Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> and most of them are definitely ***nut cases***, who already are.
> 
> If you're saying that most armed people are nut cases, I think you're 
> wrong. Many or most vocal armed people are nut cases, but the last poll 
> I saw showed at least half the houses had a firearm and ammunition 
> somewhere in the house or garage. And that's self-reported, so all the 
> people who don't want to admit it showed up as unarmed.
> 
Uh, most of the people you see recently buying up guns are taking them 
to political rallies, arguing that they should be allowed to pack them 
on trains with them, and complaining that they can't take them into the 
local bar. I.e., nut cases. The ones buying them for their houses... are 
just imho, confused about the reality of the danger, which is a) most 
people that get shot in houses by guns are not criminals, and b) if 
people that break into houses all know than 90% of the people they 
encounter in them will be armed they will do what? Probably shoot first, 
then rob you. The best thing to do if some armed wacko breaks in is to 
stop being there, not confront the asshole. But, logic doesn't work with 
people "defending" their homes.

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void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
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Stephen wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:54:05 -0400, Sabrina Kilian <ski### [at] vtedu> wrote:
>> Do it, you don't need a gun to be armed. Do you know where the kitchen
>> knives are? Do you know where the nearest exits are, and how to get your
>> family to them quickly? And do you know which few things in your house
>> are worth dying to protect?
>>
>> There, now you are armed. Use this knowledge with great care.
>>
>> Strangely, this works not just for intruders, looters, and other
>> neer-do-wells, but for fires, natural disasters, and lots of other
>> situations.
>>
> 
> Too much logic there not enough room for emotion or want ;)
> 

So? If someone was going to get a gun for home defense, a basic safety
course would teach the same thing.

>> When did the police become a means to prevent crime?
>>
> 
> Just after they stop breaking the law, themselves. :)

I was thinking more about how they shifted from an investigative force,
after a crime is committed, to existing with the purpose of preventing
crimes.

>> I hate to say it, but they are the same thing. One sides Freedom Fighter
>> is the other sides terrorist. One sides liberating force is the others
>> invading army. The only difference is which side you are on or, if it
>> was in the past, which side won.
>>
> 
> So cynical for one so young :P

That was just barely cynical, I could do much worse if you prefer ;)

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Shay wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> 
>> I hate to say it, but they are the same thing. One sides Freedom Fighter
>> is the other sides terrorist. One sides liberating force is the others
>> invading army. The only difference is which side you are on or, if it
>> was in the past, which side won.
>>
> 
> Funny that it's the Liberals in Che Guevara t-shirts who seem (or at
> least claim to be) most worried about blood-thirsty Conservatives.
> 
>  - Shay

The Liberals in Che shirts are worried about blood-thirsty Conservatives
for the same reason some Conservatives are worried about Death Squads in
nationalized insurance and internment camps for the GOP. Both are living
in separate versions of reality that just barely intersect with our own.

Personally, I think people are doing what they think is the best to help
themselves and as many other people as possible, perhaps in that order.

Post a reply to this message

>>
http://blog.riflegear.com/archive/2007/12/26/hello-kitty-ar-15---evil-black-rifle-meets-cute-and.aspx
>
> Wow. That takes a sick mind to come up with that

I'm suprised it wasn't Care Bears, the pun alone is almost worth it.

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Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> You know, this is the first time I've ever heard someone worried about a
>> citizen coup of the government. Every person arming themselves I've ever
>> heard of that has been worried about it has been arming themselves to
>> protect the government from the officials, not to overthrow the
>> government. I.e., to restore the constitution, not to overthrow the
>> elected government. I think this is probably a new GOP nutcasism, just
>> like the birthers.
>>
> 
> I don't think any of them believe they, themselves, will be the one to
> help over throw the government. But, there must be someone out there who
> believes more strongly, and will lead the uprising. And after that,
> while the opposing party is herded into the camps they were building for
> the secret NSA or Hollywood project, the righteous will need those guns
> to keep themselves safe from all the people that don't get picked up in
> the first round.
> 
> I think I lost the point of this hyperbole, when I started picturing the
> nutcase-caste as the invading army in any generic 80's Cold War invasion
> movie. And yes, didn't you know? The NSA is working with Hollywood movie
> makers to hide those camps in the 'on location' sets for various films.
> It has all been planned for years now, why can't anyone see it?!

