A Lot Hangs

Virginia’s New Democratic government will be a lesson to the nation. Which lesson they choose to teach will be one of the major determinants of how 2020 breaks in purple states.

21 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

It follows a familiar pattern:

A: These measures will make our communities safer
B: What's the evidence for that?
A: The Gun Lobby is ginning up fears to scare you
B: My question was "What's the evidence for that?"
A: The law is the law
B: So you're not going to answer my question.

Grim said...

As you doubtless know, the evidence points the other way.

MikeD said...

I wonder how they would feel about making the same decisions regarding illegal immigrant sanctuary cities?

Grim said...

You know perfectly well how they would react to Trump sending in the National Guard to sweep up illegal immigrants.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

It is legislation by feelings. They want laws that will make them feel safer, not actually be safer.

MikeD said...

And according to 75 counties in Virginia (out of 95, that's almost 80%!) they want none of those new laws. The State government best be careful not to antagonize 80% of the state (the armed, 80%) too much. Were I the Virginia National Guard commander, I'd be very careful before agreeing to an order to arrest the governments and police forces of those municipalities. The Governor might face an actual mutiny. Though, it wouldn't be a mutiny, because the laws are in violation of the Second Amendment and therefore not Constitutional.

Sic Semper Tyrannus indeed.

james said...

I suppose it makes some rulers uncomfortable to remember that this country is founded on revolutionary principles, and that the 2nd amendment is partly meant to back them up.

raven said...

Sending the Guard is perfect. Not only does it send an irrevocable signal of tyranny, it gets them into the field and away from the capitol. Then the boys from the sticks can go play in the home of the gods.
The signal is important, as a great deal of hope for peaceful resolution exists- and anyone who has seen war, usually hopes they will not have to see it again- but an military force directed by the enemy,abroad in the land attacking ones home and family? There is no stronger signal that it is time to take down the rifle and pack some mre's.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Mike D - Sic Semper Tyrannus - I'd forgotten that. I think those counties had better start using that.

raven said...

AVI,
These people do not want to "feel safe".
They want slaves, and they will kill to get them.



Grim said...

I’m not entirely convinced the Guard could muster a force to do it. I knew the NC National Guard (30th Armored Brigade Combat Team, mostly NC but with some forces from WV). They’d definitely have wanted to be involved, but I don’t think on the side of disarming their uncles and cousins at the behest of city politicians and bureaucrats.

Ymar Sakar said...

You guys talking crazy. Reminds me of me back in 2007, although even i dared not talk as explicitly, given red flag termination back then. See it is actually harder to do things when too many people catch on.

As re avi talk about feelings, this is a natural service to self at expense of others plan. They create fear. Use fear. Get power. Get sex slaves, and that includes all the children for the next 7 genetations. They use power yo keep themselves in power, bypassing the heart chakra. I know a lot more than people can imagine now. It is quite clear. Raven is also closer to the onion center. It is about slaves, but for the brownshirts, being slaves actually benefits them. They no longer need a conscience.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Let me simply register my disagreement with Raven's and Ymar Sakar's interpretations above. I know lots of liberals, and this applies to precisely none of them.

Unfortunately, I also know how hard it is for people to drop paranoid interpretations. The best one can hope for is that the person switches his target of who the core evil ones are to something else.

raven said...

Yeah, I am surrounded by "liberals". They are about as "liberal" as a Stalinist. Being "nice", does not alter what they DO.

Paranoid? Maybe. Get smacked upside the head enough times and you learn to flinch. Is that paranoia?

Find ONE who will stand up for anything outside their ironclad litany of belief.

Better yet, contest their viewpoint, and see how long it takes them to melt down into rage. Try, "I think it's just plain wrong to kill a baby in the womb."
See how much empathy and inclusivity you get in return. Or, "gee, too bad Jane didn't have gun, maybe she could have shot the rapist." The average "liberal" will froth at the mouth.

They may say they are opposed to slavery, and they may think they mean it, and they may be all sweet and nice and concerned about this and that, but their actions speak otherwise.
When their pot is put on the fire, and all the soup boiled down to an essence-

They intend to to take from one person, by force, the fruits of his labor, and give to another, or keep it for themselves.

Is there another definition for slavery?

Grim said...

I don't think they support chattel slavery, for example. But I totally expect them to vote to send armed agents of the state to my house to steal my property, insofar as that property consists of any firearms; and to leave me disarmed facing their additional thefts of property to support their government spending / redistribution schemes. And if I resist that, well, I'm a bad person who -- however regretfully -- probably needs to be imprisoned or killed by the police. That's what police are for.

That said, I'm sure I agree with AVI that they don't think of themselves as evil, but as just people doing what's best for the poorest and most unfortunate. They think I'm the evil one for not agreeing to fall in line. The fact that I'd happily leave them alone to do whatever they want if only they'd extend me the same courtesy doesn't move the ball; their system needs active agreement and compliance, and can only accept dissent and difference at the smallest of margins.

