Trent Telenko has already addressed the free-fall of credibility when it comes to elements of the federal government in the wake of the suspicious death in supposed tightly-supervised custody of Jeffrey Epstein, the Pedo-Prince of Perv Island. The resulting discussion thread provided plenty of food for thought, as well as clarifying the degree of contempt that elements of the so-called ruling classes and the federal justice bureaucracy apparently feel towards those ruled in that they can’t even be bothered to tell a believable story regarding the last days of the Pimp to the Privileged.
Once upon a time, we had or at least, thought we had a national news media which might, with the wind blowing in the right direction, and assuming that the reporters at the top of the national news-food chain weren’t best buddies with the studly, hip, and dynamic president and his glamorous wife that national news media would cover the important stories.
Society
Murder, Suicide, and Society
A collection of worthwhile…if not very cheerful…links from Don Sensing.
Is this mass shooting linked to others ?
Today there was a mass shooting event today in El Paso Texas, in a Walmart.
There is some evidence that the mass shooting took place in a “Gun Free Zone.” This is still being sorted out. I live in Arizona and have a CCW permit, but I usually do not carry a gun. I do have one in my car. I do see quite a few shops that do not allow guns inside.
There is some evidence that that the shooter may be Hispanic, but the story resembles the New Zealand Shooter who attacked a mosque. In that case also there was a “manifesto” giving his motives.
With both of these incidents with mass shootings, there is some resemblance to the incident in Norway where a “white supremacist” attacked children at a Socialist summer camp on an island.
The Norwegian Police arrested Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian right-wing extremist,[25] on Utøya island[26] and charged him with both attacks.[27] His trial took place between 16 April and 22 June 2012 in Oslo District Court, where Breivik admitted carrying out the attacks, but denied criminal guilt and claimed the defense of necessity (jus necessitatis).[28] On 24 August, Breivik was convicted as charged and sentenced to 21 years of preventive detention in prison, the maximum sentence allowed in Norway. The sentence can be extended indefinitely as long as the prisoner is deemed a threat to society.
What is going on here?
Breivik is linked to a 1,518-page compendium entitled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence bearing the name “Andrew Berwick”.[31][32][151] The file was e-mailed to 1,003 addresses about 90 minutes before the bomb blast in Oslo.[152][153] Analysts described him as having Islamophobic views and a hatred of Islam,[154][155] and as someone who considered himself as a knight dedicated to stemming the tide of Muslim immigration into Europe.
What about New Zealand?
the posts suggest that every aspect of the shootings was designed to gain maximum attention online, in part by baiting the media. The shooter live-streamed the attack itself on Facebook, and the video was quickly shared across YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. Before committing the act, he shouted, “Remember, lads, subscribe to PewDiePie,” a reference to Felix Kjellberg, who runs YouTube’s most subscribed-to channel. The phrase itself is a meme started by PewDiePie’s fans, and its goal is to be reprinted.\
In both cases, the shooter surrendered and was not killed. Why? They seemed to want a public forum for their causes. The El Paso shooter also surrendered. We will see what the motive was.
More Heinlein Stories
I recently posted a brief review of The Man Who Sold the Moon, a 1950 story about the first lunar trip, and thought some reviews of other early Heinlein stories might be of interest as well. (For those who haven’t yet read these stories, I’ve tried to minimize spoilers.)
Let There be Light (published in 1940). Archie Douglas, a scientist, tries to pick up a very attractive woman who is dining by herself. She politely turns him down, but it soon transpires that she is the very same Doctor M L Martin with whom Douglas has a scientific meeting scheduled. (M L = Mary Lou.) Initially, Archie refuses to believe that a woman so attractive could have such outstanding scientific credentials, but he is soon convinced, and the two begin a research collaboration that quickly develops romantic overtones.
Their effort initially focuses on the development of electroluminscent light panels, making use of Mary Lou’s earlier research on the fireflybut when Archie’s factory-owner father faces the prospect of being run out of business by discriminatory electric rates imposed by the power cartel, the pair decides to reverse the process and efficiently create electricity from sunlight. They succeed…but the power cartel is not happy about the prospect of cheap distributed generation and will do anything to keep them from bringing their technology to market.
A fun story, with lots of snappy banter between the pair.
The Roads Must Roll (published in 1940). Larry Gaines, chief engineer of the RenoSan Diego roadtown, is explaining the rolling-road technology and its social/economic impact to an Australian visitor. These ‘roadtowns’ are huge multistrip conveyor belts: passengers can get on at any point and then, depending on the length of their journey, move from the initial 5mph strip all the way over to the 100mph strip. More conducive to intermediate stops than the Elon Musk approach!
The fast strip is wide enough to allow shops and restaurants to be located on it…Gaines and his visitor are conversing while having lunch at Jake’s Steak House. (“To dine on the fly makes the miles roll by.”) The Australian (who is Transport Minister of that country) is impressed with what he has seen and what Gaines tells him about its usefulness and social impactbut he demurs politely: “”isn’t it possible that you may have put too many eggs in one basket in allowing your whole economy to become dependent on the functioning of one type of machinery?”
Gaines responds that the potentially-serious reliability issue is not with the machinery, but with the men who tend it: “Other industries can go on strike, and only create temporary and partial dislocations…But if the roads stop rolling, everything else must stop; the effect would be the same as a general strike: with this important difference: It takes a majority of the population fired by a real feeling of grievance, to create a general strike, but the men that run the roads, few as they are, can create the same complete paralysis.”
“We had just one strike on the roads, back in ”sixty-six. It was justified, I think, and it corrected a lot of real abusesbut it mustn’t happen again.”
Gaines is confident that there will be no such problems in the future, he tells his guest: the engineers who manage the road’s operation are now part of a military-like organization with high esprit de corps: indeed, they are graduates of the United States Academy of Transport, and even have their own song, to the tune of “Those caissons go rolling along.”
Just then, Gaines’ coffee lands in his lap. The strip has abruptly begun slowing to a stop. He soon discovers that members of his workforce have fallen under the spell of an ideology called Functionalism, which holds that people who do the most critical work in a society should have political power to match. And, what is more, the primary instigator of the rebellion is…Gaines’ own deputy.
I’m not sure whether the technology would really be workablewith strips running at speeds up to 100mph, it would seem that the resulting winds would create an insoluble problem, even with Heinlein’s proposed solution (partitions to isolate air flow between the different strips) But it’s a good story, and points out a real potential issue with critical infrastructure operated by key, hard-to-replace personnel.
National Conservatism
Here is Peter Thiel’s keynote address at the National Conservatism Conference, if you haven’t seen it yet. His accusations about Google’s disloyalty are front and center. I’m not sure what to think about that particular part. There’s no doubt that Google has a socially liberal, internationalist bent that favors cooperation with China at the expense of domestic interests. On the other hand, if we’re singling out companies and industries that have pursued profits that undermined American values, there are plenty to go around.
Most of his other points are spot on. As a nation we chose bits over atoms, and it did not turn out well for a large segment of America. He has some scathing comments about the American dream and higher education that are hard to argue with, while approaching a nihilism that we don’t normally associate with conservatism.
The conference was organized by Yoram Hazony, political philosopher and author of the excellent book The Virtue of Nationalism, that I highly recommend.