Month: December 2015

Frosty’s White Privilege: Having the Courage to Expose the “isms” and “aphobias” in Supposedly Benign Christmas Songs to Save the Children

Trigger Warning: Graphic discussions of homophobia, white privilege, heteronormative bias, etc. to follow. Seek out Play Doh ® and videos of puppies as needed.

One of the most invidious elements of the “Christmas Season” imposed without written consent upon unsuspecting shoppers buying organic kale and going to Bernie Sanders rallies in the public square are cheerful songs which harbor sinister messages which have been subtly indoctrinating adult and child alike for decades.

They both reflect and inculcate a world view that denies the “other” and denigrates it while championing the white patriarchal power system. Now that the Christian zealotry celebration is past, we have a year to address and stamp out this propaganda.

We must act quickly.

Luckily, you have me as your guide. Our college students, who have been faithful warriors in such important efforts as not having soggy pulled pork in cafeterias which are an affront to those of Asian heritage, have somehow overlooked this issue. Perhaps their indoctrination since birth has been too invidious.

Let us begin.

As painful as it is, we must first address Frosty the Snowman. Frosty is the epitome of White Privilege. He is the Magical White Man. Consider the line, “He led them down the streets of town right to the traffic cop. And he only paused a moment when he heard him holler, “Stop!”

Had Frosty been Black, or any person of color, he would have been tasered at the least or shot when he disobeyed the (White) officer’s command. But evidence of his White Privilege was that the “traffic cop” simply let him go on his way. The lesson to the children (who were all White in the 1969 CBS cartoon) was that their White Privilege would allow them to escape the consequences of violating the orders of a police officer. The traffic cop was voiced by Paul Frees (“Freeze!”). A coincidence? Hardly. In the White Privilege world there are no coincidences.

Heteronormity is also drummed into children’s heads, as evidenced by the song Deck the Halls which makes the crass straight assumption that somehow the gay/lesbian/transgendered community can be discerned by their clothes: “Don we now our gay apparel.” This is also one of several instances of cultural appropriation, where children and adults are encouraged to appropriate the attire of another group to mock them.

Another such instance is the Nat King Cole “classic,” The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire). Here, a native culture is mocked through cultural misappropriation, “and folks dressed up like Eskimos.” What right do these people have to dress like Eskimos? Has anyone – anyone – stopped to consider how these Native People think of having their dress and way of life taken from them and copied and worn without the proper respect and appreciation?

There appear to have been some songwriters who have fought back. Hugh Martin apparently snuck this by the censors for the hit (originally sung by Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis and later recorded by Frank Sinatra) Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas: “Have yourselves a merry little Christmas, make the yuletide gay; from now on our troubles will be miles away.” This was a very bold statement for 1944, that coming out of the closet was the beginning of a trouble-free life for gays/lesbians.

And then, of course, there is White Christmas.  What could be a clearer racist message than the opening line, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know.”  It might as well say “I’m dreaming of a White Privilege Christmas…”  It is clearly hearkening back to the “good old days” when White males held unquestioned power over womyn, cisgendered, and the non-white races – “the other” which are always to be feared by the privileged.  It is the plaintiff cry of the White male patriarchy for a power that is slipping from their grasp.  All the words about treetops glistening and children listening to hear sleigh bells is clearly cover for the primal fear of the disenfranchisement of the white power elite.

Or, I suppose, these are simply innocent images and word usages in inoffensive, heartwarming stories and songs that are supposed to give people good feelings and carry no sinister intent. But without such analysis, what is a Social Justice Warrior left to do? When is soggy pulled pork just bad cafeteria food?

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Why Trump: Relieving America’s Cognitive Dissonance

It is an overworked cliché today that pundits from across the political spectrum have miscalculated the staying power of Donald Trump’s popularity. My best friend’s long-time pal Steven Hayward posted a Thanksgiving mea Trumpa at Powerline. And I certainly never expected this staying power.

