Author: Alan Buddug

In his piece at the Conversation, Temitope Oriola (Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta) makes the case that the United States is at risk of an armed anti-police insurgency. While I do think his case might be a bit overstated, he definitely has a point backed up by expertise, so please give it a read. The overall message — that the police as an American institution must be reformed, otherwise violence is inevitable — is incredibly important.

My guess is that a longer piece by Dr. Oriola would better address the complexity of the US as the environment where an insurgency might occur. Various areas of the US are different enough and geographically separated enough that there can’t really be a national insurgency, but there can be multiple insurgencies in various locations that are primed for it, and those insurgencies can be supported (at least in spirit) by Americans who live far from them under very different circumstances. That might be the conditions under which meaningful police reform at the national level can occur.

In terms of the question of whether a group of armed citizens can meaningfully challenge the police, the answer is yes. Even in municipalities with an extremely high ratio of police to citizens, citizens still dramatically outnumber the police (no more than 7 officers per 1000 people). The question is how many simultaneous insurgencies are we talking about, and is that enough to deplete the state’s ability to reinforce the besieged police departments with reinforcements from the National Guard (for example). The fact that the police can so easily be overrun and that society as a whole can be so easily disrupted has been a core component of white anxiety since the time of slavery.

The US is also at risk for an armed, right-wing rural/white insurgency.

The following is satire, and the people are fictitious.

Since the Biden administration has once again resurrected the idea of an assault weapon ban, we thought it would be good to check in with “both sides” of the argument. Of course, neither of these sides is our side, but apparently, these are the two sides that matter. Let’s see what our guest writers have to say!

Assault Weapons Are My Friends
by Darryl Lundstrom

The Second Amendment isn’t about hunting. It’s about our God-given right to fight a tyrannical government! When I learned that a sinister cabal of pedophile Satanists had rigged the US Presidential election, I thought, “Well, this is exactly why the American people — or at least American people like me — need to have assault weapons!” even though there’s no such thing as an assault weapon, which you would know if you weren’t a dumbass.

And then I sat in my huge walk-in closet for three hours bravely clutching my Ruger AR-556 with beautiful American flag cerakote, surrounded by my cache of 30-round magazines and thousands of rounds of ammunition that I never shoot because I just never have time to go to the range because I’m always working for the huge multi-national corporation that employs me as a middle manager.

Speaking of work, January 6 was a Wednesday. But if it had been a Saturday, specifically, then you know I would have been there at the US Capitol kicking some ass for America and Jesus!

Now, let’s be clear about this: The gun I own is called an AR-556, so if you ban AR-15’s, it totally won’t affect me! Hahaha, dumbass! Also, you can ban all the “high capacity clips” you want because my gun takes magazines, which are an entirely different thing! Gotcha again!

Americans like me should be able to buy anything we want! That’s the definition of freedom in the Constitution! Whether that be a really nice chainsaw that I’ll only use once, some classic Barbra Streisand albums on CD, an autographed photo of Ben Shapiro, or, yes, an AR-15! And before you ask — Yes, I should be able to buy a nuke if I can afford it. I am an American, goddamnit.

Against Assault Weapons
by Karen Lundstrom

America has an epidemic of violence and we need to do something about it, as long as that something doesn’t involve changing the material conditions that lead to poverty. Guns are literally flooding the streets of our neighborhoods. Nearly 40,000 people die from gun-related injuries every year in our country. The majority of those are suicides and almost all involved a handgun.

That’s why I believe it is time to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips. Now, I don’t really understand what either of those things are, but they don’t belong in our suburbs — unless they’re carried by the totally-not-racist cops that work here or maybe the army if there’s some kind of emergency. Other than that, these weapons of war belong in other countries, carried by our brave soldiers as they’re sent to murder whatever people live there in order to secure a constant, inexpensive flow of the things I need — like coffee, diamonds, oil and lithium.

I ask you: Do you really need a machine gun (which is what I assume an AR-15 is) for hunting? Doesn’t that make the deer, like, blow up? Who needs a machine gun more — an urban gangster who is probably up to no good despite being unarmed and having broken no laws, or our brave police officers? Do we really want to live in a world where a self-absorbed coward like me is forced to take responsibility for the violence inherent in our toxic capitalistic, patriarchal systems? I think not! Just let me get back to watching the latest police-procedural TV drama and someone else can worry about all the violence for me.

