“Protect” Minnesota has a new executive director.
We’ll come back to that.
Modern American “progressivism”, like all its many forebears in the past 200 years, has been all about rallying people against boogeymen. From “monarchists” in the French Revolution, to “Wreckers” in Stalin’s USSR to the Wobbly’s “Bosses”, up through “the patriarchy” and “the man” and “counterrevolutionaries” in Red China and San Francisco in the sixties and seventies, and if you have a hard time distinguishing between ’em, join the club.
Today, the boogeymen…er, boogiepeople on the left are pretty much all the things that people who are included are told to be “anti”. “Anti-Racism” “Anti-Misogyny” (not just sexism, anymore – it’s the more active, more malevolent noun these days), “Anti-Fascism”, “Anti-Transphobia”, and on and on – all of which sounds like good things to be “anti”…
…and, unsurprisingly, when you dig into the “Root Causes” of all those nouns, all things trace back to “Western Civilization” in all its particulars: the Judeo-Christian value on the individual and their worth, value, rights and responsibilities and potential of each and every person, as a person with a mind, a point of view, and at the end of the day an indivisible soul of personal, societal, political, intellectual and metaphysical worth.
Those aspects of humanity are anathema to progressivism in all its flavors. The focus is on the group – the Marxists “classes”, the Nazi’s irreducible focus on race, the modern academic Left’s obsession with a byzantine network of intersectional identity groups. The individual is nothing but a vote (for now), an appetite, a widget to be moved through the production line of life (like Obamacare’s awful caricature of Progressive humanity, “Julia”). Progressivism is “Materialist”. Souls, individual intellects and thoughts and reams, all are ephemeral; humans are widgets that consume and produce, and whose worth and value (to those in power) is expressed via their membership in the collective.
Those widgets have a term. “Bodies”. Not people. Not brains. Not souls.
Bodies.
Anyway – “P”M has a new director. And unlike the dotty, dizzy neverending font of comedy that was Heather Martens, or the serial fabulist The “Reverend” Nancy Nord Bence, the new director presents us with a few surprises.
She’s “a gun owner herself” – which might be seen in several ways. Is “P”M moderating? Are they realizing that the culture war has slipped far enough away from them, especially over this past year, that they have to start speaking to people who need to be convinced?
And she’s apparently incredibly famous, since she apparently just goes by “Rashmi”. I’ve turned “Protect” Minnesota’s website, Facebook feed and other social media upside down, and not been able to find any reference to a last name, which is Seneviratne, by the way.
But even during the reign of the serial fabulist the Reverend Nord Bence, “Protect” MN wasn’t nearly extreme enough in its hatred of guns and (law-abiding) gun owners, enough for some people.
“P”M spawned a breakway group, “Survivors Lead” – basically a woman, Rachel Joseph, with a long history of progressive activism and a story; an aunt who was murdered, according to Ms. Joseph’s story, by a gun.
Quick aside: I don’t minimize anyone’s trauma over having a loved one murdered. But in the many times I’ve heard Ms. Joseph’s story, she’s never once mentioned a perpetrator, someone actually holding and using the gun that killed her aunt; that persons evil motivation, the legal fallout from the murder, whether that person was sentenced or not. It’d be wrong to crack wise – “what, did the gun animate itself?” – but omitting a perpetrator, his/her motives and the like from the conversation is incredibly intellectually dishonest.
Anyway – “Rashmi” and her apparent moderation are not going over well with “Survivors Lead”:
The extreme heckling the not-as-extreme about getting less extreme. That qualifies as “dog bites man”, at the very most.
Rather less so? There followed some more, er, ethnically pointed traffic on one social media feed (from which I’ve long been blocked) or another.
After which “P”M – operating through its usual social media persona, the omniscient third person that used to be Martens and Nord Bence – responded:
On the one hand, watching the agents of Big Left eating each other is one of my favorite spectator sports.
And if the biggest semi-organic anti-gun group in MInnesota (shaddap about Moms Want Action already) is pivoting from pushing Linda Slocum’s gun grab bill to highlighting the inequity of gun control (“Race, class and geography all play into who gets to have a gun and who doesn’t” – which is something every Second Amendment activist has known for 50 years) and speaking in the first “person” to the prudence of victims of violence to arm up, then in culture war terms that’s the sound of the first tank crossing the pontoon bridge at Remagen.
But…”white bodied privilege?”