The original consensus view was that Trump would be a brief but entertaining flash in the political pan as he had been in previous campaigns. When he stuck around at the head of the class, there was a great deal of re-positioning and reconsideration. Now there is (for me and many others) the frightening prospect that Trump may actually win the nomination. Or serve as a Ron Paul spoiler (the pouty third-party “If I cannot have the nomination I’m gonna ruin it for the winner and let the Dems win” gambit). Or perhaps even more frightening, become the 45th president.

There have been hundreds of articles and posts analyzing his success. Most make some reference to his plain speaking and distinction from the political class, saying what the common folk think. I believe it goes beyond this; I believe it is rooted in the very psychology of many Americans in a way that it trumps (intended) normal reservations, logic and litmus tests that people usually apply when picking “their” candidate.

Plain speaking is one thing. Why do people stick with him when he makes stupid gaffes that would doom other politicians, or when he holds positions that would normally cause them to reject any other politician? So many Republicans have been sidelined in past races for a single slip up, sometimes a single word (macaca, anyone?). How is it that Trump survives gaffe after gaffe, sometimes growing stronger when critics say, “This time his doom is insured.”

Trump’s Rhetoric Relieves Many Americans’ Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a term coined by Leon Festinger to explain the mental discomfort felt when two contradictory ideas or thoughts are held in the mind at the same time. People who are not willfully blind or so ideologically conditioned as to be impervious to reality are confronted by such conflict by politicians and the media on a daily basis.

We are repeatedly assured by politicians and media personalities alike that terrorists calling themselves the “Islamic State” and shouting “Allahu Akbar” as they commit acts of barbarism have nothing to do with Islam. Indeed, we are told that people who equate ISIS and jihad with Islam are Just. Plain. Wrong.

We’re told it’s un-American to think this way. It’s Islamaphobic.

For many (most?) of us, that hurts our brains. But… but…but… we silently think. We don’t hate or fear all Muslims. Just the ones who want to kill us. Most of us have Muslim friends.

We are asked by our leaders to hold in our minds two concepts that are contradictory. Cognitive dissonance.

The Democratic National Committee puts out an ad quoting several Republican presidential candidates saying America is at war with “radical Islam” and then quotes President George W. Bush saying we are not at war with “Islam,” two different things which any rational person can differentiate. “It’s wrong to attack an entire religion and an entire people.”

Really? That quiet voice is saying in many heads. That’s not what I just heard. Inigo Montoya speaks up, “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.” They didn’t say “at war with Islam” – qualifiers matter, which is why we use them. Sorta like why we say “conservative” and “liberal.” Would President Obama be happy with saying “Americans hate Muslims” or is he more likely to say “conservative Americans hate Muslims?” Qualifiers matter. We can see the difference in the words they use but are expected to accept these two contradictory claims made with authority. We are being told left is right.

Cognitive dissonance!

When people are slaughtered in Paris, President Obama calls it a “setback” after saying that he has “contained” the group responsible for the terror attacks the day before.

Cognitive dissonance!

While people see their healthcare costs rise, their deductibles increase, they lose their doctor after being told (“period”) they could keep her, and in many cases their insurance plans get canceled, they hear from politicians that Obamacare has been a success.

Cognitive dissonance!

When many workers give up looking for a job and quit the workforce, resulting in the lowest workforce participation rate since 1978, they are being told by the current administration and a pliant press that the unemployment rate is falling and they should be happy the president is doing a good job.

Cognitive dissonance!

With the bodies of the dead still cooling in Paris after an Islamic terrorist assault, a new Islamic terrorist assault in Mali leaving another American dead, lockdowns in France and Belgium because of the threats, President Obama continued to warn Americans that the real imminent threat is climate change. He reserves his anger in press conferences for Republicans, not terrorists.

Cognitive dissonance!

