Start getting prepared for emergencies

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for February 24, 2021)

I thought the past year had taught people to be prepared and less dependent on rescue by others. It seems I was wrong.

This has been quite the year for "preppers". Just one crisis after another, with the recent cold snap and power outages the latest chapter. If you're still not a prepper, you have no one to blame but yourself when you get caught off-guard by the next event. You've had plenty of warning, and you've seen that politicians aren't able to save you, even if they wanted to.

If I seem to harp on this topic, it's because I care about your safety and comfort.

During the recent cold spell, I heard personal stories from people who huddled in their cars for hours trying to stay warm; of school buses being distributed and parked in neighborhoods as emergency shelters from the cold; of burst pipes and house fires.

People died from carbon monoxide poisoning because they didn't understand how to safely stay warm when the grid is down.

We were lucky in this area. This time.

People have an individual responsibility to be prepared for storms, record cold (and heat), and power outages. It's not all their fault, though. They've been lulled into a false sense of security.

There's another lesson which seems obvious to me: It's a terrible idea to allow government to grant utility monopolies, decide energy policy, and otherwise interfere in the energy market. When this happens, you get blackouts at the worst possible times.

Instead of government dictating how energy will be produced and distributed, there should be a market providing it. If government gets involved, there is no market; only politics. Central planning doesn't work. At least not to the advantage of the people. There isn't enough flexibility and innovation that way.

You'll become reliant on too few options.

Central planning works well in the short term for politicians and their cronies, though. That's why they won't willingly let go. The people will have to take it away from them if anything is to change in a meaningful way.

What should have been a learning experience will probably result in no change. The wrong people are being blamed and the wrong people are being asked to save us from next time. No one is looking in the right place for the solutions.

If nothing else, follow FEMA's advice for the emergency supplies they recommend at www.ready.gov/kit. It's a start.

(Added: Do I think FEMA is legitimate or credible? Nope. But this was written for "Themasses" who read the local newspaper. At least the FEMA supply advice won't hurt them, and would make them more prepared than otherwise.)

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Creative boredom

People differ. This is why "one-size-fits-all" mandates and legislation never fit all.

I've always found a little bit of boredom to be essential for my mental health. Not the toxic kind of boredom, such as what I experienced in kinderprison classrooms, but creative boredom. The kind of boredom that, when it happens, allows you to do whatever comes to mind, eagerly, to relieve the boredom, without feeling rushed or like you're neglecting something else. And without someone screaming at you to pay attention, get to work, and stop daydreaming.

Call it free time, with no plan and no guilt.

If I have a dozen projects nagging for my attention the only kind of boredom that strikes is the destructive kind.

But if I have nothing to do, and there's nothing I feel I should be doing, my creativity can flow.

I've had too little of the good kind of boredom recently. I used to have tons of it. My wikiup and tipi area was where a lot of it happened. It was a daily mental vacation, and I miss it. (I've been trying without success to find a replacement for years now.)

The past couple of months have been unusually hectic-- tons of projects and "obligations" in various stages of completion with no time to take a breath. 

Usually, when I'm doing some mindlessly repetitive task I get bored and can at least think. That hasn't been the case with these projects, probably because they've required too much thought and attention. They've drained my brain and my body.

I have an art project I've been needing to work on (for my dad's birthday), but without time to get bored, it just hasn't happened. It's not something I can just decide I'm going to do, like a physical or mental task-- if I do it this way it would be a failure because of a lack of creativity. I have to have time to get bored enough to get creative.

I also find it harder to let my mind come up with blog posts and newspaper columns if there's no time for my mind to wander. Recently, because of this, I haven't had time to tone down my newspaper columns for "public consumption" as much as I normally do. Not sure if that's good or bad.

So this next week, I have declared my very own "No projects week". Maybe it's my spring break. Yes, there will probably be blog posts-- if I let my mind wander, they just come to me whether I want them or not. But I'm not going to be forcing anything. I plan on boring myself into creativity and hoping it recharges my batteries.

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I hate when the evil loser survives

If you are an evil loser who murders people, I don't care extra about your victims if you did it because you hated their "race", sex, or religion (or lack thereof). I don't care about them less if you had no insane "reason" behind your aggressive act.

I don't care if you did it because you imagine they slighted you in some way that a rational person wouldn't even think of considering.
I don't care if you did it because of an addiction or any other mental or physical problem.
I don't care if you did it because people-- who were not your victims-- bullied you.

I don't believe in "hate crimes". You did what you did, and that's all that matters. People who are murdered but don't fit into a government-favored category are still just as dead, and their murderer is still equally evil.

The thing I always hope for is that you don't survive your attack, either at your own hand or at the hand of an intended victim or a rescuer.

I would have wanted one of your potential victims to have splattered the walls with your blood and brains. 

No, I don't want the Blue Line Gang to arrest you and cage you; both the gang and your caging financed by stolen money. That just victimizes more people, adding to the number of your victims in a huge way. That some pathetic people imagine that people like you justify taxes, cops, and the state just makes you that much more disgusting.

No sympathy from me.

