Which, if true, means that the right is going to go with narrative #3: staged false flag to undermine Donald Trump, make white people look crazy, and to bring in restrictive gun control laws.
I liked Tom Petty. He had some of the best songs on the radio in the late 70s and early 80s. He also always looked cool in his videos. I liked his voice, and Damn the Torpedoes was a great album. Hard Promises had some good stuff on it, too. Tom Petty was great.
I was in high school when Damn the Torpedoes came out. We listened to this thing called FM radio back then, and it kinda sucked. When a Tom Petty song came on the radio, the radio didn't suck for a couple of minutes.
DICKHEAD LOON: "Its disappointing, but not unexpected, to see people advocating for more control over others in the wake of a tragedy involving guns. We don't hear people advocating for car control or banning trucks when people drive through crowds. But when the tool used is a gun, tragedy gets politicized and people expose how they want to control others versus giving people more power over themselves. I read that people are advocating for things like mental health checks, insurance, and registering guns. I ask gun control advocates in this group: What did the Nazis do with the gun registration lists started by the previous government? What do you know about the number of people killed by their own governments, especially communist countries? What makes you think these horrors couldn't happen here?"
MATTHEW: "A gun is different that a car or truck. A gun is specifically designed as an anti-personnel device. If there was no difference, police would be issued only squad cars, and soldiers would be issued only jeeps. The same goes for the equally asinine (yet always popular) argument that knives are just as dangerous in the hands of someone who wishes to harm others. There is a reason that this 64 year old man opened fire from a higher elevation with a projectile weapon, instead of dashing through crowd on foot, slashing and stabbing. Just the same reason we give soldiers and police rifles and handguns, rather than swords or daggers. Firearms are very efficient killing devices and they put distance between you and your victim.
If you truly believe that a gun is simply a tool in the right hands, I presume you are for further liberalization, including easy access to automatic weapons, etc? If not, why so? Where is the line, and why is there a line at all?
As for Hitler. I am currently researching the Holocaust and I have seen nothing to suggest that Jews were sufficiently well-armed to have defeated the Nazi stormtroopers. It is doubtful that, even prior to having their few outdated weapons taken away, they would have had greater hopes of defeating those forces than the full national armies that went up against them (with tanks, fighters, bombers, bazookas, battle ships, etc). Poland, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Russia, Britain, etc. didn't have gun control holding them back and most of them fell under control of the Nazi regime.
Even ignoring the fact that Hitler somewhat loosened gun control of the Weimar, guns would not have prevented the Holocaust. The problems in Germany and Europe went far deeper than that. The entire argument is insultingly ahistorical and rooted in ignorance. It is nothing more than gun lobby propaganda."
DICKEAD LOON: "Should people be allowed to defend themselves from their government?"
MATTHEW: "Sure. According to you they can use their cars to do that."
Tom Petty had some great videos in the early days of MTV. Pretty sure that was my in to him. He managed to become an icon without ever fully annoying me. He always had that smirk suggesting "what the fuck am I doing in the middle of the circus".
In my new usual routine I spun a bunch of his stuff while doing my Monday chores last night and there was very little garbage. Mostly a couple that I'd just heard too many times (Free-Falling anyone?). Even the stuff he did with Jeff Lynne was standing up pretty well.
For those reasons and the fact that he was a Florida boy, I'm on team Petty. RIP.
Tom Petty was basically the hamburger bun of American rock music. It's hard to think of a time in my life when he wasn't there with the good stuff, and he was part of some great things... but he still wasn't was much more than plain white bread to me.
He seemed like an awesome person, though, and I liked the record the Heartbreakers did backing up Johnny Cash. And the Wilburys, too. And he was hilarious on King of the Hill. So RIP anyway.
I encountered my first actual encounter with a Sandy Hook false flagger this morning. A friend of a friend. I have a pretty well manicured friend list and I guess my friends mostly do too (aka bubble). It was chilling to be only 2 degrees of separation away from this fact-resistant human. I didn't engage with him but many others did, and it was clear that no progress would be made on his outlook. Ever, perhaps.
