On the corruption of Conservatism and the Libertine Party

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Miscellaneous ruminations on the left's "mass shooting" hysteria

"Mass shootings" have reached "epidemic" levels according to the Communist left, and a complicit media apparatus that serves as the unofficial propaganda arm of the Communist Party. Americans today are experiencing unprecedented levels of gun violence wildly accelerating out of control. From the way it's portrayed by Marxist politicians, e.g., Bernie Sanders, and covered by equally Marxist journalists, you'd think something akin to a holocaust is occurring in the United States every year, every month, or even every day.

Here's the reality. According to the FBI there were 27 active shooter incidents in 2018. Of those 27 only 10 were mass shootings (i.e., met the federal criteria of 3 or more victims in a single incident).

So according to leftists, 10 mass shootings in one year resulting in 85 deaths in a nation of 320 million people, is an "epidemic." But 40,327 deaths to automobile crashes, an average of 110 fatalities a day, is not.

One will of course immediately observe that active shooter incidents still occurred in very anti-gun states like IL and CA, with the most occurring in CA, which has some of the strictest (if not the strictest) gun laws in the entire nation. Which might lead one to deduce that strict gun laws do little if anything to prevent mass shootings or protect people from them. But, I digress.

What does "epidemic" mean?

• "Extremely prevalent; widespread."
• "A rapid spread or increase in the occurrence of something."

Thing is, "mass shootings" are (according to the federal criteria) neither "extremely prevalent" in the United States, nor new or particularly rapidly spreading or increasing in occurrence. In 1970 the Ohio National Guard killed 4 students, and wounded 9 others, at Kent State University. In 1966 Charles Whitman shot and killed 14 people at the University of Texas. 7 men were gunned down in the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929. Going back farther still, the United States Army killed approximately 300 Lakota Indians, about 200 of which were women and children in 1890. But of course examples 1 and 4 don't count to leftists, as they were perpetrated by proxies of the state, the only entity that should have firearms. Likewise, the fact that governments have perpetrated mass murder on a vastly larger scale than any civilian "mass shooter" (or even scores of them) ever could, is likewise ignored as it doesn't fit the specious narrative that only firearms in the hands of those who are not agents of the state are "dangerous." (This despite the same leftists incessantly, simultaneously claiming that the military and police are systemically and irredeemably racist institutions, that murder brown people abroad for profit and "hunt" them domestically for fun.) 

Gun violence, contrary to what media coverage would have you believe, hasn't undergone any profound increase in severity or frequency. Quite to the contrary, what's increasing exponentially, is media coverage of gun violence. Again, 110 people die every day in automobiles in the U.S., and that receives nary a mention. But "mass shootings," all of which to date kill less people than automobiles on the same day, are mentioned. And whereas the most egregious of automobile accidents might receive a passing mention on the news, "mass shootings" by contrast are mentioned for days, weeks, or even months. The same disingenuously lachrymose journalists who bemoan the loss of life caused by guns, perfunctorily read the teleprompter regarding a "fatal" car accident without so much as a sniffle.

Because who cares about car accidents, when they've got charts like this?

Pretty conclusive, isn't it? There's clearly a trend, an increase in mass shooting fatalities occurring, as evinced by the line drawn across the image from left to right. Of course, when you compensate for the agenda line, this is what you see.

Maybe I'm crazy, but that's what I see, when I look at that chart. And that seems far less consistent and more random in nature. I see something that's sometimes lower and sometimes higher (for whatever reasons). There's also the problem that data, like anything else, can be significantly skewed without context. To give a simplistic example, if I presented data on mass shootings over a period of two days, and there were 0 shootings the first day and 2 shootings the second day, the data would reflect a 200% increase in mass shootings. Despite the fact that contextually, over a broader period of time, there's been no substantive increase. 

The simple fact is that the farther you go back in time the less definitive data we have on shootings. So naturally, the farther you go back, the fewer shootings will be reflected by the data. Because beyond a certain point the data becomes far more unreliable or doesn't exist at all. You won't find FBI crime data for "mass shootings" in the year 1895, for example, because it didn't exist until 1908 and didn't start publishing that data until 1958. And even that data is apparently derived only from constabularies that voluntarily participate in the program.

