TTAG commentator Boba Fett wrote this under our post Personal Defense…It’s an Act of Love:
I have a Progressive-with-a-capital-P friend. She’s a statist to the bone, is absolutely terrified of guns (to the point where she can’t even watch movies with guns in them), and truly believes government can and will solve all of our problems.
Like you did, I decided to humor her a few years ago and get into the gun debate. We were in her apartment in Brooklyn and I asked her, “What if some thug busts down your door right now and tries to kill you? What are you going to do?”
Her response (I kid you not):
“I don’t know…die?”
That’s it. Thing is, she doesn’t want to die, but she has to just shrug her shoulders and act like she doesn’t care because she knows she has absolutely no valid response to that question. Anti-gunners like her have to first swallow two crazy pills to justify their stance:
1) It will never happen to me (unfortunately, that’s what everyone says the day before it happens to them).
2) Not only will I have the opportunity to call the police, explain the situation, and give them my address, but they will also show up so quickly that the assailant will not have a chance to do me any harm.
And they bet their lives on these premises.
I’ve known her since middle school, long before either of us formed any political beliefs at all. She’s never had any kind of traumatic, real-life event involving a gun. She just hates them for reasons unknown. Now that she’s an adult, she readily gobbles up any “statistics” and arguments that are even remotely anti-gun, without question, simply because they validate the true core of her anti-gun stance: her feelings.
In that same conversation, I verbally cornered her and got her to admit what I knew all along about anti-gunners: she actually doesn’t care about how many people in this country get shot, she wants all guns banned because SHE is terrified that SHE might get shot, because SHE has been staring, saucer-eyed, at the mainstream media for the majority of her life. She “feels” that anyone who leaves their house at anytime, anywhere, stands an excellent chance of getting shot to death. That’s all.
Anti-gunners love to throw out tallies of the dead and pretend they give a fuck about people who live thousands of miles away whom they’ve never met. But the human brain isn’t wired that way.
At the end of the day, we’re all self-serving, but the way “news” is reported has guilted a huge swathe of the country into believing they’re supposed to care, and if they don’t, they’re just the worst kind of callous asshole. It’s just control, masquerading as safety. And people buy it.
Well done.
Now, leave Han alone, man. What’s he done to YOU?
Well he did shoot first. 😉
Greedo deserved, it he was going to shoot Han after all.
#UnpopularOpinionOfTheDay
Boba Fett is the most overrated character in the Star Wars universe.
His strategy of tracking Solo involved putting a tracker on the Falcon.
He had to kowtow to Vader, and meekly accept his promises (after just stabbing Lando in the back! Ha!) that the Empire would ‘compensate’ him in case Solo was killed by the carbon-freeze process.
He apparently had nothing better to do than hang out with Jabba for months after delivering Solo (did Jabba even pay him? Was he just waiting around to collect?)
He was defeated in hand-to-hand combat by a *blind* Han Solo.
He also suffered one of the most pathetic deaths in the Star Wars canon: he falls, limp as a muppet, into a tooth-rimmed anus in the desert.
Fett wasn’t even supposed to be a major character. But his cool-looking costume sold a lot of toys, so he got promoted to the big time. George Lucas may be one of the worst screenwriters and directors of all time, but the guy is a business genius.
Business genius? All he had to do was look at the sales figures and tell them to make more of the stuff that was selling out.
He built a multi-billion-dollar empire off of three mediocre children’s movies (and three more really, really shitty children’s films). That takes more than a little business acumen.
He didn’t die in the Sarlach pit.
These Sub Humans are the force that is harming us, our rights, our future, our Liberty?
The fight will be short and the victory sweet.
Accepting reality can lead to some callousness. Hate to say it, but it’s hard to give a damn about people who bring about their own self destruction and who abuse compassion that’s given to them.
If some criminal or terrorist gets shot it’s hard for me to give a damn about them. They made their choice to hurt others. My concern goes far more towards an upstanding citizen who they put in that situation.
While one shouldn’t blame the victims, not being a victim starts with the will to fight back in many cases. Tend to one’s self first then worry about the world.
