement. In this aspect, Islam is no different than Nazism or Stalinism. As with those, Islam must be confronted with all our might and ultimately eradicated. In case you quail at this last exhortation, let me remind you what we are dealing with:
(c) 2023 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.
Once again, the Democrat presidential nominee will be selected, not elected. But it won’t be Joe Biden.
Joe Biden is running for reelection. No matter that 3/4 of Americans wish he wouldn’t. No matter that his approval ratings, never good, are at an all-time low. That his undeniable cognitive & physical abilities continue to worsen, or that he’d be 86 at the end of a second term. Or his son is almost definitely headed to prison, while his family’s shady influence-peddling schemes have been exposed. The ground-shaking discovery of evidence that Biden himself took a $10 million bribe leaves Team Joe unfazed.
Whatever palace coup was underfoot during the classified docs brouhaha, it was obviously thwarted. As an empty-headed marionette, Biden has value to whoever is pulling his strings. It’s his failing body that’s the problem. Frankly, the odds that Joe Biden is still alive in 2028 are slim to none. So Kamala takes over at some point.
That cannot be part of the plan. Kamala’s been crated so far, but as POTUS she’d be unleashed and unpredictable. Nor are presidential aspirants patient enough to sit through six or ten years of a Harris administration.
Piecing together clues, we can suss the Democrat’s real plan.
Not Up For (a) Debate
The Democrat Party has been rigging its nominations since at least 2008. Now the DNC has put the kibosh on debates. No repeat of the 2019 clown car, which saw the establishment picks stumble, while rogue Tulsi Gabbard stole the limelight and reminded voters that the Democrat Party bore scant resemblance to the party of old. Before they were fixed, the 2020 primaries nearly elevated Bernie, who actually wanted to implement all those socialist plans the Democrats only ever give lip service.
So this year, no dangerous flirtations with democracy by the Democrats. The delightfully batty new-age loon, Marianne Williamson, poses no threat. But RFK Jr. does. Both his pedigree and platform offer stark contrasts between traditional Democrat values & ideals, and the Party’s current authoritarian, war-mongering, globalist, culturally radical agenda. He must not be given a voice.
Then there’s the fact that no amount of Adderall or coaching in his earpiece can get Joe through 90 minutes of hard-hitting Q&A. Without debates or need to campaign, Biden racks up enough delegates to secure the nomination.
Pump Trump
Believe it or not, Alvin Bragg’s bullshit indictment of Trump was intended to help Trump. And it worked — Trump’s polling numbers shot up among Republicans, and have stayed elevated ever since.
Trump is the best match-up for any Democrat. At 76, he can hardly point to Biden’s age as a disqualifier. Joe may be frail and wan, but the Donald is bloated and pasty. Divisive, caustic, a raging narcissist, Trump repulses far more voters than he inspires. Twice, he’s failed to top 47% of the vote, and nothing he’s said or done since gives any indication he could improve on that.
Most importantly, Trump has been wired for demolition. More serious indictments are coming, and are timed to go to trial after the GOP nominee has been chosen. Trump’s campaign would be consumed by this. The Dems learned well from Hillary’s emails.
DeSantis Is In The Details
Biden vs. Trump is winnable for the Democrats; Biden vs. DeSantis is not. DeSantis is young. He’s a traditional family man who doesn’t pay hush money to porn stars. He’s able to put critics in their place without being an asshole. DeSantis turned a slim victory in 2018 into a landslide in 2022, winning over many disaffected Democrats.
So the Dems and their flying monkeys in legacy media have waged a psyop against DeSantis — first trying to discourage him from announcing, now calling his run quixotic. Portraying him as the Devil incarnate plays to the Democrat base, but they know it won’t stick in the general election. DeSantis scares the crap out of the Democrats.
Thus the strategy of boosting Trump, then swapping out Biden for someone who matches up better against Trump. Someone younger and more charismatic. We have indications of who that someone might be.