Furthermore, that a "trend" is occurring is not proof it will continue to occur in perpetuity. As the chart shows, fatalities increase, only to just as suddenly and rapidly decrease. And even if there is a legitimate, perpetual increase in the aggregate of shooting fatalities annually, that likely has some correlation to the population perpetually increasing. More people, generally, is going to = more of a thing occurring. A chart showing toilet usage in the U.S., would no doubt likewise depict a perpetual/incremental increase, or "trend." Because more people are using toilets over time. And similarly, in a country with the right to bear arms, each new day will likely result in more people bearing those arms (some for nefarious purposes). Simply put, there are simply more criminals in the U.S. than there were in 1919. Because in 1919 the population was 104 million. Today it's more than tripled at 327 million. If 1% of the population committed a gun crime in 1919 it would have been 1,040,000 incidents. If 1% of the population committed a gun crime today it would be 3,270,000 incidents. So an increase in gun crime does not necessarily mean gun crime is "worse."

Personally, I've long said the only thing one needs to refute the notion that gun violence is getting worse, or is much worse than it used to be, is a $10 bill. When's the last time someone was killed in a gun duel by the Vice President of the United States? (Hint: 215 years.)

Note also that the criteria for a victim of a "mass shooting" in the last chart is dying in a shooting in which at least 2 people were killed. So mass, which means "pertaining to, involving, or affecting a large number of people," means as few as 3, or even 2, victims. Why? Because the fewer the number of people required, the greater the number of "mass shootings" can be alleged to have taken place, and the greater the number of causalities that can be attributed to such in charts like this one. (Which behooves anti-gun initiatives. If the criteria was 50 people killed in a single incident, then there'd be perhaps one "mass shooting" a decade, which obviously wouldn't make for good propaganda/hysteria fodder. So, for the purposes of making guns look as evil as possible, 2 or 3 people is a "large number of people.") At this rate I surmise before long shootings with only 1 fatality will be considered "mass" shootings. 3 is only 1 more than 2, and 2 is only 1 more than 1, after all. If someone can rationalize applying the term "mass" to 2 people, then it's little more of a stretch to apply it to 1 person, or to argue that there's really no such thing as individual shootings at all. Individual shootings are just part of an aggregate "mass" of shootings that comprises every victim of gun violence, etc. Because there really is no limit to the sophistry of leftists, as anyone who's ever dealt with them well knows.

It's also no coincidence I used the words random and nature in reference to the preceding chart. Because when you look at charts pertaining to mass shooting fatalities, they look remarkably similar to data charts for completely random events, like the weather. Take the number of hurricanes from 1860 to 2020 for example.

Alas, we see yet another apparent trend, conveyed by the line arbitrarily drawn across the chart by someone. Which should come as no surprise, as an alleged increase in unpleasant weather is likewise construed by the Marxist left and complicit media, as grounds to confer ever more regulatory power to the state (and revoke ever more freedom from the people).

"Our environment (is) being destroyed by the greed of a few obscenely wealthy capitalist groupings. [....] Threats to the environment continue to spiral out of control, threatening all life on our planet." - Communist Party Platform. (Parentheses mine.)

But again, when you remove the presuppositional bias that is the trend line, this is what you see.

You can create trends of increasing hurricane activity (e.g.,1855-1860), or decreasing hurricane activity (e.g., 1885-1900), purely by where you decide to start and end the data. But in reality it's just a procession of random events. It should come as no surprise, however, that leftists think gun violence can be ended with regulation. When they literally believe you can diminish the severity of hurricanes, or prevent them entirely, in the same fashion.

The irony is one could argue that the excessive, and indeed obsessive media coverage of mass shootings, is a contributing factor to their occurrence. If video games that "glorify" violence are contributory, then surely the media that makes "mass shooters" celebrities and even household names, is likewise to blame. Surely the media, and the equally leftist Hollywood with its own de facto glorification (whether intentional or not) of the "mass" homicidal maniac, occasionally engenders such aspirations in some mentally unstable individual out there. Individuals who otherwise might not have thought of committing such a crime, if not for the assiduous coverage of such acts with which they're deluged by the media. Right? 

Of course not, and how dare you even suggest such a thing. Leftists are never to blame for anything themselves. Only their political enemies are to blame. It's video games that dehumanize people, not a political ideology that has supported the systematic genocide of over 60 million children, because their lives are inconvenient or deemed not worth living by leftist eugenicists seeking a more perfect society.