When people across the political spectrum raise concerns that importing “refugees” from Syria into the United States should be slowed down because this could provide a convenient path for ISIS or Al Qaeda to smuggle in terrorists, President Obama and his supporters ridicule the notion. Even after it is revealed that one of the Paris terrorists apparently was a using a “refugee” passport and ISIS states it will be using the refugees to infiltrate terrorists.

Cognitive dissonance!

President Obama chides Republicans for being afraid of “women and orphans” as 26-year-old Hasna Ait Boulahcen blows herself up with a suicide vest during a Paris raid. In San Bernardino, a woman joins her husband slaughtering fourteen people. But we shouldn’t be afraid of women, we are mockingly told by our president.

Cognitive dissonance!

On one hand, we have the world as people experience it on a day-to-day level. On the other we have it as Democratic politicians and their media supporters present it.  In movies and TV shows it is more likely than not that the initial focus on a likely Muslim suspect will turn out wrong and it will be the right-wing nutcase who is really the terrorist, giving us the Hollywood elite’s invaluable insight into our preconceptions and prejudice.  How often does James Bond or the IMF go after Islamic terrorists these days?

The average mother cannot help thinking about whether she is more concerned about getting shot by a terrorist when she goes to eat dinner next Tuesday with her toddler, or if August is two degrees warmer on average in one hundred years from now. Which does she believe her government should be more focused on?

Yet while the world literally burns, our president and his surrogates and top leaders (as well as the Democrat candidates) are telling her the greatest threat we face is climate change.

Cognitive dissonance!

Our president and his media repeatedly tell us that terrorists want to kill us not for the reasons the terrorists proclaim (religious, cultural, historical, and political reasons) but because of jobs and climate change.

Cognitive dissonance!

The government assures us they will “vet” an influx of tens of thousands of immigrants from Syria and other Muslim nations – but “vet” with whom? The Syrian equivalent of the CIA and NSA? We are wrong if we question how. FBI Director James Comey explained that the agency cannot vet people who are not in their database. President Obama isn’t explaining to anyone how the vetting will be done.

I’m reminded of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Major Eaton tells Indiana Jones the government has “top men” working on researching the Ark of the Covenant. When Indie asks, “Who?”, the major repeats, “Top men.” Cut to the vast warehouse where the Ark will be buried forever, untouched.

We know that one of the San Bernardino terrorists passed three levels of government background checks to be allowed into the U.S. But that’s OK, we should still have confidence because we will have “top people” on the job vetting Syrians. Pay no attention to the fact that ISIS can apparently print their own Syrian passports and documents.

Americans are being fed statements from our government and press daily that contradict what we see around us and what makes common sense. They are constantly being asked, as Chico Marx did in Duck Soup, “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

The frustration builds. The cognitive dissonance is built into the warp and woof of culture these days. Television, movies, theater, and magazines. Yoga is canceled because it is “cultural appropriation,” yet my latest copy of Smithsonian celebrates Lin-Manuel Miranda’s all-Black Broadway musical about Alexander Hamilton and no one dare claim cultural appropriation there. When it’s Black actors portraying White historical figures, it’s brilliant and edgy.  What would the reaction be to a revered White actor portraying Crispus Attucks?  Somehow I doubt the Smithsonian would treat it the same way.

Cognitive dissonance comes from liberals who claim they support free speech by denying others the right to say things they disagree with. It springs from minorities crying racism at every term, then claiming they cannot be racists when they cast racial epithets because they lack power. Never mind that the President, Attorney General, Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of HUD, the Administrator of the Small Business Administration, two Supreme Court justices, as well as the U.N. Ambassador are all minorities. Congress is 8% Black, 6% Latino and 5.6% Asian. It’s hard to compare these to their population percentages because of those pesky “White Hispanics” and other crossover designations, although Blacks are about 13.2% of the population. But having the presidency and much of his cabinet being Black should help balance that out.

Cities are burning with race riots, police officers are being executed by Blacks, Black Lives Matter demonstrations are making headlines, and race relations are at a two-decade low. But President Obama says he has improved race relations during his presidency.