Indeed. It sucks that anyone ever gets killed, but it sucks way more that people make choices to victimize others. And when those people refuse to be victims? Well, any life lost is wasted potential, which is unfortunate. But they made their choices, and they alone are responsible for the outcome of those choices (especially when those choices directly result in them getting ventilated).
Are you sure this wasn’t my brother in law from Mesa, AZ. He told me last year we need the Democrats because they will make more laws and protect us better than we can do ourselves. Worse he has infected his grandson and wife with his willful ignorance.
I just responded to that original post and it is well worth repeating here:
“Progressives … decide what to do based on altruism, fantasy, and emotion.”
It is imperative that we understand that principle along with these two HUGELY important implications of that principle:
(1) Facts are irrelevant to Progressives.
(2) Progressives readily accept the death toll of their altruism, fantasy, and emotion.
The only possible constructive outcome of any conversation with a Progressive is to illustrate their hysteria and accompanying death toll to fence-sitters who are listening to that conversation.
This is why Vox Day has pointed out it is completely pointless to try to have a dialectic conversation with someone ‘programmed’ to think rhetorically.
We like to sit on our laurels and crow about “facts are on our side” and taking the ‘moral high ground’ in our discussions. But at the end of the day, none of that matters.
They simply cannot ‘hear’ what we say when we do that.
The only effective argument for such people comes from rhetoric. Not facts, not “truth.” The truth matters to us, not them.
We need to keep this in mind whenever engaging a rhetorically minded individual (and there are many on both sides of any debate). Logic and facts don’t ‘stick.’ They are ignored.
And we can’t change them to be fact-oriented. If we wish to communicate with them, and persuade them, we must communicate in a language they understand.
It’s hard for many of us to grasp this basic fact, but it is essential.
Fvck Progressives. They don’t listen to “racists, bigots, misogynists, trans-phobics and xenophobes” anyway, which is how they define non-Progressives. I find my life is happier, fuller and richer when I am not in contact in any way with Progessives past polite, superficial conversation. Moving further away from Progressive centers is of benefit as well.
“Moving further away from Progressive centers is of benefit as well.”
Avoid them, live and let live would be my preferred response to leftists as well. However, no matter how much we try to avoid them, I’m afraid that sooner or later they WILL show up on or doorsteps (figuratively or literally). Proggies are not real big on live and let live.
Old Ben,
The pertinent pearl of wisdom is, “You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.”
‘The pertinent pearl of wisdom is, “You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.”’
Very well put.
Come on, how could you pass up such a glorious opportunities to inflict massive butthurt upon a Progressive? I for one NEVER, EVER, take a pass on “triggering” an “anti” by relying on facts and statistics that support us on the 2nd Amendment in fact I relish and take advantage of each occasion as they present themselves exploiting it to the fullest hoping to send the Progressive scrambling for their “safe space” if just to demonstrate to them how badly they will fare when facing an armed criminal intent on doing them harm. “Yes” I AM an unapologetic “instigator”, MY heroes are Woody Woodpecker and Chilly Willy two of the most renowned “troublemakers” in the cartoon world.
JR_in_NC,
I don’t even see how rhetoric will persuade any Progressives. They process situations and events in a visceral way. They see firearms as downright evil and no amount of talking is going to change that.
Think about it this way. Suppose that a bio-chemist develops an enzyme for dog turds that kills all the bacteria and coverts all the material into safe, edible protein. If that bio-chemist presents a thoroughly treated dog turd to you, would you eat it? Or would you reject eating the converted dog turd even though you KNOW that the enzyme killed all the bacteria and converted all the material into safe, edible protein? That is how the Progressive mind works. It doesn’t matter if a dog turd is safe to eat and good for you. Eating a dog turd is just plain disgusting and they will never eat one and will vehemently oppose offering them for sale in grocery stores. And that is how a Progressive views firearms: firearms are just plain disgusting and no amount of polishing (or enzyme action) is going to change a Progressive’s position that firearms are disgusting.
There are some that are un-reachable.
There are many who are. Our goal is not strive for the unattainable conversion of the ‘true believers.’ Our goal is to discredit the ‘true believers’ to such a degree that those with even a modicum of intellectual honesty can see the flaws in the gun control arguments.