The gun rights/Holocaust argument really bothers me. Particularly because of what segment of the population makes it. I have never seen it expressed by anyone except white males.
Whites comprise 63% of the American population of the US. Jews were around 0.7% of the German population circa 1933 (compare with the fact that they comprise around twice that in the current population of the US). Why are members of the dominant race of America likening itself to the plight of German Jewish minority to which the gun restrictions would have applied?
Also, German Jews were only a small fraction of the Jewish Holocaust victims. Out of 5.7-6 million Jews, 'only' around 140,000 were Germans. The Nuremberg Laws were also extended to Austria (an additional 50,000 victims) and the Sudetenland. The reason for this is that Germany had one of the smallest Jewish populations in Europe. The majority of deaths were in militarily occupied Poland and Soviet Union (combined, more than 4,000,000). Four times as many Hungarian Jews were murdered as German. Lithuania and Netherlands lost similar numbers as Germany, but represented much higher percentages of their respective populations (83% and 71% vs Germany's 25%).
Jews died in Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Estonia, Latvia, Italy, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. Besides the annexation of Sudetenland and Austria, most of these countries were invaded and their populations destroyed in war, not by slow and deliberate marginalization by rule of law. Most of these countries met the German invasions with national armies of their own.
I am repeating myself, but the 'gun control left Jews defenceless' propaganda line is so utterly stupid that it is mesmerizing as to how common it is to see expressed. Jews were also not known to be avid gun owners. Weimar gun laws were strict, and Jews were largely urban, with around three quarters of them living in urban centres (more than half living in ten cities, around one third in Berlin). The guns that were kicking around were either outdated WWI rifles or hunting gear.
To return to the race of those who raise this point. American gun owners are mostly white, male, and married/straight. There are women gun owners and women in the NRA, but they mostly have guns for self-defence. The ONLY people I have EVER seen raise the "We need to fight government tyranny" issue are WHITE MALES. Again, the US population is 63% white. Congress is 87% white and 90% male. More than 60% of police officers and soldiers are white (and mostly male). They are almost exclusively Christian. What exactly do these "we must prevent tyranny" loons have in common with a the 0.7% Jewish population of Germany circa the Nuremberg Laws?
And a large percentage of the most enthusiastic gun owners in America are former soldiers and police officers. These are the very people who would be called upon to carry out a purge of political undesirables. They are the ultra patriots. They are the same ones weeping at the sight of racial minorities expressing their outrage at mistreatment of people of colour at the hands of the authorities. There is a massive correlation between the people who fear minorities and those who support law and order and militarism. Again, they cannot even bear to watch NFL players 'take a knee' during the anthem. Do they really expect me to believe that they are for arming minorities to defend themselves from their white male Christian government?
This is to say nothing of the fact that this correlation also means that these same white men who are most fearful of tyranny in America are the same white men who most support American tyranny overseas. Case in point: the hundreds of angry white former soldiers raging into the phone cameras in their cars, screaming about how disrespectful the 'spoiled millionaires' of the NFL are being.
In short: the people who most buy into this 'gun control helped make the Holocaust happen' rhetoric are the ones most likely to carry it out if it were to occur.
You know as well as I do that the wingnuts see themselves as the targets of a huge conspiracy, victims of a betrayal by libtards, the deep state, the NWO, the illuminati, the lizard people, whatever. They must prevail, god willing, in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of their natural fluids, and they must do so by arming themselves to the teeth.
In between the wars, many right wing germans believed in something similar, the famous stab-in-the-back myth, the notion that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by leftie civilians on the home front, particularly the republicans who overthrew the monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918–19.
I realize that we're at a cultural moment where people are a) sick of Seth McFarlane's smarmy, juvenile cartoons and b) increasingly willing to call him on the carpet for his persistent sexism and repetitive writing... So people hate him right now. I get that.