Cognitive dissonance.

And along comes The Donald. Here is someone in politics who doesn’t even pretend that the other side has any credibility at all. They are idiots. They are morons. How can they expect any intelligent person to believe this crap? On Fox News Sunday (excuse me, Faux News Sunday for my liberal friends) today he said the label “losers” was not strong enough for the politicians in Washington.

And people who have been struggling with their cognitive dissonance, wondering if there was something wrong with themselves, can heave a sigh of relief and say, “Hell, yes. Finally, someone is saying what I was too afraid to say.”

“I’m not crazy after all.”

He legitimizes their feelings, their frustrations at being force-fed through every media a topsy-turvy world that contradicts so many values they took for granted ten or twenty years ago. The definition of marriage, the role of America in the world, even what it means to be a man or a woman.

Trump is the therapist who reassures the patient that they are not insane. He relieves the pressure on the brain without the awkward and messy trepanning procedure. His role is more than just that of politician – it is one of psychic rescuer.

For decades Americans have been conditioned to be politically correct, and to be sensitive to other cultures, the feelings of others, to not judge.

Discrimination – in the broadest sense so essential to survival (fire hot – don’t touch!) – became something to be avoided to the point of absurdity. Reality became user-defined (choose to be a man, woman or other), and people had to set aside common sense; disparate outcomes were not because of difference in abilities or effort or dumb luck but because of institutional racism or other factors unrelated to the individual who failed.

One was required to be willfully blind to the fact that you had to have proportional racial representation on the faculty but not the basketball squad. We could allow for ability in one but not the other, and ironically for an academic institution is was in the field of sports where ability was the determinative factor for allowed discrimination, not academics.

And along comes Trump who cries BS (literally) and a lot of people say, “Thank you!”

They will forgive him a great deal because for the first time in decades someone on the national stage in politics has clearly, passionately and without a thought to how it would play out on page one or the lede on the evening news, cried “This is crap!”

And that’s a good thing, a great thing. Many times over the last few months Trump’s over-the-top pontification has smashed open the Overton Window, allowed for the conversation to happen over policy issues that were somewhat constrained (over immigration, refugees, military strategy, taxation, etc.).

But like the boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes, identifying the problem doesn’t mean having a solution. The Overton Window refers to politically acceptable options; Trump often sets a parameter beyond the acceptable, allowing more rational heads to grapple with the issue and come to a more measured policy. Even Trump usually backtracks and softens his rhetoric.

But is that what we want in a president? President George W. Bush was accused of being a “cowboy” (as was Reagan before him) but Trump makes them look like Caspar Milquetoast.

I believe one real secret to Trump’s effectiveness, which differentiates him from the other top-tier candidates, is that he doesn’t care about the press, he uses the press.

Republicans treat the mainstream media the way a battered spouse does her abuser – she tries to be nice in the hopes that this will avoid further abuse. In my practice I represent abused spouses, and the problem is not the victim, but the abuser. No matter how well you treat the abuser they will find an excuse to batter again. The victim’s conduct is not at fault. It’s about power and control.

No matter how Republicans pander to the MSM, they will always have their words twisted and distorted. They will always be covered unfairly. They will always be ambushed. They will always have unfavorable coverage, and be the subject of negative editorials. Time for Republicans to say “Screw ‘em!” and control their press more effectively, or just ignore the consequences. Don’t pander any more. Mock the press, don’t meet the press.

Say what you want to say. Have your plans prepared before you shoot off your mouth but address the concerns of the people, not the press. Don’t worry how the press will receive it and distort it, think of how the people will hear it. Town hall your message, don’t focus group it with groups gathered by “experts.” The “experts” are generally wrong, fighting battles from several campaigns back (which they lost…).

Americans are living in a Through the Looking Glass world. Trump has capitalized on that as no other politician. But candidates have to stop talking in generics and platitudes that the press cannot take issue with; they have to take stands with details that will alienate some people to rally others.

