Anarcho-Tyranny in the UK

Paging George Orwell:

A journalist with the London Telegraph has been visited unannounced at her home by police in the UK who told her they are investigating a “non-crime hate incident” over a tweet she posted a year ago.

...

Allison Pearson relates what happened on Sunday in an article, noting that police will not tell her which post is the subject of the investigation, nor will they tell her who her accuser is or what they feel offended about.

Well okay, then.  But the UK Plods seems to have forgotten the old saying to not mess with someone who buys ink by the barrel:

Way to shine a spotlight on your policy, dumbasses.  Streisand Effect much?

I've just caught up with this by @AllisonPearson. Fortunately, she is a member of the Free @SpeechUnion, but I hope the @Telegraph will also be vigorously defending her freedom of expression. The ‘non-crime hate incident’ industry is a malignancy.https://t.co/iLsuNX4MgQ pic.twitter.com/yf0Cr2f0Vr

— Adrian Hilton (@Adrian_Hilton) November 12, 2024

Quote of the Day, Wal*Mart edition

Heh:

But hey, TrailerParkTrashMart, thanks for opening the market up for every other brick-and-mortar firearms retailer in the country, and eliminating your loss-leader negotiating position to sell firearms below cost just to drive littler guys out of business. Firearms makers can now tell you to kiss their ass when you want their product cheaper year-over-year. That just ended too, whether you figured it out or not. Sam is probably spinning in his grave, and his half-wit kinfolk heirs clearly haven't the wits to run a roadside chicken stand. If he were alive, he'd kick their asses, then disown them all.

... 

I'll still visit your stores though.
Just to use the bathroom.
80-20 my turds land in the middle of the floor though, or in the sink bowl, every time.
Have fun with that. I sure will.
Be a real shame if something that simple caught on nationwide.

Remember, guys, the enemy always gets a vote. ;)
And I'll be eating a lot more ethnic foods, and voting often.
Got a hankerin' for some Panda Express broccoli beef today...

"Cleanup on Aisle 2..."

The whole thing is as good.  The Raconteur Report: purveyors of quality rants since 2008 ...

Joe Biden and the Democrat Party

This is pretty funny.

And Gillette can die screaming in a fire.

The exile of Roseanne Barr

Barbarus hic ego sum, qui non intelligor illis 

I am the barbarian here, because none of them understand me.

- Ovid, Tristia

Ovid was one of Rome's greatest poets, actually one of the Big Three (along with Virgil and Horace). His reputation was enormous, so much so that he rose from relative obscurity to rubbing elbows with the family of the great Augustus himself.

It seems that Ovid was also a bit of a punk.  He wrote a notorious (and wildly popular) sex manual, the Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love").  This was published around 8 BC, right in the middle of Augustus' public morality reforms, and he would have known that this was playing with fire.  Likely he relied on his friendships with Augustus' family, especially his grand daughter Julia for protection from the Imperator's wrath.  (Did I mention that he was a bit of a punk?)

But something happened (we don't know exactly what), and Augustus exiled his own grand daughter, along with a number of others.  Ovid was one, sent in exile to Scythia on the Black Sea which was about as far as you could be sent from Rome and still be in the Empire.  Augustus didn't allow him to return, and Ovid lived out the remainder of his years there, miserable.  Nobody there even really spoke Latin, turning this great Man Of Letters mute.  He wrote many letters to the Emperor, begging to return.  All in vain.  He had been purged, despite his popularity.  It is likely that he was purged because of his popularity.

ABC just canceled their most popular show, Roseanne. They did this seemingly without taking any time to deliberate on the decision. The show is more popular than other extremely lucrative shows like Big Bang Theory which has astronomically high advertising rates - presumably Roseanne is similarly lucrative. ABC just burned that revenue stream to the waterline, without even thinking twice.

That seems a bit of a mystery, like Ovid's exile.  But the similarities are striking: both Ovid and Roseanne were a bit controversial, and poked the power elite in the eye.  Both were wildly popular, if considered somewhat vulgar.*  Both had their careers terminated by the power elite.  The power elite took action because each was an influential voice that ran contrary to the goals of the power elite.

Roseanne was so, so not helpful to the cause of Hollywood and the cultural elite.  On the contrary, the fact that a voice was allowed to speak uncomfortable anti-PC truths made it fresh, and wildly popular.  Lots of people tuned in each week to listen to anti-PC ideas.  Lots and lots of people.