All the above comes with a necessary caveat: I know the national mainstream "news" business lies, and I know government employees (cops, etc.) lie. Both lie routinely to make an event fit their narrative, so nothing I have heard from any of them about this event is necessarily true. There's your grain of salt.

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Asbestos and guns

Asbestos is something which protects people from certain dangers, but is also inherently dangerous-- especially if mishandled. However, the greater danger comes from trying to remove it.

Guns are similar in some ways.

Guns are something which protect people from certain dangers, but they are inherently dangerous-- especially if mishandled. However, the greater danger comes from trying to remove them.

It's interesting that some people recognize the truth where asbestos is concerned, but ignore or deny the truth where guns are concerned. 

In fact, one such person wrote an entire book about misguided fears where he pointed out the facts about asbestos, but then prattled on and on about how "the real danger" to us was the availability of guns. With issue after issue, if there was a way he could find to blame "the availability of guns", that's what he did. It was awkward and kind of dumb. Politics had caused brain damage and he didn't realize it. His brain damage made him anti-science.

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Time's running out on Time's Up flags

If two Time's Up flags sell in the next week, they will remain available for at least another month. Just so you know, in case you haven't gotten yours yet.

I have to sell 2 per month or I lose money on the listing, and I haven't sold any during the past month. The 23rd is the deadline. It's up to you.

UPDATE: They'll stay up for another month, at which time I'll post another reminder (or repost this one). Thanks!

Live long enough to be a curmudgeon

My dad has occasionally said he's glad his dad didn't live to see how the world has gone. He died in the late 1960s, only a couple of years older than I am now.

He was rabidly "conservative"-- in many of the worst senses of the term. He would have hated even how leftist the 80s were, compared to his comfort zone. I would probably have had a hard time getting along with him had he lived until I was older.

I don't want to become that way. But I will speak up.

Yes, I hate how some things are going-- I despise "w0keness" with a passion when it clashes with individual liberty-- which it usually does. I dislike how political everything has become, and I understand why politics causes divisiveness-- it can't be otherwise. I hate that human rights are always on the chopping block built of "equality" (or worse, "equity"). I hate how popular communism has become-- while mostly being called something else. I hate how people seem to imagine you have to choose between being a socialist and being a copsucker, when the two have more in common with each other than with me.

But I don't want to ever be the person someone else is glad didn't live to see...whatever happens to society. I'm willing to keep pushing for liberty against all tyrants and karens as long as I can, even if it means I've become a curmudgeon.

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Politicians responsible for much loss

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for February 17, 2021)

It's so nice of New Mexico's political overlords to allow businesses to re-open a bit-- until they change their minds again. We should gather in the frozen fields and sing hymns to their glory. Wearing two or three masks each, obviously.

If you don't praise the bully when he beats you slightly less, you're ungrateful.

The past year has been very educational. I have learned people will tolerate anything, on the flimsiest of excuses.

They will allow politicians to destroy their businesses, cripple their social lives, dictate what they wear, and imprison them in their own homes without even a show trial, as long as there's a new cold virus for justification. Unbelievable!

I can't even blame one political party over the other-- they are both guilty. This was sold to the public as "Science!" and no one wanted to appear to be against science. Yet, when even the tiniest bit of politics is mixed with science, you've tossed science out the window. You're left with only politics.

America will never get back the liberty it lost to the politicians and politicized experts over the past year. Sure, the restrictions will be scaled back temporarily-- as permitted business re-openings have shown-- but politicians have seen what they can get away with. Next time they'll test their limits again. Each time the liberty they allow us to have back will be slightly less than it was before. Incrementally you will be enslaved, and most people won't notice until it hurts them, personally.

If you think I disliked people who use politics against their fellow humans before, that was nothing compared to how I feel about them now.

Even though I lost most of my income over the past year, due to other people losing theirs, I fared better than many people did. I was ready for supply chain disruptions. Other people weren't. Many people may never recover financially, and those who harmed them-- just as surely as looters or arsonists would have-- will never be held accountable.

It's a shame the practice of tarring and feathering politicians has gone out of style. Otherwise, I don't think politicians could have gotten away with what they did to America over the past year.

We'll have to wait and see where this goes. Unless America changes direction completely and Americans start to value liberty again, it's not going to go well.

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Is your compliance all used up?

I think the government overreach of this past year drained my "compliance bladder" of all its stored compliance fluid. I'm pretty much empty now. At least for nonsensical (or what I see as nonsensical) stuff.

I know some people have feared that humans are being trained to be compliant over the past year, but I wonder how many recoiled the other direction. There's always an opposite reaction and unintended consequences.

It's difficult, because I do try to respect store managers' signs requesting (or communicating the state's demand to wear) masks. But recently, I've been forgetting more and more. I just can't care anymore. Not even a little. I never cared much to begin with, but what little I did care has been used up. They pushed too far and too long.

As I've said from the beginning, I'm agnostic about the masks. Yeah, they may help a little in some way. Probably not enough to justify being a karen about them. And making them mandatory was pure evil. Masks aren't my line in the sand though, especially since I kind of like their "facial recognition" defeating utility.