Waiting In The Wings
For months now, Gavin Newsom has been running a pretend presidential campaign. He’s traveled the South to insult Southerners, erected billboards across the country promising expense-paid abortion junkets, ran anti-Florida ads in Florida. Gavin’s pretend opponent is Ron DeSantis, against whom he’s focused his attacks, culminating in his recent, empty threat to arrest DeSantis on kidnapping charges. As he did back in 2009, when he parlayed an upstart challenge to Jerry Brown into the Lt. Governor’s spot, Newsom is clearly jockeying for something.
All of a sudden, Michelle Obama is in the spotlight again. On TV scolding America for its obsession with guns. On TV scolding America for its over-dependence on technology. Hobnobbing with bootlicker Steven Colbert to accentuate her likability. Did I mention she has a new book out? Considering the flurry of fact checks insisting Michelle is TOTALLY NOT a candidate, it’s pretty much certain she is.
The Plan Unfolds
The picture becomes clear. Two Democrat power blocs vie with each other behind the scenes. The Obamas, currently running the White House, the dominant force ever since shattering the Clintonistas. The Californians, their strength deriving not just from sheer numbers, but also money. As a one-party state with few close contests, California Democrats big & small serve as the Party’s milk cow, funneling donations into competitive races across the country. (Not a day goes by when I don’t receive half a dozen email appeals from Democrat candidates in far-flung states.)
A gentleman’s agreement is in effect. From now on through the primaries, Biden will be the placeholder. Shortly before the convention, Joe will be shoved out of the way — perhaps quite literally, with another serious fall forcing him to withdraw. (It’ll need to be a physical issue, as the Dems could never admit they’ve been foisting a man with pudding for brains on the country all this time.) A fight on the convention floor will ensue between Gavin and Michelle. Both will be on the ticket, with only the order of their names in question. And may the dirtiest pol win!
Hang On, Sleepy!
The plan is devious, machiavellian, and par for the power-mad Democrat elite. It has a few holes, however.
The biggest is its reliance on Joe Biden’s mortal husk lasting another year, when the codger could go any day now. With the placeholder gone, the primary floodgates open. President Harris will certainly run. Gavin will announce faster than he finished on his wedding night. Amy Klobuchar’s in, Bernie might even give it one more go. In this cluster scenario, Michelle must now actually campaign if she wants the prize. Suddenly, RFK Jr.’s polling in the 30s places him in front.
Spoiler Alert
Does Kennedy feel any loyalty to a party he considers a betrayal of its heritage? Were they to fix it so he can’t win (like they did twice to Bernie,) what’s to stop him from running as an independent with, say, Gabbard as his running mate?
The centrist Third Way may field a candidate. Andrew Yang might appear on a few states’ ballots at the head of his Forward Party. A potential spoiler already exists in Cornel West. Whether West garners 10, 5 or, just 2% of the vote, all of it will be poached from the Democrats’ progressive or black base. What once looked like a lay-up is getting dicey.
Pray There Is No Plan B
A lot could go wrong between now and next Summer. FD-1023 Gate is like a manure pile fire — it may not seem like much at first, but there’s really no putting it out, and it can only get worse. No wonder the Democrats seem extra tense and on edge. We can only pray that they have no Plan B. For desperate people take desperate risks, and power-mad people do mad things. Another pandemic, a war with Russia — you name it, these Democrats would use it.
(c) 2023 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.
When a trans-identifying individual committed mass murder, the powers-that-be collaborated to employ censorship and propaganda to shield their violent but useful mob from scrutiny, and get their divisive narrative back on track. Those of us who cherish liberty and tranquility must fight back, though not in kind.
As I write, I am serving a thirty-day suspension on facebook, caught up in a coordinated campaign of censorship and propaganda to protect radical trans activism from scrutiny over its increasing violent nature.
My crime was to post an image, which had already appeared in a number of media outlets, as an example of that violence. In a clever abuse of its terms of conduct, facebook instantly punished me for the hateful rhetoric contained therein.
In a similar move, Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists who tweeted a poster for the upcoming and ominous ‘Trans Day of Vengeance.’ (If you find that surprising for supposed free-speech advocate Musk, remember that at least one of his spawn is gender-confused.)
