October 25, 2021:
Bert learns a big word.
Posted on 10/25/2021 2:39:38 AM PDT by Kaslin
Alec Baldwin got to play his dream role last week, and unfortunately for an innocent woman, it was a method-acting version of Ted Kennedy. Now, you note that I am mocking a guy whose probable gross negligence killed a lady and maimed a man, and this raises an important question – do we really want to live in a world where our reaction to a tragedy caused by an enemy is not sorrow and compassion but mockery?
It doesn’t matter what we want. We do live in such a world, in large part due to the likes of Alec Baldwin. Besides his scuzzy abuse of the people – notably women – in his orbit, he is a particularly loathsome social media presence, and as a result, conservatives are gleefully resurrecting his old tweets about guns and his wish for them to be used on his many, many enemies in the wake of his horrible act. There are many, many such tweets. I am not a believer in karma and do not fear it, but I do try to keep a respectful distance from irony.
Note that arguments that this somehow hurts the families of the victims are weak – “My beloved relative has died – I shall seek solace on Twitter” seems far-fetched. Moreover, the families might be mortified to see people taking apart the architect of their pain? Doubtful. If anything, the practical effect of slamming Six Gun Alec is making people think, “Gosh, better not play with firearms lest people on Twitter roast me.”
But there is a legit question of how we should respond to this. There have been two different reactions among those on our general side of the fight to the reactions to Alec Baldwin’s fall from, well, not exactly grace. One is to recoil with horror at the accident and assert that this is a time when we should offer our thoughts and prayers for the victims and for Baldwin, who one would hope is devastated by what he has done. Nice people tend to have this reaction, those who want to live in a more genteel world than we do. I sympathize, in that I would like to live in such a world. I would also like a unicorn pony.
Then there was the opposite reaction, in which our folks ran up the score, skewering the gun control zealot’s failure to zealously control his gun. This is playing by the new rules of gladiatorial combat in the cultural coliseum. Those burned out on the lies and calumny we are bombarded with daily tend to go this way; they are angry, and they are more than willing to give Alec a good, hard dose of his own medicine. That’s certainly my inclination. A tweet for a tweet, so to speak.
So, I sympathize with both options, and I cannot get upset at people for choosing one over the other. If you want to go gentle, cool, and if you want to go hard, okay. After all, the rules are the rules, and there can only be one set of them. In the world I would want to live in, we would all be at Option A, whispering a silent prayer for the hurting – and I did. But this is not the world we live in, and none of us are under any moral obligation to pretend we do. This is a world where the rule is that you take an opening in the enemy’s line and you drive a couple divisions hard right through it.
Alec Baldwin is a bad person, but more than that, he is a bad person who hates us with a mortality rate thanks to his hypocrisy. And now he is vulnerable, and the rules say he is fair game – his rules. Is it significant that this amoral, leftist, Trumpophobic gun grabber has personally executed more mass shootings than any Christian conservative Trump-loving NRA member? Not in any kind of intellectual sense – it’s just a thing that happened – but it makes a helluva meme.
The argument for being nice is that 1) we should live the way we wish to live, that is, model the way we want the world regardless of how the world actually is and set the example; 2) we are better than that; and 3) Jesus tells us to. Of these, No. 3 is the most compelling – the hardest part of Christianity is loving your enemies. Perhaps you can do that even as you tweet that the fifth rule of gun safety is never give Alec Baldwin a gun. Jesus wasn’t a pinko hippie; he confronted and told hard truths. And despite the injunction to turn the other cheek, Christians are not pacifists. After all, many soldiers are Christian and they kill their enemies, so you must be able to be a Christian and point out through biting sarcasm that Alec Baldwin is awful too.
As for us modeling to the world, does that ever work? Has us not matching punch for punch with the cultural left ever made them hold up and think, “Gosh, the conservatives’ refusal to stoop to my level has made me rethink this whole pursuit of power thing – I will forgo it and return to the norms of yesteryear”? Of course not. George W. Bush famously remained above the fray and they only stopped vivisecting him when he joined them in vivisecting us.
As for us being “better than that,” I’ll take being just as bad as that and not being a cultural serf over the David French position, which is the converse.
The argument for Option B is that you can’t go back to the past paradigm where you didn’t hit ‘em when they were down without punishing them for hitting us when we were down. Pain is the teacher. Of course, this assumes a paradigm not in evidence; we were never quite that pristine. I remember that within days of the Challenger accident, cruel jokes circulated across campus. Gallows humor has always existed, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t – maybe we’d just prefer a scenario where we acknowledge it’s appalling even as we laugh in spite of ourselves.
The premise of Option B is that we have to fight fire with fire, though that analogy always puzzled me. Rather, in combat you use the necessary weapons. Nazis and communists used guys with guns to attack us; we used guys with guns to kill them. Was there a moral difference, since everybody used guns, asks the moral illiterate? Yes. The other guys were Nazis and communists, and shooting them was a moral imperative because they were Nazis and communists. Our mean tweets are in the service of light, theirs are on the side of darkness.
To not engage on the terms that reality has set before you is to accept defeat. You might not like the rules, but there they are. In a society that has made the rule that you pummel your opponent when he is down, to not play by the rule is to unilaterally disarm.
Those nice folks on our side don’t see it that way – they see it as embracing decency. But lately, “decency” has translated as submission and, not being Bulwark staffers, we’re not into that scene.