The state on one side of me has ended all Corona mandates--the state on the other side of me still has all the silliness in force with no end in sight. But a lot of businesses still demand masks even though they aren't forced to do so anymore. Like the caged bird that doesn't realize the cage is gone.

I never "social distanced" other than staying away from those who were trying to do so. I've done as little as possible to accommodate the Branch Covidians. I have observed and learned from their behavior, and have taken measures to protect myself from their craziness.

I just can't see myself going along with any new orders-- regarding anything-- unless a Blue Line Gang thug is looking at me. Then I might, to avoid being murdered.

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Invalid claims on you

If you imagine government's claims on you are valid because of maritime law, birth certificates, social security cards, the Constitution, lords and feudalism, the US being a corporation under obligation to the monarch of England (or the Rothschilds), or anything of that sort, then you are free to believe it. 

But none of the claims on you are valid regardless of what you believe. You have just fallen under the spell of government-supremacism. Who has the right to decide such things? Where does this authority come from?

I'm not with you on this runaway train. I don't care what any government believes now or believed in the past. I don't care what agreements between governments say. To believe in any of that requires a belief that political government is legitimate and I don't-- I can't-- believe that.

Yes, I realize delusional people will act on their beliefs to the contrary. A crazy person might also shoot me because he believes I'm a dinosaur, but that just means he's crazy, not that he's right.

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The Dr. Seuss divide

I would really like my readers to weigh in on something. Something that I'm not sure I'm right about.

The newspaper editor disagrees with me about the Dr. Seuss situation. His take: "... I think [the Dr. Seuss company] ha[s] been unfairly criticized. End of the day, they made marketing decisions they think will increase sales. God bless profitable America."

Thomas Knapp lumped those like me (and Claire Wolfe) who don't think this was a good move with the "deplorables".

If the company (corporation?) did this to boost profits, I hope it hurts them financially in the long run. I don't want censors to prosper, especially when they make their decisions based on "someone was/might be offended". It doesn't matter to me if they had the "legal right" to do what they did-- that's a statist notion.

I think this shows the flaw with IP generally and with copyright, specifically. 

Dr. Seuss didn't make this decision about his works, someone else who was entrusted (by whom?) to manage his legacy has decided to vandalize it, instead-- in my opinion. 

If they won't publish those books, I think it would be perfectly ethical for someone else to publish them-- especially if they used some of the profits to support causes Dr. Seuss would have supported. I can't imagine him supporting cancel culture, but maybe he would have-- I know he was a flawed human being.

But what do you think? Is this something they have a right to do and I am being anti-market if I object? Which side of the divide do you find yourself on?

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Do you believe government has rights or authority?

If you believe government has a right to do anything, you are a government-supremacist.

If you believe government has authority to do anything, you are a government-supremacist.

Individuals-- and only individuals-- have rights. A group of individuals has no rights that each individual doesn't already have. More rights can't be created by banding together with others. 

Only someone who imagines that government is superior to the individual could believe that a government has the right to do anything to any individual. Such a description fits a government-supremacist-- they believe government is superior to the individual. To them, government is supreme.

Authority, when used to talk about government, is not real. The belief that political authority is real qualifies as a superstitious belief. The Most Dangerous Superstition, according to Larken Rose-- and I agree. 

Only someone who considers government superior to the individual could imagine that such a group has authority to violate the natural human rights of any individual. Such a person would necessarily imagine government is superior to the individual. To them, government is supreme.

Do you believe government has rights or authority? If so, why? How would you explain and justify these beliefs?

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Free will

I don't know if free will is real or not. It certainly feels real, but I also understand the arguments against it-- although I believe quantum physics' uncertainty provides a place for free will to hide.

Scott Adams has repeatedly said he doesn't believe in free will, but he believes "we" have to pretend it's real so "we" can punish criminals and maintain civilization. Why? That is only necessary if you imagine that revenge ("punishment") is necessary for justice, and it isn't. Government-supremacism can cloud your thinking as badly as any other mental problem.

Self-defense and restitution don't depend on why someone does something, only that they did. Their action created a debt; justice requires this debt to be paid (or payment to be attempted).

If you have no free will to avoid archating, it's the same as your having no free will to choose to fall upward into the clouds. There are still consequences. You've still become part of a chain of events, one of which could be restitution or death at the hands of your intended victim. The lack of free will doesn't change this.

If you do have free will and you used it to choose to archate, you chose to create a debt. Even if you pretend you didn't choose this debt, your actions created it. Again, free will is irrelevant to the outcome.

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Politics not a good look on anyone

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for February 3, 2021)

Politics has a strange effect on people.

I'm stunned at how many people can't let go of Donald Trump. They cling to him like a life raft in an ocean of uncertainty.

I'm not talking about Trump's supporters, but about those who hate him passionately. Those who suffer from what is known as "Trump Derangement Syndrome".

Most Trump supporters have moved on. They accept the reality he'd be too old for the presidency in four years. He'd be seventy-eight by then, and no one that age should be subjected to the pressures of the presidency. This includes the current seventy-eight-year-old White House occupant.

But the dedicated Trump haters can't move on. They obsess over revenge fantasies which they dishonestly call "justice". Against Trump, and everyone they believe wasn't sufficiently anti-Trump while he was in office-- or now.