Restore The Narrative
All of this came on the heels of the school shooting in Nashville, where three adults and three nine-year-olds were murdered. Normally the Left loves it whenever school kids get shot so, while the bodies are still warm, they can clamor for taking away guns from people who’d never harm a child. Inconveniently, this killer turned out to be trans-identifying (increasingly common for mass shooters, btw), and who may have been retaliating for the recent passage of a Tennessee law banning so-called ‘gender affirming treatments’ (i.e., sterilization and mutilation) for minors.
So obviously any visual reminders of the alarming prevalence of enraged, armed, & bloodthirsty transgenders had to be suppressed. As was the Nashville killer’s manifesto in which she detailed her motivation. And don’t even think about questioning the wisdom of brainwashing an emotionally disturbed, autistic lesbian into believing she’s a boy, pumping her full of testosterone, then stoking her resentment to the point where she considered it righteous to shoot little kids in the face.
That potential PR mess averted, the Democrats and their flying monkeys in legacy media quickly returned to railing against the ScaryBlack-15 and transphobia. Indeed, they completely turned the tables, making this horrific execution of innocents all about the ongoing hate campaign against the ‘trans community’ — you know, those horrible Christian Nationalists who can’t appreciate the beauty of adult men with paraphilias performing bawdy burlesque in front of children, or the vile removal from elementary school libraries of books containing instructions on how to use a butt plug.
Green Light The Thuggery
White House Spokesblacklesbian, Karinne Jeanne-Pierre, announced “our hearts go out to the trans community as they are under attack right now.” She went on to praise the “LGBTQI+ kids” who are “resilient,” “fierce,” and who “fight back.” “And we have their back,” she added. “This administration has their back.” Kamala Harris flew to Nashville, not to console the families of the six victims, but to support the three state legislators who’d led an anti-gun totally-not-an-insurrection inside the state capital, where the mob raised seven fingers to indicate that the heartless killer was eyrself a victim. Two Democrat operatives later amplified the messaging by tweeting exhortations to shoot ‘transphobes.’
With this public blessing from the regime, the non-binary goon squad resumed its pogrom. When women’s rights advocate, Riley Gaines (one of the female college swimmers forced to compete against the male autogynephile narcissist, ‘Lia’ Thomas) attempted to speak at San Francisco State University, she was physically attacked by a mob, chased while under police escort, then barricaded in a room for three hours while the mob outside the door demanded a ransom for her release.
No arrests have been made, but the school’s Dean of Diversity has publicly lauded the “peaceful” (sic) protestors. SFSU is as likely to punish these trans-ally thugs, as the NSDAP was to chide their Brownshirts for smashing windows.
Fostering Hate For Political Gain
More than just turning a blind eye to such behavior, the Democrats openly encourage it, while fomenting the underlying rage. For the Democrats depend on perpetually resentful identity groups. The gender-confused, a burgeoning horde of misdiagnosed sufferers of mood & personality disorders, told to blame ‘transphobia’ instead of the anti-science ideology and Dr. Moreau butchery inflicted upon them. Urban blacks, told to blame ‘systemic racism’ instead of the social engineering schemes of the past 60 years that dissolved their families and devastated their social structure. Lonely, unhappy women, told to blame ‘The Patriarchy’ instead of the tag-team of 4th Wave feminism and consumerism that duped them into trading the joy of raising a family for soul-crushing careers, and left them with passive, infantile, low-T geldings as hook-up prospects. All forming an irrational, reactionary Coalition of the Whining with the anemic, pseudo-intellectual elites caught up in an orgiastic Six Year Hate against their orange Emmanuel Goldstein.
Whether it’s Antifa scum engaging in Burn, Loot, and Murder, DEI cadres silencing and attacking speakers on college campuses, pro-choice fanatics fire-bombing pregnancy clinics, pink pussy hat harridans picketing the homes of Supreme Court justices in violation of Federal law, Branch Covidians assailing US Senators in the middle of the street, or angry mobs storming and occupying state houses, the Democrats applaud and encourage it, while the legacy media apologizes for it, so long as it serves their objectives. First rule of the Left: It’s Okay When We Do It.
No Way Out?