And so she had to go.  It really doesn't matter what she said, which seems to be pretty mild when compared to the sort of things that get said by celebrities these days.  Certainly far worse has been said about George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump.  In a larger social sense, the chatter about "White Privilege" or "All Men Are Rapists" show how widely acceptable racist and sexist remarks are on the left.  But nobody gets fired over those, which says that there's something deeper going on.

The ABC executives no doubt were horrified as they watched her popularity grow, thinking about all those viewers tuning into subversive ideas.  Her tweet, while a useful excuse, wasn't the issue.  If she hadn't said that, they would have found something else.

My take is that it doesn't matter if her show doesn't return to the air, at least as far as the culture wars are concerned.  The toothpaste is out of the tube, and the people who like the show won't buy ABC's excuse.  On the contrary, they will remember the many insults directed against them by the cultural elites and this will just solidify their hatred of those elites.  This will be what they talk about with family and friends.  Millions of people will look at this and remember why they should vote for Donald Trump.

Augustus triumphed, and oversaw the establishment of a great empire.  Along the way, he sent Ovid to where his voice would not be understood.  In contrast, ABC is breaking itself, losing money while hardening the opposition to their ridiculous dogma.  Despite their best efforts, Roseanne's voice is heard, at least in the manner that causes maximum political damage to the elites.  The Re-elect Trump 2020 campaign watches, and smiles.

* Ovid wrote elegant and influential poetry, but the Ars Amatoria (while elegant) was still a sex manual.

How's all that UK Gun Control working out?

But I thought it was just us Cowboy Yanks that had a problem:

SCOTLAND Yard has sent out extra patrols in London after a blood-soaked Bank Holiday weekend in which a teenager was shot dead and boys aged 13 and 15 survived being blasted with a shotgun. 

Two more men were shot or stabbed and three were doused in acid as the capital's shocking violence claimed yet more victims.

London is turning into Chicago.  But Moms Demand Relevancy in no doubt relieved that more than half the casualties were stabbings and acid.

At least their top cop is honest:  'We are doing all we can to address this.'  Translation: when seconds count, the police are minutes away.

The Gun Control movement has blood on its hands.

Thoughts on the Media freakout

I don't have any idea what Trump will do as President, at least concerning specific policy details.  Build a wall?  Maybe.  Maybe a big wall, may be a little one.  May not build one at all.  I just don't know.

Same for the other policies.  I guess we'll all see soon enough.

But one thing has become crystal clear in the last week: Trump will make two BIG changes that are entirely beneficial to this Republic:

1. He will (continue to) cut the legs out of the professional Political Correctness crowd.

2. He will (continue) to expose the Media as the liars and idiots that they are.

Both of these are a breath of fresh air.

Hey teacher!  Up with your rules!  'Cause everybody knows that smoking ain't allowed in school ...

Quote of the Day - Political Correctness edition

Yeah, I know I've already done one today.  Samizdata recalls George Carlin's epic description of this scourge:

Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners

– George Carlin

Donald Trump: Ha, Ha, only serious

Computer programming culture (called "hacker" culture in the days before the term got co-opted by Black Hats; these were the original guys who figured out how to code supercomputers, the computers that landed Our Guys on the Moon, and who created the Internet) had a bunch of puns and plays on words.  This isn't surprising when you consider that most of these hackers were exceptionally bright and thought in ways very different from the mainstream.

You can find a huge collection of these in the Jargon File (highly recommended reading, but you are warned that you will lose hours reading through this).  Looking at the Donald Trump phenomenon, one of these sayings came to mind:

ha ha only serious

[from SF fandom, orig. as mutation of HHOK, ‘Ha Ha Only Kidding’] A phrase (often seen abbreviated as HHOS) that aptly captures the flavor of much hacker discourse. Applied especially to parodies, absurdities, and ironic jokes that are both intended and perceived to contain a possibly disquieting amount of truth, or truths that are constructed on in-joke and self-parody. This lexicon contains many examples of ha-ha-only-serious in both form and content. Indeed, the entirety of hacker culture is often perceived as ha-ha-only-serious by hackers themselves; to take it either too lightly or too seriously marks a person as an outsider, a wannabee, or in larval stage. For further enlightenment on this subject, consult any Zen master. See also hacker humor, and koan.