Without Trump to hate and focus on, they'd have to look closely at what they put in the White House, which would not be comforting. They don't dare take off their anti-Trump spectacles and look with objective eyes.

Pointing this out gets me called a Trump supporter, which shows the depth of their self-deception.

On the "other side" are those who can't let go of "Q". If you aren't familiar with "Q" don't dig in to it unless you have spare time and mental health to waste.

No matter how badly the Q predictions missed, those who are desperate to believe in "The Plan" only remember the predictions which-- by coincidence and sheer numbers-- appear to have been right. In other words, it is like a carnival psychic or a horoscope. You'll see whatever truth you fool yourself into seeing and forget about the misses.

Even outside these extremes, politics makes otherwise normal people support things they'd never consider doing personally because of their morals.

This isn't new. It's been the same as long as people have entertained the belief that it's OK to try to govern each other in addition to themselves.

Politics doesn't look good on anyone. There must be something addictive about it, though. People keep trying it on in various guises. The strange political obsessions of this year will fade away, only to be replaced with different strange beliefs in future years.

People will continue to imagine their own political beliefs are reasonable and the political beliefs of others are delusional. It's as predictable as the tides

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Dumb experts

It's so fun to be scolded for "denying science" by Branch Covidians.

It's hilarious to be lectured on economics by people who have fake economic credentials based on Keynesian "economics".

It cracks me up to be told what "real anarchy" is by people who learned the word from government schools, the mainstream media, socialists, or other government-supremacists.

It's silly to be "educated" about guns by people who used guns (and bombs) to promote the US feral government's agenda in foreign countries and who, because of this experience, "know" that an AR15 is a "weapon of war" that no one should be allowed to own.

Some people's "expertise" (or submission to "the experts") makes them dumb.

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Renouncing citizenship seems pointless

Why would anyone bother to renounce "their" citizenship? I'm not going to assume you are the property of a government-- a "citizen"-- unless you publicly affirm that you are. Who would do otherwise?

How can a person renounce something they never explicitly agreed to or embraced? 

If a crazy person imagines she owns me, is it necessary for me to publicly confirm that she doesn't?
If someone imagines I'm a dog, do I need to renounce my status as a dog?
If someone has gotten it into their head that I'm a brain surgeon, do I need to file papers proving I'm not one?

Now, if the crazy person is going around announcing to everyone I know that I am their slave it might inspire me to say "No, I'm not", but if the delusion exists only inside their head what is it to me until they act on it?

If someone else gets the idea that I belong to Crazy Cora or a government, or that I'm a dog, the problem is obviously theirs until or unless they act on it. Other people's craziness isn't my responsibility.

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Being "polite"

On various issues, Scott Adams has long been harping on doing what one side (usually the Left-Statist side) demands because he says doing otherwise is "impolite". He says, why be impolite when you can just be polite?

Well... Because "polite" is as subjective and imaginary as "fairness", which he has criticized as a concept invented so that idiots and children could feel like they are participating in the conversation. In all but a few cases, "polite" is exactly the same. 

Sure, almost everyone would consider it impolite to sneeze in someone's face or sit there picking your nose enthusiastically across the breakfast table from someone, but the issues where he calls for politeness aren't nearly so clear-cut. 

Being polite is going to mean different things to different people; sometimes things that are directly incompatible. One person's "polite" is another person's "rude".

Scott believes that historical statues are impolite; while I believe demanding that someone take down a statue to soothe your feelings is impolite-- even if the statue is of someone I consider a monster, like Hitler, Lincoln, or FDR-- any military or political figure, for that matter. Yuck! But they neither break my leg nor pick my pocket by existing.

He considers it impolite to not use incorrect or made-up "gender" pronouns and to not validate someone's opposite sex cosplay, while I consider it impolite to police (sometimes literally) the words people use when they are simply trying to communicate in an obvious, truthful way using words that have been standard speech all their life. I consider it impolite to demand that someone lie.

It's the same with many other sorts of words. No matter what words you use, soon someone will decide to change the acceptable words so that they can condemn you for the (now) "rude" words you use. It's a Red Queen situation where you have to keep running as hard as you can just to stay in place. Ridiculous in the extreme.

He has suggested it would be impolite to not edit Dr. Seuss's books to fit a modern sensibility. I think it is impolite to judge them by the w0ke standards of today.

I consider it very rude to impose mandates and legislation to enforce someone else's idea of politeness. Now, I don't intend to be rude, but if you can't satisfy someone no matter how much you bend for them, I say it's past time to stop trying.

Politeness is a trap. A better metric is archation. Don't violate the life, liberty, or property of-- don't initiate force or property violations against-- anyone. Politeness is fuzzy; archation is concrete.

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Texas flirts with liberty

The Texas governor announced he is ending the coronapanic shutdown in Texas next week. Finally! 

Since he didn't have the right or the imaginary political "authority" to impose any shutdowns in the first place, it would have been great to have never gone along with it, but better late than never.

Now he needs to end the criminal ban on "constitutional carry" in Texas, too. By pressuring whoever needs to be pressured to finally stop being a criminal state (at least on that dimension) and be compliant with the law.