But I kinda like The Orville. It feels like Star Trek: The Next Generation with dick jokes. He really nails the music, the tone, the kind of plots, etc. It's a very loving homage. And some of the dick jokes are funny.
I'm not telling you it's a great show. But if you have a certain affection for Trek *and* a penchant to laugh at dick jokes, you should give it a shot. I've only seen two episodes, but both were fun.
In between the wars, many right wing germans believed in something similar, the famous stab-in-the-back myth, the notion that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by leftie civilians on the home front, particularly the republicans who overthrew the monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918–19.
Well, there was some truth to that. Not that it was the civilian government or Weimar, but the argument that communist agitators had weakened their resolve, which was another plank in the myth of the 'stab in the back'. Communists HAD undermined the war effort. But not as a secret Jew plot, but because spreading the message that 'this is not their war' is what socialists and communists do. People were sick of dying in the millions in a war for which they could see little reason, so the message resonated with many.
The German military elite knew that this message was spreading because they helped spread it into the Russian Empire themselves in order to undermine the Tsar. They gave Lenin safe passage back to Petrograd in hopes that he and other revolutionaries would take Russia out of the war.
The German's had the lost the war on their own anyway, but socialist agitation in their ranks had become an issue before surrender. It was a good excuse as any.
Comments
Some dickhead loon in a political group I am in:
DICKHEAD LOON: "Its disappointing, but not unexpected, to see people advocating for more control over others in the wake of a tragedy involving guns. We don't hear people advocating for car control or banning trucks when people drive through crowds. But when the tool used is a gun, tragedy gets politicized and people expose how they want to control others versus giving people more power over themselves. I read that people are advocating for things like mental health checks, insurance, and registering guns. I ask gun control advocates in this group: What did the Nazis do with the gun registration lists started by the previous government? What do you know about the number of people killed by their own governments, especially communist countries? What makes you think these horrors couldn't happen here?"
MATTHEW: "A gun is different that a car or truck. A gun is specifically designed as an anti-personnel device. If there was no difference, police would be issued only squad cars, and soldiers would be issued only jeeps. The same goes for the equally asinine (yet always popular) argument that knives are just as dangerous in the hands of someone who wishes to harm others. There is a reason that this 64 year old man opened fire from a higher elevation with a projectile weapon, instead of dashing through crowd on foot, slashing and stabbing. Just the same reason we give soldiers and police rifles and handguns, rather than swords or daggers. Firearms are very efficient killing devices and they put distance between you and your victim.
If you truly believe that a gun is simply a tool in the right hands, I presume you are for further liberalization, including easy access to automatic weapons, etc? If not, why so? Where is the line, and why is there a line at all?
As for Hitler. I am currently researching the Holocaust and I have seen nothing to suggest that Jews were sufficiently well-armed to have defeated the Nazi stormtroopers. It is doubtful that, even prior to having their few outdated weapons taken away, they would have had greater hopes of defeating those forces than the full national armies that went up against them (with tanks, fighters, bombers, bazookas, battle ships, etc). Poland, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Russia, Britain, etc. didn't have gun control holding them back and most of them fell under control of the Nazi regime.
Even ignoring the fact that Hitler somewhat loosened gun control of the Weimar, guns would not have prevented the Holocaust. The problems in Germany and Europe went far deeper than that. The entire argument is insultingly ahistorical and rooted in ignorance. It is nothing more than gun lobby propaganda."
DICKEAD LOON: "Should people be allowed to defend themselves from their government?"
MATTHEW: "Sure. According to you they can use their cars to do that."
In my new usual routine I spun a bunch of his stuff while doing my Monday chores last night and there was very little garbage. Mostly a couple that I'd just heard too many times (Free-Falling anyone?). Even the stuff he did with Jeff Lynne was standing up pretty well.
For those reasons and the fact that he was a Florida boy, I'm on team Petty. RIP.
