Timeless

A constant whine among stupid people — professors and students alike — is that Literature classes should no longer have to read Shakespeare because he’s “not relevant to today’s world” or some such nonsense.

Now I can understand why students whine about reading Shakespeare, because they’re ignorant and immature, and “that’s not English, dude” — IDK wht u sez LOL — as though if it’s not “modern” then it’s not worth learning.

I will also disregard the usual cant about Shakespeare being beyond the pale because he’s, like, old and a Dead White Male Patriarch to boot.

Over at Taki’s place, David Cole has written an absolute masterpiece on Aaron, the arch-villian in Titus Andronicus  (one of my favorite of all the Bard’s works, because if you think that Brian De Palma is the be-all and end-all of violent writing, Andronicus  has him beaten by a country mile).

What Cole proves (as though any proof were needed) is just how relevant Shakespeare is in today’s world.  And what Shakespeare proves is that when it comes to the human condition, there’s very little new under the sun.

Go there now and read it all.

And then read Titus Andronicus, for the full treatment of malevolence and violence.

New Day, Same Problem, Different Group

So let’s take a look at this new warning from the .dotgov.  Here’s the summary:

The Acting Secretary of Homeland Security has issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin due to a heightened threat environment across the United States, which DHS believes will persist in the weeks following the successful Presidential Inauguration.  Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence.

What interests me about this diktat  is not that it’s spurious bullshit (it is), but in terms of this language it could have been equally applicable after Trump was elected President.  Let’s parse the thing, to get the parallels to 2017.

  • “Some ideologically-motivated violent extremists”  — Antifa?  Most definitely.
  • “Objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition” — Anyone remember the Washington D.C. riots during and after Trump’s inauguration?
  • “Other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives” — that would be the completely false Russian “involvement” of 2017.

All these and more could have been good reasons for Trump to invoke this very kind of action, back in early 2017.

But he didn’t.

Yet because a couple hundred idiots invaded the Capitol, walked off with Nancy Pelosi’s lectern and sat behind her desk, now it’s Defcon-3 and BOLOs for “terrorists”?  Just a reminder:  the “insurgents” who broke into the Capitol weren’t carrying weapons, didn’t throw Molotov cocktails around in the streets or public places, didn’t burn and pillage shops and office buildings, and didn’t beat up innocent people in the streets.  Even the ones arrested were released within hours, and if any effort was made to identify and charge the instigators of said riots, I don’t remember it and nothing ever came of it if there was such an effort.

Also, I don’t recall any of the 2021 “ringleaders” actually saying things like Black Lives Matter’s co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who said in 2015 that she and her fellow organizers are “trained Marxists”.

So which group is more likely to want to violently overthrow our republican form of government:  the “Proud Boys” / Trumpist conservatives or BLM / Antifa?

Anyone who suggests the conservatives, I would suggest, is the enemy of the United States and should be the ones targeted by the National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin of January 27, 2021 — because if ever there is a “false narrative”, it’s the one contained in the bulletin’s summary at the top of this post.

It’s an age-old tactic of the Left:  accuse your opponents of doing what you’re doing, or plan to do.

Quite Right

Yeah, I don’t buy this either:

This has the stench of agent provocateur  and “false flag” all over it — I’ll go even further and say that this even smells like an ATF / FBI sting.   So, to whoever dreamed up this little scheme:  go fuck yourselves.  Peddle this shit somewhere else.  As the man says:

If you want to exercise your Second Amendment rights, do it the way you have always done it: keep your weapon in a safe place where you can get to it if you need it to defend yourself from imminent harm or if you are engaging in a gun-safe activity (e.g., a firing range or hunting); follow all gun safety rules; and refrain from being stupid — and it would be exceedingly stupid to step into an obvious trap baited by Democrats, the Deep State, Antifa, or some other organization that wants to end the Second Amendment in America.

There might well come a time when we have to go to the guns, but this ain’t it.  Not yet.

Don’t Care

O woe is Minneapolis:

If you want to know what the real-time self-destruction of a city looks like, Minneapolis offers the perfect model. This is no Detroit-esque collapse prompted by the degeneration of an industry-dependent metropolis. This is the willful push down the path of ruin of a city burgeoning with opportunity and rife with promises of the American Dream. It is suicide.

Instead of looking to successful policies used to counter that crime wave—increasing the number and presence of law enforcement officers for several months—the Minneapolis City Council wants to do the exact opposite.

For a far-left Minneapolis City Council at war with its police force and local citizens yet maintaining control due to leftist activism and special interests, the answer may be in the blind devotion to the radical belief of constantly burning and building into the unattainable utopia they so hubristically believe they can create.

Let the whole place lie in deserted ruins after riots, mayhem and fires have destroyed it;  they voted for it, they supported it, and now they’re going to get it — in Mencken terms — good and hard.

So much for “Minnesota nice”;  “Minnesota idiocy” would be more appropriate.  They don’t deserve our sympathy, our support or our best wishes, especially when you see this, and  bullshit like this happens.  I’d say “Fuck ’em”, but they’ve fucked themselves already.

Of Course They Will

Here we go:

More than 300 District of Columbia National Guardsmen will be in Washington this week to help support police officers patrolling protests scheduled by supporters of President Donald Trump this week.

“We have received confirmation that the D.C. National Guard will be assisting the Metropolitan Police Department, beginning tomorrow through the life cycle of this event,” Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee III told reporters at a press conference on Jan. 4.

National Guard personnel will be assisting police officers from Jan. 5 to 7 with crowd management and traffic control, freeing officers “to focus on anyone who’s intent on instigating, agitating, or participating in violence in our city,” he added.

Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, revealed she’d requested National Guard help in a Dec. 31 letter to District of Columbia National Guard Commanding General William Walker.

Bowser said guardsmen wouldn’t be armed and wouldn’t be involved in domestic surveillance, searches, or seizures of Americans.

Damn right they won’t be.  That would be un-Constitutional, not that the godless Socialists ever cared much about that.

As long as Mayor Trotsky keeps the Guard hanging around the inevitable crowd of Commie agitators (that would be the BLM / Pantifa ilk), there shouldn’t be any violence.  I’m not holding my breath.

I just wish I could be there.  I do plan on watching it on TV while I sharpen my M4 bayonet, whispering, “Soon, soon, my Precioussss…”

Quote Of The Day

I have an uneven response to Taki writer David Cole’s articles:  sometimes I want to punch him in the face, and others he makes me howl with laughter.  This is one of the latter occasions, to whit:

I’m not a man who speaks in absolutes, but here’s one I’ll stand by: If a bus full of black people enters an upscale area and nobody on board is wearing a [sports] jersey, it’s bad news.

His description of a bunch of BLM mopes encountering resistance in the form of Persian Jews is equally funny:

Blacks have gotten far too used to dealing with Woody Allen Jews—weakling, neurotic nebbishes of European descent, people who are either Marxist or have Marxists in their family tree.
Persian Jews are cut from a different cloth entirely. It’s a healthy and virile community that categorically rejects racial guilting and socialist wealth redistribution. So the protesters were met by a bunch of Persian Jewish neighbors who stood against them with zero fear.

“Woody Allen Jews”… [exit, laughing]

Read the whole thing.