Ultimately, if you put me in charge of the country, we'd be restructuring it so that all Americans could live the way they want with minimal interference. What Virginia is testing is whether, should you put the current crop of Democrats in charge, they'll call out the National Guard to compel other Americans to surrender what those Americans consider core Constitutional rights.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Raven - As I hit "Publish your comment" I knew what the responses would be. You are either willing to hear difficult information or you aren't. I was mostly responding to Ymar's comments about sex slaves for seven generations; you were a minor throw in.

I work with paranoia for a living Lo, these forty years and have studied it outside of my direct line of work as well. It is an overread of patterns, probably with a strong hardwired component. It overinterprets neutral information and adds it to real dangers. It is hugely susceptible to confirmation bias.

They do not want slaves. No one is trying to make you a slave. Liberals, especially those who gravitate to DC, want things that I think are bad for all of us, that circumscribe our freedoms, that would make our lives more like Western Europeans. But Western Europeans are not slaves, not close. If your rhetoric was not simply hyperbole to get people to wake up (a tactic I associate with liberals), then it is simple inaccurate. My friends from eastern Europe, including two of my sons and the people who ran their orphanage, could instruct you what real oppression looks like. And even they would not use the word "slave."

One of my sons from Romania has worked in Norway these last eight years. He is distressed that they accept restrictions they should not. He shakes his head at the illusions they labor under of things they think can be easily fixed. But he doesn't think he is a slave, nor Norskis in general, nor that they are in danger of becoming slaves anytime soon... because he thinks even he has never seen the real thing, being born in 1987 and only hearing about actual oppression secondhand.

If it's just hyperbole, drop it. It's an ineffective tactic. Incompetence and good intentions leading to Hell are adequate explanations - malice is unnecessary. If you really believe they want you to be an actual slave, in any reasonable sense, then talk to people who have lived under real oppression.

Ymar keeps changing who he thinks is behind it all. I think soon it will be the Jews. He has already hinted at that. It's not that he never sees anything accurately - paranoids are actually very good at noticing details that other overlook - but that he is unable to tolerate the least doubt. He knows, and the rest of us are just fools who can't see.

raven said...

AVI,
I did not concoct my reasoning out of thin air- I am simply listening to what they tell me. Over and over. "peace, inclusivity, diversity, and love. And if you object they beat your head in. Lovingly, of course.

It is very true I am extrapolating,because predicting an arc of possibility is what people do, if they have a brain. It is the "what can go wrong" thinking that keeps us out of trouble.

Don't confuse the subject with my supposed paranoia-
That is just displacement of the argument-
What I am saying is there is a large contingent of the "liberal" crowd who would, if not cheer us on the road to the camps, would at least not lift a finger to stop it.
You have seen the pictures of the adoring crowds of women and girls, rapturous at the appearance of the Leader- whether they were evil or not- their actions supported a horror beyond comprehension.
Slaves? Maybe not yet, but a damned good case could be put the "liberal" elites regard us as nothing more than farm animals, to milked for taxes and bred for meat.

Grim said...

In fairness, too, the rhetoric has a long American heritage, and to positive effect. E.g.:

“ Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace²but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? 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!”

Grim said...

It’s not very likely the British were really planning to enslave the colonists, though men like Henry (like I myself in the analog) were in peril of being killed or slapped into chains. But his model of defiance certainly worked out.

MikeD said...

AVI, I was raised in Virginia. About 20 minutes South of Richmond. I don't know how many others paid attention in Social Studies, but they taught us those words, and what they meant. And in the school I attended, young men might be "out sick" if they happened to shoot a deer that morning during hunting season. And if they failed to do so, they would generally bring their rifle to school (left in the car, or perhaps put in a locker) and no one even thought twice about it. And then they would try again the next morning.

I know that the State House and Senate has gone to the Dems. But if they think that 90% of the State's counties will surrender their arms because of the fears of a few urban hoplophobes, they will learn the meaning of those words I was taught in Social Studies so very long ago. I have no doubt.

I do, however, completely doubt the willingness of members of the Virginia National Guard to go into those counties and arrest the law enforcement officers therein for upholding their oaths to the same Constitution the NG also swore to uphold. As I said, I'd halfway expect a general mutiny.

douglas said...

AVI, who's paranoid, the VA Dems floating the idea of deploying the NG to enforce gun laws most Virginians don't like, or we who are reacting to that idea? I don't think our reacting to that idea is a fully developed belief that we're headed to civil war, but a recognition that the future is often not as we'd predicted or hoped, and big, prosperous, strong nations have fallen into chaos before. It may not be likely now- I hope not- but sitting back and not reacting to this sort of trial balloon with equally radical responses won't help- indeed, it might do the opposite.