Problem is, there are literally groups, many of them indirectly 
supported, for ideological reasons, by existing members of the 
government, (who have, in a few case come damn close to saying the same 
things, and in others ***are*** the ones saying it), who have actually 
convinced themselves that everything from the economy to the current 
non-white, possibly Muslim (they still insist this is true), likely not 
a US citizen (again they **still** insist this is the case), liberal, 
are signs of how corrupt the government is, and how it needs to be 
replaced. One of them, just this last week, stated that, "If the 
government continues down this path, I wouldn't be surprised if a 
bloodless coup took place, led by military officials, trained in nation 
building." One can presume this means the same people they sent to Iraq, 
under bush, and hand picked from the "Evangelical" groups in the 
military, which we have been hearing increasingly large numbers of 
complaints about. Others are vaguely more rational, and just suggest it 
might be better if Texas, or some other states, leave the union, to 
found their own **true** theocratic democracy.

No, I have no problem imagining these people are serious. I have no 
problem believing that too many people in congress, state officials, 
school boards, and many other places, where they have spent **decades** 
playing up the god card, and getting radicals elected, should, if not 
for it being "religious beliefs", be classed as clinically insane. And, 
I have no difficulty at all, based on who they fund, who funds them, 
their being board members, in some cases, of right wing think tanks and 
other such organizations, and the ties between those and even more 
radical groups, that if for one moment, they actually thought they 
already had enough military people, brain washed with evangelical 
gibberish, behind them, they wouldn't stop to think for one moment at 
trying to "save" the country from communism and liberal thinking, 
through military actions. Many of them have said as much one the various 
places they fund/get funding from, chair, or support, while never quite 
saying so *in public*.

Heck the current wacko they think is likely to be the Republicrat 
candidate in 2012 has hand picked what has been described as a laundry 
list of the worst right wing scandals and hypocrites, to be his 
"advisers". The only possible reason for doing this is because he, and 
they, don't think anything they got caught doing was wrong, and that 
anything at all is justified, as long as it supports the insertion of 
Jesus, "back into the nations government". One of them is a women who 
***Bush*** even had a problem with, and during her testimony, in the 
trial that lost her her job, she repeated stated that she made an oath, 
not to protect the "constitution", but the "president", despite the fact 
that her job required the former, and she couldn't have been given the 
position without taking the oath to defend it.

You have to understand, the sane ones are either jumping ship so fast 
its not funny, or sticking it out, in hopes to moderate the message, but 
if you look at most of the ones in office right now, the difference 
between the completely crazy ones, and the ones trying to "save" the 
party is almost nothing. They all think there isn't enough god in 
everything, they all think government is always bad, they all think no 
one, especially them, should pay taxes, they all appose health care, 
they all think poor people deserve to be poor, or they well.. wouldn't 
be, they all are jumping at shadows, and they all appose **liberals** so 
completely that they will, and have, and continue, to appose even their 
**own** additions to bills being put through, or even bills that say 
they same thing **they** proposed previously, based solely on the 
grounds that its "liberals" that might get the credit for passing the stuff.

Worse, they seem to have the mentality that *their* people can shout 
fire in a crowded theater, when there isn't one, but its absolutely 
horrifying if someone else points out that the other side let real moths 
loose in the same theater. The former is acceptable, for some reason, 
the later, an unconscionable act of rudeness. Why? Apparently because of 
who is saying it, and whether or not it supports the goal of putting 
more Republicans in office, or undermining the communist liberal agenda.

You have to be living under a rock to not get that these people are mad 
as a hatter, and clueless, if you imagine that none of them are serious 
about a coup, bloodless or otherwise, if they don't get what they want. 
The only reason they are not "serious" about it yet is because they know 
they don't have enough "soldiers" to pull it off. But, many of them are 
so completely deluded about their own positions that they will ignore 
"nation wide" polls showing the 75% of people want some options for 
health care, and instead say, "I have talked to tens of thousands of my 
own constituents, and they all say they don't want this options." Well, 
if you keep asking them, "Do you want the communist, government run, 
system that will kill your grand parents and force you to buy government 
health care?", then yeah, they probably all say no. If you asked them, 
"Do you want your neighbor to stab you with an ice pick?", they would 
probably say no too, but lying about their neighbors buying a truck load 
of ice picks doesn't make allow you to then go on national TV and tell 
people, "Everyone I talked to said they hate having neighbors."