The prospect for arresting this juggernaut and averting a national catastrophe grows ever slim. The radicalized Democrats, with their tight control of information flow — just one of the many tactics they’ve borrowed from both religious cults and totalitarian regimes — have convinced their followers that it is the ‘others,’ not they themselves, who are extremist, out-of-touch, hateful and violent. That perceived threat justifies their own violence and disregard for the rule of law. By Any Means Necessary.™
Many on the right are too eager to adopt this form of combat. Like Johnny Ringo in TOMBSTONE, they exclaim ‘alright, let’s do it!’ Like Johnny Ringo, they will lose that duel to the more experienced practitioner.
No, the only hope is an appeal to common sense and calm. The vast majority of Americans are not perpetually butthurt, are generally decent, and tolerant within reason. They can tell that most of the rhetoric spewed by the Left — the trans lunacy, the race hatred, ‘decarceration’, ‘Environmental Justice’, ‘Shade Tree Equity’, etc. — is pernicious nonsense. But they’ve been cowed into silence by the extremely loud & vicious minority, and misled or kept ignorant by the partisan media.
We are perilously close to open civil war or the imposition of an authoritarian state. The way to avoid this is by lowering the temperature, not raising it. Not by furthering division, but rather by emphasizing the values and principles most of us still share. Regardless of our prior affiliations, we all need to turn now to political leaders who take that approach.
(c) 2023 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.
Postscript
A note on censorship, and just how real and extreme it has become. One can never quite tell if a given post will be declared verboten by our social media overlords. Their terms of conduct are sufficiently vague to provide great leeway for them to punish wrongthink. Nor is an offending post merely deleted with a stern warning. No, the punishment is immediate, harsh, and beyond appeal. Twitter further demands a Struggle Session where the transgressor publicly admits his or her guilt.
This dynamic was presciently captured by Orwell:
A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police…. [H]e can be inspected without warning and without knowing that he is being inspected. Nothing that he does is indifferent…. Not only any actual misdemeanour, but any eccentricity, however small, any change of habits, any nervous mannerism … is certain to be detected. He has no freedom of choice in any direction whatever.
On the other hand his actions are not regulated by law or by any clearly formulated code of behaviour. In Oceania there is no law. Thoughts and actions which, when detected, mean certain death are not formally forbidden, and the endless purges, arrests, tortures, imprisonments, and vaporizations are not inflicted as punishment for crimes which have actually been committed, but are merely the wiping-out of persons who might perhaps commit a crime at some time in the future. A Party member is required to have not only the right opinions, but the right instincts. Many of the beliefs and attitudes demanded of him are never plainly stated, and could not be stated without laying bare the contradictions inherent in Ingsoc. If he is a person naturally orthodox (in Newspeak a GOODTHINKER), he will in all circumstances know, without taking thought, what is the true belief or the desirable emotion.
Such uncertainty leads — by design — to self-censorship. Working on the assumption that WordPress is in thrall to the woke mob, prudence dictates I still my own tongue to avoid further punishment. The curious can search the internet to view the images in question, or PM me for them.
Joe Biden’s usefulness to the Democrat Party is past. Further, his imminent downfall due to his involvement in his son, Hunter’s, shady business dealings, threatens to wreak collateral damage to the entire Party. So, as with a crumbling old building, the Dems are in the process of carefully bringing Biden down. The manipulated, albeit real, classified document scandal is their Emulex.
A controlled demolition. We’ve all seen one, and it’s a fascinating spectacle. An aging, crumbling edifice is intentionally and carefully razed before it can collapse on its own, potentially causing great damage to other surrounding structures or even the loss of human life.
Engineers place explosives at critical points within the building. Then, after everyone has moved away to a safe distance, the charges are denoted in sequence. The old building falls in on itself, leaving all around it untouched. The rubble is cleared and something new erected in its place.
This is precisely what is being done right now to Joe Biden’s presidency.
Setting the Charges
The discovery of classified documents in Joe Biden’s possession — some top secret and related to national security — is a very serious matter. More and more keep popping up: in a private office and scattered about his Delaware home, including in a banker’s box laying around the garage, with “important docs” scribbled in Sharpie on the lid.
He’s had them for a very long time. Some he took no later than 2017, when he was VP. Others date back to his time in the Senate, and raise a serious question of how Biden ever got his hands on them, when members of Congress are subject to very strict protocols for viewing classified material, and never allowed to take possession of it.
