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Friday, November 18, 2016

November 18, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Source: "9mm Kalashnikov – The Chiappa AK-9 Pistol"--The Firearms Blog.
Firearms/Prepping:
Second, and related, is that proficiency is obtained by virtue of being able to recite the fundamentals. He writes: "A beginner hardly knows the fundamentals, while the expert not only has a grasp of the fundamentals. He subconsciously runs through the fundamentals quickly and solidly. Experts do it effortlessly and quickly." 


Other Stuff:
  • He hasn't even yet been sworn in as President:
Immediately after the election, state Senate President Kevin de León and his Assembly counterpart, Anthony Rendon, both Latinos from Southern California, sent out a scathing statement in English and Spanish assuring all 39 million Californians that they were ready for political war. “Today, we woke up feeling like strangers in a foreign land, because yesterday Americans expressed their views on a pluralistic and democratic society that are clearly inconsistent with the values of the people of California,” they wrote. “We will lead the resistance to any effort that would shred our social fabric or our Constitution.”
  • That's okay, though, because a lot of people on the right no longer have the stomach to compromise with the left: "An Open Letter to Donald Trump"--David Solway at PJ Media. Solway notes:
... I believe it is either naïve or disingenuous—one way or another, an egregious error—to assume that the political fissure between collectivism and individuality, Socialism and classical liberalism, fantasy and reality, can ever be closed. As I wrote elsewhere, “the rift between a part of the nation committed to the values of work, family, and creative expenditure and a part of the nation mired in ignorance, pride, and destructive sentimentality—in effect, between heartland and coast, rural and urban, conservative and left-liberal—is permanent. The attempt to heal the chasm, however laudable, is doomed to fail.”
... I take Andrew’s point to mean that the left has accused him and people like him of racism for so many things, no matter how trivial, that the accusation doesn’t faze him anymore. I have been saying for some time now that if the alt-right grows in power and influence, it will be because ordinary people get tired of being bullied by these kinds of accusations, and choose to ally with people who might actually be bona fide racists, but who aren’t bothered by the attacks from the left.
      I think Trump’s not giving a rip about political correctness was a big factor in his rise. If you’ve been reading me all year, you know that I’ve objected to his vulgarity and coarseness on many occasions. Trump lowers our discourse, and normalizes ways of talking in public that ought not be normalized. Having said that, it is undeniably true that the willingness of many on the left to demonize as bigots (racists, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, etc.) white people who don’t live up to strict progressive blasphemy codes has called forth contempt for the (necessary and important) taboo against racism itself.
          Think of it like this: Prohibition encouraged contempt for the law. If you pass so many “laws” around normal discourse, saying to transgress them makes you an “outlaw” (= bigot), then you should not be surprised when people go full Uncle Chuckie, and cease caring.
          • Related: "This Election Marks The End Of America’s Racial Détente"--The Federalist. The basic rules of the détente, according to the author, was that whites would accept a collective guilt for the harms to blacks, while tolerating a double-standard of education and job preferences for blacks (and welfare, I would add), but that blacks, for their part, would avoid accusing whites, generally, of racism. The author goes on to observe, however:
          Privilege theory and the concept of systemic racism dealt the death blow to the détente. In embracing these theories, minorities and progressives broke their essential rule, which was to not run around calling everyone a racist. As these theories took hold, every white person became a racist who must confess that racism and actively make amends. Yet if the white woman who teaches gender studies at Barnard with the Ben Shahn drawings in her office is a racist, what chance do the rest of have?
              Within the past few years, as privilege theory took hold, many whites began to think that no matter what they did they would be called racist, because, in fact, that was happening. Previously there were rules. They shifted at times, but if adhered to they largely protected one from the charge of racism. It’s like the Morrissey lyric: “is evil just something you are, or something you do.” Under the détente, racism was something you did; under privilege theory it is something you are.
                  That shift, from carefully directed accusations of racism for direct actions to more general charges of unconscious racism, took away the carrot for whites. Worse, it led to a defensiveness and feeling of victimization that make today’s whites in many ways much more tribal than they were 30 years ago. White people are constantly told to examine their whiteness, not to think of themselves as racially neutral. That they did, but the result was not introspection that led to reconciliation, it was a decision that white people have just as much right to think of themselves as a special interest group as anyone else.
                  I think the fears of "white nationalism" are, as of this moment, overblown. However, there are those on the left (including someone that looks remarkably like Emperor Palpatine), that want to see the world burn. The difference is that there are now those on the right willing to push back. As John R. Schindler writes at The Observer:
                  To the surprise of no one who understands human nature, many whites didn’t appreciate being told that they had to die off for “progress” to be achieved. They didn’t like being derided by their betters as “bitter clingers” with their guns and Bibles, and they especially didn’t like being termed “deplorables” unworthy of compassion or consideration. In the last days of Hillary’s doomed campaign, its contempt for a huge chunk of the American population had become so blatant that one of her top celebrity surrogates publicly hailed the “extinction” of straight white men as a step in the right direction.
                  * * *
                  Moreover, once nationalism becomes the main political factor, there’s no putting that troublesome genie back in the bottle. Politics become tribal, ethnic conflicts waged at the ballot box rather than on the battlefield. Having done most of my scholarly work on multiethnic societies like the Habsburg Empire and Yugoslavia, I can attest that the fires of nationalism, once stoked, are only put out with great difficulty—and that ethnically diverse societies that play games with nationalism are living dangerously.
                  * * *
                  In recent decades, Washington has advocated that Black, Hispanic and Asian nationalisms are “good” (Americans of Middle Eastern descent may soon be added to the good list) while White Nationalism is “bad.” However, average whites—meaning those not indoctrinated in critical race theory in college—will never see it that way. The problem with pushing identity politics among minorities as a political weapon is that the majority eventually realizes they have an identity too. As I explained back in early 2015, before Donald Trump entered the presidential race, “However verboten discussion of White Nationalism is at present among polite Americans, it is unavoidable that this will become an issue in the future, with potentially explosive consequences.”
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