If Cruz or Rubio would get their acts together to recognize how hungry the American people are to be told by politicians that their candidate understands that up is not down and not just generic “values” but specifics are what they stand for, then I believe Trump’s support would erode quickly when more stable, thoughtful and credible candidates began treating our national cognitive dissonance.

 

Thank You, Violence Policy Center, For Helping Prove Concealed Carry Permit Holders Are Safe!

I am not a member of the NRA, in part because I don’t want my real name on a list the government can use against me (paranoid much? Yup). But I saw a TV ad titled “Freedom’s Safest Place” they produced a while back that has added urgency after the December 2 attacks in San Bernardino. It is right on the money in calling for a nation-wide concealed carry law.

The ad’s text (aimed at Congress critters) appears prophetic:

You know the threat is real.

You sit in meetings with advisors and operatives who tell you there could be Islamic sleeper cells in every major American community.

You know the southern border is a welcome mat for terrorists to enter our towns and neighborhoods at will.

You know about their plots to kill us in our shopping malls, our sports stadiums and our office buildings.

You won your office by talking like a champion of freedom. Now it’s time to act like one.

Pass a national right to carry law that guarantees my constitutional right to defend myself, my family and my fellow Americans anywhere inside our borders … and make sure the enemies of freedom know the power of freedom.

No law-abiding American should be forced to face evil with empty hands.

I’m the National Rifle Association of America.

And I’m freedom’s safest place.

Facts are facts. As these charts show (based upon data from the Centers for Disease Control and Congressional Research Services), as both the gun ownership rates and number of firearms in the U.S. have gone up between 1993 and 2013, the gun homicide rates have gone down. How can that be?

Fine, my friends on the Left say, but those gunslingers who go around with their concealed carry permits (CCPs) and Glocks and Smiths and “multi-automatic round weapons” under their shirts are surely killing people right and left. Can you just imagine these rednecks getting liquored up in a bar and shooting somebody? It must happen all the time!

I’m no statistician, but the folks at the Violence Policy Center are. You know they know their guns when they talk about “assault weapons.” They list 62 homicides in 2013 committed by folks with concealed carry permits (CCPs), including the DC Navy Yard massacre where 13 were killed. Sixty-two gun deaths from CCP holders in 2013.  That’s pretty bad.  That’s after I went through and took out all the accidental deaths and suicides, and homicides where the weapon was not listed (but the person did have a CCP). So there could be up to 5 more I didn’t count.

But that is out of 11,208 gun homicides in 2013. That’s 62 out of 11,208 gun homicides that were committed by concealed permit holders, or just .56% of total gun homicides that were committed by CCP holders. It’s quite possible that some other easily-identifiable groups might comprise a higher percentage of known perpetrators of gun crimes. Maybe left-handed barbers. Or perhaps gang members. I’m just spit balling here.

There were approximately 8 million concealed carry permit holders in 2013. About 34% of the population owns guns, so in 2013 that meant about 107,500,000 people owned guns.

Let’s see. Carry the two. Use the other hand because I just ran out of fingers on this one…

The Violence Policy Center evidence points to the opposite conclusion of their scary rhetoric (“[CCP holders] instead expose the public to more danger, ongoing research from the Violence Policy Center (VPC) finds”). In actuality, concealed carry permit holders commit substantially fewer gun homicides per capita than the general gun-owning public.

Who would have ever thought that people who had to go through a background check and then training in firearm use and safety might have a better safety record than folks who just bought a gun? Or that people who accepted the responsibility for carrying a deadly weapon and had the maturity and respect for the law to go through the permit process (rather than just carry the weapon unlawfully) would actually demonstrate a higher level of self-control and restraint?  I sure would never have seen that coming.  As those legal eagles say, no indicia of reliability there.