So why now, after all these years, did his own lawyers suddenly stumble upon this hoard? The timing is critical to understanding what’s really going on.
Classified material was, we are now told, first unearthed back on November 2, 2022, in Biden’s vice presidential office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a money laundering operation think tank funded by the Chinese Communist Party. The DOJ and White House secretly agreed to keep mum about it until after the midterms.
The lawyers poked around some more and found another handful of documents at Biden’s private residence. Those were the ones in the garage, next to the Stingray, which Hunter Biden, who apparently rented the house for $49,910 a month, used to borrow to drive around his underaged nieces/stepdaughters/girlfriends.
At this point, White House Spokesblacklesbian, Karine Jean-Pierre, assured the nation that the search was now completed. Biden is cooperating and takes classified documents very seriously. It’s totally not at all like what Trump did. These are not the droids you’re looking for. Go forth now, and write the news stories we tell you to write.
But she was lying. When the discovery of the first set of docs was announced, they’d already found the second, but neglected to mention them. And then came the announcement that a third set of documents had been found inside the house after the search had supposedly been completely completed.
MSM, ever the Democrats’ obedient flying monkeys, suddenly changed their tune. Abandoning their earlier mix of apologetics and disregard, now they are all in unison reporting non-stop on the fiasco and calling it a major fiasco. Charges detonated in sequence.
Why? Because not only has Joe Biden long out-served his usefulness, like that decrepit old building, he’s in imminent danger of collapsing and causing splash damage. Joe’s steadily deteriorating senile dementia can no longer be hidden. The GOP-led House will be investigating the contents of Hunter’s laptop, and they will reveal that ‘The Big Guy’ was actively involved in, and the monetary beneficiary of, his family’s influence-peddling schemes, including deals with the CCP. Further, so long as Joe remains standing, he’s in the way of new construction: namely, the presidential aspirations of more than a few powerful Democrats. And lately, Joe has been talking more and more about running for reelection.
Watergate Redux, But Planned
So how does this play out? These are serious felonies Biden has allegedly committed. If convicted of them, he could spend the rest of his days in a Federal penitentiary. But it will never come to that. The Dems just need to get Joe out of the way without embarrassing the entire Party in the process. No damage to surrounding structures.
When the Watergate scandal blew up in the GOP’s face, the Party leaders had a come-to-Jesus talk with Nixon: ‘You are in so deep to be beyond redemption. We in Congress will have no choice but to impeach & convict you. For the sake of the Party and for yourself, resign now. In return, you’ll get a pardon and a library.’
And that is essentially what’s being laid out to Jill Biden — for it’s she who’s encouraging Joe to run again. Sure, she’d love to play house in the White House for another 6 years wearing her Drapes of Tara dresses. But preserving a shred of Joe’s legacy has gotta count for something. As matriarch of the Biden Crime Family, she’s also motivated to not watch as everyone goes to jail while all the assets are seized.
So Joe will be allowed one more State of the Union, to receive standing O’s from the Dems for delivering a series of fabulist stories and patently false statements. Shortly thereafter — and I can’t see this going much past a month or so, as presidential campaign committees must be formed and first dibs on mega-donors taken — a (physical) medical condition will force Joe to resign. The investigation into the classified docs will slow to a crawl. If necessary, President Harris will issue the promised blanket pardon. Or she might renege, cuz she’s a batshit crazy, loose cannon.
Rats & Pawns
If there was any doubt that the razing of Biden was imminent, it was removed by the announcement that Ron Klain, White House chief-of-staff and de facto head-of-state, would be resigning in the next few weeks. The charges will only be detonated after everyone has moved away to a safe distance.
This may also explain why Jean-Pierre — easily the most atrociously bad PR person in the history of PR — has been allowed to flail & flounder for so long. Jean-Pierre won’t be around much longer, so can be sacrificed, left behind like some Japanese grunt in a tunnel on Iwo Jima. Nor does it matter how poorly she spins this scandal: not only can no spin make it go away, the Dem powerlords don’t want it to go away.
Who’s Next?