What the flaming hootie hoo?
I thought for a moment – is this a shot back at the Rachel Dolezals and Elizabeth Warrens of the world, with their flip-flopping identities, by “actual” “people of color”, reinforcing the idea that while you might “identify” with one degree melanin or another, your apparent appearance still wins out in the great privilege lottery (which will, I suspect, get pilloried hard by the Trans crowd, for whom perceived identity is everything? I’ll let the fight that one out).
But no. It’s much less hilarious than that.
It’s “inclusion language” – slang or argot that one class of people use to track who is in, and who is “out” – to be sure. That’s part of it, and people are noticing:
Referring to people as bodies is a reminder, writer Elizabeth Barnes says in an interview, that “racism isn’t just about the ideas that you have in your head.” Barnes is the author of “The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability, The Girl Behind the Wall.” In intellectual discussions, theories about social oppression sound almost disembodied; “we talk about prejudice,” Barnes says, “like it’s just a matter of ideas.” The point is to emphasize the physical violence done to black people through slavery, lynching, and police brutality. In the case of women, the term “bodies” highlights “what happens to women’s bodies in health care contexts, in sexual contexts, in reproductive contexts.”
But behond that?
It’s a nod to the materialism of the left – that the mind, the thoughts, the indivisible soul of the indivisual human being is not merely irrelevant, but inconvenient to the obsession with identity.
Your melanin defines you.
In some ways its a cheap ad hominem – “of course you’d think that, you are (add a reference to your target’s melanin, or lack thereof)”. But pointing logical fallacies out to the foot soldiers of Big Left is a little like arguing salinity with sharks; it’s just part of the water they swim in.
So – gun groups eating each other? Good.
The debate contributing to the ongoing hijacking of the language? Bad.
The whole thing participating, in its own little way, in the further erosion of one of the ideals that’s made Western Civilization the most successful, and humane , civilization in human history?
Worse.
We’ll come back to that.
Circling back is old and busted at SiTD.
Which pretty much describes 99.99999% of the left.
Leftist trash beating white people with brownies is also old and busted. You’d think they’d object, but evidently those sweet gibs make up for a mountain of abuse.
A case in point. The Chicago public school teachers union has threatened to go on strike to resist going back to work. The majority of the students in that steaming heap of fail are black, fatherless kids. The chance that any meaningful number have even bothered to log into the laughable remote learning scam is in itself laughable. They’ll have to pay someone to read the package to make sure they’re getting the right ammunition for their 9mm pistols.
Chicago’s record of academic failure is almost equal to Minneapolis’s. In fact, on a per capita basis it’s way worse. Mayor Beetlejuice has been trying to get the union members back to work, but it hasn’t worked; they advise her to gfy. These leftist reprobates are once again, and to their direct detriment, using minorities to further their political and economic fortunes. Beetlejuice can’t come right out and speak the truth; so she has blamed Trump.
The present cohort is all but guaranteed to morph into a wave of violent predators…it’s not like they needed much help with that. And once again, it will be the dwindling, white middle class paying the tab for that.
I find it highly offensive to reduce people to “white bodies” and “brown bodies.” to people of my faith, rather ordinary Christianity, reducing people to being “bodies” is wickedness. The “sack of meat” is the least important part of a human being.
Interesting. Taken at face value, the ‘big tent’ section is little different from NRA: lawfully own or not, your choice, just be safe about it.
But . . . can I take it at face value? Lot of history to overcome.
But . . . a gun owner. Maybe a shooter? Could be an opportunity to mend some fences? Or at least, soften some opposition?
I volunteer to host a ‘get to know you’ session at my gun club. Send a few rounds downrange, maybe grab a cup of coffee afterwards, humanize the opposition. I might even have a box or two of shells laying around (which I no longer need since that tragic canoe accident).
What can it hurt?
Remember, Mark Dayton was a proud gun owner.
The rest of the response is frustrating to an old debater and Mock Trial Coach.
Attacking the critics as racists is ad hominem which is a red flag that you don’t have a legitimate response to the criticism.
Bragging about the new director being a woman of color is Appeal to Authority, a red flag that she doesn’t have any legitimate credentials to lead a gun-safety organization.
Blocking comments is a red flag they know their position cannot withstand scrutiny.
All those mistakes undermine the strongest part of the response: Over the past year, we’ve learned it’s more complicated than we thought, so we’re changing emphasis to regain focus on preventing gun violence instead of mindlessly opposing guns in general.
