14 people Are Dead and it’s All About Rod Dreher’s Feelings

Other people have already offered up quicker and no doubt more comprehensive coverage of the massacre in San Bernadino. And yet I am still going to write a post on it because people still kept painting after Leonardo daubed out the Mona Lisa. And if I didn’t keep trying to prop up the moldering remnant of Sadly, No! my supply of theoretical Soros bucks would dry right the hell up.

So a few people shot up a county building in San Bernadino CA yesterday leaving 14 dead and leading to a pair of shootouts with the police that left 2 people dead. I’m told it was actually the second mass shooting yesterday, but I haven’t been able to find details on the first. This is exactly the kind of shit we will see more of until we can control access to firearms in this country. I’ve got some ideas. 100% tax on all firearms and firearm accessories (and devices similar to firearms like bows, crossbows and spear guns) and 1000% tax on ammunition including tools and supplies to manufacture ammunition, and using the proceeds to fund the BATF for more enforcement. Impose the same restrictions on firearm advertisements that already exist for tobacco products. For firearms owners, a maximum of two hunting firearms with a magazine capacity of five or fewer rounds. If they want handguns or non-hunting weapons, that’s where the “well regulated militia part comes into play” they have to qualify on their own dime annually at BATF ranges to a level equal to or exceeding that expected of infantry recruits and maintain a fitness level equal to that of expected of soldiers their age in the National Guard. Owning a firearm should be subject to similar licensure and insurance liability rules as owning a vehicle. Shut down gun shows that sell firearms without a background check. Clamp down on “firearms dealers” that only have the license so they can own a machine gun, or sell out of their home. Require a firearms dealer to operate a storefront, meeting minimum standards of security and record keeping. Gun buybacks. These are we should be doing. These are all examples of concrete action to reduce gun violence and the availability of deadly weapons. That is what we are demanding of our elected leaders, not stale platitudes and or hypocritical appeals to god to reduce violence.

Naturally calls for action from our elected leaders instead of prayer, have Rod Dreher in a tizzy. He calls it ‘prayer shaming’. Prayer Shaming: The View From Jesusland

We have reached the point in our culture in which leading voices on the Left feel compelled to shout from the rooftops condemnation on Christians for offering something as ordinary and decent as prayers for atrocity victims as a first response to news of the killings.

Despite his theatrics, “people” aren’t being shamed for offering prayers. Elected leaders who chose to do nothing but publicly pray instead of doing their goddamn jobs are being shamed. People being paid off by the merchants of hot leaded death are praying in public for healing and an end to violence and think that’s all they have to do. I don’t think the American Left cares that Republicans are appealing to god on this issue like they do on every other freaking issue, it’s who they are, it’s what they do. But on other issues like, for example, abortion or access to affordable health care, they back up their tedious god inspired moralizing with legislative action. Granted, leftists and Democrats are horrified by that legislative action, but they aren’t praying and calling it a job well done. On issues where they actually want to make a change, elected Republicans are happy to pound a Bible and vote. So today Rod Dreher has a sad because people aren’t putting up with that kind of hypocrisy anymore, and once again he pulls out his ‘persecuted christian’ narrative to prove it’s all about him and his hurt feelings, and not the ongoing war on non-bulletproof Americans.

 

Comments: 45

 
 
 

I humbly offer an alternate title and image:

ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN

Shorter Rod Dreher: “ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN!”

 
 

a first response to news of the killings

Part of the problem is that it’s the first & only response.

And of course, pray in one hand & crap in the other, then see which piles up first.

 
 

P.S.: It’s obvious to me that Rod Dreher has no “feelings” similar to those ordinary (or even “normal”) people have.

 
 

You never seem to hear about an atheist choosing martyrdom in exchange for getting to kill a bunch of people.

 
 

Well said. It’s well past time that the NRA was put on the terrorist list. But maybe, as with ISIS, that’d get them more guns and funding an the USAF would ‘accidentally’ bomb planned parenthood :-/

 
 

BTW Facebook seems to be down all over UK. This possibly related to the viral spread of a photo said to be of our esteemed prime minister preparing to violate a dead animal.

 
 

But I’m praying SO HARD. WHY ISNT IT WORKING?