If this was a comic book universe, half these idiots would be wearing 
funny costumes and conspiring with the Joker, in a plot to kill Batman. 
It actually seems to have gotten that bad, since these anti-science, 
anti-fact, make shit up, only our side is right, we need to save the 
nation for Jesus, and everyone that so much as suggests one of our 
factless, poorly planned, irrational, ideas might need to be rethought, 
is a damn liberal, including any Republicans that don't toe the line 
enough, are all ignorant, disinterested in *any* evidence, and barking 
frakking mad. And they are almost all convinced that saving the nation 
means making us more like Medieval Europe, under the Inquisition, where 
only those that accepted the absolute authority, and ideas, of one hard 
line religious view, and its **official** kings, and nobles.

Some have even gone so far as to suggest that democracy itself is a 
failure, though again, not in the direct public, but in their own books, 
web sites, and talks to some supporters, and we need to "fix" the 
problem by reinstituting some sort of monarchy, with, of course, them as 
the nobility.

How insane do these people have to act before you recognize that they 
don't have the same limits on their actions, or what they might plan, as 
the rest of us do? You can't reason with someone that rejects reason. 
**period** And most of these people have rejected everything and 
anything that doesn't make them "chosen", "better", "more moral", "more 
saved", "divinely chosen to lead", etc. Anything that does, including, 
and especially, someone leading that isn't one of them, is a direct 
affront to their world view, and since God can't be wrong about them, 
qed its everyone else that must be conspiring to undermine their god.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>> and most of them are definitely ***nut cases***, who already are.
>>
>> If you're saying that most armed people are nut cases, I think you're 
>> wrong. Many or most vocal armed people are nut cases, but the last 
>> poll I saw showed at least half the houses had a firearm and 
>> ammunition somewhere in the house or garage. And that's self-reported, 
>> so all the people who don't want to admit it showed up as unarmed.
>>
> Uh, most of the people you see 

I'm saying the "you see" is the important part. The people who aren't nut 
cases who are buying guns? You don't see them.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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On Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:40:27 -0400, Sabrina Kilian <ski### [at] vtedu> wrote:

>> Too much logic there not enough room for emotion or want ;)
>> 
>
>So? If someone was going to get a gun for home defense, a basic safety
>course would teach the same thing.
>

I was, in my own way, agreeing with you. And I still do.

>>> When did the police become a means to prevent crime?
>>>
>> 
>> Just after they stop breaking the law, themselves. :)
>
>I was thinking more about how they shifted from an investigative force,
>after a crime is committed, to existing with the purpose of preventing
>crimes.

And I was thinking of the phrase "A law unto themselves".

>>> I hate to say it, but they are the same thing. One sides Freedom Fighter
>>> is the other sides terrorist. One sides liberating force is the others
>>> invading army. The only difference is which side you are on or, if it
>>> was in the past, which side won.
>>>
>> 
>> So cynical for one so young :P
>
>That was just barely cynical, I could do much worse if you prefer ;)

I know, I know ;-)
I used that concept on this newsgoup myself several years ago when writing about
Al Qaeda and the IRA. To the disgust of Bill deWitt.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Problem is, there are literally groups, many of them indirectly
> supported, for ideological reasons, by existing members of the
> government, (who have, in a few case come damn close to saying the same
> things, and in others ***are*** the ones saying it), who have actually
> convinced themselves that everything from the economy to the current
> non-white, possibly Muslim (they still insist this is true), likely not
> a US citizen (again they **still** insist this is the case), liberal,
> are signs of how corrupt the government is, and how it needs to be
> replaced. One of them, just this last week, stated that, "If the
> government continues down this path, I wouldn't be surprised if a
> bloodless coup took place, led by military officials, trained in nation
> building." One can presume this means the same people they sent to Iraq,
> under bush, and hand picked from the "Evangelical" groups in the
> military, which we have been hearing increasingly large numbers of
> complaints about. Others are vaguely more rational, and just suggest it
> might be better if Texas, or some other states, leave the union, to
> found their own **true** theocratic democracy.