Unless my math is wrong (a distinct possibility; as we used to say in law school, if we could do math, we wouldn’t be trying to become lawyers), concealed carry permit holders accounted for 1 gun (gub? Obligatory Woody Allen reference) homicide per 129,032 CCP holder in 2013 (62/8 million). Other gun owners accounted for 1 gun homicide per 8,927 gun owners (11,146/99.5 million). Of course, those “other” gun owners include gang members and criminals who commit the vast majority of the gun homicides, so that figure is misleading. A majority of those gun homicides occur in Democrat-run cities like Chicago, East LA, and Washington, DC which have the tightest gun control laws.

Another way of looking at it, a CCP holder is 14 times less likely to kill someone with a gun than a person without a CCP.

So no, more concealed carry permits by licensed, trained and vetted citizens will not lead to bloodbaths in the streets. It hasn’t in the past. And don’t we all trust our government to vet people thoroughly? If we cannot trust our government to vet citizens who have been living and having every move since birth recorded here, how can we possibly trust the same agencies to clear folks from Syria with dubious papers who seek refugee status?

But that is another story.

In our new reality (the new, new reality, the post-September 11, post-December 2 reality) we know that no place is safe. No town is too large or too small. No venue too innocent. It can be a Paris café or a holiday party for office workers. It can be a subway where a man starts slashing with a knife or a busy street where a man starts hacking with a hatchet.

The often-stated fear of those on the Left of concealed guns on the persons of civilians is simply not supported by facts. Robert Heinlein, in Beyond This Horizon, believed just the opposite. His thinking was, “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” The facts, as stated by the anti-gun group Violence Policy Center (which can be counted on to make the best case possible against concealed carry permit holders), show that CCP holders have a much better safety record than gun owners in general.

If this holds true with expanded adoption of a national concealed carry permit system, along with safety, defense and tactical combat training, then every community across the nation could not only feel safer but actually be safer. It would be the simplest way Congress could empower citizens, with a simple bill and vote. No thousand-page monstrosity no one would read but a single page of clear writing would suffice. Of course Congress would muck it up with all kinds of needless rhetoric, verbiage, riders, guidelines, unnecessary bureaucracy and cost, but if that is what it would take that would be acceptable.

It wouldn’t require billions spent on intelligence gathering, or invasions of civil liberties.  It wouldn’t require years of debate, environmental impact studies, and construction of border fences.  Citizens would take the task upon themselves, pay for it themselves, train themselves, arm themselves.  When they gathered together at ranges and afterwards they might form social interactions that would reassure them and ease their fears that their families and communities were safe because they had developed, for wont of a better term, a well regulated militia.

Then when the next Islamic terrorist starts crying “Allahu Akbar!” the first thing they will hear is the racking of a dozen pistols and the last thing they will hear is the sound of thunder.

The San Bernardino Terror Attack and Lessons from The Northfield Minnesota Raid of 1876

We have a President who refuses to acknowledge the nature of the enemy we face (radical Islamic terrorism); he consistently demonstrates his lack of wisdom or conviction to take the necessary actions to protect us against it. We also have feckless leadership in Congress on both sides of the aisle who only say empty words to gain favor with the press and their base to maintain their positions of power while doing nothing of substance.

If we are to be protected, we must rely upon ourselves.

On September 7, 1876, three men rode into the bustling town of Northfield, Minnesota. Several townspeople thought they looked suspicious because their horses were of unusually high quality and they wore matching dusters (to cover their weapons).

These riders (who eventually grew to number eight men) were Jesse and Frank James, the Younger brothers (Cole, Jim and Bob), Charlie Pitts, Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell. They had come to rob the bank.

The towns folk had other ideas.

To this day, teller Joseph Lee Heywood is a local hero, shot dead by Frank James as Heywood repeatedly refused to open the bank safe after being beaten to the floor and threatened with death. James fled the bank with only $26.70.