But here’s the most important thing: I don’t have time to be a parent. I’m always working for a huge multi-national corporation as a middle manager. My teenage son is being raised by the YouTube and the online chat people. He has no responsibilities and, honestly, I don’t feel like I even know him anymore. He says he’s into “men’s rights” — what does that mean? I’m afraid to look it up. So, my point is that I’m concerned about him having that machine gun that my husband bought for him that he keeps under his bed, and since I’m not willing to do anything about any of that myself, I want the government to take care of it for me. Before my son does a mass shooting.

Please help.

Tucker Carlson is receiving a bunch of criticism right now for endorsing the white supremacist “great replacement” theory, but in general, this is something Fox News has been doing for decades. They dog whistle white supremacy, and their viewers respond to it. Then, when someone calls them out on it, they accuse the critic of jumping to conclusions and engaging in “cancel culture”. The only question at this point is whether Fox News are they, themselves white supremacists, or whether they are using white supremacist dog whistles as a strategy to affect politics and retain viewers. My gut instinct is that it is both — they are white supremacists but also manipulating white racists for the purpose of conserving the current multi-layered political hierarchy — and that includes the supremacy of wealthy conservatives, specifically.

Below is a piece by John Oliver about Tucker Carlson. Oliver plays a clip of Derek Black, a former white supremacist whose family are still white supremacists, and Derek explains that his racist family, “watches the show once and then watches it on the replay because they feel that he is making the white nationalist talking points better than they have…” And the thing is, most conservatives who would claim that Tucker Carlson is not racist know that he is pushing racism and are just pretending that they can’t see it as a strategy.

Tucker Carlson grew up rich — he doesn’t need his Fox News paycheck. He’s an elite so elitist that he wants to be there in person pushing that propaganda — and he’s willing to say anything to maintain the power of people like him.

Yesterday, President Biden made an announcement about various administrative actions he’s taking to regulate guns. From our perspective, the totality of that narrative is pretty incoherent and part of a very big story about gun control in America, but I’m going to focus on one small part of that — pistol braces — for the sake of brevity. (The mental health aspect of the announcement is a bit more interesting and positive; I plan to cover that soon.)

A pistol brace is basically a thing that takes the place of a proper stock on a short-barreled rifle in order to sidestep the law regarding the registration of a short-barreled rifle. There are certainly a few examples of people who used a pistol brace to overcome some physical issue with their body, but they are definitely the exception.

A short-barreled rifle is a legal definition that was created as part of the 1934 National Firearms Act in the USA. It isn’t a technical or practical term — just a legal one. At the time, there was a lot of fear about gangs in big cities using Tommy guns in turf wars or against the police. These machine guns were a legitimate problem, but Hollywood dramatically exaggerated their prevalence and created fear of Tommy guns among people who were in no danger of gang violence. Most importantly, it was the fact that they were machine guns that made them effective weapons when used in high-profile murders like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

The legal definition of a short-barreled rifle in the USA is: “a shoulder-fired, rifled firearm, made from a rifle, with a barrel length of less than 16 in (41 cm) or overall length of less than 26 in (66 cm), or a handgun fitted with a buttstock and a barrel of less than 16 inches length”. Guns fitting that definition are still legal, but you have to register them with the government; that takes $200 and about 9 months to a year to accomplish.

The question, though, is: Are short-barreled rifles more dangerous to the average person than long-barreled rifles? We don’t know the answer to that question — that’s the truth. However, my guess is that they are not. Here’s why:

1. Barrel length does not significantly affect the lethality of a gun. While there is a slight difference in the velocity of a bullet from a short barrel versus a long barrel, the bullet from a short barrel is actually slower and therefore less deadly.

2. Barrel length does not significantly affect the accuracy of a gun. Every gun fires a specific ammunition cartridge, and that cartridge is designed to be effective out to some distance. At closer ranges, there’s no difference in accuracy at all between barrel lengths, but when shooting at targets that are out at the limits of the ammunition cartridge’s design, a shorter barrel will be slightly less accurate. The exact meaning of “closer ranges” would vary by cartridge but would rarely be less than 100 yards which is well beyond the distance of all but the rarest gunfights or murders. The reason rifle barrels are long is because of gunpowder technology — older powders took longer to complete their burn, so a longer barrel was required to allow the bullet to attain sufficient velocity.

