You're never too deranged
To get firepower at a range.
Even if you're totally off
You'll still get a Kalashnikov.

Complaints about shooting and violence are nothing new in downtown Myrtle Beach. In 2017, a shooting on Ocean Boulevard on Father’s Day injured six people and brought much attention to Myrtle Beach because a tourist happened to livestream the incident on Facebook.

In 2018, an off-duty employee of RidTydz on North Ocean Boulevard was shot inside the establishment and died. A lawsuit filed by the man’s family said that the popular tourist spot “was becoming known as a problem area for increasing incidents of violence, shootings and murders to the extent that Myrtle Beach had been infamously nicknamed ‘Murder Beach.’”

In 2020, then-Myrtle Beach City Councilman John Krajc told ABC 15 News that the violence had to end. “If we stop making ourselves the ‘discount beach,’ over time that culture can change,” he said. “We have to remember this is Myrtle Beach, not ‘Murder Beach,’ not ‘Dirty Myrtle.’” …

[The mayor complained about] “hotels who choose not to clean themselves up, and offer rooms at $40-$45 a night” and businesses along Ocean Boulevard that cater to the wrong crowd by selling “graphic” T-shirts, drug paraphernalia and “things that are not welcoming to families.”

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Murder Beach isn’t working class; it’s sub-proletarian. It’s dirt cheap, ugly, porny, druggy, boozy, gunny. Its clubs are loud, extremely gross, and feature really cheap alcohol. Outside the clubs, squatted trucks and hordes of motorbikes screech by. “The last time I was in Myrtle my Uber driver had a gun between his knees because he was worried about getting robbed again.”

And Myrtle Beach is wall to wall gun ranges, so don’t forget your own guns!

All wrapped up in South Carolina itself, Murdaughville!

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I mean, yeah, this might appeal to a few… non-standard… families, but I’m thinking all of that plus a pretty constant atmosphere of menace on the main thoroughfares – deepened by a huge police presence – doesn’t exactly broadcast safe family fun. I mean hey why do they need battalions of officers? Aren’t we supposed to be having a relaxed carefree sort of experience?

Any family with the means to vacation someplace better than Myrtle Beach should certainly be expected to do that. Your chance of getting shot might not be great, but you can count on feeling menaced and cheapened by the setting.

And of course everyone says that thing about changing the culture, but there’s real big piles of real big money behind the purulence, and the business owners making all that money aren’t about to fuck with their model.

It’s about time.

• 18 firearms that included assault rifles and handguns
• 1 Taser
• Over 12,000 rounds of ammunition
• 15 Airsoft guns
• Two-way radio
• Law enforcement-issued police laptop
• An assortment of law enforcement, military, FBI, Army Ranger and Marine uniforms
• Ballistic vest and helmets
• Law enforcement credentials
• Active-duty Army credentials
• FBI credentials
• Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office badges
• 3-D printed body camera
• Self-made Army-training certificate
• Material with Nazi insignia

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He’s planning to kill us all, but today the authorities arrested him before he could do it. Which is great, but even if he gets jail time, he’ll be freed at some point and then he can start accumulating for his killing spree again.

Props to Vermont for going after a notorious nutcase and making it less likely (but not impossible) that he’ll be the next Robert Card.

It’s crucial for fried-brain gunfuckers to know that the state knows who they are, is watching, and, in the case of this particular guntard, is litigating.

A previously self-professed white nationalist, [a person who played] a central role in the racial harassment of a former Bennington representative, [this POS] has faced several charges in the past, including aggravated domestic assault, a hate crime charge of disorderly conduct and repeated violations of his conditions of release. 

Jury took all of ten minutes to convict him of illegal possession of high-capacity firearm magazines. He probably won’t get jail time, so he still walks among us, I’m afraid. There should be a way for my country to protect itself from armed-to-the-teeth madmen.

A long, unsparing consideration of old age care in America makes me think of my conversation yesterday with a 92-year old friend. We met near the Foggy Bottom metro and walked together through Washington Circle to a lunch date with a third friend. I asked my buddy what she’d been up to.

