Our Brilliance Is Obscured By Your Cruel, Cruel Words
Chronic self-flatterers mystified by mockery of chronic self-flatterers:
Update, via the comments:
As Liz notes,
The replies show it’s not ‘a meaningless sneer’.
Indeed. Though of course this may be due to our more primitive faculties and not being “outward and forwards” in our thinking.
Readers may wish to savour the conceit that the most obvious reason one might have a term for mocking the habitually self-flattering and routinely censorious is to “stand in the way of thought and discussion.” Given the famed woke tendency to shut down discussion and inhibit thought – a tendency that ranges from feigned tears and emotional bullying to mob hysteria and exultant thuggery – it’s almost funny.
Says Mr Outward-And-Forwards:
We used to call these people ‘considerate’, ‘tolerant’, ‘charitable’.
Via Damian Counsell.
Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
The second amendment doesn’t mean an individual right to guns. It clearly only applies to militias satisfying the associative property.
😉
until I visited friends in Texas in December 2011
Just this AM saw a post from an old high school teammate who lives in Texas now. What she posted of the Christmas lights in her neighboring, more upscale community that she and hubs take their evening constitutional through each night was simply fantastic. And not in the tacky, overdone Clark Griswold sense either.
So what about handguns? Oh . . .
This was in the midst of a fling a large number of big cities were having with requiring registration of handguns, so can rightly be considered a devious first step necessary to make sure that *once handguns were banned* that those attempting to circumvent a ban would have had their legs cut out from under. And that in the meantime all handguns were subject to confiscation if not registered, etc.
Naturally, the NFA in general was conceived in weaselry to pass a court fixated not on “is there a legitimate reason to do this” but “can you pretend that this doesn’t give an enema to Constitutional principle if you squint really hard?” No logical reason or questioning of motive required, nor of a slippery slope or poor precedent.
This also before gun ownership lobbies had really spooled up and taken an aggressive tack against fees and licensing and the like, as the bait-and-switch of registration drives for future confiscation was not yet so blindingly apparent to the public at large.
People who are largely thinking outward and forwards rather than inward and backwards. We used to call these people ‘considerate’, ‘tolerant’, ‘charitable’.
How could we ever think otherwise?
The English Army advanced on Lexington and Concord merely to enact safe and sensible gun control, hater.
You can have my 32-pounders when you pry them from my cold, dead artillery crew.
Remember when a certain class of atheists decided they wanted to be described as ‘brights’ (analogously to ‘gay’)?
You can have my 32-pounders when you pry them from my cold, dead artillery crew.
6″ cannon balls. You’ve got big balls. [salutes]
“The second amendment doesn’t mean an individual right to guns. It clearly only applies to militias satisfying the associative property.”
And to further clarify,”It is not to be confused with operator ring or operator assistance.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_composition#Properties
In early days – in fact well into the 19th Century – it was not unusual for militiamen to be expected to provide their own weapons. So, the right to arms applied to individuals who would make up the militia. You could not have a militia without having individuals independently possessing firearms.
Yeah…no. It’s not the leftists who need to be convinced, it’s the general population. THIS is the right’s problem. This appeal to reason is nice if you’re in an honest court of law. The court of public opinion isn’t honest, but it’s very, very real…
I agree whole-heartedly. (1) You cannot persuade leftists to abandon ideas they embraced for illogical and perverse reasons. (2) Few people in general are persuaded by reasoned arguments. (Insert joke about massive piles of CATO Institute white papers.) And that applies just as much to reason-worshipping Skeptics™ as to any random sample of the population.
The Founding Fathers owned private artillery.
Because what’s the point of getting a Letter of Reprisal if all you can bring to the battle is a pea-shooter? I’m honestly disappointed that Congress hasn’t issued Letters of Marque to ships patrolling the Horn of Africa. They’re happy to exercise every illegitimate power they can think of, but do they take advantage of this really cool power that’s actually listed in their instruction manual? Of course not.
reason-worshipping Skeptics™
Among the most difficult to sway with reason, because they worship the “reason” of people holding higher status in the pretend-meritocracy of scientism and progressivism. Those in charge are the smartest, and the most moral, and it would be dangerously impudent to question them.
They will shy away from any cogent argument which challenges their preconceptions like a vampire, because anything which resembles Thought but isn’t approved must be The Unthought. A soul-corrupting seductive wrongness. If they allow themselves even to consider an Unperson’s Unthought, even for a moment, it may infect and cast them into the outer darkness.