3. Barrel length does not significantly affect the concealability of a gun. The concern people have about concealed firearms is that someone can produce the gun unexpectedly and quickly. Anything larger than a Glock 19, which is a medium-size handgun, is pretty hard to conceal on your person in a way that allows for quick access. A very small short-barreled rifle might have a folding stock, and that would make it a nice “backpack gun”, but a backpack gun isn’t going to be produced unexpectedly and quickly, and if a person is concealing a rifle in a container, they can use a big duffel bag, guitar case, box of long stem roses, etc.

4. Mass murderers rarely conceal the gun, and want the gun to be big. The whole motivation of the standard mass shooter is to regain the respect of society through an episode of extreme terror that creates a lasting impression of the murderer’s fearsomeness. This doesn’t work with a tiny gun. Biden pointed out that the perpetrator of one of the (many) recent mass shootings used the pistol brace workaround on the gun he used; however, this gun was still quite large and the killer did not attempt to conceal it.

I don’t want to avoid the truly important feature of the short-barreled rifle, though. That feature isn’t actually the barrel — it is the stock. A stock on a gun is what allows a person to steady it and hit what they are aiming at. Any argument stating that guns should be less accurate is a non-starter for at least a couple of reasons: 1) it is a violation of the whole point of a firearm, which is to place a bullet where the user wishes it go, and 2) a less accurate gun isn’t less dangerous generally — it’s slightly less dangerous to the intended target and slightly more dangerous to anyone else. It seems like some people are simultaneously afraid of too much accuracy in a firearm and also inaccuracy, which is often expressed as a gun “spraying” bullets.

The fact that accuracy is a core feature of a firearm is why the gun community was relatively calm about the short-lived ban on bump stocks. In case you missed it, a bump stock is a workaround for the requirement for machine guns to be registered. A side-effect of the way a bump stock works is that it makes for a relatively inaccurate machine gun.

Based on all of the above, I do not see any compelling reason to regulate short-barreled rifles. In addition, there is nothing resembling evidence to say that they should be regulated — only imagined scenarios, which I don’t think are adequate to justify legislation.

I think it is obvious that the whole purpose of the pistol brace is to circumvent the law, and I certainly agree that scofflaws are annoying. However, instead of going through all this effort to stop people from circumventing the law, we’d be better off just getting rid of the requirement for the registration of short-barreled rifles. If Democrats want to come up with better firearm laws — which is something I do agree is possible — they’re going to need to better understand the thing that they hate first.

If you’re thinking about building an AR-15 with a barrel shorter than 16″, you might be interested in this nice summary of the relevant laws by Lucky Gunner.

Youtuber “BadEmpanada” cuts through the bullshit from right and left-wing ideologues to find the truth about what is happening with the Uyghurs (and other ethnic minorities) in China. This video is long because the truth is complicated.

Republicans are always talking about how there is a shadowy conspiracy of Satanic pedophiles out there that needs to be found and executed. Well, we’ve uncovered some of them by reading the news!

First off, we found some Satanic pedophiles in Missouri who conspired to set up a reform school for girls so they could sexually abuse them. Don’t worry, though — the authorities have arrested them and charged them with 102 counts. What’s weird, though, is that it was a Christian reform school — the perpetrators don’t identify as Satanists, but rather as conservative Christians. Very interesting!

In other news, surely by now you’ve heard that Matt Gaetz (a Republican representing Flordia in the US House of Representatives) has been involved in sexual trafficking of minors in addition to a slew of sleazy sexual stuff that mostly isn’t illegal but is certainly morally reprehensible. Sounds like Matt might be another one of those Satanic pedophiles Republicans have been worrying about — sure is odd that he is a Republican politician!

And if you look him up, you’ll see that he claims to be a Christian and supports evangelical (Christian dominionist) political positions. Very curious!

Oh, but wait — there’s more: The inside story of how Kanakuk—one of America’s largest Christian camps—enabled horrific abuse. Wow! Another conspiracy of Satanic pedophiles in Missouri! Who’da thunk it!

So maybe all those Republicans who are worried about Satanic pedophiles should check within their own ranks because that appears to be where all the Satanic pedophiles are. To be fair, there’s no indication that any of these people worship the devil; there’s every indication that they do not. They seem to be people who sincerely believe that they are following the teachings of Jesus Christ.