Townsmen (many who were Civil War veterans) grabbed old but serviceable weapons and began firing at the outlaws on the street while yelling at townspeople to clear the area. The shocked robbers fled the town leaving two dead (Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell), with every member of the gang wounded except Jesse James. Two townspeople were also dead, the teller and a Swede who apparently became confused and couldn’t understand the shouts to get out of the street to avoid the shooting.

In describing the scene, Western story teller Louis L’Amour liked to say the gang was “shot to doll rags.”  It took just seven minutes for the robbery to fail because of the swift actions of the men in the town in spotting the robbery and acting.

The citizens were relentless. As many as 2000 men from Northfield and neighboring towns chased the gang members for weeks, eventually capturing the Youngers (and killing Charlie Pitt). The James brothers escaped after splitting from the others a week after the robbery.

We can learn much from this historic narrative. It runs contrary to the fictional western movies where a band of outlaws come in and take over a town and terrorize the helpless citizens, a popular Hollywood theme.  In reality an armed citizenry, leavened with battle-seasoned veterans, sized up the situation and took immediate action, sheltering their women and children and dealing swift and unrelenting justice to the barbarians who threatened their civilization.

Our fight against the global Islamic jihad has had a number of paradigm shifts. Prior to 9/11, pilots and flight crews were trained to go along with hijackers as the best way to protect passengers. The historic object of the hijackers was to safely get to a location with hostages or make demands for their release. After the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center, that all changed. In real time, some passengers on Flight 93 learned on their cell phones what had happened in New York and Washington at the Pentagon and overwhelmed any terrorists in the passenger cabin and were assaulting the cockpit door when the terrorists decided to crash the plane near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The paradigm shifted in real time.

The Paris attacks gave us another paradigm shift (or should have). There was talk about the “hostages” at the Bataclan concert hall while the event was unfolding, but we should really know better by now. Islamic terrorists do not take hostages in the middle of such attacks; they massacre people. When they have the leisure to do so they may take women or girls to sell as sex slaves or men and children to behead at a later time for propaganda purposes, but in a terror operation where they are certain to be killed in the middle of a city like Paris if they stay put for very long, there is no recent history of hostage taking, just slaughter.

When journalists suggest that they are taking hostages, they are reporting the last war, a failure of imagination.

Northfield in 1876 teaches four lessons we must learn if we are to defend ourselves in this new reality.