“Going through a lot of stuff and throwing most of it out,” she answered. “I don’t want to leave my daughter with too much to handle when I’m gone.”

My friend is sharp-witted and physically robust; she lives alone in an elegant apartment in the chic part of Alexandria, Virginia. “Is your health okay?” I asked. “Is anything wrong?”

“Not a thing. But I’m looking into Zurich.”

“Why?”

“My biggest fear is becoming dependent. I just can’t handle that prospect at all. I’d rather avoid it.”

“But I mean there’s independent living, etc. There are all sorts of steps between living fully on your own and being really dependent.”

“Not really. All my friends who made any sort of move in that direction went downhill very fast and I desperately don’t want that.”

We went on to discuss the bureaucratic details of the Swiss way of death versus the apparently more burdensome administrative niceties of what Washington DC offers. And then, both of us smiling in the city sunlight, we met our friend at a hotel cafe and enjoyed lunch together.

Would you want to work for the Murder Beach police department?

Regular readers of this blog will recognize this as another Don DeLillo Death (background here), a death emblematic of our fun-leisure-time, affluent landscape. Postmodern Americans die from bizarre accidents while enjoying luxe activities in five-star settings.

Can we really call this mode of departure “tragic,” the sort of demise Oedipus would recognize? Grievous Golf Cart of Fate…

So far it’s just middling spring stuff – Saturday night fights/shootings, killing one or two, injuring ten or twenty – but come July the gunfire’s gonna be SIZZLING.

Not just on the weekends, and much more productive body bag work – that’s what I’m talking about.

Bring the kids, bring granny – you’re never too old or too young to run screaming for your life and the lives of your loved ones while hundreds of gunshots pierce the balmy air. Get ready.

[O]ne [new high school lacrosse player] was taken [by older teammates] to a remote area in the county when people appeared from the woods, dressed in black and armed with what appeared to be at least one handgun and at least one knife…

[They] put a pillowcase over that student’s head, then tied him up and threw him in the trunk of a car before he was left in a wooded area in the southern part of the county…

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At least five new recruits were tortured.

Not only did the high school cancel this season’s lacrosse; the district attorney insists on prosecuting! Boooooooooo

WASHINGTON—In a dramatic reversal of recent polls showing a decline in the president’s approval ratings during his first 100 days in office, new surveys confirmed Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s support was surging after he pointed a gun at all 340 million Americans. “Ever since Trump pulled out a loaded handgun and menacingly swept its muzzle across the entire American populace, he’s seen a massive bump in favorability on everything from his handling of the economy to his views on immigration,” said Gallup polling analyst Eric Waltman, adding that Trump’s numbers had seen a particularly sharp spike after he fired a shot into the air to show that “he means business.”

Where even the drinks say Hakluyt (her place of work).

… is pleased to see that Jonathan Chait compares Trumpy America to Hungary throughout this essay.

[T]he parallels to Hungary are striking. Orbán’s economy has suffered a brain drain as the regime’s cronyism drives its great minds to work in freer societies. Trump’s policies have shown early signs of producing a similar outcome, as would-be international students must now consider whether pursuing an American degree is worth risking getting detained by ICE or having their visa revoked abruptly over minor legal infractions.

The University of Minnesota has tried; Lord, how it has tried. But vicious and self-serving theft of other peoples’ work (background here) makes lots of people angry, see, and they speak up and speak up until even cynical administrators who try – insanely, stupidly – to dismiss blatant extensive repeated plagiarism as an ‘honest mistake’ (a phrase destined to haunt the UM school of public health for years to come) have to face the consequences.

Which are: The local public radio station won’t let this disgusting tale of institutional corruption go. Eventually a legitimate scholar/administrator at UM will have to step up and admit the cover-up. Some of the cover-uppers should be fired.

… here, celebrating Hakluyt’s thirtieth anniversary with her colleagues. UD is seriously envious.