Game of Drones: Season 8 Episode 6 (Series Finale)

It's official. Game of Thrones is the Mass Effect of television. For those that don't know, Mass Effect was a popular and loved video game trilogy, that ultimately became infamous for its completely botched ending. I see a lot of similarities between the two franchises, particularly in the response of the fans. Many fans of Mass Effect likewise were profoundly disappointed after it's remarkably lackluster conclusion. A large contingent were in abject denial well afterward, and devoted a great deal of energy to essentially fabricating their own alternative endings, to compensate for the bad ending they couldn't reconcile with their expectations. They seized upon all manner of subjective nonsense to imbue depth and meaning to an ending that ultimately had none. There was no "secret," or esoteric substance, behind it. It just sucked. 

I've been seeing the same from GoT fans for the last three episodes. "Game of Thrones fan theory says the White Walkers will play a role in the finale," says one fan. "I'm almost certain that this is a subtle clue that might strengthen a suggestion that Gilly and Little Sam have White Walker blood in their veins." Of course none of that happened. That's Season 1-4 caliber depth. Season 8, by contrast, was a narratively hollow simulacra that had none of the nuance endemic to its nascent content. It went out with a decadent and vacuous whimper, squandering virtually off of the goodwill it had accrued over seven prior seasons, in the paltry span of four episodes. My personal expectations were pretty much depleted after the battle with the Night King. That set the tone for the whole season for me. It was very ill portent. If they resolved something that ostensibly significant so shoddily the likely outcome going forward was more of the same. And that's exactly what happened. They didn't know how to resolve the conflict with NK coherently, so they didn't. They didn't know how to solve the conflict with Cersei coherently, so they didn't. They didn't know how to solve the conflict with Dany coherently, so they didn't. It was an almost nonstop spectacle of special effects, meant to distract you from the fact that on a narrative level, none of it made much sense.

It's no small problem either that endings tend to carry a disproportionate amount of significance and repute in stories of this nature. Mass Effect is remembered, more than anything else, for the trilogy's terrible ending far more than the mostly good content that preceded it. If you were to ask someone who played Mass Effect what they remembered, the botched ending would almost certainly be the first thing they mention. Why? I'll tell you why. If you ate an ice cream cone, only to find a dead cockroach at the bottom, would you care about the preceding 99% of the ice cream that was good? Probably not, or at least not nearly as much as you would have, if the conclusion was commensurate with the prelude. The ending is the last, and therefore most chronologically proximal, thing a person experiences. You botch the ending, and you often mar the memory as a whole, forever.

The last episode was, as those preceded it, a combination of visual splendor and narratively uninspired swill. The shot of Dany which appeared to show her unfurling dragon wings in particular was very nice. I wish they'd have done it long ago, when it might have mattered, and not been eclipsed by a story that had already driven off a cliff into contradiction and unfulfillment. It turns out Dany was just female Hitler all this time. (The arrangement of her troops in the courtyard immediately brought to mind The Empire from Star Wars.) She doesn't show an ounce of contrition for indiscriminately murdering civilians; it's all rationalized away as necessary collateral damage for achieving the greater good; i.e., her pursuit of global dominion. Like Hitler, she's not content with Poland and France, she wants it all. She makes it clear she's going to invade everyone, everywhere, until the whole world bends the knee. And she'll kill anyone who's an obstacle, because she alone is the arbiter of morality.

As stated previously, it's not the fact she ended up this way that bothers me, so much as the dearth of exposition surrounding it. It simply lacked development. There weren't enough episodes to make it feel organic, and so it all comes across incredibly shoehorned, having largely occurred in the span of four episodes. Much like her relationship with Jon. As mentioned in a previous installment, their "love" too was never really developed, and therefore lacks weight. Consequently, so does Jon's betrayal. I felt no more shock when Jon betrayed her, than I would infidelity from the spouse of some wayward relative or child, whom they wed after knowing only 6 weeks. That's how it was with Jon and Dany. We're supposed to feel something because the show tells us they're in love, but it never showed us they're in love in any meaningful way, and it's not evocative as such. Jon and Dany were never really together, or allied in the viewer's mind in that manner, and consequently the perfidy that sunders them feels as hollow as their relationship.

I literally felt nothing as Dany was stabbed, and died, and was carried off. I was actually scoffing mockingly for much of it, along with the rest of the episode. Because, again, their relationship never meant anything to me. I was also perplexed at why Drogon didn't kill Jon, but burns the Iron Throne for some reason. Am I to surmise Drogon has some comprehension of what the throne is, represents, etc? Is it some kind of socio-political statement? Is he burning it instead of burning Jon because he can't bring himself to kill a Targaryen? As usual, nothing is explained, nor makes much sense. Drogon then flies off with her corpse, to who knows where, neither of which are ever to be seen again. This is the conclusion to Dany's story we've been waiting to see for 8 years? She gets shanked inconspicuously, mere feet away from the throne she's been trying to obtain for years without ever sitting on it, before being hauled off into the fog by her giant fire chicken? It felt far too meager for a character of her scope.

