During World War 2 in the Pacific, American GIs famously used verbal call-and-answer passwords with the letter “L” – “Calla Lillies” was a famous one – because the Japanese language has no such sound in it; it’s hard for Japanese-born speakers, even those relatively fluent in English, to make that sound.
Likewise, an easy way to tell if someone is from Western Europe is to see how they pronounce a phrase like “Think Through The Thoughts Thurman Thought Thirty-Three Times”. A German will work hard not to say “Tink Tru Da Tots Turman Tot Turty-Three Times”; a French native, “Zink Zru Ze Zots Surman Sot Zurty-sree times”. Neither language has the “th” sound like American English does.
But if America comes, heaven forbid, to blows over our social and cultural differences, the social and cultural divides don’t really break along linguistic lines.
So as a substitute, perhaps we’d have to try this; tell someone a bit of news like this, and see if they regard it as good news or terrible news.
That should tell you what you need.
I thought the article was actually even handed, for the WaPo.
Despite public polling that indicates a majority of Americans favor more gun control, gun-control advocates have been losing ground for years because of activism at the state level in part because of increased political polarization, according to Sean Holihan, state legislative director for Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Now this is just nonsense. The reason state legislators don’t pass more gun control laws is not because they are afraid of the NRA, it is because they are afraid of the voters.
I get the impression that the reason gun control is more popular in polls than in voting booths is because people responding to polls and voters are different sets of people, and simple, one sentence poll questions are very different from proposed gun control measures.
I remind the reader that Stephen Paddock, the Vegas mass shooter who killed 60 and injured 400 in 2017, would have passed any “background check” ever devised by law enforcement.
MP, this is a redux of the earlier post. There, the arguement was that a tiny minority is being able to control the narrative. When did libturds ever care about minorities? And talk about hypocisy (as expected) – think Big Gay and Big Trans.
The comments are always a hoot.
“a well regulated militia means licensing.”
Read through the crimewatchmpls twitter thread. I assume ALL big cities run by progressives are the same.
You don’t see a lot of notices about concealed carry people committing gun crimes. What you read about, on a daily basis, is multiple shootings, armed robberies, and people spraying a neighborhood with bullets out of anger or insanity.
Not a word about this in the WaPo story.
why would there be? That would destroy the narrative, ahem, propaganda.
MP;
It’s funny that you brought up the Mandalay Bay shooting. My brothers and I were just talking about it yesterday. It’s funny that, unless I missed it, we never heard anything conclusive about it. There were at least three witnesses, a woman and two men, who told police that there was more than one shooter. All of them died under strange circumstances before they could testify. I’m convinced that Steven Paddock was a patsy. I’ve heard rumors about a Saudi prince fitting into the story somehow, but haven’t been able to find accurate information.
Bosshoss, I think it is worse than that.
Some people are crazy evil and there is no way to stop them.
Paddock had no history of mental illness or even being a crank. He had never expressed hatred for people in general or any particular group of people. He had a long term girlfriend. I am certain that an autopsy was performed on him and that any anomalies would have been publicized.
Paddock had no mental illness that could be diagnosed medically or behaviorally until he decided to murder hundreds of strangers and kill himself in the process.
He planned the atrocity meticulously, over a period of weeks. If for some reason no guns had been available, he would, no doubt, have devised some equally violent way to kill dozens of people.
Paddock reminds me of the guy behind this episode, except that Paddock gave off fewer signs warranting concern.
People are potentially incredibly violent. Almost always they keep their violent impulses under control.
Imagine that you are a reasonably wealthy human being. You control sufficient resources that you can buy two dozen semi-automatic weapons etc. Spend a day thinking about how you could kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time before you were killed yourself. Call it a novel-planning exercise, if that makes it easier to do.
There are probably a billion people on earth who could dream up the plan you dreamed up, yet only a few people a year actually do it.
The human imagination is our super power, it isn’t weird that people snap and go on murder sprees, it’s weird that so few do.
MP, you might check out this guy, he’s given it a lot of thought:
https://www.amazon.com/Fed-Up-H-Narcissus-Petit-ebook/dp/B08KWLZGHC
Thanks, JD! I have that book and I couldn’t for the life of remember where it came from. I did all the searches and nothing. I rather like the book (read it again), but I’d like to see the list of victim-culprits expanded to some who are a bit more consequential (if you know what I mean and I think you do). Not that I’d ever in a million years wish anything bad on the people who killed thousands with their lockdowns, incarcerations, and vaccines.
Isn’t that the same story as “Falling Down”, JD?
I always say “the same people that don’t like the 2nd Amendment are the same people that wanted to defund the police”.
I love seeing their reaction.
Haven’t read the book, but from reading the synopsis it doesn’t sound like Paddock at all. Paddock was living out a comfortable retirement doing what he enjoyed doing — drinking and gambling. He left no manifesto. He made a point of paying off all of his gambling debts before he went on his killing spree.
Blade, I loved that movie! Hadn’t thought of the similarities – unable to live under the new rules, fed up and willing to strike back – but certainly they exist.
The pickup truck is different, though.
I am afraid that voters are running out of options when it comes to sanity and decency. We are witnessing a game of censoring and hysteria. First, college campuses are polluted with those “space spaces”, and now there are even designated “free speech zones” (which means outside of these, it’s a no-free-speech zone!!). Many topics or books are out, as faculty does not want “trouble” or eagerly subscribes to the woke newspeak. Democrats appear to be totally cool with this, and embraces enthusiastically things such as the gender identity agenda in utter contempt of the overwhelming majority of the population.
Now we have a counter-attack in the form of censoring brought by Republicans, this time elementary and high schools. There is a grain of truth in these outcries. When you have teachers that state “there is no gender, it is a social construct”, or that ask white kids to apologize to black kids for slavery, we need to deal with the woke virus. Or what about the questionable preaching to children “if you are not antiracist, you are racist”? Unfortunately, Republicans are not taking a constructive approach to deal with the issue. Out of many examples, we just learned that many math textbooks in Florida were banned, presumably as they discuss “binary numbers” (which implies there are non-binary numbers, and, so shocking, that cannot be, that’s a prelude to indoctrinate the youth on non-binary gender!!).
Voters are left to conclude that we live in the dumbest timeline.