My experience with conservatives is that when they actually find a pedophile operating in their own community, they let them go. This isn’t really data — more like a series of anecdotes I’ve heard over the years — but the logic seems to be that because pressing charges against the pedophile would be so damaging to the reputation and psyche of the child (and perhaps more importantly the family of the child) that they just warn the pedophile that he should never be around the child again. And that’s it. The pedophile is free to go on and molest another child. They are enabling the pervert’s activities by remaining silent.

Then, they imagine a shadowy conspiracy of Satanic pedophiles and demand that they should be executed for their crimes against children.

My apologies to actual Satanists — the evidence indicates that actual Satanists are strongly opposed to pedophiles and would never harbor them like conservatives do. These false accusations of pedophilia against Satanists go back many centuries, and include time periods where there probably weren’t even any Satanists at all. (Basically, the victims of these accusations were probably neither Satanists nor pedophiles, but rather some other group of people these “Christians” wanted to persecute.) When 53 pastors signed a letter supporting Republican pedophile Ray Moore, the Church of Satan released a statement saying that Christians love pedophilia (2017) and pointed out that pedophilia is explicitly forbidden in the Satanic Bible but not in the Christian Bible.

Just in case I wasn’t clear enough: The reason conservatives claim that there are Satanic pedophiles is because they are looking for an excuse to destroy their enemies. Meanwhile, the real pedophile conspiracies are operating in conservatives communities.

Related: Who are the real Satanists?

Update: Now Matt Gaetz is saying that any Republican who isn’t a kid fucker is a (celibate) monk.

Here are four things every American needs to know.

1. People can be good. There’s a widespread belief among Americans that human beings are incapable of being truly altruistic. That’s simply not true. Not only have scientists proven that most people are completely capable of being altruistic, but altruism is one of the most important elements in the success of human beings on this planet — goodness is in our DNA.

2. Selfishness is wrong. Selfishness is not a virtue. Though a healthy person certainly will balance the needs of others with their own needs, enriching yourself at the expense of the greater good is wrong. Anyone who follows a “virtue of selfishness” is a villain.

3. Poverty is a societal choice. In every society where poverty exists, powerful people have made a choice for that poverty to exist. Poverty is not inevitable; it is completely possible — even easy — to have a society without poverty.

4. Poverty is created by rich people. No one tries to be poor. Wealthy people — and the people who serve them — create poverty… and they damage communities and individuals in ways that create serious impediments to succeeding in life. The rich are the people who initially created the cycles of poverty and abuse that keep people down. Then, they hold up the few who do manage to escape poverty as proof that everyone can someday be rich — even though it is literally impossible for “everyone” to be rich — and pretend that people who were born into wealth are somehow “self-made”. Rich people are willing to create poverty because they are selfish bastards who believe they deserve to have far more than they need and believe it is OK for many other people to live in poverty to allow them that material excess. Rich people would rather distract us into fighting each other through racism, sexism, and other evils rather than become better people.

That’s it.

It’s pretty simple, but until most Americans understand these 4 points, we will not be able to make any kind of real progress toward having a better society. Most people understand that the QAnon conspiracy theory causes people to take all sorts of actions that are self-damaging, but there’s a bigger conspiracy theory that almost all Americans — including self-described Republicans and Democrats — believe. If you’re having trouble accepting any of the four points above, you have been indoctrinated with that conspiracy theory. I’m going to let you figure out what the conspiracy theory is.

If you don’t believe people can be good, evil people are benefiting from your belief in the inevitability of evil.

If you believe that selfishness is good, you are protecting selfish people from consequences.

If you blame people living in poverty for their poverty, you are protecting powerful people from the consequences of causing real, material harm to other people — including you.

If you refuse to believe that rich people are harming people, you allow them to continuing doing it.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the mass murder committed by a conservative Christian in the Atlanta, Georgia area. Because the killer was a white, conservative man, he was taken alive by the police. The killer informed police that he had targeted his victims based on his belief that they were sex workers, saying that he has “sex addiction” and that they were a “temptation he wanted to eliminate“.

Upon hearing his claim that he had targeted his victims based on his belief that they were sex workers, the police declared that a hate crime had not been committed. Meanwhile, the liberal mainstream press is insisting that it was a hate crime because most of the victims were Asian.

First off, targeting sex workers is, in fact, a hate crime. Sex workers are among the most popular targets for violence — at least partially because people seem to think violence against them isn’t as bad as violence against other people. That the police so quickly relaxed when they chose to trust the mass murderer’s statement that he had not targeted Asians is yet another window into just how sick American society is. Moreover, when women who are sex workers (or are perceived to be sex workers) are victims of a hate crime, it affects all women.