It's always good when government decides to stop violating the natural human rights of the people.

Of course, those in the Cult of Covid are weeping, wailing, and gnashing their teeth. They are acting as though this means they won't be allowed to wear a mask anymore. I haven't seen that suggestion anywhere. (Surely they are all Californian imports.) They are presenting "Beto" as the "hero" Texans need to hold us prisoner longer. I don't need a governor other than myself. They can keep Bob'O; I'll keep my guns and my liberty.

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The Wisdom of knowing when to keep quiet

These days it feels like it's hard for most people to have pleasant social interactions with others who "believe" differently. 

I think a large part of that is due to people feeling it's OK to make everything political, and to air their every belief. You know they believe differently because they feel the need to rub it in your face.

Just imagine how it would go if everyone you interacted with on a daily basis felt the need to tell you what kind of crime they commit regularly. You meet someone and one of the first things they tell you is how much they enjoy burglarizing houses. Or that their hobby is shoplifting. Or rape. 

And then they expect you to just go ahead with whatever you were going to be doing with them?

Sure, you'd pare down the number of people you willingly interact with that way, getting rid of some deadwood in the process, but wouldn't it look a lot like what I see happening now?

Personally. unless someone admits to being a murderer/politically-inclined person, I'll assume they are OK. Most of the time, if I need to interact with them anyway, I'd rather not know the worst things about them unless I'm going to be living with or working with them. You are a kitten-stomper? As long as you don't brag about it I won't know. You support Politician X or Z? Keep this horror to yourself and I won't feel the need to ridicule you or run away from our casual interaction.

Some might claim that there's no comparison, but they'd be lying. If you advocate using any application of the political means against others, any difference between you and any other monster is only a matter of degree (if that). It would be best to not go around yapping about it unless you want people to treat you differently based on what you admit to.

This is my problem when most celebrities (including "science" celebrities) start interjecting politics into their public statements. It's also the same with anyone I know casually. I don't want to know how horrible or stupid you are. Why would you want me to know? And once I know, do you really expect me to have no reaction to this revelation? 

Dragging your politics into the open cripples society.  It's anti-social and shameful.

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YOU can do great things if you ignore those who would hold you back

Those who see "racism" in math, science, grammar, general excellence, and ethics are using those things as a mirror. They are only seeing their own reflection.

I believe anyone of any "race" is perfectly capable of great things. And by "great things" I mean things that improve the lives of humans in general (and sometimes other life-forms, too) without archation.

To imagine that doing great things means you've accepted the "superiority" of one "race" or its ideas is to belittle yourself. It's not "colonialism" to embrace good ideas. To hold back the lives of anyone tragic enough to listen to you express this sick belief is to be the worst enemy they have.

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Can do without Biden's 'unity'

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for January 27, 2021)

John Brennan, an ex-CIA director from Obama's administration, claims the federal government is targeting "religious extremists", conservatives, and libertarians for extra scrutiny. All these people are said to be potential domestic terrorists.

He recently stated on MSNBC, “[M]embers of the Biden team ... are now moving in laser-like fashion, to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas, where they germinate in different parts of the country and they gain strength, and it brings together an unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists — so authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, and even libertarians,"

What scary company!

For people who only want to leave everyone else alone, libertarians sure to seem to attract a lot of powerful enemies. The worst things libertarians do are exercise the natural human right of self-defense and engage in non-compliance when legislation violates human rights. Not terrorist behaviors, but behaviors for which the government-supremacists hate and fear us. Maybe it's because we-- along with conservatives-- are the ones with most of the guns.

The truth is, John Brennan should look in a mirror.

Brennan and his sort are the authoritarians; the people who crave and worship imaginary political authority. According to fellow liberty advocate and author, Larken Rose, belief in political authority is the world's most dangerous superstition. I think he's correct.

How can Brennan fear fascists? Political government is always fascistic as well as being socialistic. Does he fear himself?

I would say Brennan is also a religious extremist, only his god is the state. Look who and what he is willing to sacrifice for his religion. Anyone who doesn't buy the leftist narrative is seen as a danger. You're probably an infidel, just like me, and liberty-- which he appears bigoted against-- must be treated as blasphemy.

If what he says is true, the Biden administration seems to agree with him.

Will Joe Biden wait for Congress to make up legislation to target us, or will he squeeze out yet another executive order? I wonder if they'll give Brennan the job of going after these "dangerous" people. Time will tell.

I wasn't a supporter of Trump, nor a supporter of any president or even of the office, but I like Trump as a person a lot more than I like Biden. So far, Biden's notion of "unity" is one I can do without.

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"Just test it small"

You can't just judge slavery and say it's bad. You need to test it in some limited way-- or region-- and see how it works out. 

The same goes for genocide. It's small-minded to just come out against it until you test it and see if it's right for some state or city. You're just not a smart person if you automatically say it's wrong to commit genocide.

Sure, these things have been tested multiple times and found to be awful (maybe the tests were flawed), but this time might be different. Right...?

This is the government-supremacist justification for anti-gun legislation, for $15 per hour minimum wages and other government economic interference, and for climate legislation. Until you've tested every idea, how can you credibly criticize it? So why pretend you can just pre-judge those other things I listed at the beginning?