The bad guys want us to be “decent” too – but not because of decency but because it makes their lives easier when we are hamstrung in response to their cultural aggression. We’re not supposed to make jokes about Alec Baldwin’s idiocy for the same reason we’re not supposed to make jokes about men pretending to be women pretending to be admirals. Humor, especially mean humor, is subversive. The leftist joke stasi wants the potential for subversion off the table.
Think of it as the Cold War. Option B is mutually assured destruction – if you launch social media cruelty at our misfortune, you will pay in spades, so don’t. Option A is unilateral disarmament. Nice people on our side want us to disarm to make us better people; our enemies want us to disarm to make us better targets.
So do as you wish about Alec Baldwin. If you want to remain in the light and offer your condolences, do so. Like I said, I’ve muttered a prayer for him and his victims because my faith tells me to do so and loving only your friends is kind of a meaningless exercise. I don’t like Alec Baldwin (though I really enjoy his acting). He’s awful. So I’m also going to talk bad about him and his hypocrisy and negligence.
Those are the rules we’re playing by today. I didn’t make the rules. I don’t like them. I’m even willing to return to the old ones, once enough pain has been inflicted to teach the necessary lesson about changing the rules. But I am not willing to play by a different set of rules that limits me at the expense of my opponents.
That’s the conundrum. I want a nice world, but I can’t get it just by being nice. So leftists, let me know when you want to change the new rules back. Until then, they are in effect.
October 25, 2021:
Bert learns a big word.
It’s a case of criminal negligence, IMHO.
Why were live rounds being used? Why weren’t they using a specialized prop gun that was incapable of firing live rounds? How did the cinematographer get into the line of fire? How could he shoot TWO people with the gun
Alex Baldwin himself shouldn’t escape responsibility. It was he who fired the weapon, obviously without personally checking for live rounds.
When the truth finally comes out, it will be shown that (smart) Alec Baldwin, while screwing around, pointed the gun right at the woman he killed (in jest) and pulled the trigger.
No “misfire”.
Lyrics
I was five and he was six
We rode on horses made of sticks
He wore black and I wore white
He would always win the fight
Bang bang, he shot me down
Bang bang, I hit the ground
Bang bang, that awful sound
Bang bang, my baby shot me down
Seasons came and changed the time
And I grew up, I called him mine
He would always laugh and say
“Remember when we used to play?”
Bang bang, I shot you down
Bang bang, you hit the ground
Bang bang, that awful sound
Bang bang, I used to shoot you down
Music played and people sang
Just for me the church bells rang
Hey, hey, hey, hey
Now he’s gone I don’t know why
Until this days sometimes I cry
He didn’t even say goodbye
He didn’t take the time to lie
Bang bang, he shot me down
Bang bang, I hit the ground
Bang bang, that awful sound
Bang bang, my baby shot me down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-wk7-pRqCo
Sonny and Cher, Bang Bang
Yes, Baldwin will get away with murder.
.best.
“Guns dont kill people,Alec Baldwin kills people,,,”
The best comment of the thread.
That fat headed liberal turd deserves everything he’s getting and then some.
He’ll never receive due punishment or consequences
It’s simple,it’s called Negligent Homicide for a reason,why is it different for an actor? He did it it wasn’t intentional,but it was Negligent ,deal with it
I detest Alec Baldwin, but I don’t see why live ammunition should EVER be used on a movie set (except maybe by their security force.)
If you are nice all the time the left views it as a sign of weakness. I say fight back and tell them what you think.
They will try to censor you as we see happen but the truth gets out there. Example all the protest going on in europe and Australia over the lockdown and vaccines which are not covered by the corrupt media but we can still view news of it on the internet.
We would stand over his charred remains and proclaim to all who worship the Left, "THIS is your end! Cease your idiocy or face the consequences!"
Yeah, it's a bit over the top. But after I read about all the pure evil being perpetrated on us by those on the Left, I kinda think even THAT isn't enough.
But then...
I am reminded of a scene from 'The Chosen' where James and John want to call down fire from Heaven to destroy their enemies...and how Jesus reacts. Watch this...
Season 2, Ep. 1 of 'The Chosen', "Sons of Thunder"
Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa
Betcha can’t where I actually care. You are implying the cinematographer was deliberately shot with no proof other than Alex Jones type horsehockey... which means you have nothing. You’re overthinking things. It’s time for you to shut up and let the grown-ups talk.
How about Trump for more Karma.
"The buck stops with Alec Baldwin on every level. It looks very bad for him. At least the captain of the Titanic had the good sense to go down with the ship."
Not criminal negligence. It’s not possible to accidentally load a live round into a prop pistol. This is murder.
Whoever did it, it’s murder. Just a question of who and why. We already have a maniac on the set who is the prime suspect.
If you can't, comfortably, get on the other side of that, I don't know what to tell you.
correct, and there is no excuse for it.
his article is about four times longer than was required...
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I would add that the official legal reaction to this event will show the usual liberal/conservative bias without a doubt.
What we as conservatives do or don’t do doesn’t matter. There will be a liberal media and legal response to the event that won’t do any harm to the standard party line regarding guns.
Baldwin will be sued for as much as possible, but eventually he will be a victim and the gun will have been the problem; not the finger on the trigger.
Bingo!
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