This is how the alt-right is gaining political ground through meming and going on rhetorical attacks. They are not trying to convince Clinton sycophants to vote Trump; they are merely trying to show utterly and completely bankrupt Clinton ideology is.
The sycophants won’t change. The goal is to show them to be just that…true believing sycophants that will vote Clinton no matter how nutjob she gets (and seriously, she’s off the deep end lately…admiring Merkel? Seriously?).
We can model after that strategy.
The reality is there are a LOT of people that are kinda ambivalent about Gun Rights…they don’t care all that much about ‘guns’ as a political issue. They get their issue info from MSM and nutters like Kelly/Giffords, Watts and pols like Newsom.
Discrediting these sources forces their cognitive dissonance. That’s where rhetoric comes in. Not to convince Shannon she’s wrong, but to convince someone that might otherwise listen to Shannon that not only is Shannon wrong, but she’s so totally wrong as to be laughable – and insultingly so.
(It should be relatively easy in that cast, too…there are clues Watts herself does not even believe the nonsense she is paid to spread).
Rhetoric is highly effective. Ask GamerGate, for example. The Alt-Right is growing (to the point of experiencing growing pains of infighting), and it has done so via effective rhetoric.
I don’t care what you think you did with that dog turd. You could put whipped cream and a cherry on top and insist that you used your sciency ways to turn it into pure NY cheesecake…
I ain’t eatin’ eht.
And I love guns and cheesecake.
Next time at I’m at cheesecake factory I’ll have to ask about this converted dog turd cheesecake thingy.
“I ain’t eatin’ eht.”
Okay, then…stop eating. Everything.
Feces and other wastes, including decomposing bodies (from microbes to humans) constitute nutrients for plant matter. Those materials are converted from ‘feces’ into ‘good food’ by the plants.
Every time you eat a fruit, veggie or bread, there’s a good chance that you are eating the chemical conversion products of what was once “crap.”
Eat only meat? Fine. If eat a plant eater, same argument. Meat eater? Okay, what do THEY eat?
Ultimately, chemical conversion is just that…it’s chemical conversion. For example, H2O extracted from urine is just that…H2O. And, it is one of the fundamental laws of chemistry (“The Law of Constant Composition”) that it is completely impossible to tell that H2O from any other. H2O is H2O.
If you don’t acknowledge that you are not being rational. So, go ahead and say you don’t eat sh1t. At some level you do, or have at some point, by the rules of the question u/s set up, whether you want to admit it to yourself or not.
That is dialectic. That’s the truth. Now, let’s go ahead and lay claim to how much more rational, logical and factual our side is while we say “I ain’t eain’ feces, no way.”
Will that argument be convincing? The fact that something is “the truth” really does not matter all that much to most people. It’s not really a question of intelligence, either.
To continue winning in the war for gun rights in particular and individual liberty in general, we need to get better at rhetoric. Some arguments (like eating protein converted from dog crap) will be rhetorically harder than others, but that does not mean we should give up on the single most effective persuasive tool we have.
Puck Frogressives. I got rid of Facebook in Nov 2012 and now the only pandering of big government grape koolaid salesfolk I have to deal with is on the boob tube and youtube. I dont have any friends who are communists/Marxists because I refuse to be polite to those who are willfully and actively shitting on America (fundamental transformation much) like theyre eating laxative for breakfast. Pretty salty this morning, Wolverines!
I would not be friends with this person. I would not be friends with any person, no matter how long I knew them, that held these beliefs. I would disown family over this.
+++
Exactly. Theyre the enemy and should be treated as such.
LOL. We’re actually not friends anymore, on account of her sheer idiocy.
I had a neighbor in NoVA just like your ex-friend. He wanted all handguns eliminated because he knew that someday someone with a handgun would kill his daughters. He must have had many sleepless nights worrying which one would go first. I guess it didn’t matter that having a handgun just might be what his daughters needed to save their lives. After living next door to him for 16 years, he never knew that my wife and I both carried. And, his daughters are still very much alive.
A miracle?
94 shot, 11 killed in Chicago last week.
If progressives really cared about saving lives, they would be flipping out over this.