The Dems had hoped to avoid elevating Kamala at all costs, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Besides the potential for an administration on par with the reign of Emperor Commodus, there’s nothing stopping Kamala from running in 2024 and, were she to win, 2028. Her dear old friend, Gavin Newsom, is an impatient man. He’s premature in all he does. Just ask Jerry Brown. Or Kimberly Guilfoyle. So, the Dems must have some contingency plan to prevent Kamala from winning the primary. Letting her open her mouth during the debates should do the trick.
Besides Governor Hair Gel, plenty of other hopefuls are unwilling to wait until 2032 for their shot at the White House. Amy Klobuchar seems to be ramping up for another try; after her marquee internet censorship small journalism bill failed, she’s introduced ‘Free Britney’ legislation to regulate TicketMaster — anything to show she can get shit done. But her ‘Amy in the middle’ schtick won’t work next time, not after foolishly going hard Left to appease her DNC masters who would never let her win anyway. The chipmunk will likely also throw his hat into the ring, notwithstanding his complete failure as Secretary of Transportation. Because for his ilk (i.e., elitist parasites) utter incompetence is never a bar to seeking positions of power. Surely there will be others as well. (Watch for smoke signals rising above Cambridgeport.) Sadly, octogenarian Bernie Sanders has indicated he won’t run again, a disappointment to the entire Pacific Northwest and to all my friends who miss my impression of him. Still, the upcoming Democrat primary season should be almost as droll a clown car as the last one.
It will be interesting to see how things unfold, but one thing is certain: Joe Biden is going down and soon.
(c) 2023 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.
Skeptic Michael Shermer has solved gun violence in America. All it took was hackneyed tropes, trite observations, mathematical errors, obtuse reasoning, and a truckload of falsehoods.
Quillette has a new article by skeptic and author, Micheal Shermer, titled “The Cause of America’s Gun-Death Epidemic? It’s Guns.” In it, Shermer claims to have discovered the solution to the ‘epidemic’ through an application of the philosophy of science. The world has conducted a giant natural experiment, Shermer argues, and the results show that “the proximate cause of illegal gun violence is guns, full stop.” Ultimate causes — “mental illness, racism, white supremacy, a culture of violence, raging hormones, maleness, and the like” — are irrelevant to crafting public policy. Alluding to Overdetermination, (a concept invented by Freud, then adopted by Marxists,) Shermer argues that the chain of events preceding a firearm death can & should be ignored. As the “primary cause of gun violence is guns,” Shermer concludes, “curbing their availability and capacity can attenuate the resulting carnage.”
Of course, ‘gun violence is violence caused by guns’ is a tautology. The rubric ‘gun violence’ is itself an artificial category carved out of several distinct phenomena — suicide, crime-related murder, targeted murder & familicide, public mass killings, & accidental deaths — which ignores their actual respective etiologies. For each, the incidents involving firearms comprise only part of the entire set of incidents — most of murders, half of suicides (not “only a handful”), but only a tiny fraction of accidental deaths.
Shermer swaps between addressing these distinct phenomena individually or as total ‘gun deaths’, to suit his motivated reasoning. Likewise, he compares apples to oranges and plays loose with definitions, all in his quest to indict the gun.
Bad Maths
Comparing US states and then countries around the world, Shermer presents “best-fit regression line[s] showing that more guns are associated with more” gun deaths per capita. This is as profound as noting that Montauk has more shark attacks than Vail. But beyond that, as data analysis it’s pure garbage. It omits the 1/2 of suicides not involving a gun, intermingles suicides & murder, two very distinct social phenomena, clumps together all geographic & demographic groups, and fails to account for multiple confounding factors.
Most egregiously, guns of all types are tallied, when nearly all the firearms used in suicides and homicides are handguns. Only around 400 people a year are killed by long guns. It’s asinine to claim that thousands of bolt-action rifles in Appalachian Pennsylvania cause drive-by shootings in Philadelphia, any more than the pistol a woman in Philly carries for self-defense is responsible for someone swallowing rat poison.
