Musings

Ruth Bader Ginsburg 

So.  The notorious RBG is dead.  I've seen celebrations, and I've seen grief.  I've even seen respect, among the social media groups I'm a member in.  As for me...yeah, I'm glad she's dead, but not for the reasons I've seen a lot of people cheering. 

I'm glad she's dead because that woman has been through absolute hell for the past several years.  She's been fighting pancreatic cancer: one of the most painful and least treatable cancers out there.  Because it pretends to be other things until it's far too late to treat.  And she's fought, and fought hard.  And she's done her dead-level best to continue working and being productive during that fight.  I did not like her politics.  I did not like her as a person.  I did not like her judicial choices.  But I have to admire her grit and determination in the face of such suffering. 

It's over, now.  And I'm glad--I rarely wish suffering on others.  And just because she was wrong on most counts doesn't mean she's not human. 

More of us--all of us, on both sides of the aisle,* not just the people cheering her death--need to remember that. 

Federal Funding

 The President is considering cutting federal funding to rioting cities that aren't attempting to control the riots.  Well, aren't successfully controlling the riots.  I can see that they're attempting; however, their attempts are the same as parents giving in to a tantrum to silence the toddler. 

That...doesn't work.  It doesn't ever work.  Not even in the short term.  What it actually does is embolden the little shit and teaches that the tantrums work to get them what they want.  It doesn't get them to stop.  It doesn't buy peace, not even in the short term. 

I don't mean that you have to beat the toddler black and blue to get your point across.  I don't think that's what it would take in these cases, either.

However.  That said.  You do have to say no, make it stick, and set (and enforce) consequences for this behavior.  It wouldn't even be very hard to do: most of the actions taken by the overgrown toddlers throwing tantrums are felonies.  I've seen assault, arson, felony theft, felony property damage (good God have I seen felony property damage!)...there's a list longer than a football field. 

Arrest the bad actors.  Not the peaceful protesters--let them whine and bleat all they like.  However.  The second they throw a rock at someone (or a brick at a window), come down on them like the wrath of God: arrest them, charge them, and send them to jail.  Hit them while they're still committing misdemeanors.  Don't let it accelerate to felonies.  Arrest the little dummies sitting in the middle of streets holding up traffic.  Do it before they start beating on cars, dragging people out of cars and attacking them, or robbing delivery trucks.  Prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law before they get worse. 

Anyway.  Any parent who's successfully raised toddlers past this stage knows this.  And Trump has raised several.  He's setting consequences on the people who should have been stopping this butt-cold, and haven't.  I really hope he sticks to it. 

Defunding Police

This...this is a fucking dumb idea.  I am in favor of disbanding city-level SWAT teams.  I am in favor of revoking qualified immunity.  I am in favor of prosecuting "wrong address" mistakes on no-knock warrants as first degree murder.  I am in favor of ending the war on (some) drugs. 

I am not in favor of defunding the police.  And if the left would fucking think about it, they'd be less in favor of such, as well. 

What do I mean?  I mean if you defund police departments...you're going to have a massive rise in violent crime (several places are already seeing this).  And then, people like me are going to stop calling for help that won't come, and will take care of the problems themselves. There are a lot of crimes that will suddenly come with a death sentence during the commission.  No trial, no pleading, just dead. 

I am in a peaceful area of the country.  So far.  However, my city is seeing an uptick in crime...not because our law enforcement has been defunded like in the larger, Democrat-owned cities.  Because our department doesn't have enough funding in the first place for the size of town we actually are.  Our police department is about half the size it should be. 

Yeah, I will call the cops if shit goes down in my house; however, I will have a gun in the hand that isn't holding the phone, because I know they won't get to me in anything resembling a timeframe that would prevent severe bodily harm.  Chances are that there would be a live creep spread out on the floor waiting for the cops to arrest them. 

In Democrat-owned cities, people are going to simply shoot the son-of-a-bitch, roll him out to the alley, and clean up.  Because they won't have the option of calling the police, and will refuse to lie down and die. 

Most of those would likely be Democrat voters.  And the people defending their own lives would start to grow up into non-Democrats.  Non-statists.  Because they'd have learned the important lesson that they actually are responsible for themselves and their own safety. 

Which is the opposite of what the left truly wants. 

Netflix and California

So.  Netflix. 

We didn't cancel Netflix when they gave political opponents time and space to expound their views.  We talked about it, but decided not to.  Because neither my other half nor I want to live in such an isolated, insulated bubble that we can't tolerate dissent. 

That's a trick of the left, and we aren't leftists.  We are leave-me-the-hell-alone libertarians (note the lack of a capital L). 

However.  We have children.  We have an almost-twelve-year-old son, and a daughter that will be ten in December. 

And Netflix has come out on the side of normalizing pedophilia and grooming children to be receptive victims thereof. 

That. 

We've cancelled Netflix over that. 

I am a survivor of long-term sexual abuse.  It lasted most of my childhood.  What there was of it.  Looking back, I can see the grooming that accompanied it.  Grooming to compete for the abuser's attention and affection, grooming to not tell.  (That failed.  Hard.)

I am...damaged.  I bear scars.  I am not in favor of permitting adults that look at children and think "mmm, sexy" to walk the world.  I am not in favor of things that normalize children as sexual objects to be considered "art."

So.  Neflix is gone.  And we're debating Disney+ because their tween series?  Same thing, but more subtle. 

And California has come out and, instead of raising all criminal definitions of pedophilia to the most strict, have lowered their standards to decriminalize adults fucking children so long as there's no more than ten years' age difference, and the child "consents." 

Because kids, of course, know better than anyone what's best for them.  Kids are capable of informed consent.  Kids are starting to think about sex earlier than ever.  Right? 

Actually, no.  No, they aren't.  Not without external grooming, like you see on Netflix.  And the Disney tween series. 

Unfortunately, grooming is on the rise, and has been for decades.  Like boiling a frog. 

I am about ready to simply buy a whole bunch of safe TV series on DVD and dump the Roku. 

Because I have kids, and I do not want them to have the same mental, spiritual, and emotional scars that I have.

*I've seen hard-line leftists damning her for not having retired during the last years of the Obama administration.  I understand how they feel, and why they feel that way...however, it doesn't mean they're right.