It was hard enough to wrap the mind around the shortage of infant formula, and how a recall and recall-caused shortage which began months ago, only blew up in our National Establishment Media, and by extension, the current administration in the last week or so. I suppose that if you aren’t living in a household with a baby present, it was easy enough to miss out on the whole tense business of – will there be formula on the shelves – how many cans can we get – and what on earth do we do if we run out? It didn’t help that sanctimonious cows like Bette Midler and divers others began smugly suggesting that mothers breast-feed, once the matter bubbled to the surface of the national conscience. Why thank you for that heaping helping of the screamingly obvious – it had somehow managed to escape our notice. Now that the National Establishment Media is belatedly interested in the matter, we discover that the contamination in question which kicked off closure of the manufacturing location likely originated elsewhere than the factory. We also discover that the FDA dragged their feet on approval to re-open. Huh. Imagine that. A low priority for the inspectors, or a deliberate attempt to add just that much more of a ration of misery to our lives, now that gas is over $4 a gallon in Texas where it comes straight from the cow, and higher yet in other less fortunate localities.
Crime and Punishment
The Odessa Steps
The early Soviet propaganda movie, The Battleship Potemkin, culminates in a prolonged and shocking sequence of local citizens – men, women and children – gunned down by remorseless Czarist soldiers on Odessa’s famed harbor-to-town staircase. The sequence remains a shocker. (And is still studied in film schools, apparently, for being ground-breaking effective and technologically ahead of the time.) Historically, there was never such a massacre on the Steps, but the sequence served as a kind of cinematic shorthand for State brutality aimed at essentially harmless, unarmed, unthreatening civilians in a public place; civilians who were seen to be defying the authority of the State. And so the armed minions of the State acted – because even the mildest defiance of Authority on the part of ordinary workers and their families is a stab at the heart of those Authorities. They cannot brook defiance, and so out come the armed police, just as they have this week in the streets of Ottawa with regard to the truckers protesting vaccine mandates. All the forces of the law, with the cheerful approval of the Canadian established media, the intellectual and ruling class – it’s really rather breathtaking, this concentrated venom and enthusiasm for breaking heads and bones, all aimed at the workers participating in a civil and well-organized street protest. (It would seem that as far as the RCMP are concerned, Dudley Do-Right and Constable Benton Fraser both have left the building – so much for Canadian ‘polite.’)
What will happen now that the ordinary working stiffs of Canada have been so casually abused by their native ruling class; threatened with having bank accounts frozen, their means of earning a living confiscated, themselves arrested, while their pets and children given over to the tender care of animal shelters and the child “protection” authorities? How far will this protest go now, bouncing down the Odessa Steps like a runaway baby carriage? It could be that Canadians, with the ethos of being polite, courteous, and truthful, may be truly shocked, shocked to the point of open rebellion over being consistently lied about and bullied by their ruling elite. In America, our own flyover country residents are perfectly accustomed to being abused as stupid, red-necked rubes by our own elite class. It’s what we have come to expect of NPR, the political ruling class, the New York/Hollywood cultural axis and the inside-the-Beltway-Washington DC denizens; what we have come to expect of them anyway. It may be a new and shocking development to ordinary, working-class Canadians, this contempt for the working class, though. Comment as you wish.
Privileges
Well, I see from the linked story, that the educational geniuses in Fairfax County have trodden heavily on their essential nether parts, yet again, in their demented crusade to shove critical race theory, or whatever it is called this week to disguise the whole rotten concept, down the throats of hapless students of all colors on the Pantone scale. This time around, they tried to foist off the concept of military dependents being somehow uniquely privileged.
Rittenhouse Found (Appropriately) Not Guilty but Who Was?
I have not followed the Rittenhouse case as closely as many, but I’m old – we’ve been there before. Remember the 70’s, the 80’s? Last year a hundred thousand Americans died of overdoses; theft is not prosecuted in some cities. Did we think our lives would be peaceful? Did we then, as we pulled out some of the pillars that held the roof over our society, protecting and ordering it? Some of those pillars were being reconstructed, but the last few years have seen their destruction, again and more thoroughly.
Rittenhouse, certainly out of self-defense, killed, but these deaths are not just the result of the actions of the men, apparently unhinged and certainly violent and predatory from long before Blake was shot, that attacked him. The fault also lies in those in charge, who have little humility in taking over our lives from cradle to grave, but shrug off their first responsibility – to nurture an ordered society, where the rights of citizens are protected and civility reigns. They seem to want to take our guns but they certainly don’t want to protect us. Our leaders have lost a sense of the priorities outlined in our unique, beautiful, and profound Constitution. However, it codifies and organizes responsibilities long seen as a government’s duty: to protect citizens from threats external (the federal) and internal (the state and city). They found a sensible format for fulfilling those duties – one with checks and balances. Our tradition, of course, has always included a healthy bit of personal responsibility, of self-protection. Rittenhouse is in that tradition. Those who did not do their duty are in no position to scoff at someone who tries to protect the home town of his father and grandmother.
Victory Lap
I was happy and relieved at the verdict yesterday in the Rittenhouse trial. Of course you have plenty of ridiculous takes on the trial out there like this:
America today: you can break the law, carry around weapons built for a military, shoot and kill people, and get away with it.
That’s the message we’ve just sent to armed vigilantes across the nation. https://t.co/yiVLN2v718
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) November 19, 2021
I have spent an inordinate amount of time following this trial and spent my evenings watching the proceedings. Which reminds me that we need to start having cameras in federal courtrooms, but that is a different subject.
It’s breathtaking how none of the screaming loons like Newsom looked at one minute of these proceedings, looked at not one exhibit of evidence or even bothered to look at all of the video that is out there everywhere. Why are there even sides on the right to defend yourself?
This is a great time to have conversations about prosecutorial misconduct, the Constitution and self defense and instead it is just all rank bullshit. Imagine all of the innocent poor people rotting in jail because they took the deals due to prosecutorial misconduct. Kyle had people setting up defense funds or he would be there too. Especially if there wasn’t video.
The left in this country are absolute trash. I hope Kyle is able to somehow get on with his life and live it in a somewhat normal fashion after this all blows over. Oh and also after he is done suing everyone who called him a white supremacist, murderer, and all the rest. He could start with “Biden” but there is probably lower hanging fruit out there for some quick settlements. I’m sure there are a lot of people scrubbing their social media as I write this, but the internet never forgets. Just ask Nick Sandmann.