There are those groups. Where I disagree is that the members of the
government actually believe what they are saying. Call it cynical, but
most of them are saying what ever it takes to get their 'base' to vote
for them. Since that occasionally requires out-right lies, that is what
they do.

> No, I have no problem imagining these people are serious. I have no
> problem believing that too many people in congress, state officials,
> school boards, and many other places, where they have spent **decades**
> playing up the god card, and getting radicals elected, should, if not
> for it being "religious beliefs", be classed as clinically insane. And,
> I have no difficulty at all, based on who they fund, who funds them,
> their being board members, in some cases, of right wing think tanks and
> other such organizations, and the ties between those and even more
> radical groups, that if for one moment, they actually thought they
> already had enough military people, brain washed with evangelical
> gibberish, behind them, they wouldn't stop to think for one moment at
> trying to "save" the country from communism and liberal thinking,
> through military actions. Many of them have said as much one the various
> places they fund/get funding from, chair, or support, while never quite
> saying so *in public*.

I don't disagree with you that the entire thing is a problem, but I do
have trouble believe that many of the people are serious about it. I
grew up in a coal and train city. I am certain there are people who
believe any of the points you made above. What I do not believe is that
any single one of them is actually going to act on it except to talk or
to vote.

There are always the militant figures, the quiet ones in militias and
the loud ones screaming on national TV. The ones in militias may be more
dangerous, as the past 20 years has shown. But the ones on TV, I won't
say they are harmless as they do a great deal of damage to the country
by causing people to simply vote against the other team instead of
thinking on a larger scale. However, I have a great deal of trouble
seeing any of them as actual participants in a revolution of any sort.

> Heck the current wacko they think is likely to be the Republicrat
> candidate in 2012 has hand picked what has been described as a laundry
> list of the worst right wing scandals and hypocrites, to be his
> "advisers". The only possible reason for doing this is because he, and
> they, don't think anything they got caught doing was wrong, and that
> anything at all is justified, as long as it supports the insertion of
> Jesus, "back into the nations government". One of them is a women who
> ***Bush*** even had a problem with, and during her testimony, in the
> trial that lost her her job, she repeated stated that she made an oath,
> not to protect the "constitution", but the "president", despite the fact
> that her job required the former, and she couldn't have been given the
> position without taking the oath to defend it.

Who is the current likely pick? I stopped getting cable and try not to
follow the primaries until it is time to vote in them. I know Caribou
Barbie is one, but she actually caused some long term Republicans in the
small coal and train town to vote for Obama or for a third party. They
were scared of her becoming President.

> You have to be living under a rock to not get that these people are mad
> as a hatter, and clueless, if you imagine that none of them are serious
> about a coup, bloodless or otherwise, if they don't get what they want.

I don't believe that none of them are serious. I think that the majority
of them, serious or not, do not have the ability to pull it off. Beyond
that, I feel that the few how think they have that ability would find
themselves hard pressed to shoot their neighbor for sedition from their
cause.

> Some have even gone so far as to suggest that democracy itself is a
> failure, though again, not in the direct public, but in their own books,
> web sites, and talks to some supporters, and we need to "fix" the
> problem by reinstituting some sort of monarchy, with, of course, them as
> the nobility.

So? I have suggested that democracy is broken before. I wouldn't be the
first. Goggle "panem et circenses", bread and circuses.

> How insane do these people have to act before you recognize that they
> don't have the same limits on their actions, or what they might plan, as
> the rest of us do? You can't reason with someone that rejects reason.

How insane would someone had to have been to charge the White House with
a water gun 4 years ago to protest water boarding? People on the left
talked about revolution, people on the right were scared that one might
happen any day now. Years later, nothing happened. Not having sane
limits to actions is one of the definitions of insane.

The populous is, in my opinion, in no shape to take part in a
revolution. To generalize: the voting blocks of the right, those who are
following but not leading at the moment, are too scared of government
control to trust a few people to lead a revolution. Those on the left
want the government to act for them, so they don't have to act for the
government.