Because you're smarter than those who believe anyone has a right to test such things.

If a plan would violate the life, liberty, or property of any individual, it would be just as wrong to "test it small" as it would to impose it on the entire population of Earth. It doesn't matter whether it works. It doesn't matter if you really want to know how it would turn out. There are things no one has the right or the imaginary political "authority" to do. You don't need to test them to figure that out-- just have worthwhile ethics.

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Politics destroys civility

Do people really have to wonder why politics divides people and makes them angry? I've explained it before, but I still see people who seem confused over the mechanism at work here.

How can they not understand? Or is it a matter of not understanding what they don't want to understand?

If you constantly call for government violence to be used against anyone who doesn't believe the same way you believe-- which is the nature of all politics-- you are dividing people. You are going to be making these other people angry. You are threatening them with deadly force-- threatening to take their life, liberty, and property, so what do you really expect? 

You are showing yourself to be an anti-social simpleton who can't get along with others because of your desire to control them.

It doesn't matter if you imagine you are "right" or "left"-- government-supremacism is government-supremacism. Government can have no "rights" or imaginary political "authority" to do anything. Trying to cheat the system and act as though it does is going to make you the cause of division and anger. Every time.

If you're going to decry the lack of civility; the anger and division, with one breath, and then call for government violence to be used against other people with the next, I can't take your concern seriously... but I may still take your threats seriously.

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It's a new month on the Time's Up flag sales.

I remind everyone that they'll stay available as long as I sell at least 2 per month.

In which I toy with an anonymous troll-wanna-be

A few days ago I got called a "Randbot" for saying "Government is garbage" in response to a post pointing out some horrible thing a government had done to a population.

The articulate argument against my point was "Not all government is garbage", and then he spent hours trying to find ways to insult me, saying I'm in the Trump cult and various other nonsensical things. Just totally off the rails, was he. 

I pointed out that Rand was a government-supremacist who believed in the legitimacy of the "night watchman" government-- and that I don't. So he kept trying to move the goalposts to find an insult that would stick. He never succeeded.

I don't know who he thought he was trying to attack, but he was wrong.

It was kind of amusing seeing someone double down on being wrong and looking dumb over and over. I don't know if I've ever seen one person so dedicated to so many scattered positions, and all of them wrong. It was quite the spectacle.

He even said I probably see myself as a "patriot", just before he went off against guns. For some reason, he was very offended when I pointed out there's no such thing as "assault rifles". He said I should check a dictionary and didn't like it when I said that if a dictionary said an "assault rifle" is semi-auto and includes such firearms as the AR15, then the dictionary is wrong. 

Oh, but he owns a gun he tells me! So he's an expert, doncha know!

I don't know why it's so hard for people to accept that dictionaries can be wrong, since they often only tell you how words are used, not what they really mean.

One thing he kept harping on was that I had posted a link to one of my shirt designs, and he hated that I was using the internet to try to make money selling my "sh***y shirt designs". Trying to make money really triggers some people. I think there's a word for people who hate the market... He said I should be able to find a real job now that half a million people have died of... I mean with... The Corona, leaving jobs vacant. (I wonder how many of those who are said to have died with Covid actually had jobs.) 

Anyway, I got busy with life and wasn't able to check back in for several hours to see what his next point was going to be, but when I was able to check in, he had faded off into the woodwork without another word. I was content to let him go.

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It's a new month on the Time's Up flag sales.
I remind everyone that they'll stay available as long as I sell at least 2 per month.

Craft Holster IWB for a Sig P365-- review

The guys at Craft Holsters were nice enough to send me another holster to try out and review. This one is their IWB holster (again) for a Sig Sauer P365. 

This time, it shipped FedEx. It arrived in just a few days and in perfect condition. That's always nice.

The box, opened.

Finally, to the good stuff! 

The holster looked smaller than I expected, compared to the holsters I have for the other, larger, guns. Obviously, that makes sense! The Sig Sauer P365 is surprisingly small, and may be the perfect concealed carry gun. 

Here's the gun resting in the holster for the first time. Doesn't it look comfy?

As I have come to expect, this holster is very nice looking and well made. At first, the fit was very tight. That has been the case with the others as well, with the one for the S&W revolver being tighter than the one for the 1911. It took a bit of work to get it in the holster and get the strap snapped the first time, but it loosened a bit overnight (I used their break-in kit), and continued to get easier to get in and out over the first week. It has now settled in to a good snug fit.

I would recommend giving this a week or so before using it for your defensive carry, so it could be drawn from without difficulty.

Did I mention this thing is small? And that's what I was looking for, but size means compromises.

As a consequence of its size (the gun/holster unit), the center of gravity is very low. At first, the gun felt like it wanted to flip upside down, out of my waistband. The steel clip that holds the holster to your pants isn't going to let go unless you want it to, though. Experience gives me confidence about that.

But, over the course of a couple of hours of being worn, the holster cants so that the clip is diagonal on my pants. Usually, it tips so the grip is pointing nearly straight up, even though that seems to go against gravity. That may be due to unconscious adjusting on my part, or due to my clothing pushing it. But, whatever is going on, the muzzle doesn't want to be pointed down.

