… to be a real moneymaker for the federal government, now that fines will be imposed on House members unable to resist even for an hour or two the peculiar arousal of up close and personal arsenals. Friends and family have tried all kinds of interventions, but Lauren Boebert’s craving for glocks has now become a financial and reputational emergency, costing her so far $5000 in fines as she goes into a swoon at the Capitol metal detector and becomes a national laughingstock.
That amount will rise with each daily infraction, until her salary falls to something like $20,000 a year, but farcical as this daily public mental breakdown may appear, addiction is no laughing matter. Much as she might like to avoid personal and professional disaster, Boebert has no more control over her screaming fits at the detector, and her efforts to illegally evade it, than Jeffrey Epstein did over his daily need for sex slaves.
Boebert’s the loudest, but she’s far from the only House member melting down every day at the metal detector. Fine-wise, we’re talking real money, which UD proposes Pelosi donate to a fund for the victims of gun violence.
The ONLY one; and he represents people way over THERE… over on the far right… the eastern shore… which is BARELY Maryland… Let’s call it Tidewater West Virginia or something …
Back over here, in MARYLAND, we don’t elect stinky doodoos who do a doodoo in front of the Capitol police days after a violent insurrection because they MUST be allowed to break the rules and carry their guns onto the House floor because what if there’s another insurrection and he can be of assistance to the Proud Boys? Pence is gone, but someone’s gotta pop Pelosi…
Cosmic convergence, too, with one of this blog’s perennials, His Holiness Adrian Vermeule — who shares with Andy Harris an adoration of Hungary’s dictator, Victor Orban!
Farhad Manjoo frets over the power of the reactionary paranoid media and how it’s leading our people astray, but it ain’t that. That’s a symptom. That’s merely their reading material.
There are two primary causes of violent insurrection in today’s America:
- Arsenal Sadness: Most people solve the problem of arsenal sadness by unlocking their arsenal and killing themselves, or their wife, or both, with a selected weapon from it. They are sad because they have spent decades, and tens of thousands of dollars they don’t have, amassing a world-class armory, and have been unable to use it. It sits, a seething reproach to their promise to themselves that someday they would spray some setting with bullets and everyone would pay attention to them. These people have what used to be called an itchy trigger finger. They are actively looking for occasions to pop someone; they open carry in desperate hopes that in the course of this or that ordinary day they can whip out their semi-automatic and do a wee-wee on the Waffle House lawn. Scaring people with their AWS-16 Beowulf just doesn’t do the trick anymore; they’re still sad. What better target than the national leadership of American democracy? It’s cathartic; it’s a culmination; it’s a hoot. If Stephen Paddock hadn’t prematurely shot his wad in Las Vegas, he’d have been blasting his way into the Pence family secure location on January 6. Ditto Adam Lanza.
- Stupidity: This is the most thoughtful analysis of American stupidity UD has found. Yes, it is a long read; yes, it is somewhat pedantic. But the author captures better than anyone I know the roots and significance of the globally recognized idiocy of many Americans, their hatred of intellectuals, and their love of Louie Gohmert, Sarah Palin, and Tommy Tuberville. Like the almost seventy percent of Americans who cannot name our three branches of government, Senator Tuberville, pride of Bama, cannot … name our three branches of government. I would not be surprised if Senator Tuberville thinks he sits on the Supreme Court. The archē-idiot, the person who took the ultimate, most powerful, opportunity to do good in the nation and the world and turned it into the foulest, most degenerate, most pointless killing field this country has ever seen, directs these people in their political activity. He shows them where to point their Beowulfs.
Oh solutions. Solutions. Yes, yes, solutions!
Fuck if I know.
Ask yourself why a rich successful guy, facing very minor charges (unlawful entry; curfew violation) stemming from his effort to overthrow the government, came home to Georgia and apparently blew his brains out. “There’s blood everywhere,” his wife told 911, and there certainly would be if he used one of his SKS-45s to do the deed.
Judging by his house, the dude could have afforded excellent lawyers who would almost certainly arrange things so that he’d have to pay some eminently affordable penalty or something… So what the hell?
Let us speculate.
One possibility is that he was so devastated by his failure to destroy America that he saw no further reason to live. The event itself was heady stuff; he felt part of a righteous revolution. But within hours Nancy Pelosi – who should by rights have been dead by the end of the day – was not only alive but still presiding over the house. The anguish that settled upon him on his return to intolerable normalcy overcame him.
