Category: Current Events

The panic really started at the beginning of the week, when my weekly trip to Wegman’s for the groceries saw she shelves cleared of many items. That’s telling, because Wegman’s is usually on top of that shit. It was worse than the week before Christmas. As soon as Pennsylvanians hear the word “snow” in the forecast, people head to the grocery store to stock up as if the Russians just launched all the ICBMs out of their silos and we only have 30 minutes to grab all the canned goods we can get our hands on. I’ve never understood this. We have plows, we have salt. Unless it’s piled up over the roads, you’re stuck inside for a day, at best.

I notice the fogey quotient was up pretty high this week, so I think a lot of it is old people. Old people seem to be more prone to panic. Either way, I’m trying to figure out whether to go to work tomorrow. It’s forecast not to start until later in the evening, but my commute is 45 miles one-way and that’s a long way to go if it’s heavy snow because they were wrong. Unlike DC, we know how to drive in snow, but the correct technique is slow and deliberate, and I’m not eager to do 45 miles of that.

It was Bismarck who said “Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal … A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all … I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where … Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off.”

And with that we have Ammon Bundy and a few other folks taking over what would seem to be a bird watching outpost in a National Wildlife Refuge. The local ranchers don’t seem to be too happy about this, which hopefully will allow for a peaceful resolution.

Ordinarily, we’re told when groups that have the left’s sympathy act out, that we have to understand their grievances. In this case, they are calling them terrorists and demanding severe action from the federal government.

I’ve posted this debate between Prof. Robert Churchill and Josh Horwitz of CSGV before, but it’s worth linking to again. The Bundy’s aside, there are a lot of people out there for whom there has been no economic recovery, and they are angry. In the west, a lot of these folks have serious and not-unwarranted grievances against the federal government for their heavy handed management of federal land. Bitter’s family are among those who are facing having land seized by BLM along the Red River. They are mad as hell, and well armed. So are their neighbors in the same situation, on both sides of the border.

The left either has no idea what a powder keg this kind of situation potentially is, or they are happy to start seeing their political opponents start getting shot to death. I can understand the former, but the down the latter path there be demons. This situation has to be carefully defused, and then the land issues addressed. Most of the federal land in the west should probably be turned over to state management.

The following things appear to be facts at this point. I stress appear.

• There were two shooters, a man and a woman who were (once?) married. I won’t name them here in honor of my policy not to give these clowns publicity.
• This attack was elaborately planned.
• They employed IEDs unsuccessfully.
• Whether jihad was a motivation won’t matter. This will be another case of workplace violence. That will be the continuing narrative by the left and media no matter what. Count on it. There will be no interfering with the narrative about who’s really at fault for all this.
• Some of their guns appear to have been purchased legally. Personally, I’m skeptical of this since I doubt their AR-15s were California Compliant. Maybe they were originally purchased legally, then illegally transferred.
• The media has invented a new term “assault clothing.” No really, it’s a thing now.
• Praying for the victims is now shameful.
• For the left, this is only evidence that California’s gun control laws aren’t nearly strict enough. It’s like that Paris thing never happened.

I feel like I’m way too young to start talking like my grandparents about how this country is going to hell in a hand basket, but it is. We have become an unserious people. We have the left on one hand who can’t name something for what it is, and then on the right you have the clown show that’s the GOP primary.