Clearly they are not. Clearly they do not.
Like you said, it’s all because they personally don’t want to be shot, and they don’t care who they hurt to get there.
This is also why they can see a huge rise in homicide rates and poo-poo it by saying, well, it’s really only happening in bad neighborhoods in major cities.
Yeah… guess it doesn’t count then. Keep on truckin!
Humans the only animal in the animal kingdom being conditioned not to defend their lives? Goes every natural grain of living life.
What are progressive’s progressing to? Extinction??
“Progress” for them is freeing themselves from the remaining shackles of the Constitution and Western individual liberty. They are very clear on what they want to destroy. They have never been very clear on what they want to build.
They have never had a philosophy of building anything. Only change…
Progressives are progressing toward “utopia” on Earth. Literally. They honestly believe that utopia on Earth is achievable. Oh, and they believe that it requires a central government, that isn’t hampered with any Constitutional limitations, to “pool” (confiscate) everyone’s resources.
This hit me like a ton of bricks when I saw a 1960s video of a police proposal in the greater Los Angeles area. Their proposal included putting bright “help me!” lights on the rooftop of every home/business and having police helicopters in the air at all times to see those “help me!” lights and respond within seconds. The police representative giving the proposal actually used the word utopia to describe what they were hoping to accomplish with respect to reducing crime and increasing effective police response to people in distress.
We are quite literally fighting against altruism and fantasy — the cornerstone of nearly all movies and television coming out of Hollywood (and more recently New York City as they ramp up their movie and television production capacity).
“They honestly believe that utopia on Earth is achievable.:
So do I! Let’s begin by requiring every adult to carry, or surrender his right to vote. Police to find all defensive shootings fine and dandy. Also, hunting down and executing criminals. The world is overpopulated, by the time we get back to 5 billion, we should be well on the way to utopia.
I’ll repeat something I said some time ago.
It’s not progressive as in “progress,” it’s progressive as in “cancer.”
I stole this.
Not sure that I’ve ever met anybody that delusional. I have friends and family who are dems and even a tad proggish, but they accept the fact that people defend themselves with guns and are OK with that. They chant the same “common sense” laws to keep guns out of the hands of bad people, but you can tell they haven’t thought the issue through.
Anyways, all of them have said that if someone were a danger to them or their family, deadly, ballistic force is justifiable and required.
Have you asked them if they think New Jersey’s gun control laws are common sense?
It’s easy to paint with a broad brush but this is merely one example. Our (2nd Amendment advocates) cause too is much more complicated than anti-gun propone t’s give us credit for.
The fundamental truth is that anti-gun supporters tend to base their positions on emotional foundations.
That said, we have our own weaknesses.
Who exploits these? The media, gun manufacturers and ammo manufacturers. In that order, I think.
The media plays both sides of the field and deals the rewards of advertising revenue.
The resulting panic has given firearm and ammo manufacturers their best years. Ever.
It’s the price of being a free nation.
My main concern is that, although we have many more gun owners, we don’t necessarily have gun advocates. It’s more of a “we got ours, to hell with everyone else” mentality.
” It’s more of a “we got ours, to hell with everyone else” mentality.”-sums up a major problem with the 2A community..far too many silently accept the destruction of other individual rights, the same rights many of the same state the 2A was designed to protect.
This sounds like my cousin. He often states in that he’d rather die during political discussions. There is something disturbing about progressives’ acceptance of death and willingness to be a victim.
I’ve heard that with liberals, too. You can rest easy, though, it is just a figure of speech, they have no real idea what they’re saying. Like, “I’d rather die than go see that movie!” They are uniformly not willing to lift a finger, much less risk their ass, to accomplish anything at all.
There’s a tactic employed in combat to help hide the sound signature-locating of multiple machine guns being fired called “talking guns”. One gun (yes, this one’s not your “rifle” it’s a machine-“gun”) let’s go of a burst of rounds quickly followed by another gun that is physically offset in position. The mixing sounds do (somewhat and briefly) help slow down the enemy’s ability to audibly locate the position of the machine guns.