Another possibility is simply that this man, like his idol, is mentally ill. His violent extremism held off the inevitable violent suicide for awhile (there are several effective ways to off yourself; ask yourself why this man chose the absolute bloodiest, visiting piercing trauma upon his family as they discovered what he did to his head) by establishing a cult within which he could “normalize”and play out his fantasies. The failure of the cult’s attack on democracy shattered this man’s tenuous hold.
Another possibility goes the other way: shame. When the party’s over, and you see precisely the damage you’ve done to yourself and the people you love — hey, maybe even the country you love — you feel overpowering shame.
Yes, Utah is one of those big manly gunned-up states (also Montana, Wyoming, Alaska…) where you better not mess with me cuz I wanna mess with me. Suicide, ho!
UD firmly believes that a lot of men buy guns with their own eventual suicides in mind. The suicide option may not be at the forefront of their thinking as they amass scads of weapons; but you know that implicit in the wide-open-spaces nihilist’s life (drinking, driving pointlessly about at high speed, divorcing like crazy, alienating everyone around you) is a clear endpoint, an obvious moment somewhere in your late fifties, early sixties, when you lose your bad boy bounce, you’re all alone, and the winters are long.
Gun Stocks Tumble After Upbeat Vaccine News, Lack of Civil Unrest
There once was a man, LaPierre,
Who only would say, “I don’t care!”
“Because of your money affairs,
We’re shutting you down, LaPierre.”
LaPierre only said, “I don ‘t care.”
“The IRS has assembled a squad
To look into possible fraud.
So all we can say is Beware!“
LaPierre only said, “I don’t care.”
UD‘s totally getting into the burgeoning new American phenom of firing at helicopters that annoy you. There was this story, last week, about a shooter somewhere on the ground who injured an Air Force crew member and forced the copter to emergency land in Manassas Virginia. They haven’t caught that guy yet (as you know, UD‘s prediction is that two bored fourteen year old lads did it with their dads’ extensive weaponry), but they did get the guy quoted in my headline, Ted Kaczynski Redux, and took his picture and all.
Mountain Man got fifteen years, but I’m thinking he’ll get out in two. Helicopters really can be irritating.
UD also predicts that shooting down aircraft will become a widely popular American sport, a pastime, something to do in fun competitive groupings, the way British aristocrats used to gather of an afternoon to shoot pheasant. Two points for dangling bodies; five for explosions.
This incident shows you there’s something very wrong at the NRA.
Here we see what appears to be the deep state threatening to investigate a citizen of Virginia exercising his second amendment right to shoot at American military aircraft — and not a peep out of that organization.
UD can only imagine the chilling effect this is going to have on other Americans attempting to shoot down our helicopters.
*********
The government’s response is particularly disappointing, given that the shooters were almost certainly young people, just beginning to discover the joy of guns. UD will predict that two fourteen year old boys are the shooters here – bored at home because of covid, and taking their parents’ extensive weaponry out for a spin. Good clean American fun, and just the sort of thing the surveillance state cannot abide.
… would be the revelation that Wayne LaPierre took all those private taxpayer-subsidized jets to Jeffrey Epstein’s island.
But you can’t have everything.
********************
Broke, rudderless, and mired in costly litigation, the NRA is now facing a real possibility of going out of business—or being forcibly dismantled.
… LaPierre [takes] a $2.1 million salary, enormous for the head of a nonprofit—the NRA is a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) social welfare organization …
Here’s a bit of video from the boardwalk at Ocean City, Maryland, where, faithful readers know, UD has deep roots.
The only thing separating Ocean City, at this point, from Beach Blanket Bloodbath Myrtle Beach, SC, is that for some reason no one at this latest event has a gun. Someone always has a gun during brawls in Myrtle Beach.
******************
The reason these particular beaches are singled out for gang violence? Too simple. If you build it, they will come. Look at the sorts of commercial establishments that dominate these towns. And there’s too much money and political power on the line to change that. Note that no police appear at any point in the video.
The pandemic forced a temporary shutdown of random mass shootings recorded by the shooter, but as of tonight, we’re back in business: A wee babe with an AR-15 opened fire at a shopping center because “society is mean.”
The echt, iconic American scene playing itself out in Glendale Arizona – an insane idiot barely out of his teens trying to kill us all with his enormous rifle – tells you that we were only temporarily out of commission. Now we’re back, all guns blazing.