Second, the liberal mass media’s fixation on trying to make this into a hate crime against Asians (and not about sex workers) is just as disgusting. Liberals are always trying to separate race from class because they are comfortable with economic inequality. They fully support discrimination based on a person’s economic situation. They may not like that poverty exists, but they believe it must exist and they blame poor people for poverty. Because of all this, they miss the fact that systemic racism is inextricably linked to poverty and the very reason why a mass murderer targeting sex workers in a particular place might find that he has just killed a bunch of people who belong to a particular ethnic group.

What really happened here is that the extreme sexual repression placed on all of the congregants of an extremely conservative church broke one of those congregants, and instead of destroying himself, he chose to go on a rampage. While the bulk of the blame belongs with the murderer, his parents, church, and all of conservative society are also to blame. All this does dovetail with prejudice against Asians, just not in a straightforward way.

Advocates say this reveals the way racism, sexism and anti-sex-work sentiment work together to produce anti-Asian violence: no matter what, they say, his crime was ultimately one against sex workers. “Even if they were providing non-sexual massages, this ends up being a sex work issue,” said Esther K, a co-director of Red Canary Song, a grassroots Chinese massage parlor worker coalition. “The women are de facto being seen as sex workers and being scapegoated as such.”

‘A specific kind of racism’: Atlanta shootings fuel fears over anti-sex-work ideology by Marie Solis

Not only is race inextricably related to issues of class, but western societies have a long tradition of sexualizing and even fetishizing the marginalized people that they are oppressing. Then, they occasionally lash out against the people they’ve sexualized, as if their sexuality is an existential threat to society. One example of this that comes to mind would be 14-yr-old Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered by white people in Mississippi in 1955 for the crime of having flirted with a white woman; years later, the woman recanted, saying that Till had done nothing wrong at all.

Sex addiction is not an officially recognized disorder, though some destructive sexual behaviors (like hypersexualism) are associated with legitimate disorders, many of which can be caused by an abusive upbringing. Regardless of whether the killer has a legitimate psychiatric condition, he is essentially using sex addiction as a way to blame the women for their own murders. The conservative narrative of “sex addiction” tends to be frighteningly similar — and just as destructive — as their narrative for homosexuality, with perfectly healthy human behavior painted as self-destructive and sinful. The killer was a member of the Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, Georgia, which is a Southern Baptist church. The Southern Baptists have a long history of discrimination against gay and lesbian people and support gay conversion therapy. The killer’s framing of the murders as necessary to save himself from sexual temptation is quite similar to the “gay panic” defense frequently used by violent conservatives — sometimes with success.

We might eventually learn that the killer’s “sex addiction” excuse was merely cover for his hatred of Asian people generally. The United States has had a year of intensified racial violence against Asians because many are unjustly blaming them for the COVID-19 pandemic, and people are understandably concerned for the safety of Asian people in the US. Although reports that the killer’s social media contained such claims appear to have been false, there’s certainly a high correlation between the killer’s conservative culture and hatred of Asian people. Regardless of what the killer’s true motivation was, this was clearly a hate crime.

Update:

We’ve just learned that the killer probably did receive treatment for sex addiction according to a man who claims to have been his roommate at a halfway house. The man also said that the killer frequented massage parlors for the explicit purpose of sexual activity. This doesn’t change the inextricable link between class and race, but does confirm that liberalism is failing once again to accurately understand reality. (Reuters)

The mainstream media has been full of news about Meghan Markle, I so I thought we should weigh in with our perspective on the British royal family’s internal conflicts.

Hahaha — I’m kidding! I don’t care at all about any of that crap! Why does anyone care about what those royal dingdongs are up to? There are 65 countries on this planet that have a yearly celebration of escaping the rule of the British royals and the only concern about the British royals that any person in any of those countries should have is: How to best get rid of them once and for all.

We shouldn’t care about what kind of hats or other bullshit they put on their heads. We shouldn’t care which one is boning which other one. It’s nice that Queen Charlotte was Black, but seriously — time for all that bullshit to end! The Queen is wearing clothes? We should not care. The Queen is naked? Well, in the metaphorical, she always is. Get rid of them all.

And if someone marries into the royal family? Well, they’ve just become part of the problem, haven’t they?