The council that appoints Bran king, as well as the appointment itself, was farcical. Isn't this the guy that just two episodes ago said he didn't want to be the Lord of Winterfell? But now, not only does he agree to be ruler of the 7 kingdoms, he implies it was his objective all along. When asked if he would be ruler, he replies, "Why do yo think I came all this way?" This has a lot of implications. He can apparently see the future, after all, and just let it all play out, presumably knowing the ultimate outcome would be his ascendance to the throne, and his brother being once again banished to a monastic life of solitude. I wish I could say it didn't fit his character. But Bran has a history of exploiting people for his own purposes. He basically killed Hodor to save his own skin. It's not like Hodor was asked if he wanted to hold the door. He was forced to, against his will, at the expense of his life to save Bran's. He arguably knew how things would end up for Jon also and did nothing to alter that outcome. I'd like to think this has some deeper significance, and is perhaps indicative of some ulterior motive on his part, but that would just be me in denial like the others. That would be season 1-4 caliber story telling, and this is season 8, in which all such subtlety and nuance has been ostentatiously discarded. The reality is it doesn't mean anything. It's just bad writing. Another casualty of a story being told in too little time, with too little attention to detail to do it justice, and under the misconception that being "unexpected" and being good are the same thing.

The writers have never more flagrantly conflated these two things, and substituted the former for the latter entirely, than they have in Season 8. Bran becoming ruler wasn't because it was the best, or most satisfying outcome, but because it was an unexpected outcome. And to that I simply ask, what would you prefer? Would you prefer your favorite meal, knowing you'll receive it, or a meal that's awful which you weren't expecting? Does being unexpected make bad food good? Well, it doesn't make plots good either. And it seems writers are increasingly unaware of that fact. I'd rather have something I want and like, knowing it's coming, over a bad surprise pretty much any day. And a major problem with GoT's ending is that it provides virtually none of the former whilst delivering the latter in abundance. It's one thing for one, or maybe two things to not go as expected, and contrary to your wishes. But when most or all of it goes that way, it just becomes unentertaining, and even downright depressing.

Watching Jon be sent back to the wall was one of the most anticlimactic and unsatisfying things I've ever seen in a television show (or any form of entertainment) I've followed. And as stated above, it was the grand finale, and will therefore linger with me more prominently than other parts of the show. What I will remember going forward, above all else, is that the show left me dissatisfied. That it wasted hours and hours of my life leaving me with angst in the end. And I will never forget that. It will always imbrue my memory of the series as a whole. John saved the world from tyranny and was basically sent to an internment camp for his troubles.

Weiss himself somewhat acknowledges this issue in an interview in which he seems to be preemptively defending what he anticipated would be a received as an epic stink bomb.

It's true, what he said. You can't please everyone. But far from trying to please everyone the conclusion of GoT feels far more like it tried to please no one. It feels like virtually no effort was made to produce an ending that would be well received. It's not bitter sweet, it's just plain bitter, and thus the excuse "you can't please everyone" falls flat. If you were a Dany fan, and wanted her to end up on the throne, you'd have been disappointed if Jon did (and vice versa). I wanted Jon to end up on the throne, personally, and I would have been disappointed if the converse happened. But that's not what happened here. Instead we got an ending that frankly sought to satisfy as few people as possible, and the writers have the audacity to imply those who dislike it, dislike it because they were expecting perfection. I wouldn't have necessarily hated the ending if Jon didn't win the throne, but the notion this was the "version that worked better than any other version," is simply farcical. No, I hated this ending because the person who got the throne, being the product of a deliberate narrative trolling effort, was one of the worst choices for the position. So, why should I feel any differently about this, than I do an election that sees someone who's nowhere close to the best candidate being appointed?