Gun grabbers are working very very diligently to convince you that that’s the only confrontational “conversation” worth having with respect to guns.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/usmc/mcwp/3-15-1/mcwp3-15-1.pdf
pg. 1-7
Amongst other purposes. . .
But it’s not just her. She’s also giving up her right and duty to defend her children, husband/wife/significant other/whatever-we’re-calling-it-these-day.
People who refuse to use firearms to defend their children? Wouldn’t want to be their child. “Why, Mommy?”
Amen to that. If someone would rather be victimized than defend themselves, fine. But how can you say that you would rather your family be victimized as well? That is either insanity, cowardice or both.
Hollywood is crystal clear on this issue: Guns save lives… if one judges by the material they regularly produce. Moreover, those characters cast without a gun invariably get bent over unless said flick is of the unrealistic martial arts variety. Even that invariably boils down to another life lesson: Might makes right. The Hollywood moral of the story? Either arm yourself or be sufficiently strong and skilled in order to impose your will upon others.
How can you possibly argue with that?
Progressives: Big on feelings, low on reality. I got into an argument with a progressive family member recently about firearms. The emotion on his part got so out of control that I can only equate his demeanor with that of a child who doesn’t like what he’s hearing so he clamps his hands over his ears and begins yelling “Blah blah blah I can’t hear you!!”.
Yeah, my late Dad (career Navy followed by extreme liberal university life-go figure) once carried on for around 15 minutes on a one sided anti gun rant, when he ran down for a moment, I got to speak for around 5-10 seconds before he interrupted with “Well, you’re wrong, so let’s not talk about it any more.”, and walked away. He got his wish, I never talked about guns with him again, or anything else.
PhD Professors at liberal universities are the absolute worst about realistic conversations, and I am sure he inflicted his extremist views on all his students, too
@Boba Fett:
Progressivism isn’t merely a fantasy. It’s a feminine fantasy. Being passive, collaborating and waiting for help is what women have been trained to do, so don’t judge your nitwit “friend” too harshly.
“Friend” may not have been the best word to describe the current state of our relationship.
Another fun little side story about the same girl. About 10 years ago she heard my buddy and I were going to the range, and she asked to come. I was absolutely shocked, but she said something like, “I just want to see what it’s like…” So, I said ok.
After we parked, she refused to move from the backseat of the car. She was sitting there, shaking like a leaf from all the gunfire she heard on the way in. Eventually, we coaxed her out of the car and up to the firing line. After the standard safety brief, I handed her a USP .45. She stood there for an eternity, but just couldn’t manage to pull the trigger. I rolled my eyes, took the pistol back and kept shooting.
Then, a minute later, she gets this terrified look on her face, points at a dude shooting a couple lanes down, and gasps, “He’s doing the sniper thing!!!!”
“That’s called the prone position. It’s a very common shooting position.”
It was a long day at the range.
An acquaintance of mine has this virulent hatred of firearms. He’s not really a friend anymore (not because of the guns, he’s recently turned into a grade-A jerk after financial success…) but he considers the act of carrying a firearm outside of the home equivalent to “punching him in the nose…”
He also feels he’s safe in his home due to the (unarmed) security in the front of his building. I guess he figures that the guy manning the fort will somehow be able to tell if the guy he just buzzed in is a “good guy” or not.
I’m wondering if what happened to Kim K this morning has changed his mind? Armed assailants forced an unarmed desk agent to unlock KK’s suite…
pod, sounds like your friend or acquaintance has never actually been punched in the nose….
I have a Trump sign in my yard.
My neighbor next door, Hillary.
So I put another sign in my yard.
This house protected by Smith, Sig, Ruger, Winchester, Browning, Remington, Norinco, and Colt.
<<<<<< This house not so much.<<<<<<
Yeah, we really don’t converse much.
Unspoken assumptions in that conversation that I caught (there may be more):
1. The criminals will stop or will otherwise be defeated/contained by the police.
2. The bad guys are not the police.
# 2 is a BAD assumption in Chicago. Google the name “Jerome Finnegan” to find out way…
Progressivism’s goal is Medieval. They want everyone to be controlled by “someone else”, namely, the Government. As with the historical Marxist Socialist Governments we have seen and still exist, the “Government” is composed of an Elite Class who have privilege and access to goods and services the “proletariat” can’t even dream of. The Ruling Elite control Police and Military whose principal job is to protect the Ruling Elite from the “proles” and maintain the existence of The State. Sound all-too-familiar?