Suicide
After devoting two turgid paragraphs to the trite observation that gun suicides are greater in countries with more guns, Shermer points to Australia, where suicide rates allegedly fell due to sweeping restrictions on firearms, including mass confiscation. However, a Rand study, noting “challenges for estimating the causal effect,” found
“these effects took place during a time of generally declining suicide rates in Australia. The fact that the observed reductions in suicide do not appear to be limited to firearm-related suicides raises questions about whether declines in suicides are primarily attributable to the [restrictions] or whether other social forces, such as those contributing to pre-[restriction] declines, account for these changes.”
The data from Australia seem to indicate that removal of guns affected the means of suicide, but not the overall numbers.
“Guns are far less forgiving than other methods of attempted … suicide,” Shermer writes. “When people attempt suicide, they don’t always want to kill themselves…. An overdose of medications or a botched attempt at slit wrists may grant someone a second chance at life. With guns, that is much less likely.”
When people attempt suicide, they don’t always want to kill themselves. Precisely. For the proverbial ‘cry for help,’ a less than lethal method will be intentionally chosen. But for a person determined to die, a gun offers the most certain way to get the job done, not to mention the quickest & least agonizing. When guns are not commonly available, as in other countries, hanging, poisoning, etc. are resorted to. Although the proximate cause is a noose, there are never calls for a cooling-off period to purchase rope.
Nor is absence of a firearm a brake on spontaneity or finality, as illustrated by the case of this professional, who after being passed over for a promotion, abruptly threw himself into the river. Try un-jumping off a bridge sometime.
Not surprisingly, many studies find that waiting periods “may serve only to delay suicides rather than prevent them.” For obvious reasons, I can assure Michael that his proposed limit on magazine capacity will have no impact on suicides.
Despite his fondness for global natural experiments, Shermer ignores the one on the gun:suicide connection. The US has 4x more guns than Austria, 6x more than France, 10x more than Belgium, and 400x more than Japan. Yet all five nations have very similar suicide rates. Worldwide, there is no significant correlation between gun ownership rates and suicide rates:
Murder
Shermer asserts that “homicide excepted, crime rates in the United States are comparable to those in other Western countries that have few guns.… It’s US homicide rates that are a category of their own —because of guns.” This is patently false.
Homicide included, the US is 56th in the world in crime rate, at 47.8/100K. Straddling the US are Sweden, with 5x fewer guns/capita, at 54th (48/100K), and the UK, with 24x fewer guns, at 64th (46/100K). For murder rate alone, the US is 76th. Brazil, in 16th place, has 3x the murders as the US with 14x fewer guns.
Moreover, murder in America is predominantly a problem of big cities, where but 1 in 5 own guns. Take Missouri, where half the residents have firearms, but nearly two-thirds of the state’s murders occur in St. Louis and Kansas City alone. Can guns really be the cause of murder, when an inverse relationship exists?
Accidents
Shermer finds it “darkly entertaining” how a “brief scan of YouTube videos. … will provide hours of … gun accidents due almost entirely to human error.” A more robust methodology would’ve been to review the actual data. The Gun Violence Archive recorded <400 accidental gun deaths for 2019. [NB: I previously examined each and every one.] Of these, only about a dozen were the clichéd ‘hunting accident’ type. A further three were the result of holstering mishaps (two LE and one civilian.) The vast majority were urban youth playing with a stolen or otherwise illicitly possessed gun they mistakenly believed was unloaded. A shocking number of these occurred while mimicking hip hop videos.
A further 38 deaths came from young children accessing a gun. (CDC, using a different categorization, records 51 victims age 14 & under.) Tragic as these are, consider that at least 4 in every 10 households, ~ 50 million, have firearms in them. Literally a one-in-a-million occurance. In contrast, in 2019, 74 children age 14 & younger died of poisoning, 645 from drowning, and 1,295 from suffocation, Still, no one calls for ‘curbing the availability and capacity’ of the proximate causes: cleaning products, swimming holes, & plastic bags.
Here again, a banal observation by Shermer: the US has more accidental gun deaths among children than do countries with fewer guns.
Public Mass Shootings
Citing “260 mass public shootings” for the year to date — a deceptive figure padded with gang shoot-outs, drive-by’s, family murder/suicides, and targeted murders — does not reflect well on Shermer’s scientific rigor. The standard benchmark is the FBI’s definition of ‘active shooter incidents’, of which there were 61 last year. Of the horrific Uvalde type attacks, there have been four so far in 2022.