I would definitely say he had his own sound. And yes a lot of his songs I no longer enjoy because of overplay on the radio and mtv
Whites comprise 63% of the American population of the US. Jews were around 0.7% of the German population circa 1933 (compare with the fact that they comprise around twice that in the current population of the US). Why are members of the dominant race of America likening itself to the plight of German Jewish minority to which the gun restrictions would have applied?
Also, German Jews were only a small fraction of the Jewish Holocaust victims. Out of 5.7-6 million Jews, 'only' around 140,000 were Germans. The Nuremberg Laws were also extended to Austria (an additional 50,000 victims) and the Sudetenland. The reason for this is that Germany had one of the smallest Jewish populations in Europe. The majority of deaths were in militarily occupied Poland and Soviet Union (combined, more than 4,000,000). Four times as many Hungarian Jews were murdered as German. Lithuania and Netherlands lost similar numbers as Germany, but represented much higher percentages of their respective populations (83% and 71% vs Germany's 25%).
Jews died in Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Estonia, Latvia, Italy, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. Besides the annexation of Sudetenland and Austria, most of these countries were invaded and their populations destroyed in war, not by slow and deliberate marginalization by rule of law. Most of these countries met the German invasions with national armies of their own.
I am repeating myself, but the 'gun control left Jews defenceless' propaganda line is so utterly stupid that it is mesmerizing as to how common it is to see expressed. Jews were also not known to be avid gun owners. Weimar gun laws were strict, and Jews were largely urban, with around three quarters of them living in urban centres (more than half living in ten cities, around one third in Berlin). The guns that were kicking around were either outdated WWI rifles or hunting gear.
To return to the race of those who raise this point. American gun owners are mostly white, male, and married/straight. There are women gun owners and women in the NRA, but they mostly have guns for self-defence. The ONLY people I have EVER seen raise the "We need to fight government tyranny" issue are WHITE MALES. Again, the US population is 63% white. Congress is 87% white and 90% male. More than 60% of police officers and soldiers are white (and mostly male). They are almost exclusively Christian. What exactly do these "we must prevent tyranny" loons have in common with a the 0.7% Jewish population of Germany circa the Nuremberg Laws?
And a large percentage of the most enthusiastic gun owners in America are former soldiers and police officers. These are the very people who would be called upon to carry out a purge of political undesirables. They are the ultra patriots. They are the same ones weeping at the sight of racial minorities expressing their outrage at mistreatment of people of colour at the hands of the authorities. There is a massive correlation between the people who fear minorities and those who support law and order and militarism. Again, they cannot even bear to watch NFL players 'take a knee' during the anthem. Do they really expect me to believe that they are for arming minorities to defend themselves from their white male Christian government?
This is to say nothing of the fact that this correlation also means that these same white men who are most fearful of tyranny in America are the same white men who most support American tyranny overseas. Case in point: the hundreds of angry white former soldiers raging into the phone cameras in their cars, screaming about how disrespectful the 'spoiled millionaires' of the NFL are being.
In short: the people who most buy into this 'gun control helped make the Holocaust happen' rhetoric are the ones most likely to carry it out if it were to occur.
In between the wars, many right wing germans believed in something similar, the famous stab-in-the-back myth, the notion that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by leftie civilians on the home front, particularly the republicans who overthrew the monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918–19.
But I kinda like The Orville. It feels like Star Trek: The Next Generation with dick jokes. He really nails the music, the tone, the kind of plots, etc. It's a very loving homage. And some of the dick jokes are funny.
I'm not telling you it's a great show. But if you have a certain affection for Trek *and* a penchant to laugh at dick jokes, you should give it a shot. I've only seen two episodes, but both were fun.
The German military elite knew that this message was spreading because they helped spread it into the Russian Empire themselves in order to undermine the Tsar. They gave Lenin safe passage back to Petrograd in hopes that he and other revolutionaries would take Russia out of the war.
The German's had the lost the war on their own anyway, but socialist agitation in their ranks had become an issue before surrender. It was a good excuse as any.