 
 

1000% tax on ammunition including tools and supplies to manufacture ammunition

Relevant

 
thomas the dooter
 

I’d like to hear from those who advocate prayer precisely and exactly what prayer achieves apart from a sense of smugness in the self satisfied prayer.

 
 

Now the news is rambling about “ISIS connections” and other half-thoughts. We have had 366 shooting incidents, most small, over this entire year, more days than a year and the last month of 2015 isn’t even finished yet.

It isn’t the machine guns, nor the submachine guns, that keeps this slaughter going – it’s the cheap 9-shot automatics, most of which are second or third hand (nobody talks about the endless staying power of guns; they hang on for decades, sometimes outlasting their manufacturers.) So this nonsense will grind on until Star Wars-style energy blasters become the norm or the UFOnauts discover that gunpowder is a great alien aphrodisiac and the steal all of ours in one night.

 
 

Hey BBBB! Long time no see.

I haven’t had a New York trip in a long time. I have enough seniority that I tend to stay around the Midwest these days.

 
 

I used to read Dreher because it was a way to get some interesting perspectives on the thinking of the religious right. And he would sometimes surprise me by showing some actual empathy for other human beings. But in the last 6 months or so, he has become so completely unhinged by LGBT rights, that he has lost all capability for rational thought, and has just locked himself into his bunker, while each blog entry just keeps getting more and more paranoid about how Christians are being systematically exterminated. I don’t even bother looking past his post titles anymore.

 
 

“…Trump’s popularity is, in effect, final proof of what some of us have been arguing for years: that the Tea Party is less a libertarian movement than a right-wing version of populism. Think William Jennings Bryan or Huey Long, not Ayn Rand.

 
 

I’ve actually been involved in religious led actions against gun violence including lobbying the state legislatures and I can say that “prayer shaming” is a ridiculous complaint.
Religious people of any political persuasion, including far right-wing nut jobs, know the difference between prayer backed up by action and prayer that is meant to ignore a problem. Anyone who is claiming to be offended is lying their ass off.

 
 

Daphne,

It is so unfair to compare Bryan and Long to Trump or the Tea Party. Bryan was super anti-corporate/anti-plutocracy and mostly anti-military. Long was progressive on race and economically had real concerns about the poor.
Of course their solutions were often insane, even dangerous, but Trump doesn’t give a crap about the poor, is racist as fuck, and his plans are just as dangerous. George Wallace is probably the nearest populist equivalent to Trump. Even Perot wasn’t this over the top awful.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

I haven’t had a New York trip in a long time. I have enough seniority that I tend to stay around the Midwest these days.

Anytime you’re in the general geographic area, let me know. There’s always time in my bizarro schedule to hang out with the Major and, if lucky, the Missus.

 
 

has lost all capability for rational thought, and has just locked himself into his bunker, while each blog entry just keeps getting more and more paranoid about how Christians are being systematically exterminated.

this is 90% of the people i am forced to work and interact with 99% of the time…

“…Trump’s popularity is, in effect, final proof of what some of us have been arguing for years: that the Tea Party is less a libertarian movement than a right-wing version of populism. that people are even more hideous than previously thought…
fify

 
 

Is this an example of prayer shaming?

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”

 
 

Did no one ever tell Trump “you never go full Kristallnacht.”.

 
 

Daphne and Histrogeek:

I think Daphne is onto something, although “populism” is perhaps the wrong word. The key point is that both the conservative noise machine and media personalities who consider themselves to be both journalists and liberals (ensuring that all too many people think negatively of journalists and liberals, which is not a bug but a feature for TPTB that employ these media personalities) have been respectively celebrating and displaying a Rothian combination of contempt and envy toward a the supposed silent majority (which is neither silent nor a majority) who represent the base of the GOP and who are supposedly quite conservative or libertarian. However, the GOP leadership and their mouthpieces are quite right: Trump is no true Scotsman conservative in that his policy positions, such as he has any, and even the framework in which he reaches those positions do deviate from the Republican orthodoxy. And what that means is that his supporters are in fact not as conservative/libertarian as either the conservative establishment or the referees of mainstream political discourse would like us to believe; i.e. the GOP base’s support for conservative/libertarian policies or even the conservative/libertarian framework behind those policies is actually quite shallow. Rather the GOP base supports conservatism not out of a commitment to small government or any other official principle but rather identifies as “conservative” or “libertarian” for, shall we say, other reasons … but we already knew that, didn’t we?