An oft-repeated meme, repeated in the Quillette article, is that since its weapons ban & confiscation, Australia has suffered no public mass shootings. This is demonstrably false.
No less than five incidents, under the standard definition of a mass public shooting, have occurred in Australia since the ban. A further six shootings took place which fit the broader definition Shermer relies on above. Australia’s gun confiscation was also unable to deter the three deadly attacks by armed terrorists, the nine mass murders by arson, or thirteen family murder/suicides by sundry means. This equates to nearly 600 such incidents in the US.
Gun Control Shermer cites a study on Austria, where a 1997 gun control law allegedly reduced “firearm suicide and homicide.” Yet over this period, Austria saw a reduction in suicides & homicides by all means. As the cited paper itself illustrates, but fails to explain, gun control somehow had its greatest impact on suicide by hanging:
As for mass shootings, the only ones ever experienced by Austria occurred after the gun control law, in 2013, 2016, and 2020. This would equate to almost five per year for the US.
Gun Culture
That snide condescension toward gun owners, so common among the intellectual elite, and which blends arrogance with ignorance, drips from Shermer’s pen.
Following his Schadenfreude binging of negligent discharge videos, Shermer next attacks the “militant” NRA. Blustering that “the NRA’s solution to crime and violence” is “arming everyone and hoping the good guys out-gun the bad guys,” Shermer erects, then bashes, a straw man. “In essence, the NRA is presuming America to be an effectively lawless society in which might makes right, so let’s all arm ourselves to the teeth.” Uvalde, Shermer declares, “put the lie to [the] trope” that “[t]he only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
Just one day after Uvalde, a crazed, AR-15-wielding man opened fire on a large party, but was shot & killed by a woman with a handgun before anyone was injured. This story, and so many others like it that don’t fit the narrative, are rarely covered by MSM. In fact, defensive uses of guns to prevent crimes are abundant — CDC estimates over 1 million each year; other studies double that figure.
Half of all states now allow permitless carry — some have for decades, Vermont since it entered the Union in 1791. Yet the Wild West scenario of Shermer’s fantasies has never manifested. As the number of guns in America doubled from 1990 on, murders steadily decreased — until they abruptly soared following the breakdown of law & order in big cities beginning in the Summer of 2020. Did George Floyd somehow exert a spooky action from a distance to suddenly convert guns into proximate causes?
Shermer might reassess his haughty assumption, that private gun owners are ignorant, unskilled ER visits waiting to happen, by considering the extensive training & safety programs of organizations like The Liberal Gun Club, A Girl And A Gun, or the NRA itself. As for the prototypical policeman “routinely practic[ing] his craft at shooting ranges and in simulation drills,” Shermer could peruse this Youtube channel to discover that training standards among departments vary widely from adequate to atrocious.
Certain Unalienable Rights
Absent from Shermer’s fatuous equation is any recognition that ownership of firearms is a constitutionally protected right.
“Gun-control legislation does not mean outlawing guns,” Shermer assures us, “any more than the licensing and regulation of automobiles means that only outlaws will have cars.” There is no enumerated right to keep and drive carriages, Michael. Nor is anyone calling for limiting the ranges of vehicles, or for bans on assault Porsches.
In an apparent denial of every man & woman’s natural right to self-defense, Shermer opines that the armed civilian “contravenes our understanding that, except in rare and exceptional circumstances, designated law-enforcement officials have a monopoly on the use of force.” Forgive me for taking personal responsibility for my own safety. For, despite being well-worn, the adage, ‘when seconds count, the police are only minutes away’, holds true. (Closer to an hour for yours truly.) In scoffing at the maxim, ‘if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns’, Shermer forgets that what most worried the Founders was, if guns are outlawed, only tyrants will have guns. Frankly, his entire take on this smacks of authoritarianism.
At the end of the day, Shermer’s approach is fatally flawed. Even had he gotten his facts straight, performed proper data analysis, and disabused himself of tired tropes, a blinkered, scientific-philosophical analysis is inadequate to address a complex issue intertwined with weighty legal, social, and political implications.
(C) 2022 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.
Posted by Matt 
True Liberal Nexus 