I mean, who the hell wanted Bran to end up on the throne? To whom, but some tiny fringe minority, was that ever a hope or source of satisfaction? Again, it seems like the objective was purely to produce an unexpected outcome, with no regard for whether or not it was a good outcome. Why would Bran be a better ruler than Jon, or even Dany, anyway? Bran (by virtue of his powers) may have superior knowledge, but by his own admission he's scarcely even human anymore, lacks the natural human affections from which virtue (as much as vice) are derived, and is effectively naught but an amoral spectator. He's flagrantly exploited others, even unto their deaths, to achieve what he deems the greater good. (Sound familiar?) Both Dany and Bran have used people to their own ends and then discarded them in pursuit of their own agendas. The only difference is perhaps the scale to which each did so. But he's the best guy to rule because Tyrion said so. And everyone just listens to Tyrion, despite the fact he completely misjudged the last ruler he followed, because reasons.

From the viewer's perspective this should be particularly unsettling. The viewer is made aware, numerous times, that Bran can see the future. It's implied the NK's demise was a result of Bran manipulating events all along to achieve that outcome. At the very least he had precognition of the outcome. He implies he knew he would be offered the crown and that's the reason he traveled all the way to King's Landing. He tells other characters repeatedly that their actions and fates are part of some grander scheme. So, basically Bran knew King's Landing would be razed, and said/did nothing to stop it. He didn't warn anyone. He didn't warn Tyrion. He didn't warn Jon, that if he told Sansa and Arya his true lineage, that he'd end up back at the wall for the rest of his life. At best this makes Bran the consummation of human indifference, willing to forfeit thousands of lives and see his brother miserable for the rest of his life, in service to some agenda he deems more important. At worst it was all his plan, allowing thousands to be killed and his brother to take the fall, so he could acquire the throne. 

So at best Bran's neither bad nor good. He's overtly indifferent to the circumstances, bad or good, of other human beings; even his family. He spends most of his time in a state of apparent catatonia, again by his own admission, because he mostly lives in the past. How does that make for a good ruler? It's things like this that make me question how I'm even watching the same show. Characters are contradicting themselves from episode to episode much less season to season. And given that people who merely spend an hour with the show are noticing this, it leaves one baffled at how people working on it for the better part of a decade failed to notice. Surely they did notice. They just didn't care anymore. I was saying quite some time ago that the show began to feel like its makers no longer wanted to make it. The quality began to noticeably dip, indicating a diminishing interest from its makers, at least from a writing perspective. If I had to bet money I would wager this waning interest is proximal to their being given approval to make the next Star Wars film. They got what they wanted out of GoT; a launchpad to bigger and better things. They were simply done with it at that point and wanted to get it over with. Hence why they chose to make a 6 episode final season despite allegedly being given approval to make 10.

So Jon (The Prince that was Pointless) gets shipped off to the wall to spend the rest of his days in ignominy. His extraordinary birth, life, death and resurrection amounting to nothing. Of what significance is it that he was a secret Targaryen? It played no meaningful role in the battle against the NK. Was it so he could ride dragons? He barely did that at all and accomplished nothing of substance when he did. To kill Dany? She loved him before she knew he was a Targaryen, so it was completely unnecessary toward that end. He would have procured her trust and been able to exploit it either way. Why was he resurrected from the dead? To kill the NK? Again, he did nothing in that regard. To kill Dany? That makes no sense. The god that resurrected him was a fire god, and one of its servants (a red priestess) implied that Dany was an instrument of that god, in a previous episode. Had she fulfilled her purpose? Had her usefulness expired? We'll never know. I'd frankly rather see Dany on the throne than what we got (and that's despite never really caring for her). At least that would have made a modicum of sense. 

I also couldn't help but observe that the Unsullied and Dothraki, who demanded Jon be punished, apparently leave the continent after it's decided he'll be sent to the wall. So, who will be there to know if Jon doesn't in fact go to the wall or remain there? None of it makes much sense. And the more the you think about, the less sense it all makes. People will no doubt claim they were trying to "honor" the source material, but that's a strawman of the worst order. They arbitrarily made significant changes on a regular basis for their own purposes. There was nothing stopping them from doing the same to give the fans a good ending. They chose not to. They didn't even leave us with anything. No Drogon with freshly laid dragon eggs. No allusion to White Walker activity north of the wall. Nothing but "subverted expectations."

Ultimately, it was a mixture of displeasure and relief. Displeasure at how it all played out, and relief the show was put out of its misery, and I won't have to watch being butchered on a weekly basis anymore. From Episode 3 onward it was kind like watching someone you care about being tortured to death, as each succeeding episode was narratively worst than the last. When the last episode credits rolled, I was like, "at least you won't suffer anymore."

So long Got. Some of it was good while it lasted.