If that’s true, then this is a tremendous opportunity for gun-rights supporters and gun-violence-prevention groups to sit down and talk about what could be possible.
Whenever I see the words “x is a ‘safe space'”, I know that like most prog-talk, the meaning is the exact opposite.
But . . . a gun owner. Maybe a shooter? Could be an opportunity to mend some fences? Or at least, soften some opposition?
Of course it is. We have a President who got more votes than any candidate in history, JD. He’s a “uniter”; he unites.
Why wouldn’t the gun grabbing slags take this opportunity to reach across the firing lanes to let you inspect their new hog legs?
Maybe Rashi will share tips on where to get cheap ammo!
Joe Doakes wrote:
Attacking the critics as racists is ad hominem which is a red flag that you don’t have a legitimate response to the criticism.
Not according to the postmodernists. Your concern about “ad hominem” is a statement about white male power, not the capital-T Truth.
The worst part about post-modernist discourse is that the “woke” (note the term) do not apply their critical eyes to themselves. All of us are merely expressions of racism, the patriarchy, cis-genderism, etc., except them.
To me, it is obvious that being “woke” is an expression of the bourgeois social class. Just look at who the woke are: educators and the educated who need to work for a living, but not work with their hands.
I rarely debate the woke — it does no good, it is like talking to a zombie — but when I do, I always make it a social class issue. My credentials as a working class guy are unassailable.
I know the superstition – speak not the Devil’s name lest he appear – but I’ve just gotta ask: what happened to my buddy, John K? He never calls, he never writes. Is he okay?
Are blog trolls seasonal hires, like at Target? Only needed for election season, then they’re let go? That would make sense. Even someone as rich as Soros could see the value in pinching that penny.
Or maybe it’s a union thing – last hired, last fired? The Amagamated Union of Nit-wit Trolls? That would explain why the E’s are still around: they have seniority.
Not that I’m complaining, mind. It’s curious, is all.
Reek is giving Faphammer some lessons in telemarking, up on the birkie trail, JD. Then they cool down by snorting detergent and plooking each other.
Something must have been wrong with my guns. They always remained where I put them, loaded or unloaded. If they were loaded, they always left their safety on and they never chambered a round without cause. You don’t just find those types of guns just anywhere. It is possible to train them to behave themselves and not go out looking for trouble. God, I miss them. Since they were all lost in the fire at my hunting cabin, I’ve not been able to find any like them.
My dad had a pistol like that, a civilian model .45 ACP with fancy grips. He bought it while he was stationed in Korea. The grips had an inlaid mother-of-pearl tiger on one panel, the word Korea on the other. He carried it during that ‘conflict’ and somehow managed to ship it home. It was stored unloaded in a shoebox in his bedroom closet.
As far as anybody can tell, the gun never loaded itself, drove itself to Minneapolis, or shot a single Black man in the ghetto. It was always in the shoebox (and the ammo in the coffee can in the workshop where kids couldn’t find it – heh).
He passed it to me when his wrist got too weak to handle the kick (80+ years old), I passed it to my brother a while ago. His kids will get it someday. Still hasn’t shot anybody.
Defective firearms. What a nuisance.
JD,
Funny enough, in the Bloomington neighborhood I grew up in, there were 3 Korean War veterans, including my dad. Two of them were allowed to bring the M1’s back with them. My dad claimed that he could have brought his home, too, but he knew that he would be serving for another two years in the Minnesota National Guard, so he didn’t bother. Several years later, he regretted that decision when he found out that his guard issued rifle had to remain with them.
Woo! Hoo!
https://m.theepochtimes.com/americans-buying-guns-at-blistering-pace-fbi-data-shows-expert_3683064.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-02-03-2
If Minnesota is really serious about reducing gun crime, may I suggest stopping and frisking all black males between the ages of 15 to 30 all day and night everyday.
The poster about the availability of a gun increasing the risk of being shot by a domestic abuser 500% amuses me. No, not that I’m laughing about domestic abuse, but that the increase is only 500%, as we would assume that if a gun were unavailable, the domestic abuser would have a 0% likelihood of shooting the abused. In other news, people in towns with cars are a lot more likely to die in car accidents than people in towns without cars.
Gun controllers, along with other liberals, seem to be incapable of doing not only math, but also basic logic.