I balanced the other guns in their Craft Holsters and found they were only a little better balanced, but maybe the amount of holster inside my pants was enough to keep them in place better. The size of the gun dictates some things, and the placement of the clip is one of them. Any higher (making the gun lower) and the grip of the gun would be partly below the edge of your pants and harder to acquire when you need to. That could be a problem, but I think it would be worth it to try.

Because of the way I wear my belt-- not in belt loops but slung lower on my hips-- the belt presses the muzzle end of the holster into my skin sometimes. Or, it bothers me sometimes. Not all the time, but when it happens it can suddenly sting and I'll need to readjust things.

I realize both of these issues may be unique to me. It seems I may be the first person to mention them. You might not have the same issues if no one else is experiencing them.

Anyway, I have 2 suggestions for future improvements to this holster: raise the clip a half an inch (which might require widening the leather above it) and-- at least for me-- adding a little length on the skin side below the muzzle. I've crudely tried to illustrate these suggested alterations:

I passed along the suggestions to the guys at Craft Holsters. I think if they would make these adjustments, this would be the perfect P365 holster for me-- maybe for everyone. As it stands, it's completely acceptable, but not quite perfect.

As always, I truly appreciate the opportunity to test and review these holsters. I learn something new every time. Thank you to Craft Holsters!

Addendum:

I decided to modify my own holster to the specifications I outlined above. I also redyed it to cover the spot where the clip used to be, but my dye was darker.

Here is the result.

It is no longer top-heavy, no longer tips on my waistband, and no longer digs into my skin. So far, it works just as well as I had hoped. It's now perfect, as far as I can tell.

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Poking Chinese dragons

Twitter gives insignificant people like me the opportunity to poke at the Chinese government. That's actually more fun than you might imagine.

The guy above posted this and I responded:

This guy...

... jumped in to boost his social credit score.

Oooh! Cultural appropriation! How horrible! You should never "pirate" anything you appreciate from other cultures. I'm sure he uses nothing "pirated" from European cultures.

(How much do you want to bet he's also Chinese government-- I mean, he has access to Twitter while the common people in China are banned from using it.)

Anyway, he had a couple of responses to me:

And also this:

Some "freedom"... He can join RuAdolf Giuliani in misdefining "freedom" to be something government-supremacists prefer. 

I finished off with this (which I sort of copied from L. Neil Smith's takedown of Abe Lincoln):

Now, I don't give a flying hump about the evil government of Taiwan, however I wasn't replying to that government's tools, but to a tool of the Chinese government. And I do approve of secession. Always.

It's fun to aggravate governments. If something happens to me in the near future, the China government (or maybe their buddy in the White House) probably did it. 

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The rarest of events

There has been a shooting in a gun store. This is a rare event. Yet, there's no real reason it would be.

Even gun stores usually have policies against loaded guns in the store. 

It makes sense in a way. In a gun store people are going to be handling firearms in all sorts of ways-- checking to see how they fit in their hands, how the sight picture looks, how the slide or cylinder feels, and things like that. Some may even attempt to dry fire. So, for the guns that are going to be handled to be loaded would be a recipe for disaster.

But for holstered guns... 

Yes, the employees of gun stores are often (if not usually) armed. This just means any bad guy knows who to shoot first without having to scope out the situation too much. It wouldn't surprise me to learn store employees were the ones initially killed. (Reports are still fragmentary as I write this, with no real word on what actually happened.)

As always, it's better if the bad guys either know everyone is armed, or don't know who is. Because, once again, a policy will never stop a bad guy intent on killing people from ignoring a sign on a door and just going through with what he wants to do. 

I'm glad there were other armed people inside the store who prevented more deaths by engaging (keeping him busy) and killing the bad guy. Sometimes the bad guy is just going to do what he's going to do and the best anyone can hope for is to drop him before he makes things worse.

Seriously, if a bad guy is going to start shooting (or stabbing, etc.) near me, I'd rather be in a gun store than just about anywhere else.

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Government needs your compliance

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for January 20, 2021)

No matter how you feel about them, U.S. presidents are both too powerful and figureheads without any real power. It seems contradictory, but it's true.

A president has the power to sign unconstitutional legislation and impose unconstitutional executive orders-- such as Trump's ban on bump stocks-- but unless he does what those with the real power want him to do, he loses the power to do anything.

This defeats the point of gaining the office. So presidents usually play the game.

A president who can do anything to us has too much power over our lives, but everything he does is dictated by others. By who? In spite of what you might believe, it's not the voters. Voters have little power to control the president. That power lies with other people and institutions.

First, there are entrenched federal operatives-- what some refer to as "The Deep State". Yes, it's real. These are the people embedded in government throughout decades of changing administrations. They know how to play the system to get what they want. What they want is more power for themselves and their agencies. They are behind the Pentagon and the security and "intelligence" agencies, but some are ordinary government functionaries with connections.

The legacy political parties-- Democratic and Republican-- are part of this, too. The party bosses are able to help or harm a president of their own party, depending on how well he serves their agenda.