I think that Trump entered the campaign in a ha-ha-only-serious way: an ironic joke with a hard core of disquieting truth.  He was the only one on the stage who would say what the Political Class refused to say but what a large part of the Republic believed in their heart of hearts - but were not permitted to say in "polite society" because shut up, hater.

And every time he opens his mouth and emits what the Political Class deems to be a "gaffe", his poll numbers go up.  I don't think that anyone understands this, including Trump.  However, half of having luck is getting yourself in a position where you can be lucky, and my opinion is that Trump is almost certainly too opportunistic to let an opportunity like this pass.

I'm not the only one who seems to think this way.  Heartiste (WARNING!!! Site is extremely non politically correct and many people - including perhaps all of my Lady Readers - are very likely to be offended by other posts there.  This post is entirely safe except for Democrats) posts an email tip that he received from someone claiming insider knowledge about Trumps campaign:

I just got told by a friend that Trump hired the former lawfirm of the RNC.
Why does this matter?
Word on the street in Chattanooga (where Trump has and retains many high end connections) is that Trump went into the campaign with two intentions.
One was to ‘shake things up’.

The second was to raise his profile with Chinese investors for fund raising for a new casino.

He really didn’t intend to get big numbers in the US and didn’t intend to actually ‘go for the goal.’ Which was why he came in with no primary ground game. He didn’t intend to even get 5%.

With the recent success the question was ‘what now?’ Go for closing the deal or back out? Some of his more inflammatory comments were tests to see if he could flame out. And his poll numbers just rise.

If he has retained a political lawfirm it can only be to create a ground game.

There's a lot more about how this is very, very different from the way that the GOP Establishment runs campaigns.  If true, it may be game changing - it would certainly be very difficult for the Political Class to combat this.  Heartiste comments:

I don’t doubt Trump entered this race thinking he couldn’t win, and that his initial motivation was partly narcissistic (in fact all politicians are narcissists to a degree), partly self-aggrandizement. But then he saw that he could win, and that he had tapped a deep well of dissatisfaction among people by simply speaking his mind the way he likes to speak (i.e., not like a weeping p***y).

The level of dissatisfaction with the Political Class in this country is at epidemic proportions.  The Political Class has assumed that if they offer the populace no real choice, that they can continue with their binge of crony capitalism and keep getting away with their lies.  And now someone has tapped into that dissatisfaction in a way that they may not be able to thwart.

Is this a good thing?  Beats me - he seems a bit Caesarish for my taste.  But the screams of the Political Class (including the media, but I repeat myself) are deafening.  Remember, it's the kicked dog that yelps, and I have precisely zero sympathy for any of them.

The Dinosaurs sniff a change on the breeze and roar their defiance.

Tramautized delicate flowers

William Briggs (Statistician to the Stars!) ponders the crooked timber that is Man:

There’s a story in John Toland’s magisterial The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire (volume two) which depicts a Japanese ship transporting Western prisoners in conditions worse than on any (other) slave ship. It was dark, confined, covered in human filth, and unbearably hot. Unbearably is a strong and apt word. The men went mad and what they did to each other is difficult to relate. I won’t try. Few survived.

...

Do we need to discuss the Amalekites? The retreat from Moscow in 1812 (and again in the twentieth century)? The guillotine? Should we recall certain religious practices of the Aztecs? The scene in The Brothers Karamazov in which we learn that babies were tossed in the air to be bayoneted for amusement? The Goths? Cannibalism? The practice of sati (also spelled suttee)? Utopian scheme A, B, …?

Enough. It is impossible to be familiar with any serious literature and not realize the human race is fallen, that man is broken, that bad things have always happened and, at least in this form of our existence, always will. A vale of tears isn’t in it. Evil.

So what kind of childish naive sheltered coddled whimpering intellect would allow itself to be “traumatized” over reading about a minor criminal beating up a shopkeeper and then attempting to do the same to a policeman and getting himself killed in the attempt? Traumatized?

I’ll tell you: Columbia law students.

The rest is even better, as he demolishes the frivolous hot house flowers that inhabit today's Academy - students and Administrators.

The only thing that I would add is that many of the prisoners on that Japanese ship were the same age as the Columbia students.