Bike, that’s because they think emotionally, not logistically. It’s another manifestation of the second-order-consequence discussion we had a while back. The logistics of implementing gun control are where it all falls apart.
Pretend you are Governor Walz. You sign the bill to ban private ownership of all guns and the Supreme Court lets you. Fine, private ownership of all guns is banned. That’s the first order consequence. Are we done? No, because the banned guns are still in private hands where they can be used to commit violent acts. Now you must collect the guns, and also prevent more guns from coming into the state, which is the second order consequence of your action.
So . . . block the roads at the borders, empty and search all long-haul semi-trucks, use explosive sniffing dogs to inspect all passenger vehicles and busses and boats and trains and airplanes . . . okay, good, no more guns get in.
Now collect all existing guns. After you announce a voluntary turn-in period and nobody complies; after you announce a small cash payment and nobody complies; you’re going to have to start kicking down doors to search for guns. Even if nobody resists, as you clear each block of the city, you’ll have to establish a perimeter with checkpoints searching everyone coming into the cleared area to prevent resupply from other parts of the state. As the cleared area expands, the perimeter expands, the manpower requirement exands . . .
It can’t be done.
Okay, don’t seize them, merely outlaw guns, forbid their use, seize them when used, hope to reduce numbers by attrition? Maybe. But guns last a long time and the shelf-life of properly stored ammunition is measured in decades. How long are you willing to wait for the problem to go away, particularly when gun violence will continue to occur because you didn’t seize them all, and because criminals understand the principle of Substitution?
And that’s the third order consequence – the realization that even if we took away every gun on the planet, women would still get beaten up and thieves would still stab people for their wallets. Taking away one set of tools does not eliminate violent behavior, it merely shifts it sideways to a different set of tools. You have accomplished nothing.
Worse than nothing, you have taken away the best means for honest citizens to defend themselves from younger, stronger criminals. You’ve made life more dangerous for the most vulnerable, the women and children. You’ve made things worse.
That’s too complicated to think about. So gun controllers don’t think about it. They just concentrate on the first order consequence and congratulate themselves because they care so much that at least they’re doing something. For the women. And the children.
The post talks about dehumanization. 1984 is a great book on the subject. And indeed it is being used as manual for the progressives. My wife decided to re-read it again this week. First time she read it was the year she left the old country and was amazed how well it described what she escaped. Now, she stopped reading a quarter of the way through because she could not stop crying – she was reading about where we are all headed.
On the scary guns subject. I just read that the following are prohibited in MN: Walther rimfire pistols, Cobra, Phoenix Arms, Heritage Arms, Hi-Point, and GSG rimfire pistols. Wot?
JPA,
That last graf is news to me. I know of people in this comment section with Hi Points and Walther Rimfires.
Apparently they fall under the Saturday Night Special category?
jpa, lots of websites recite that list but I can’t find an original source for it, like DNR or DPS or somebody with authority to publish it. Can you find the source?
The definition of a Saturday Night Special is Minn. Stat. 624.712, Subd 4:
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/624.712
No list. Where’d the list come from? Who melted guns to make the list?
I will clarify. I was dumbfounded as well, but this person usually knows his biz.
My Sig Sauer “Mosquito” 22 pistol is no longer sold by Sig. And apparently, was never made by Sig. Instead it was made by GSG, but branded as a Sig. Now GSG sells the same pistol as their own.
And I bought it when I lived in Minnesota, from a Minnesota dealer.
And when my father passed, I got his Hi-Poiint .22 pistol. Good thing I escaped from Minnesota before I was busted!
On the scary guns subject. I just read that the following are prohibited in MN: Walther rimfire pistols, Cobra, Phoenix Arms, Heritage Arms, Hi-Point, and GSG rimfire pistols. Wot?
All of those manufacturers, except perhaps Phoenix and only because I’m not familiar with them, make quality firearms. The .22 products cost less than the larger calibers though…maybe the reprobates just don’t want poor people armed.
I recently bought a TaurusTX22 .22 auto to maintain my training and practice routine without having to burn through hard to get ammunition for my EDC. It’s a wonderful pistol that gives all of the necessary experience a training session requires. It’s also very inexpensive at around $200.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3yWWCGGEHc
I also bought a .22 conversion for one of my AR platform rifles, for the same reason. Got several thousand rounds of .22 LR…bigger stuff, somewhat less.
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