This constant fear of what the other team might do to cheat and win is
exactly the problem. There is no discussion because the other side
doesn't warrant it, so we should just yell at the top of our lungs too.
There is no compromise because the other guy may try to stuff a loophole
in and cheat. Maybe, just maybe, the people who are not part of either
side of the two vocal majorities still have it in them to kick up a fuss
and cause trouble. That remains to be seen.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> I'm saying the "you see" is the important part. The people who aren't 
> nut cases who are buying guns? You don't see them.
> 

Is this sort of like, "'you see' is the important part. The politicians 
on the right who are not completely insane, you don't see them." lol 
Touche! lol Seriously though, I will again repeat a simple principle, 
guns in people's houses are *presumed* to protect them, but the 911 
records seem to imply far more accidents and mistakes than actually 
"protection". This is sort of the "earth quake vs. tornado" mentality. 
People dealing with tornados are dealing with a known danger, which 
earth quakes are not. The odds of the ground opening up, like in some 
movie, and swallowing you whole, instead of just knocking a few pictures 
off the wall is like 1:1,000,000,000,000. The odds that a tornado will 
suck you into the sky, along with your house is.. probably more like 
1:2, if you are dumb enough to be *in* the house, and you got hit 
directly. Yet, people from areas where tornados are common often think 
people from California are insane for living where there are earth quakes.

I would argue that anyone buying a gun to "protect themselves" is a) 
exaggerating the possible dangers, b) failing to grasp the real ones, 
and/or c) actually think they are part of the great army of the faithful 
that will fight for the good of the country, when things go completely 
to hell. They may not plan to *start* it, but they are all damn sure 
they will help finish it. And, you can't just blame the news media for 
the current tendency for all of them to be class (c). You have to blame 
everyone from the conspiracy theorists pushing BS over emails and web 
sites, to the right wingers, who are lapping up all the conspiracies, no 
matter how insane they are, in order to justify their unwillingness to 
work with the current president. Under Bush, if you said something bad 
about the president you where a traitor. Why is it then that now, if you 
say something bad about the people "apposing" the president, you are a 
traitor? The only differences are that he is a) black and b) a democrat, 
and since Clinton didn't *quite* have so many wackos making things up 
about him, you have to wonder if the problem isn't a bit of good old 
Southern racism mixed in. After all, its not like all the groups like 
the KKK and other recent political failures, are flocking to the 
Democrats, or trying to get liberals, who completely hate their views, 
elected to high positions. In point of fact, we know for certain that 
some of them are, if not explicitly racist, then at least classist, and 
sectarian in their views of who should be running things. And, when you 
look at things like Palin has ties to, Morning Star Ministries, and one 
of the other crazy groups (I don't remember which one she is actually 
tied to), you find people proposing that, "entire regions of the world, 
ethnic groups, and even family lines, are possessed by demons, and 
saving the world requires somehow purging this influence."

Where are the sane Republicans in this mess? I am sure they exist, just 
as I am sure that there are sane gun owners, but, seriously..., it 
doesn't take a lot of crazy people to make a total mess for the sane 
ones, and the very existence of the crazies is what is "promoting" the 
conditions leading to more guns being bought. After all, these are the 
same people that refuse to take "rational" approaches, including proven 
ones, to social issues and law enforcement, but instead keep funneling 
money into, and promoting, shit that doesn't work at all, and often 
makes the problems worse. Or, as one person once said, "one of the 
definitions of insanity is doing the same thing, over and over and over 
again, and expecting a different results."


-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Yet, people from areas where tornados are common often think 
> people from California are insane for living where there are earth quakes.

Just so you know, where tornadoes are common, they're *usually* localized to 
a few small areas. That is, you'll be driving along, and you'll come to a 
stretch of undeveloped land a mile wide, with a bunch of houses on either 
side.  And you'll be told "that's where the tornadoes land."

Being in a tornado region is more like being in a flood-prone region than an 
earthquake-prone region.

> I would argue that anyone buying a gun to "protect themselves" is a) 
> exaggerating the possible dangers, b) failing to grasp the real ones, 
> and/or c) actually think they are part of the great army of the faithful 
> that will fight for the good of the country, when things go completely 
> to hell.

Sure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising

> And, you can't just blame the news media for 
> the current tendency for all of them to be class (c).

I disagree that most people you don't hear about are particularly worried 
about it.

I wasn't really talking about the politicians, but about the gun owners that 
you don't hear about.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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