Tagged: guns

Year end clearance

When did “Protect and Serve” become “Protect and Serve Ourselves”?

What’s the fun of a bloodless coup?

It’s not a parade until there’s gun-play.

Men are crazy. Men with guns are murderous.

The Rapture won’t be televised.

According to the “let them eat cake” principle of moral gustation, poor people should eat poorly. After all, it is their lot in life and beggars can’t be choosers.

Nothing happens for a reason.

Own goal

Mayonnaise is a staple of economy of scarcity.

Hip hop is well into middle age. It is an exhausted musical form.

It’s time to disarm police forces in the US as a public safety measure.

Populism, left or right, frequently walks hand in hand with chauvinism and xenophobia. It should not be encouraged.

Class wars are also culture wars. Always have been. Only traditionalist Marxists fail to notice this fact.

Marxist theory is dead. Marxist common sense is revenant.

Shapes of things

Re Jared Diamond: Guns and Collapse are not taken seriously in the academy. Books published for the commercial market intentionally cultivate controversy, at the expense of erudition.

Wishful thinking masquerading as journalism. How often I could apply this criticism!

Re Perez Hilton: Mining the trash bin of popular culture for profitable nuggets is America’s oldest profession. See P. T. Barnum.

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The cynicism of right-wing politicians is unabashed.

Right-wing parties and their politicians are especially prone to using the most symbolically violent language available. It appears that in the upcoming election, the UK Conservatives must shore up their populist flank on the far right. The swamp metaphor, an echo of Enoch Powell’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech, does the trick.

A similar phenomenon occurred in Germany in the 1890s. The aristocratic German Conservative Party was dragged into populist demagoguery by the presence of anti-Semitic peasant parties which threatened to pick off tradition Conservative “safe seats.” Occupying a position between the anti-Semites and the Conservatives stood the Bund der Landwirte (Farmers’ League) comprised of a rump of 5,000 Prussian large landowners and several hundred thousand peasants. The BdL’s political discourse was simultaneously populist, anti-Semitic, and elitist.

Just the same

There’s something to be said for the Miami Vice theory of policing according to which no suspect ever reaches the courtroom.

Mr Putin is the Chichikov of Russian politics.

It’s sad to think the future of Scotland hangs on the outcome of a TV debate. Territorial disputes should be settled the old fashioned way: by cannon, grapeshot, and heavy horse.

Nothing says ‘Merica better than an Uzi-toting 9 year old facing a manslaughter charge.

No robot could be as intelligent as a border collie.

Based on early reports out of London, Kate Bush is the Callas of proggy pop.