  1. The government cannot protect us in our homes, work or leisure.  No sheriff stopped the James-Younger gang. Even if we are willing to give up all of our civil liberties it is doubtful Big Brother could have averted the San Bernardino attack. Destroying IS, ISIL, ISIS, Daesh or whatever you want to call it in the Middle East might slow recruitment of jihadi wannabe attackers here and around the civilized world but will not eliminate them completely. We have entered a world of perpetual martyrdom, of lunatic Islamists who believe not only in their holy cause of jihad and their other-worldly reward but that their martyrdom will ignite further revolution. Even if we someday elect leaders at all levels with spine, it will take a long time to minimize the existential threat of random violence. These San Bernardino terrorists do not appear to have a large digital footprint that could have been detected. There was apparently an illegal straw man gun purchase of at least some of the weapons by a friend. It could not have been detected, and it could not have been responded to quickly enough.  Even when police responded, they could not just charge in. They did not know how many terrorists there were. They did not know if doors were mined with IEDs that could kill or injure officers or civilians if breached (that apparently was the case; the bombs did not detonate). They did not know if quickly breaching could result in greater civilian casualties. Time was needed – even if they arrived instantly on the scene – to gather intelligence, assess the situation, formulate plans, and implement them. Time had to pass, and in such situations every minute means innocent lives lost as terrorists engage in their massacres.
  2. Vigilance cannot be trumped by political correctness.   The San Bernardino massacre might have been averted had the neighbor(s) who noticed something suspicious actually reported it, but they said they did not because they were afraid of being accused of racial profiling. And that’s not an unreasonable fear. When U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch makes a big deal about violence against Muslims in the wake of 9/11 (where there was an astounding lack of anti-Muslim backlash violence in the U.S.) and says her “greatest fear” is anti-Muslim rhetoric, then people have reason to fear reporting suspicious activities. When she pledges to prosecute people for discrimination against Muslims, this trickles down not only to civilians but all levels of law enforcement.    That means that even had the neighbors reported their suspicions to local law enforcement or federal authorities, those reports might not have been effectively acted upon.       Nonetheless we must report what we see without fear of reprisals from Social Justice Warriors like the Attorney General, and fight to support those who do make such reports.  Making reports, even if they prove to be unfounded, should not be discouraged.
  3. Restricting gun ownership is the opposite of what is needed.   That is like saying we should lock passengers into their seats in airplanes in response to the heroes in Shanksville, so only those terrorists with box cutters can cut their way out and roam the plane. First responders cannot arrive in time and gain enough situational awareness to know to storm a building as quickly as armed people inside can respond to the situation. Cops cannot be everywhere, and every event cannot have enough armed guards to make a difference. A few armed, trained civilians could have taken down the shooters and saved many lives before the police arrived on the scene both in San Bernardino and at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. The terrorists’ bulletproof vests (if they had them; I’ve also seen them described as tactical vests for holding ammo clips) would not protect the legs or head or arms, or keep the shooter from being knocked down and being injured by the hydrostatic shock of impact. While many people would never consider carrying a gun at a holiday party, those folks wouldn’t have to; it would only have taken four or five armed citizens to insure these two were taken out, wounded, scared off, or sent out wounded to leave an easier trail for law enforcement. These terrorists had experience with target practice but expected a soft target; probably the shock of being shot back at would have disrupted their attack or even caused them to abandon their weapons.  As Bruce Lee said, boards do not hit back.
  4. Open carry is not the answer; concealed carry is.  The James-Younger crowd rode into a town they thought was filled with farmers and merchants. They had sized up a number of towns before deciding on this one and had chosen it as a “soft target.” The guns were out of sight. Open carry makes the armed person the terrorists’ first target. Concealed carry leaves the terrorist wondering who might be armed and who isn’t. This is why air marshals are in plain clothes. Would-be terrorists do not know who is armed or if there is one on a flight. A soft target becomes a potentially hard target. The San Bernardino terrorists apparently had another attack planned after this one, possibly a police station or military target; some theorize they chose this target first so they were guaranteed a soft target success in case they failed in the second. If they knew that there was a possibility that there were armed people at this party they would not have considered this a soft target.  Open carry advertises what is a hard or soft target; wide-spread concealed carry makes ANY target potentially hard and may discourage attacks.

I’m sure my friends on the Left would say that we cannot go back to the wild west or vigilante justice. They are ignoring the fact that the Islamist terrorists have already brought us back to the seventh century with their jihadi assaults. Vigilante justice was often an organized community response to the barbarism of the outlaw when no law enforcement was available. Life is not always what it appears in a Hollywood western.  For example, San Francisco citizens joined together several times in an organized Committee of Vigilance  (vigilantes) when the existing civil government was not handling problems (or was part of the problem).

We have to arm ourselves and be prepared to defend ourselves. As it happens, I was born about four miles from where those two terrorists went on their rampage last week. I grew up in San Bernardino (none of us from there pronounce the second “r” either, so don’t feel bad). This kinda hits home and tells me it can happen anywhere. There are no safe places. But I cannot legally carry a concealed weapon in California (California is not big on reciprocity for CCPs).  If I had had the misfortune to be at the Inland Regional Center December 2, I would have been as unable to defend myself and others as anyone in that hall because California politicians have determined to keep folks safe from gunslingers like me.

I’m only in California a few days a month these days. But I’m going to look into finding a sympathetic jurisdiction for a California CCP. I don’t want to be a mourned victim but a proactive defender – wherever I am.