 
 

Such upticks in hate crimes against minorities always happen during and after periods of upheaval (think Japanese-Americans in World War II or the Vietnamese refugees who flooded into America in the early 1980s),

 
 

Did no one ever tell Trump “you never go full Kristallnacht.”.

Pup! I may be in your neck of the woods soon. Mind if I email you?

 
 

OBS I’ll be damned if you DON’T get in touch! You got my email from here – it’s a real address I use to post.

 
 

Did no one ever tell Trump “you never go full Kristallnacht.”.

Certainly not Bill Kristol….

 
 

Not trying to hijack the thread, but apparently someone at the BBC reads my stuff. This is the second time they linked to one of my articles:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33766644

 
 

Well, Major, you are a globally known aeroplane guy – more proof. Preen a little.

 
 

OBS I’ll be damned if you DON’T get in touch! You got my email from here – it’s a real address I use to post.

Cool. E-mail sent!

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Nice, Major, you’re an international celebrity now!

 
 

May I suggest one serious, alternative or additional advice?

Create mental healthcare for kids in school and the entire USA population in general. Have people looking after kids, create a culture where crazy kids can get help instead of being allowed becoming more crazy until do something crazy. Have these people actively go to troubled and/or troublesome kids that seem to have a problem.

Also, try to find a way to get the media to shut the fuck up about every shooting and creating 24 hour coverage of each and every one, giving the shooters infamy and inspiring copycats. Experts in the topic have been pointing at this point for decades but everyone ignores them.

This is what is a thing that I almost never, ever seen talked about whenever a school shooting happens. Everyone seems to think that the problem with crazy people going on a killing spree is the guns, not that the people gone crazy. Left-leaing people keep talking about gun control, but never about why these people do it. They also miss the point that the crazy people buy their guns [b]illegally[/b], on the gray or black market. Even if super-strict gun control was established tomorrow that would be ruthlessly enforced, it would take many decades until all the guns on the black market are gone.

It’s like trying to fix drunk driving by making a driver’s license more strict to get and keep. Yes it is part of the problem but not the problem itself. What helped with drunk driving were cultural changes as well as legislative changes.

I admit I’m an European looking at this from an outside perspective, but surely this is a point worth considering?

 
 

You’re not wrong. But we have a hard enough time getting funding for schools at all, it would be a tough sell to put in a comprehensive mental health system in this country. Half of the country would be screaming about Obama’s mind control and/or communist takeover of the mental health system. That same half of the country has a screaming fit if anyone so much as mentions gun control. And a giant slice of America has a giant fit if people talk about how Hollywood, and the video games industry makes billions of dollars every year by glorifying violence. Everyone is so concerned about protecting their pet issue, and blaming others, that they can’t see that ending 30,000 gun deaths a year is going to mean changes for most of us. Here’s a view of what a comprehensive gun violence reduction strategy would entail. First, add a licensing, competence, and insurance mandate to firearms, equivalent to what we put up with to own and operate motor vehicles. Second, disallow state and local film incentives for movies and TV programs that feature firearm deaths likewise disallow American production companies from accepting foreign incentives if the finished movie or film show a firearm deaths. Third, add enforcement to the video game rating system, and perhaps add a 20% tax to video games featuring violence. Use the proceeds from the video game violence tax to fund the BATF for enforcement and reauthorize and fund public health institutions to study gun violence like any other cause of death. Close the gun show exemption for background checks, and add background checks to all firearm purchases not just handguns. And tax handguns and ammunition at a high enough rate to fund all of this.

 
 

Adam: How outside is your perspective? Have you been here? Do you realize just how many guns we have here, and how easy they are to buy and keep?

The NRA is pushing mental health now as a way of kicking the can down the road. If any real level of mental health screening was put in place to the extent that it hampered firearm sales, then the screaming would begin all over again, and they’d put up roadblocks in the legislatures and it wouldn’t get done.

 
 

I’m an atheist, but let me try my hand at prayer…

Lord, we beseech thee: may all the gun fetishists from coast to coast form circular firing squads and blast the living shit out of one another.