Right now, the American Ruling Elite are maintaining the sham of a democratic republic only because too many of the “proles” are Armed and vastly outnumber their Police and Military. I don’t think they fear an actual Rebellion, but regard us, the Armed, as a roadblock to their agenda, which is why we are relentlessly assailed and reviled.
Ever more Americans are accepting their role as disarmed, Government dependent “proles” because they are so afraid for their own miserable lives they cannot summon the courage to do anything else. Homogeneity is a powerful force to weak-minded Humans.
Goes to show Patrick Henry was right*, but most of the submissive “proles” don’t even know who he was. The “Progressive Utopia” would be a retroversion, but has cloaked itself in Globalism and “the (false) equality of the common good” to hide its true identity and intent. It is Medieval and toxic to the natural Liberty of the individual Human Being.
* “Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” Patrick Henry ― From a speech given at Saint John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia on March 23, 1775 to the Virginia House of Burgesses; as first published in print in 1817 in William Wirt’s Life and Character of Patrick Henry.
LOL! Double down on victimhood. PROUD TO BE A VICTIM OVER HERE! Look at me! I’m a victim. Let’s hug, embrace victimhood, and talk to each other emotionally about us being victims currently, and victims in the future. Yay!
To such people, I always respond:
* Police have no legal duty to protect individuals.
* Police have no legal liability when they fail to protect individuals.
* Police not assigned as bodyguards have virtually no ability to protect individuals.
Police don’t protect individuals. They draw chalk outlines around individuals who cannot or will not protect themselves.
If you’re unwilling or unable to protect yourself, you’re just not going to get protected at all. Anybody who tells you any different is LYING.
In response, I’ve been told that they HAVE to protect you because, “It says ‘To Serve and Protect’ on the doors of the cars!” My reply: “If it said ‘Have a Nice Day!’, could you sue them if you didn’t?”
Who told you that?
Of course, maybe the same people that think “stopping child rape” is a legal duty of a football coach…
Why would you attempt a conversation with a Progressive?
They can’t talk about anything other than what they already “know” to be true.
If they “know” it to be true, they’ll never listen to one word.
I have won one – exactly one – argument with a knee-jerk Democrat on this issue. Want to know how?
I gave him his own gun.
He’s still a knee-jerk Democrat, but swears he won’t let anyone take his gun. But he doesn’t really think Hillary wants to take them, so he’s voting for her anyway.
I said “Look at her official website. If it says anything about guns, I want the gun back.” Of course it does, and of course he won’t do that. No, no. You give them something, it’s gone forever no matter what. Facts, evidence, outright statements of intent mean nothing to a Democrat or Progressive. Their world happens according to their individual belief, not objective reality.
Anti-gunners are not opposed to the use of violence. They are just opposed to getting their hands dirty, and instead sub-contract any necessary violence to others.
Simply not possible to have a rational, logical fact based conversation with the typical leftist gun grabber.
They simply CANNOT THINK. They go through life emoting at every thing they encounter no matter how
trivial.
Super late to the party, but I just want to point out:
“Anti-gunners like her have to first swallow two crazy pills to justify their stance:
1) It will never happen to me (unfortunately, that’s what everyone says the day before it happens to them).
2) Not only will I have the opportunity to call the police, explain the situation, and give them my address, but they will also show up so quickly that the assailant will not have a chance to do me any harm.
And they bet their lives on these premises.”
…followed by the cognitive dissonance of:
“she wants all guns banned because SHE is terrified that SHE might get shot, because SHE has been staring, saucer-eyed, at the mainstream media for the majority of her life. She “feels” that anyone who leaves their house at anytime, anywhere, stands an excellent chance of getting shot to death.”
pretty much sums up why I refuse to get into conversations/arguments with anti-gun progressives in the first place. The fact that they refuse to acknowledge that their arguments cannot be reconciled, means they’re not worth discussing gun rights in the first place.