One place you can vividly see the phenomenon in action is in the arrogation of any and all plausible note of conspiracy or misconduct in government to being identical to belief that JFK was killed by Rasputin. They feign humor and mock, but their vehemence and anger is unmistakable, along with fear. “You can’t say such things!” They sense in you the devil – or possibly just “conspiracy cooties”.
And they say Leftists aren’t religious. Nor childish.
Of humorous note: the modern self-appointed Skeptic Community’s involvement in science fiction and fantasy conventions, where with one breath they will claim any visionary on flimsy (and conspiracist grounds) of having been a Skeptic in their soul, in another breath try to reconcile the current SJW vogue with the Human Wave high-concept science fiction tradition of such as Asimov (and their own guilty pleasure taken in fantasy), and in another breath conduct seminars to Voxsplain how biological sex differences are a myth. No, really.
do they take advantage of this really cool power that’s actually listed in their instruction manual?
The worst thing about being “condescended to by one’s inferiors” is that they aren’t even cool inferiors.
You’ve got big balls. [salutes]
[ Peers over spectacles. ]
The crisis for Mozza will be when someone comes along and declares him ‘Not woke enough.’
When you paddle in the stream of wokeness, there is always a tidal wave of greater woke waiting upstream ready to wash you away.
“Woke” is ghetto speak. Hard pass.
Farnsworth A Boys Anti-Tank rifle! For less than a 100 bucks . . ..
It is but to dream. Although I suspect my local range would frown up it. I imagine it would make short work of our berms.
“Woke” is ghetto speak.
Didn’t know that. Wondered if it was derived/descended from “conscious” which was used a lot by vegans and such types but never bothered to try to find out.
“frown upon it”. more coffee needed.
“Woke” was as far as I can tell a word which originated in the Not-A-House-Slave, Honest, establishment of the vote plantation, to indicate that one had “woken up” -> become “woke”, being aware of the Secret Truth underlying everything. White Supremacy, Patriarchy, etc. – all the usual suspects to blame in a varying blend for Why Am I Not Queen By Now, You May Ask.
An announcement to all and sundry that one had suffered a mental break now fueling a confirmation bias/conspiracy theory and found oneself surrounded by witting and unwitting conspirators against one. Sorry, that one “awoke” and jettisoned the false consciousness that not everyone was out to get them. Woke, but not Awakened.
Pace Wolfe, it’s more authentic if it’s not proper English.
It was then adopted by upper-middle-class white wine moms and other smugginses to signal that they were Down With The Struggle, so far as was convenient to social preening – grammatic awkwardness be hanged.
“Smugginses”. Ha! Perfect. I shall use it at the first opportunity.
Sporkatus, thank you. I learn all sorts of things here.
Woke, example usage:
“I used to think not all white people were like that. But then I got woke.”
Really tragic. Defining a moment of “getting religion” in the freeing capacity of blaming other people for your problems. In its native environment, disheartening. In its expanded environment of shrewish childless businessmen’s wives in the HOA, friendless librarians, and baristas, more than a little bit ridiculous.
smugginses
Meant by me to be a portmanteau of “smug” and “juggins”, in the comic plural. I’m sure I’m not the only one to have done it.
This week’s Ephemera has been compiled and should materialise in… three hours.
and in another breath conduct seminars to Voxsplain how biological sex differences are a myth
I blame transhumanism. There’s been a curious shifting of the goalposts from “in the future, we will be able to rewrite our brains and our biology to whatever we want” to “our brains and biology are whatever we want right now“.
It’s really no different from Fans are Slans, or Otherkin, or Trekkies. There’s a very large proportion of F/SF fandom that can’t handle the real world and retreats into their favorite fictional setting as a coping mechanism. Once upon a time we made fun of them for this. Now we celebrate it.
One place you can vividly see the phenomenon in action is in the arrogation of any and all plausible note of conspiracy or misconduct in government to being identical to belief that JFK was killed by Rasputin.
I have indeed noticed a Strange Lack of Skepticism regarding the claim that ever bigger government is an undoubtable good. My personal suspicion is that much of the Skeptic movement was started by leftists as just one of many ways to tear down our civilization in preparation for the Glorious Socialist Future.