We ask this in Jesus’ name.

Thank you Lord.

And if you do this one simple thing, I promise to believe in you forever.

 
 

Can I get an “amen”?

 
 

Sorry, guy, some of us atheists are pacifists.
How’s about beating the guns into plowshares or other useful items? Get some Xtians to help – Quakers maybe?

 
 

Hey Suez! Did anybody ever answer your question about the football playoffs over at BJ? How it works is:

There are two Conferences: National and American. Each conference is divided into four divisions of four teams each.
So, 32 teams total.
At the end of the regular season, the team with the best record in each division advances to the playoffs. The top teams in each conference play each other until there is a National champion and an American champion. Then those two teams play in the Super Bowl. Simple really.

Baseball is pretty much the same, only the baseball playoffs are determined by the top teams playing a best-out-of-five or best-out-of-seven series of games. In football the playoff teams meet each other only once- win or go home. Hope this helps!

 
 

Yes, JR, a kind soul over there explained it to me. But I find your explanation more understandable.
Small quibble : How do they decide which team goes in which conference? Is it geographic?
And is the NFL all the teams together?
Thanks for your help.

 
 

Hey Suez, merry fuckin Xmas and happy Saturnalia and joyous solstice and good goddamn Kwanzaa to boot! ‘

The NFL is the top level organization. Each conference has half of the total NFL teams. Originally there was the NFL and the separate organization the American Football League (AFL). They played footsie with each other through the 60s then finally merged in the 70s, forming the NFL that survives to this day.

As for assigning teams to divisions, it _used_ to be fairly well based on geography. There were two divisions, East and West. With the merger they went to a three division format – East, Central, West. Over the years some teams moved to different cities and new teams were introduced. Then it started getting messy.

In 1995, the league expanded for the first time since the Buccaneers and Seahawks had joined the league in 1976, with the addition of the Carolina Panthers [North Carolina] and the Jacksonville Jaguars [Florida]. Rather than moving the Phoenix Cardinals [Arizona, the desert southwest] to the NFC West, the league kept the existing structure and placed the Carolina Panthers in the NFC West. The Jacksonville Jaguars were placed in the AFC Central. In addition, the Rams left Los Angeles after almost fifty years, and moved to Saint Louis. The net result of these changes was that the NFC division alignments were even more geographically challenged than ever, as both the NFC West and East consisted of three members from the Eastern Time Zone, one member from the Central, and one member in the Pacific/Mountain Time Zones.

So it’s totally whacked, arbitrary, done more for political and business reasons than to make sense. So perfectly American!

 
 

Thanks, Pups. I think I get the picture.
I mainly wanted to see how many hoops my team, the Packers, had to go through to win the Superbowl. Which they are totally going to do because this is the first time I have taken any interest in this whole “football” deal and so my team better damn win.
Hope you and Teh Ho have some time to relax and celebrate over the holidays. Hugs to you both, old china. Well, I don’t mean old..I mean, you still look young…I mean, you’re not that old .. I mean ….you’re still goodlooking for your age…I mean….

 
 

In fact, they held back a great deal more than some Evangelicals have lately (think Jerry Falwell Jr., and Pat Robertson)

 
 

Oh Jebus Fookin Keerist

It is true?! Oh, FFS. I was hoping that was just something I mis-heard. war boners for all, I guess?

I mainly wanted to see how many hoops my team, the Packers, had to go through to win the Superbowl. Which they are totally going to do because this is the first time I have taken any interest in this whole “football” deal and so my team better damn win.

As it should be. Suck it, Vikings!

 
 

Well I grew up in Chicago so I’m supposed to hate the Packers with a white hot heat, which I in fact did for a long time. But that was many years ago, I doubt if anyone would know, so hey. Go Packers!

Ooo. That felt…………wrong. I’m a bad bad boy!

 
 

Justice system won’t kill criminals, so let’s shoot ’em ourselves!

http://crooksandliars.com/2015/12/wisc-goper-state-ban-death-penalty-means

What could possibly go wrong?

 
 

Npoooooo they fired lunch lady! I miss Lunch Lady.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/state/idaho/article51028040.html

 
 

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