Then, the national mainstream media also has power to influence most presidents. This was never more obvious than when it didn't work quite the way they were used to during the Trump presidency. It's why they had to pull out all the stops to take him down.

It's probably too late to scale back the power of the presidency, or the power various unaccountable agents hold over the presidency. I'd like to see someone try, though.

You can still choose how much power over your life presidents and those who pull the presidents' strings have. They need your compliance. Without it, they are mostly powerless. Sure, they can throw dangerous political tantrums, but that's more a sign of their weakness-- physical and ethical-- than anything. Do your best to stay out of their way as they thrash around in frustration and you'll still be standing after they've self-destructed.

The real power can be yours if you choose to use it.

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Statists (unconsciously) admit statism is a failure

Statism "works" for a lot of people. They do well under it and may even like it. They don't care about their liberty or the liberty of others. Just as long as nothing changes too much and they have someone else to abdicate their responsibility to and blame when that doesn't work.

They are scared to try anything better because they fear they might lose what they already have. Humans generally fear loss more than they fear missing out on something better... sad, but true.

Statism doesn't work well for me. I don't thrive under it. I don't like it. I'm perfectly willing to try something that I think could be better-- even at the risk of it not being better, or ending up back at square-one. I understand the risks and I'm willing to take them.

Maybe I'm being selfish, and that's why I dislike statism so much. Maybe it has nothing to do with the ethics of it. like I imagine it does.

The thing is, I've always been willing to let the statists keep their statism, but just keep it off my life, liberty, and property. Live and let live. You do your thing and stop trying to force your thing on me (sounds rapish, doesn't it).

But statism can't permit that. The very idea scares statists too much. I say I would respect their right to defend themselves from any violations, even with police they hire, but that's not good enough. To them, if everyone isn't equally enslaved by their "system", they seem to know their "system" wouldn't work. If that's not an admission that they already know it's a failure, I don't know what it is.

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You can dislike something without being a monster about it

There's a certain number of people who just don't like guns. Whatever. That's their choice. I've known some of them and gotten along with them pretty well.

But then there are also a certain number of those people who don't simply dislike guns, they are anti-gun bigots. These people don't like guns and then demand that no one else be allowed to have them, either. They want the State-- the worst mass-murderer the planet has ever seen-- to make up rules against gun owners and to take their guns away. 

These people are barbaric.

Their barbarism is based on fear, ignorance, and, yes, bigotry. Even a bit of brainwashing and Stockholm syndrome.

To illustrate the difference, I'll use a personal example:
I don't like pitbulls. It would never occur to me to have the state forbid anyone from having one, or demand licensing, background checks, registration, or any other form of regulation. It's none of the State's business. I may not like pitbulls, but I am not an anti-pitbull bigot. See the difference?

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"Black" history

When I was in seventh grade, even I would say I was racist. I had moved from a place where there were few "black" people (and where I liked the ones I knew and never gave it a second thought) to a place far away, where there were lots of them. And at school, they ganged up on me and treated me really badly. For the first time in my life, this made me actually notice them and their apparent differences, and categorize them based on that.

When they would surround me, I was told that since I was "white", I owed them. Usually, they meant I owed them my lunch money. I didn't pay because I felt no guilt or obligation. My non-cooperation got me physically assaulted and robbed a few times.

I was told my imaginary debt was because of "slavery" even though no one in my family (of outhouse using, cistern dependent, leaky dirt floor shack-dwelling farmers in the Dust Bowl panhandle of Texas) had ever "owned" a slave, and had probably never encountered anyone who had. Things other people did long before even my grandparents were born aren't my fault.

I had never encountered this notion before and was taken completely off-guard. Who thought of such nonsense?

But a few months of this treatment from them and I was definitely a racist.

Yet, in seventh grade, one of my best friends at school was "black". We were in homeroom together and we had a blast every day. 

I'm sure we made the teacher uncomfortable because we "identified" as the other's "race" to make each other laugh. I would copy the local "black" accent and he copied the local "white" accent. He, for one, did an excellent job.

He also loudly called me a "nigger", and I loudly called him a "honkey", constantly-- again copying what other kids were calling those of the opposite "race". We laughed until we couldn't breathe over all our juvenile jokes. Yeah, we probably offended a lot of people, but I had nothing but good feelings about this guy. I believe he felt the same comradery toward me.

He made me realize that the individual kids I didn't like were the problem, not the color of their skin. I wouldn't say I stopped being racist (that faded over time), but I got a lot more discerning because of him. It might not have been automatic, but it didn't take much to make me decide I liked someone. The blanket hostility I had felt, before I met him, toward those with similar skin color to his, was gone and never returned.

I feel bad for the young people now living under the institutionalized bullying that is so similar to the freelance bullying I lived with. Imagine being told-- by supposed adult experts-- that you owe a debt to a collective "them" because of your skin color and things done centuries ago, by (and to) people who are long dead. That your skin color makes you guilty automatically, with no way to prove your innocence. That you need to hate yourself to try (and fail) to make up for things you aren't guilty of. That's abusive. The "media" should be ashamed for promoting this abusive brainwashing. Individuals who go along with it should be just as ashamed.

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