It’s really no different from Fans are Slans…
That’s a slogan that I haven’t heard in a while. Not that fans don’t tend to think they are superior, but they don’t voice that particular slogan anymore.
…or Otherkin…
Making run-of-the-mill fans seem superior by comparison. :-O
“our brains and biology are whatever we want right now”
The Blank Slate
HypothesisDogma does seem to be extremely popular with that crowd.“And not in the tacky, overdone Clark Griswold sense either.”
“overdone” is not a commonly used word in Texas. Save for beef, that is.
Strange Lack of Skepticism…ever bigger government
I had a coworker, fervent Redditor: not to put too fine a point on it, but something of a dunce.
He fancied himself a libertarian, but earnestly endorsed *aspects* of socialism because he and his mom had been on food stamps once; he who could not be contained on “it’s the corporations/religion, man” and whose favorite phrase might as well have been “there ought to be a law”. So much for any adherence to the free market, then.
Finally, I asked him to consider that the single biggest corporation – with a monopoly on force and no fear of consequences for almost anything it might do – was Government Inc. It seemed for a moment that realization flickered in his eyes…
Just a moment, though.
That’s a slogan that I haven’t heard in a while.
Not since the 1950’s anyway. My point was that this has been going on for quite a while.
In 1952, it takes a special kind of self-absorption to think “Yeah! We’re super-intelligent and totally persecuted for it! Just like the Jews“
In 1952, it takes a special kind of self-absorption to think “Yeah! We’re super-intelligent and totally persecuted for it! Just like the Jews”
“It has nothing to do with our poor hygiene and lack of social graces!”
Quite the thread here, inspiring these comments:
Cayleygraph:
Among classical liberals I always self-identify as a Hoary Old Tory (var. High Church Monarchist). Annoys the hell out of people, but there it is.
WTP:
Yanquis would do well to look at the historical roots of the U.S. Bill of Rights, which are in the Bill of Rights (1688 Ch. 2 1 Will. and Mar. Sess. 2). When you read them side by side you see some virtually identical wording. The 1688 Bill was large in the minds of the Founders. The Bill is clear that it’s not about a reserve army but that “That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law.”
Leaving aside the religious test, unique to the time, it’s explicit that the arms are “for their defence”. It codifies the right of armed self-defence. That is the valid interpretation of the Second Amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights. Not the National Guard; not deer season in the Alleghenies; not restricted to when you’re a-fixin’ a squirrel perloo. Arms for your defence.
Darleen and UTF point out the explicit phrase “of the people”. Correct, and that stems directly from the 1689 Bill. The true meaning of “well-regulated militia” becomes a side-issue once that is recognized.
Spork:
First, minor pedantry: by the 1770s it was the British, rather than the English army, and (as fans of Yosemite Sam will be fully aware) it was heavy on Hessians.
Nextlywise, on the matter of AR-15s, they are recently (post-Wortman massacre) banned up here, as is the FN-FAL and derivatives. So, to be precise, that’s the Army’s current rifle (C7/C8) and its immediate predecessors (FN C1 and C2). Governments don’t greatly care about this right any more.
Farnsworth:
The Boys was mostly made by BSA in the UK and by Inglis in Canada. Much later I was peripherally concerned with a soil cleanup on the Inglis plant.
RNB:
My planned rejoinder – wish I’d got a chance to use it on an atheist of the evangelical wing – was “A bright? How nice. I’m a ‘good’.”
PST:
On ideas embraced for illogical reasons, there is always Dean Swift’s aphorism: “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”
Spork, Dan, PST:
“Sporkatus, thank you. I learn all sorts of things here.” Ditto.
I had never taken enough interest in SF/F to know about Fans are Slans, but a few moments Wikiry informed me. I recognized A.E. van Vogt’s name from Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies In The Name of Science, which roasts Vogt for his interest in dianetics and in the (now almost universally forgotten) Bates eye-exercise techniques. SF/F lives on credulity like that…well, and poor hygiene, and lack of social graces.
I recognized A.E. van Vogt’s name from Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies In The Name of Science, which roasts Vogt for his interest in dianetics and in the (now almost universally forgotten) Bates eye-exercise techniques.
I’d completely forgotten about the Bates eye exercise hokum.
Dianetics was sometimes mocked as “Diuretics.” Isaac Asimov told a funny anecdote (in his autobiography?) about being pressured by editor John Campbell to be tested by the E-Meter, a test which revealed just how credulous Campbell was.