Purity 0
I have from time to time complained in these electrons of political “purists,” those who, if a candidate or nominee does not agree with their positions in their entirety, run whining off to throw their votes away on a Jill Stein or a Ralph Nader.
The other side of “purists,” I reckon, are the cultists, those who support their idol regardless of what he or she does, even if that includes, say, just to pick a fr’instance from thin airwaves, shooting someone in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue.
At Psychology Today Blogs, Adrian Picotic explores the latter. A snippet:
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Bringing new meaning to the term, “gun lover” . . . .
He said Williams first rubbed the gun along his body. Afterwards, he did the same to her, but she grabbed the gun when it was pointed at her chest and it went off, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Shinault would later change his story and told detectives that he had been pulling the trigger and it clicked as he rubbed Williams with the gun.
Guns and stupid, guns and stupid,
They go together like love and Cupid.
Let me tell you, brother,
You can’t have one without the other.
Make TWUUG Your LUG 0
Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source. Use computers to do what you want, not what someone else wants you to do. Learn how to use GNU/Linux and its plethora of free and open source software to get stuff done with computers.
It’s not hard; it’s just different.
When: Monthly TWUUG meeting at 7:30 p. m. on the first Thursday of the month (Junwe 6, 2019). Pre-meeting dinner at Chicago Uno, JANAF shopping center, 6:00 p. m. (map)
Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.
Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk Training Room (map). (Wireless and wired internet connection available.) Turn right upon entering, then left at the last corridor and look for the open meeting room.
Foxy Shady 0
Atrios points out that Fox News inhabits (creates? perpetuates?) an alternate universe.
Devolution 0
In The Atlantic, George Packer tracks the devolution of the modern Republican Party. A snippet:
Republicans have chosen contraction and authoritarianism because, unlike the Democrats, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. Its character is ideological. The Republican Party we know is a product of the modern conservative movement, and that movement is a series of insurgencies against the established order. Several of its intellectual founders—Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham, among others—were shaped early on by Communist ideology and practice, and their Manichean thinking, their conviction that the salvation of Western civilization depended on the devoted work of a small group of illuminati, marked the movement at its birth.
Via Juanita Jean.
Afterthought:
I think the author failed to give adequate emphasis to Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, in which appeal to racism and racists became an overt tactic of the Republican Party. The Southern Strategy was key to the Republican Party’s march from being personified by Nelson Rockefeller and Everett Dirksen to being personified by Steve King and Louie Gohmert.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Afterthought:
It is somewhat ironic that the biggest argument in favor of gun control is out-of-control gun owners.
