With even Laura Ingraham calling bullshit on the fundamental truth of his being, John Eastman has gone total Beyond the Fringe, huddling on mountaintops with his mad leader, awaiting The Fraud’s earth-shattering revelation.

“Zijie was a wonderful human being. And I also know his family, so as a father as well. I start with that because it was indicative of how he interacted with people,” said Dr. Norbert Scherer, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago, where Zijie underwent his postdoctoral training… “Zijie absolutely as a young scientist was certainly on a great trajectory to become a dominant person in his field,” said Scherer… Another postdoc fellow who worked alongside Yan remembered him as “a great researcher, always positive, smiling, and full of new ideas.”

In China Zijie’s jealous insane shooter would have had to content himself with private rage against a more successful (professionally; personally) human being; in Tinderbox USA he jest moseyed on over to the gun store, ammoed up, and blew his better’s fucking head off. No muss, no fuss, and he feels SOOOO much lighter on his feet now.

Just remember: “A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, … but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process. … The discrepancy, like so many other anomalies of American violence, [comes ] down to guns.”

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Then there are the emergent social attitudes on the part of Americans as they come to accept their primary existential condition as Sitting Duck.

“It’s been heavy around campus. Physically mentally and everything else we have experienced,” [one student] said. “It’s sad that that this happened on our campus but this is also a reality for us especially growing up.”

Point One: SD is a structural reality, which is one of the most important things you learn growing up in this country.

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“I think we’re just very lucky it wasn’t more than what it was, we’re lucky to have each other, we’re connected well as a team,” [a soccer player] said. “We felt the support and love of each other, just prayers go out to the family.”

Point Two: Coulda been worse. He didn’t rampage through classrooms killing dozens like the guy at Virginia Tech. Plus, this has brought us together.

Looking at the bright side is part of the drill now, too.

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Point Three: ‘“I feel the same anxiety that I believe the students and faculty, other community members feel. The fear of not being able to send our children to school and not worry about them having to face senseless gun shootings,” said Congresswoman Valerie Foushee, a Chapel Hill native and UNC graduate, who represents the district.‘

A nearby elementary school was also locked down, which gave parents an opportunity to remember the pulverized children of Uvalde, and students the opportunity to start learning the ins and outs of SD at a very early age.

1.) The murderers of Florida State law professor Dan Markel have slowly, slowly, gone to jail. True, the hired thugs who shot his brains out while he sat in his car in his driveway were put away long ago; but the woman who brought the thugs and the criminal mastermind together was convicted of first degree murder only last year. The mastermind – Markel’s ex-brother in law, who was pissed Markel wanted equal custody of Markel’s kids after he and this guy’s sister divorced – goes on trial in October. Insanely, it has been nine years since Markel was killed. His parents and sister have suffered through those years, waiting for the worst of the conspirators to face justice. Finally, it seems, the worst of them will.

2.) The absurdly corrupt University of Southern California (put its name in my search engine and go to town) conspired with an absurdly corrupt LA politician to make money for the school in exchange for favors for the politician (details here). Mark Ridley-Thomas will go to prison for three and a half years.

… North Carolina.

Such a treat to get pictures of these beautiful bright young people huddled in terrified silence, messaging their parents that they love them and have never been so scared… Wonder what the rest of the year will bring!

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The incident’s over, but no one’s saying anything about the incident. A few outlets are reporting one professor shot dead and another person wounded, but nothing’s been confirmed. Meanwhile, general trauma from having endured hours of lockdown/possible slaughter.

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Confirmation.

The killer’s tweets were, natch, full of paranoia; but a spot of paranoia never stopped anyone from amassing an arsenal in Tinderbox USA. OTC: No way being a maniac should keep a person from his very own AK47.

Local headline: UNC SHOOTING LEAVES ONE DEAD AND A CAMPUS TRAUMATIZED: ANOTHER DAY IN AMERICA.

Thousands traumatized, yes, but think hard too about how much fun it is to die like this. Maybe you’re lucky and you never know what hit you as the madman pumps away. Or maybe you die gradually, in agony, in shock, not knowing what’s going on, totally alone, anguishing in your last minutes of confused existence as you watch your blood pool. At least a dying soldier knows what’s up; at least he’s got buddies.

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The person shot to death in his office was the shooter’s advisor, with whom the shooter had published papers.

Motive? Sounds, if you read his tweets, like a John Lennon murder: A weak, envious paranoid decides to put his idol/nemesis out of business.

Here’s one on our cloudy kitchen window. We see lots every summer.

If you insist on swaddling your females from age 0 to 100, that’s your private business; but secular states like France are perfectly free to reject female-swaddling as a mode of self-display in various parts of the public realm.

Which France has now done: No student enrolled in a state school can hide her provocative eight year old curves under the copious folds of the modesty robe.

As with France’s burqa ban ten years ago, this one will generate a spot of outrage (and lots of support) and then disappear as an issue. You can’t fight city hall when city hall represents the will of a very strong secular majority (think also of Quebec).

One can only hope that, liberated to move through her school day without her male-inflaming face and body fully covered, this or that young girl will grow up with the conviction that she represents a free and equal member of a modern society.

… but there’s SOOOO much more, as this terrific essay from last year notes.

LOL. Jodi Dean describes the aristocratic Catholic governing authority trying to worm its way into our democratic hearts.

Public morals legislation, the public observation of Christian religious practices, and a family policy aimed toward incentivizing marriage and increasing family size (as opposed to, say, promoting reproductive justice and publicly funded childcare) are hardly the stuff of a multiracial, multiethnic working-class party in a secular society that recognizes the existence of women and the LGBTQ+ community.

Duh. If you want to know what life under a Cathophate would look like, revisit Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, and take a gander at Lady Marchmain – that megaCatholic upper-cruster. She’ll be president, and her son Bridey VP, in the Cathophate to Come, and together their putrescent moral superiority will reduce us all to sniveling drunks, like poor Sebastian.

… football.

… fire.

… hits the airwaves.

As someone who has covered the AMAZING cavalcade of convicted crooks who have learned their trade at Wharton, UD will say what she has lo these many years said about Wharton:

As an insider trader factory — as, more broadly, the nation’s most illustrious breeder of malfeasors this side of Ma Barker — Trump’s alma mater certainly should have taught wee Donald and his classmates what a mugshot is.

The Trumpsters now offer their mugs:
Some giggle, some glower, some shrug.
Well, sooner or later
The law catches traitors
Right up to the primary thug.

… crime.

Hey, it’s America. This is what you do when you’re pissed with the old bag.